Who the hell is this?!?!

My journey so far.

I started chasing my real estate aspirations in January of 2022. I was tired. I was worn out and I was hungry for a change. I just had that feeling that life wasn’t where I wanted it to be. It was draining. Life caught up with me in the long run. I didn’t have time to finish my classes and they expired so real estate went to the back of my mind. So far back that I forgot about it. Then I started a new job in town, and I felt a little better about everything but never really felt great about it. Time went by and I was facing the end of summer and that nagging feeling in my head crept back in but this time it was different. This time it was this consistent drumbeat. All day I just kept saying to myself; “Is this really all there is to life? Get married, have kids and dedicate your time and energy to a massive company and hope they allow you time off so that you don’t miss things?” I know that there is always going to be some sacrifices that need to be made to provide for your family, but I kept thinking that there has to be a way to enjoy what you are doing that is taking up your time.

I talked with my wife, and she said that maybe I should try the real estate class again. I’m very impulsive so the second she said that I logged on to the website and signed up right away. This time felt different. First, I had completed about 80% of the class previously so it went a lot quicker. My previous failure at finishing the class fueled me to complete it this time, and I got it done in four weeks while working full time.I then took two weeks between passing my class to take my test. During that time the company that offers the class developed an app that you can just answer test questions whenever you want and when you answer it gives you a short little paragraph of why. It was extremely helpful. I was answering questions at the grocery store, in the bathroom, at work and where else I had a few minutes.  Then it was time to take the test.

I signed up to take my test at 11pm on a Tuesday.  I worked overnight the night before and stayed up all day so that I could take my kids to day care, school and pick them up when the day was done. I got a two-hour nap in there, but I was on fumes. I was confident that I wasn’t going to pass just for the simple fact that I was exhausted. The test was crazy. I took it in my daughter’s room, and it was proctored online by someone named Mark who watched me on my web camera and monitored my screen. Every time the Norton antivirus reminder popped up he would pause my test to verify that I wasn’t cheating. This made me dislike Norton just a little bit more.  I went through the test, and I felt like it was easy. I assume that I was tired, and it wasn’t registering but I clicked on submit about 1:15 am and for a split second I was a green check mark that said passed and it disappeared.  It felt like a blink of an eye. I wasn’t sure what I saw. Mark said thank you and that I could log off now. I asked if I passed, and he said that he wasn’tallowed to tell me and that I would get my results emailed to me.  I was tired, confused and alone because I was the only one awake. The next morning, I woke up and the results came in around 7am. They verified that I had passed, and this huge rush of relief came over me. 

I had previously talked with Coldwell Banker and decided prior to taking the test that I was going to sign up with them, so I set up a meeting and it was a lot. You have a lot of choices to make. You must decide what commission structure you want to sign up with, what realtor agency you want to sign up with, whetheryou want to be a part of a team, among other things. Again, I’m impulsive. After I was told that all these decisions would need to be revisited next year, I just said oh well and made the decisions after about ten minutes of thinking. Five weeks in the only decision that I know I got right was joining the Main Street Realtor organization. They have many free classes and more resources than the other options and have been useful.  They are also cheaper, which helps. If I have some free time, I take a class.  I decided not to join a team for the simple fact that I need to be self-motivated, and I thought that being part of a team might lead me to want to lean on them and the compensation structure I chose hasn’t really proven its self-one way or the other yet.

To stay structured I set goals. I set dates for when I wanted to have things marked off. I’m not going to go into all of them, but I will share my goal of starting to try to get leads.  The day hit where I was going to start calling listings that had expired and asking them if we could meet and talk about potentially selling their house. I wanted to start small, so I came up with four that I wanted to call on that day and the first one was a thing. When I called, I was greeted by an older lady, and she answered the phone with “WHO THE HELL IS THIS!” I took about two seconds to close my mouth and explain who I was and why I was calling.  She said, “You’re going to have to talk to my daughter about that” and then hung up on me.  What a way to start. Three hours later I got excited because she was calling me back. I thought maybe shewanted to talk about her options, and I had a lead. I answered the phone and I hear “WHO THE HELL IS THIS!” I explained who I was again and again she told me to talk to her daughter and hung up. Hard to talk to a person without a name or any contact information.  This repeated about four times a day for a week and a half. I even put her in my phone as Who the hell is this for the simple fact it made me laugh when she called.

Up to this point all the training is on me but I love that. I can make appointments with people to help, but they mostly provide you with a general overview and tell you to schedule another appointment after you use the systems and have questions.  My managing broker has been very supportive. We’ve met three times to talk about what I’m doing and where I’m trying to get to, and they have been very supportive. Also, they are providing me with some suggestions of things I should focus on because there are a lot of things. The meetings are very encouraging and help you stay motivated.

There is A LOT more to what I’m doing than what I’ve written. From trying to get my name moved ahead of an obituary on google to all the profiles I’ve had to register for. The details of that are not entertaining and quite boring but if you’d like to talk about any of it I’d love for you to reach out to me. For now, I’m just going to keep on with what I am doing and hope that results will start showing up soon. They say that it takes 90 days to start seeing momentum so we shall see. In the meantime, I’ll just keep trying to learn and figure this out and hopefully not gain too much weight. Everyone likes to meet over food, and I’ve gained a few pounds.