So, you spent your staycation watching Million Dollar Listing on Bravo and now want to be a realtor, huh? That’s cool. Before you quit your gig over at Lulu Lemon, though, I should probably tell you a couple of things first.
Look, it’s a good gig. I’m not going to burn the house from the inside and tell you it’s a shitty life. But if you think you’re going to hop in and start slinging houses all over the place, you’ll be begging for your retail spot back within a year.
When I first started my real estate career, I was working part time because working a full time full commission job when you have no money is akin to wrestling with a great white in a straitjacket. For the first few years, I was working under a person within a Keller Williams agency. If I was lucky enough to convince a friend to use an inexperienced realtor for their needs, I got to pay some of my commission to my team leader, some to the local Keller Williams agency, some to the Keller Williams franchise, a bit to the IRS, then some to marketing and knowledge. After my first sale, I was so excited to get paid for it and it was $2400. This sounds like a good little chunk of money to get. I know. But it was the only sale I got that year. I made $2400 in the first year. It was an $8000 commission and by the time everyone took a bit, I was able to enjoy $1800 after taxes (which, admittedly, single and dumb Scott probably spent on DVDs).
Your first few years are kind of brutal. Nobody hires you to work them because you’re not experienced but you can’t gain experience if you don’t get hired. A real chicken/egg situation. When I first started, I knocked on a bunch of doors, I did some cold calling, and I faked sincerity while messaging old friends to see what they were up to (hoping they’d talk about real estate somewhere in the conversation). I hated all of it. I mean, I HATED it. All of it feels sales’y and I’m not a good salesperson like that. I’m good at what I do but not like that. It was a necessary evil and I have no regrets. Three years of shit created 10 years of chill.
You’re not going to make much out of the gate. It’s going to take a lot of time and money to get going. You’ll throw your resources at a bunch of different things. Lead gen companies are going to call you all day and night and they’re all going to seem enticing. They’re not. Zillow leads are probably the best but that company sucks because they’re trying to put you out of business. Funny like that.
I didn’t start taking off until I realized that real estate wasn’t a job but a business. You have to take those chances and throw money at stuff and hope. You have to be willing to lose money. One in ten things are going to work but that one thing will make your money back. At the beginning, though, you’re not flush with cash so any investment seems so hard to dive into.
A friend once told me that an entrepreneur does things you won’t do so they can live a life you can’t. Take the first couple of years to do the things that you don’t want to do. Sit in the office and hope that a customer stops in. Knock on doors. Email expired listings. Go to lunch with an old friend that you secretly don’t like. It’s all important. It’s all painful and it’s all important. Grind and grind and grind and five years later, your assistant is doing searches for you and setting up your clients and you’re getting texts from old friends asking for your help and sending you questions as a trusted source. You’re being referred by former clients and your days of prospecting are essentially over.
You’ll never hear an established realtor tell you their job sucks. Also, have you ever heard someone say “I was killing it selling houses but it wasn’t really for me”? If you have, that person was lying. Nobody leaves a job making a couple hundred thousand a year and making their own schedule (more or less) to go back to making daquiris and pushing appetizers at the TGI Fridays or to embrace the demands of a 9 to 5. It just won’t happen because being a realtor is kinda the sweetest gig on earth. That’s why you can throw a rock blindfolded in any direction and you’ll likely hit one. Fortunately for me, most of them are unwilling to do what you won’t do and so they aren’t going to live the life you can’t live.