One of the things I love most about facilitating Silver Creek Area CEO is watching students realize there isn’t just one path to success.
Last week our class heard a great reminder of that from Terry Johnson of BARBERMURPHY Group, a commercial real estate agency headquartered in Shiloh.
He didn’t start with a list of accomplishments. He started with 1945. His dad opening a small agency that did a little bit of everything. Residential. Commercial. Insurance. Appraisals. Just figuring it out and building it piece by piece.
And then he brought it back to his senior year in high school. He was just a B and C student. And he was friends with everyone. No big master plan. He went to Rankin for HVAC. Crawling through tight spaces. Fixing furnaces. Getting paid by the hour.
He told the students about the day a coworker said, “Slow down. We get paid by the hour.” The realization that maybe he wanted his effort tied to something more than a clock— landed.
So he tried something else. Copier sales. Cold calls. Driving town to town across Southern Illinois. Walking into businesses, introducing himself, taking notes on legal pads. And somewhere in all that windshield time, he started noticing parcels of land, empty buildings, and for sale signs. And he got curious.
He quietly got his real estate license, called his dad and joined the family business. Years later, he stepped out and started Johnson Properties as a one man shop in a small office in Fairview Heights. It grew. He grew. Eventually he merged companies and built the largest commercial real estate firm on this side of the river.
And just a few months later, 2008 hit.
His phone stopped ringing. Deals froze. He had properties and payroll and very real pressure. He shared that he had to sell some of his own buildings just to create enough cushion to survive. No drama in the way he told it. Just honesty. He needed reserves. He learned.
He talked about building the Anderson Hospital project in Edwardsville. About developing the O’Fallon retail center that began with The Egg and I and Bella Milano. About assembling land for the Auffenberg dealerships in Shiloh. About sitting at a baseball game, recognizing someone he hadn’t seen in years, striking up a conversation, and that connection eventually leading to the sale of the former St. Albert property to develop The Shoppes at St. Clair.
It wasn’t flashy. It was relationships. Over and over again.
He stressed the importance of building a career on clean deals, a strong reputation, and continuing to learn from others….bankers, attorneys, engineers, and accountants. To continually build trust and mutual respect.
As I watched our Silver Creek Area CEO students listening, I kept thinking how important it is for them to see this. A career that didn’t start with a perfect plan. A path that pivoted more than once. Success that was built through conversations, curiosity, and showing up consistently for decades.
That is CEO.
Thank you, Terry for reminding our students that it’s not about having it all mapped out as a senior in high school. It’s about paying attention. Asking questions. Building relationships before you need them. And understanding that the way you show up now might follow you into rooms you haven’t even imagined yet.
