“I'm all about speaking things into existence. I've been in real estate for less than a year. I started in an October 2020, mid-pandemic. I realized that I didn't choose real estate real estate chose me after looking back. I grew up in Ellensburg, Washington, super small town. I grew up at the base of the foothills, like acres and acres away from other kids. So I spent a lot of time on my own. Wandering through the countryside on my bike, looking at properties, looking at fields. It sounds really boring, but I was so inspired by the landscape and just different people.
Going through school, going through different jobs, I realized that I had so many different interests, art, history, architecture, all of these things. I really struggled for a while trying to find my niche, trying to find the place where I thrive. I left Ellensburg when I was 20 after I wasn't sure what I wanted to do in school. I know that I wanted more exposure to just different things. So I moved to Seattle and I worked in customer service for quite a while. I worked with the four seasons hotel, Ethan Stowell restaurants while working on my BA in communications and marketing at the University of Washington.
I took my degree to a couple cubicles, one for a contract job at Amazon and was pigeonholed into doing one thing. I learned a lot from that, but I wanted so much more and I thought I'm cursed by my own curiosities. Having more time on my hands when the whole world shut down due to the pandemic, I finally started looking more into real estate. Local parks were closed, trails were closed, so you couldn't really do much of anything. So I hit the pavement, started looking at yard signs, you know, started looking at yard, arms and real estate agents that were representing amazing homes.
It's just like a light bulb went off. All of these things said, oh my gosh you can be involved in numbers and data and architecture and customer service, all of this stuff in real estate. So I started working on my license. A lot of friends were telling me, “You should get into real estate.” I just found excuses of being too busy to do the licensing. I had already done my homework with where I wanted to go, because I had been traipsing all about Seattle, looking at different listings from different companies and different brokers.
What drew me to Coldwell Banker Bain was their marketing. They had a reputation for education, it also felt like they had a community and they really lifted up the agents that work for them. I kept seeing their name everywher and after speaking to other friends who work at different companies, I got connected to Todd Shively at the Capitol Hill office. After a minute and a half of talking to him, it was solidified. There's something just like magnetic about that guy. He’s one of those folks that you want to be around just to absorb their energy and their knowledge. One thing about starting out as a newer agent is there are no classes on organizing your business, you have to learn as you go.
Real estate is very personal. It's very personal and sometimes things can be cruising along and the communication's there and then all of a sudden your client will feel the magnitude of the decision that they are about to make or involved in. There's so many things going through their head. That's why it's so important for me to be really organized. There is so much that comes in this first year where there's moments you’re drinking from the fire hose. There's just so much that we want to know, that we're expected to know, and that we work to know. Periodically get totally overwhelmed and wonder how am I ever going to know all this? Just have to stop and slow down.
I believe that you get further by holding the hands of others instead of just trying to run forward on your own. It's really easy to get overwhelmed. If you just communicate and ask the people for help, and it might not even be from the managing broker, it could be from anyone in my office. I'm lucky enough to work where everybody is willing to hold the other person's hand through something because they've been there too. It's about relationships, which is another thing that led me to Coldwell Banker Bain. It's always feels really good to get in front of a problem by asking questions before it comes a real problem.
I will feel like I've made it in real estate when I am a resource for others about real estate related things. When I am hyperactive in Washington and Seattle King County realtors. That is when I feel like I will made it because a lot of people put pressure on a number, wanting to sell or earn a specific dollar amount. The customer experience is typically not involved in those numbers. If I help people, the right thing will come to me, whether it be knowledge, income, or making the most for a seller or getting the best deal for a buyer. If I know how to you use every single tool in my toolbox, that's when I will feel like I have made it.
My best day in real estate was getting a condo under contract in the heart of Capitol Hill. This was during a time when Capitol hill, for many reasons, didn't seem to be the place that people wanted to flock to. It seemed like the place that people wanted to flee from in the summer of 2020. We're in the middle of COVID. We are in the middle of Black Lives Matter protests. We have a police department that is occupied by squatters. Everybody is angry and everybody's mad and everybody is fleeing Capitol Hill at this point. Yes. And not only that there's people that just want more space and a lot of people didn't want to flock into a shared space like a condo because people were worried about COVID. We got under contract in less than two weeks of being on the market. I love the area. I love Capitol hill. I love all of Seattle. And I think that if that transfers through the listing, there are ways that you can tell people this place is wonderful. This place is your home.”
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