How I failed at Real Estate
A year ago I got my real estate license kind of as a backup plan in case my career in digital marketing was at risk. It was; literally two months after getting my license; the agency I worked at for five years was acquired by a larger agency. Having weathered the storm of the tumultuous newspaper industry for over fifteen years and constantly dealing with lay-offs, restructures, or corporate buyouts I was nervous but confident that my backup plan in Real Estate would help me manage whatever came my way.
Real Estate is a hard industry to break into and be successful. I spent months showing homes, providing guidance, learning, and assisting with rentals for little to no pay while still working my full-time agency job and managing the high-level management of our businesses. I had to pay monthly for a brokerage fee, yearly to be part of GLVAR, and bought all of my own business cards, marketing material, and supplies. It wasn’t cheap. I was confident with my network, my marketing skills, and my drive to be successful that I would be good at it. My friends were all very supportive as well. All of that proved to not be enough.
While I read and was told by other Realtors that I should quit my full-time job and dive into real estate full time to “sink or swim” I couldn’t financially. Like I literally couldn’t just quit a monthly salary with benefits for an industry that was oversaturated with young millennials who were pushier than me, younger than me, and had fewer bills than me.
I was frustrated and felt like I was spinning my wheels in both Real Estate and in my full-time job when the larger agency stepped in to start meeting everyone in the company they had just acquired. By some fated chance, an opportunity fell into my lap to fill in for a position they were losing a resource for and I made myself a new path.
After a couple of months with the new agency transition, I was able to quit Real Estate (only 6 months in) and focus on a career path I enjoy so much more. With everything happening now, it was definitely the best thing that could have happened.
So the title of this blog says how I failed at Real Estate: my failure was due to the necessity to make money and pay my bills so I wasn’t able to dive into real estate full time. If I was a twenty-something living at home with my parents or if I had someone else paying my bills I could have dove in and dedicated full-time Charlie to full-time real estate.
In this era of Covid, it was a blessing that I didn’t dive in. I am able to work from home and I feel more successful in my position.
