Think Hard Before Choosing A Career In Real Estate

Seattle's I Got Smart Real Estate Podcast with Josh Pemberton

Two decades ago, I left a six-figure, Fortune 500 company position and started a career in real estate. I needed a change because I was heading in a direction I didn’t really want to go down. I wasn’t happy, but I was afraid to make the change because of certain things I would be losing—benefits, paid vacation, tenure, etc. As I looked back at the various jobs I’d held over my lifetime, though, I realized that each one was better than the one that came before it, and between each transition I had felt the exact same anxiety.

It was scary, but for me, do you know what was even scarier? Regret. It’s not your job circumstance that defines your future—it’s your choices. What you choose is what you get.

A mentor of mine named Nido Qubein once said, “For the timid in our society, change is always, always frightening. For the comfortable in our society, change is always threatening. For the confident among us, change is opportunity.” He taught me that all meaningful change comes from within. Most of us don’t want to change until the pain of remaining the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.

What you choose is what you get.

He wasn’t advocating change for the sake of change because that doesn’t ensure improvement. Improvement, though, is always the result of something that you change. Statistics show that 60% of Americans are just one paycheck away from bankruptcy. This means that most people are merely enduring the job they have instead of doing what they love. They’re trapped by fear, as I once was. Whether you’re in a job that pays well and makes you unhappy job that’s or a job that pays poorly and makes you unhappy, it’s not your current circumstances that define your future. It’s your choices. What you choose is what you get.

When you have a job, you have a ceiling. When you have a career, such as in real estate, you have unlimited income potential. Not only that, but you have more time to do the things you want to do. Real estate isn’t for everybody; it’s hard work. In fact, 85% of the people who get into real estate get right back out within 18 months. I believe, though, that there are tens of thousands of people out there that would really be successful in real estate- they just don’t know it.
While you might assume that the majority of the real estate business revolves around showing homes and sitting inside open houses, most of the discipline involves learning and knowing legal stuff. Once you master that, it’s all a matter of marketing yourself and marketing the inventory you have access to. The difference between a successful real estate professional and an unsuccessful real estate professional usually lies in how they were trained and mentored at the very beginning. That’s the secret to the success of my own team.
Kick some of these thoughts around in your mind. When you’re ready to give me a call, we’ll find a time so that we can chat and find out if a career in real estate is really for you.