Signs of Recovery.

Somewhere back in 2015/2016, with Kacy's support and encouragement, I started investing in my career as a Realtor.  I got my Indiana Broker's License back in 2014 with the goal of helping my Dad expand our rental empire.  

When I got my license, I really had no clue what I was doing.  I know that I wanted to sell real estate and I had a very lofty goal of selling at least $1 Million in volume my first year.  Jackie, one of my mentors and fellow broker's thought it was a really awesome goal, but thought that I should shoot for something a little more reasonable because generally the first year in real estate is hard.  Not only do you have a huge outlay of capital getting your business off the ground, but there is really nothing out there that teaches you how to sell real estate.  

It didn't matter to me, though.  I worked my butt off.  I, admittedly, didn't know what I was doing and kind of felt like I was thrown to the wolves - I went on my first listing appointment three days after I signed with my first brokerage.  I didn't get the listing, but I look back and I know that I did my absolute best.  

In what I can only call a "debriefing" the owner of our broker, Connie (who I affectionately called The Mother Tucker - our brokerage was F.C. Tucker Market Place Realty), sat me down and asked me all sorts of questions about how it went, where I think I went wrong, what I thought I could do better the next time around.  I had never had an experience like that.  Throughout high school, and even my brief time in college, I never had a teacher really teach me like that (with the exception of my Dad, who as a history professor, always made learning about history fun and more of like a storytime instead of a lesson), asking my opinion about things.  I made my way through school learning that if you do A, you will get result B.  

When I took the first real estate licensing classes it was all about the rules that you had to follow, measurements, means, bounds, how many square feet are in an acre, blah blah blah.  Both my licensing and post-licensing classes were more of how to stay out of trouble and avoid getting fined by either NAR, the state, or local MLS boards.  There was nothing in the classes on how to sell.  No one taught me how to sell real estate, no one taught me how to connect with people or that there was actually a psychology behind it.  In fact, until I started working with an amazing coach by the name of Borino, I didn't even know I was allowed to call up a for sale by owner and try and pitch myself as a realtor for them.  

As much as I loved Mother Tucker and still dearly love her and her daughter Jackie and I consider them both very much mentors who I will call on occasion to sound board things (or even refer clients to them), my career in real estate really started changing once I started learning how to sell and how to deal with people.  Before Borino, I would take on any client - preapproved or not (which, I learned very quickly to get people pre-approved!! It saved me a lot of gas, money and time), and spend hours working with them, taking them to and showing them different houses.  That first year was tough.  In fact, I would actually have to say that my first sale that didn't involve helping my Dad find rental properties, wasn't until 2015.  

I didn't mind that my Dad was using me to buy properties - it benefited both of us and my Dad was happy to expand our little empire into Indiana where I was living.  We both looked at it as this was passive income for my family of 5 and also how I was eventually going to be able to pay for the kids' college.  Until I started working, we were surviving on less than $50K per year.   I'm not saying that to brag or even have people be like "You survived on less than 50K a year?!"  Where we were in Northern Indiana, that was entirely doable.  We didn't have many if any luxuries, but we had a roof over our head and we had a plan for the future.  My goal, when I got into real estate, was to get Kacy out of construction as soon as I possibly could because we both saw the writing on the wall and that was that construction was destroying her body more and more quickly as the years came and went.  Kacy, wanting me to be successful (and to get out of construction faster, too, I assume), started helping me and was actually responsible for introducing me to Borino and his programs and began working on boosting my confidence and really taking chances.  

I also started off being more corporate and professional.  While I had absolutely no problem suiting up if the situation called for it, there was something that just wasn't clicking.  I absolutely loved real estate.  I loved working with people, I always had.  I had always wanted to do something creative, fun and above all else help people.  Before becoming a Realtor, I tried my hand at almost everything under the sun.  

One of my favorite projects (and it was a project) was when I organized a House Elf Clothing Drive at a local bookstore when the last Harry Potter book came out.  I had a friend who had a really good "wizard rock" band that I got to play, the local radio station came, the manager of the bookstore donated 5 brand new books that we could raffle off, and collected over $2000 in cash donations and 4 UHauls full of clothes for the local homeless shelters.  It was an amazing event.  That was all before I got into real estate.  

You know how they say that if you find something you love, you never work a day in your life?  I love real estate.  I really do.  I work my ass off almost every day.  At my peak, I was working over 70 hours a week and I was doing this because I loved it.   We would go on vacations and I was answering my phone, scheduling appointments and answering questions from a hotel room in Las Vegas.  I wrote up a contract on my phone in the Chicago Natural History Museum (right next to the room where the precious gems are on display).  I felt like a rockstar.  

I networked with some of the biggest names in the real estate game.  I crashed a party sponsored by EXP where I had the opportunity to meet and speak with their former CEO.  I have considered myself lucky and blessed to have worked with and learned from some of our industry leaders.  I was recruited by a top producing team leader in the Tampa Bay area and with Borino's guidance (and maybe a little bit of shoving), decided that I needed to a bigger pond to swim in.  While I loved Indiana, and I probably could have spent my entire life comfortably there, I wanted a "bigger pond" to swim in.  

So, we moved to Florida.  I became a part of an incredible team, managed to build an incredible business that has allowed me to keep my wife from going back into construction.  My confidence has increased and instead of being a pushover, I now not only advocate for myself but am fierce when it comes to advocating and protecting my clients.  

