REAL ESTATE
by Ann Marie Kennon
Leading from Outside His Comfort Zone Russ Phillips believes we all walk the winding path in life. But to speak to his consistency, one need only recognize his work ethic and commitment to family.
H
e has won all the awards there are to win, so most would not believe real estate was not the first career choice of the man known as ‘the guy who can get stuff sold.’ Nor was it his second. But when it came time to hold on to his family’s legacy, Russ Phillips went full cowboy on this vocation—and not in the watered-down Hollywood way he believes has trivialized the nature of the men who still embrace it. Raised on a ranch in a real estate family, Phillips aspired to be in radio until his boss, Bob Cole, asked him what he wanted his life to look like. “I told him I wanted to live in a small town,” Phillips says, “and I wanted job security.” Cole said radio was the wrong place to be because stations get sold, on-air talent gets fired, and the big money is in big cities. “Faced with the fact that doing what I had studied would not result in the life I wanted, and being young and unattached, I decided to go back to my ranching roots,” he says.
COWS FEAR HIM The Phillips family had weathered the turmoil of the Austin real estate market in the 1980s, so, for Phillips, the hardships of working the 1880s life—sleeping on the ground and eating from chuckwagons on enormous ranches in Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Montana—felt pretty comfortable. “I did most of my work on horseback,” he says. “It was the real deal—showing, roping, and doctoring cows. But I got homesick for beautiful Texas ladies, married a Dallas girl, and got responsible.”
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He still ropes today and loves that his cowboy skills just add to his unique character. In 2002, Phillips’ responsibilities went next-level. His father passed away suddenly and it was left to this 31-year-old to hold on to the land his family had owned for more than a century. He recalls, “I was thrust into save the ranch mode. The economy was in bad shape, I had just lost a job, and I was about to learn some painful lessons about how brutal our tax laws can be. But I had my own family to take care of and always wanted their mom to stay home so it became the refining fire from which I came.”
