Real Life in Real Estate
A quick history of my real estate background- I was drawn to real estate for the flexible schedule and was hopeful for a great income. When I started this career, I was pregnant with my first child in 2009. It required two classes that I took in person. I took the first class with child, gave birth to our daughter Hannah during my short week break and finished the second class while breastfeeding. That’s flexibility!! I passed my classes and moved on to take my test. Thankfully I passed my test on the first try and attribute that to taking the Randall’s School of Real Estate Prep course. The questions were similar to the practice tests given. All of this was in 2009 and I joined Nebraska Realty as a brand new agent.
I absolutely loved the people and immediately was assigned a mentor who threw me in her car and took me along for the real estate ride! She taught me a lot, however I didn’t feel like the brokerage could provide me the full learning experience that I had hoped for in order to build a 6-7 figure income. I then made a switch to Keller Williams, and took what I call real estate Bootcamp or Floyd Wickman. This class taught me the sales scripts and endurance it was going to take to build a career, how to make endless calls to Craigslist leads, and For Sale By Owner clients. I think I sold around 9-12 houses all under 200k that year. Hardly enough to make a living on, and unfortunately my first go at real estate left me searching for full time work with benefits.
I started working for Dr. Schlesinger and helped open the Lovely Skin store. After about a year of tough, long hours and watching my daughter cry because I was gone so long, I was determined to make another change. I was told I wouldn’t ever be better than that job, which only fueled my desire even further. I applied for a job with another local med spa, Mid City Med Aesthetics and was quickly shown what being appreciated for your work felt like! They welcomed me and allowed me to put my talents to work. I began marketing the spa, helping them grow their client base and profits until I decided to attempt it all on my own. I left and opened Skincerely Yours Spa which grew from an individual owner operated business, to a 15+ staffed salon and Med Spa in Omaha Nebraska.
After running that for 4 years, we were ready to grow and move into a larger space. It was this moment that I renewed my real estate license to be able to navigate the real estate search for Skincerely Yours. We located a building and made an offer! I was ecstatic! God had other plans, though, and the loan fell through after months and months of due diligence, causing me to lose my 20k earnest deposit. I was devastated and quickly lost confidence, relationships and direction.
In all reality, that was the best thing that could have happened. I now had tons of sales & marketing experience, business experience and was able to take all of that back to real estate where I was able to establish an amazing business with the right foundation. I have now been full time in real estate and have doubled my business every year since 2015.
My goal with this blog is to share real life stories about my experience and what has helped me grow into the 40-50 million dollar team “Big Picture Real Estate Group” we have now!
