Careers

Why I Failed as a Realtor

A lesson about side hustles and careers

One of the greatest tragedies about the American education system is the lack of career guidance given to high school students. If I were king for a day, I would make every high school student take one of those personality tests which tell you which career might be a good fit for you. While not perfect, at least it would provide some ideas to consider for the millions of students graduating each year. For those entering college, many are undecided even after their first year.

…you’ll go work for someone less smart than you doing a lot of big brain work.

While my first job aligned perfectly with my engineering degree, somehow the lure of touring big beautiful homes and getting big commission checks made me want to explore real estate as a side gig. But unlike school where success is judged by how well you do on paper tests, very little about me fit the ideal real estate agent. In fact, I probably couldn’t have made a more disparate choice — a job that’s almost 100% sales.

Getting good grades in school really brings no value to anyone… Great, you fully understand Calculus! You’re considered a success in school, and most likely you’ll go work for someone less smart than you doing a lot of big brain work.

Alternatively, being able to sell yourself and sell others on a vision can make you successful in almost anything.

But selling yourself requires you to really put yourself out there.

I have always been a pretty modest and private person. My family was reserved; the house was always quiet. Growing up in the 80’s didn’t require you to blast your whole life on social media either in order to build a business.

Given the choice, I would rather be the super-rich guy who was the unknown founder of some major tech company rather than the crazed personal injury attorney you hear screaming on the radio every single morning.

You can guess my first challenge with trying to start a side hustle in real estate.

Selling yourself

Being a successful Realtor® has very little to do with knowing contracts inside and out. If that were the case, I would have been a top agent — many people are able to pass the basic agent exam. But success in real estate has really nothing to do with the test; it’s all about selling yourself. You must constantly put out your personal information on everything from business cards to postcards in the mail, even billboards on the highway.

Real estate is a 24x7 activity and getting leads is hard. You can’t risk missing a potential buyer or seller at any time. That number you see next to the agent’s name quite often goes directly to their personal cell phone. Being engaged and always on, seven days a week, is not for most introverts — I cherished my private downtime too much.

You call it sales, I call it harassment

Even once you have all the marketing collateral, you’re constantly in the mode of making sure everyone in the neighborhood knows you’re an agent. There are five agents just on my own block now. How do I know? Because they made a point of telling me. One used to put small American flags on everyone’s lawn each Fourth of July with a business card attached.

I always felt like I was harassing people by telling them, “Hey, let me know if you know anyone trying to buy or sell a home.” We have been in our home almost eight years and the agent we used during our relocation still calls me twice a year and sends me a calendar for Christmas. I don’t have the heart to tell him I have my own license, so really don’t need his services now. It truly takes a different kind of person to constantly be asking for referrals.

Oh, and my job can’t know…

When I grew up the term side hustle didn’t even exist, but people sure had second jobs — I still think the term “moonlighting” sounds dirty to this day.

today you’re supposed to always be closing…

I have Millennials at my job that openly talk about their side businesses with their manager two feet away. Some will even wear logo apparel from their side business to work. I’ve even had coworkers show up to meetings late because they were coming back from a side gig. There’s just no shame — it’s a different world from the one I grew up in.

It was almost a sin to talk about your other work on company time thirty years ago. If you did, it was only mentioned to close friends whispering in the kitchenette.

Like the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, today you’re supposed to always be closing, no matter where you are or who is around.

All these conditions that I placed on myself for how I wanted to do real estate pretty much negated me from ever making any consistent income. It was like wanting to be a world-class swimmer but not liking the idea of getting wet.

No rest for the weary

My timing was pathetically unrealistic as well. You can’t work a job for 10 hours a day, get home at 7pm and expect to show potential buyers a home in the dark. Buyers and sellers are notoriously impatient and the demands from my primary job were always too high.

A house with eight buyers standing in the street ready to make an offer won’t make your client happy when you say you’ll get out there later that afternoon.

Part-time was always a hard gig for agents but has become a lot harder in super-competitive markets. Short of working with a close friend or family who know this is not your full-time gig, many buyers and sellers want full time agents — and that’s to be expected.

My network is too small

All that moving around the country for those demanding jobs meant never establishing any real roots in any one place. Me trying to compete with agents that grew up in the area was tough. Not knowing your territory is a huge liability in real estate; you can get sued. The other benefit to growing up in the area was that those agents had an endless supply of contacts they grew up with — classmates from school, coaches, small businesses they visited as a teen.

Oh, and people are illogical

All the critical thinking skills I needed to get that engineering degree were apparently useless when it came to dealing with emotional buyers and sellers — logic just went out the window.

We don’t want a house with a pool, turned into, “We have to get this house WITH THE POOL.”

“We’ve been saving for this house for 2 years, but we just bought a new car last Saturday, because it was a great deal.”

There were times I just knew I was getting Punk’d — alas, Ashton Kutcher never came out, and I was the one left crying like Justin Timberlake.

The stories are long, varied, painful and without a commission check.

Conclusion

What you may consider a side-hustle may be someone’s full-time career, and pretty much every job in life is harder than it looks. It’s proven time and time again, that success doesn’t come down to college degrees, but rather hard work. The key is finding that right career match (or side gig) where you actually enjoy the hard work. As they say, “Doing it for the money, never works.”

If you ever get a chance to shadow anyone in any career, never pass up the opportunity — you’ll learn more in that one experience than four semesters at any university.

I’m sure with enough determination, I could have figured out a way to overcome all of these obstacles, but my brain couldn’t compute that side hustle still meant hustle.

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