I'm not going to lie, though - it has been a rough 5 years in Florida.  And the thing is, it hasn't been rough because of real estate.  It was about 99% personal life that has been pushing back at me, causing me stress and anxiety and even some depression.  Real estate has been the thing that I have clung to like Rose on the door at the end of Titanic and the support from my brokerage here in Florida has been the door that has ultimately saved my sanity at the end of the day.   

I have slowly been recovering, learning my limits.  While I started ignoring those limits (and I found that ignoring them was really a bad thing for me to do), I have found that putting more emphasis on myself and my mental recovery has been a wonderful thing.  I have, for the past two years, been putting all my eggs in someone else's basket, taking on responsibilities that I wasn't expecting and it really hurt my business.  I wanted to do so much more in the past two years.  It didn't help that three years ago my coach Borino passed away very suddenly and threw me into more of a depression.  

I didn't have a choice but to carry on.  Unfortunately, life threw more and more obstacles in my way so I did what any average, decently privaledged person would do and went into therapy.  I got a diagnosis of adult ADHD (which I should have been diagnosed as a kid) and found out I was on the Autistic spectrum.  My therapist informed me that I had all the classic signs of the gifted kid that grew up and burned out.   It was like my eyes were opened and everything made sense.  BUT on top of coming to that realization, and finally being on adderall which helped immensely, I started noticing health issues that I hadn't had before.  I was grumpy or cranky a good portion of the time, stress was almost unmanageable, I was crying and having emotional outbursts.  I honestly felt like I was going crazy and my blood pressure went scary high (we're talking in the 160s).  All classic symptoms of perimenopause.  Yeah!!! Let's add something new to the mix!

It was also around the time that I was figuring out all of this that Hana, Borino's widow, contacted me and wanted me to help her keep his Real Estate Rockstars going.  Rockstars was the one thing that had kept me going and was a safe place for me, not to mention real estate being such a passion for me, that I said yes.  I didn't even have to think about it.  I had been in the business at that point for 7 years and while I still felt like a rookie, I decided to take the jump and help out.  It took us a little while to figure out where my place would be, but we found it.  

I started coaching and my first class was on Confident Communication.  At the time, I couldn't help but laugh because I felt like such a mess inside.  Me? Confident?  But, I was going to do it.  And as I traveled down that road, I started exploring my own self more and practicing what I preach.  

I started seeing the bullshit from other "friends" and cutting them out of my life.  People started telling me that they were amazed at what I was doing, what I had accomplished and asking me how I was keeping everything together.  I was honest about it - I wasn't.  I was just doing the best I could.  Somehow, that helped other people.  On the real estate side, I started answering questions for people - even if they had an agent already.  I didn't poach anyone, I could never do that.  I just offered help.   

I discovered, when working in a transaction with another agent, if I was straight forward (not necessarily blunt, but open and communicative) with them, everything worked out smoother, I was able to work together with the other agent and my success rate with not just agents, but buyers and sellers, increased.  I started doing things how I wanted to do them.  

I wasn't like a lot of agents that were focused solely on the numbers - I was focused on the people.  Helping people was what made me happy.  I started thinking about working with more and more people and thinking about how I could help them.   I had so many top producers (even Borino had chided me on this back when he was live) telling me "You can't make a living by working with buyers."  I called bullshit.  

I also ditched the suit in favor of jeans and tee-shirts.  I still had the suit in my closet and damn did I love wearing it because I looked good and it made me feel good, but it wasn't as comfortable as my every day clothes.  I started really just being myself in all aspects of life.  I had long conversations on the phone with people about their real estate goals.  Even if they were just looking for something temporary, I would do everything I could to point them in the right direction.  Kacy said I was playing the long game - that these people would remember my kindness and my help.  While I could agree with that, it honestly didn't cross my mind.  I felt like I was just helping people and I loved that.  

At the same time the market was going crazy and there were so many new people getting into the business that didn't know what they were doing.  The first thing I would do would be to look up when they got their license.  Depending on their attitude, I would either help them or I would keep things completely terse.  I hated being terse with people, so I decided to say fuck it and started talking to them like I would anyone else on the planet.  I would be straight-forward, honest, tell them what they needed to know and have a smile on my face while I was doing it.  I was underestimated time and time again, but I got started getting a reputation locally for being straight-forward and fiercely loyal.  

I feel like I'm starting to finally hit my stride.  I feel like I'm starting to get back into the swing of things.  I have goals and plans and have even revived ideas that I've kicked around for eons and am trying to implement them.  I have embraced my inner Jess.  It feels good.  

Today, I start one of those plans that I've had for a good long while.  I wanted to create a course for Rockstars to teach agents how to work with buyers.  Not only do I have a webinar that I'm going to do for free, but I have an entire course (or "BootCamp") that I'm going to be teaching this month.  For the first time in a while I'm excited.   Is my anxiety kicking in and waiting for the other shoe to drop?  Absolutely.  But I know what I want.  I want to help people.  Whether it's other agents, buyers, sellers... it doesn't matter.  I want to help people with their real estate goals, dreams, whatever. 

That is what I'm going to concentrate on (along with my family, of course) and while I'm doing that I'm also going to keep my boundaries.  I've discovered that there is no work/life balance, it's all about boundaries.  I can still help people and keep those boundaries.  And I'm going to show other agents that it can be done too.  

Just watch me.  :-)