Bringing Passion and Care to Your Real Estate Team

Seth Godin says:

“I’m not sure that anyone has a calling. I think, instead, our culture creates situations where passionate people find a place where they can make an impact. When what you do is something that you make important, it doesn’t matter so much what you do.

It’s not that important where. It matters a lot how. With passion and care.”

Did you graduate from high school or college thinking you wanted to find a job as a real estate executive assistant? Probably not.

When I graduated high school, I didn’t know for certain what career path I would choose. In college, I needed to choose a major and ended up in secondary school education with an emphasis in English. I knew I loved my English classes the most and thought it would be fun to teach it. I sort of ignored the part that I wasn’t fond of kids and thus found little fulfillment in the three years I spent teaching middle and high school English.

While looking for a new career, I came across an ad for an apartment leasing consultant. In college I worked for the dormitory system and would take prospective students and their parents on tour of our dorm. I liked doing that, so I figured apartment leasing would be somewhat similar. It was actually a sales job, but I don’t think I really made that connection in my mind until I was several months in. I was pretty happy with the job. It was low key and not very stressful. And when the manager left to become a buyer specialist on a real estate team, I was promoted to assistant manager. For all of a week I think.

When the apartment manager left, she encouraged me to apply for the real estate team’s position as Executive Assistant. I was good friends with that manager so I went along with it. For several weeks, I went through what is now known as Career Visioning. What appealed to me the most was that the Mega asked that I read The Millionaire Real Estate Agent. That book said that one day the Mega would step away from the team through retirement or going “7th Level” and I would be in charge of running the team. That promise of an ultimate level of responsibility really appealed to me. So I accepted the position.

What I discovered was a whole new world of business. Every previous place I worked, I was always just an employee. I had to clock in, perform a specific job, clock out, and go home. That’s all there was to it. Even as a teacher, I had little control over what I taught. I was handed textbooks and told to teach the material in them.

As an Executive Assistant, I was given a whole new level of autonomy. Now, in the beginning, there was a lot of specific tasks that I performed in specific ways. But I was quickly handed the reigns and told that I was free to improve upon the systems as needed. What joy that was! Because that’s my jam! That’s how I express myself creatively. It’s my passion to learn new and better ways of doing things and make improvements that affect the business I’m in as a whole. Now, when I make decisions, everyone benefits; specifically, my team and our clients.

We are all passionate people. Every single one of us has something that lights up a fire in us and fulfills us greatly. When you can apply that passion to your work, you can see the impact you are having. With passion and care, you become fulfilled.

Here are some examples of what passion and care look like:

• You keep a list of your teammates’ birthdays and you’re sure to have the team sign a birthday card or otherwise recognize their special day
• Your contract to close checklist includes things like checking with the clients to make sure they have a reputable moving company lined up to help them and that they have plenty of moving boxes
• Your Mega has been in a funk lately so you have a heart to heart with her to reconnect her to why she’s in business
• You comfort a client who shows up unexpectedly in your office and pours out his heart to you because he lost his job and is now in danger of losing his dream home
• Your tracking system includes every conceivable number anyone would want to know about the business
• You encourage a co-op agent to send her clients to your office to sign a couple of documents to help her out while she is on vacation

Now, everyone on the team has a responsibility to be on the lookout for talent. Even if you aren’t looking to add someone to the team right away, you could be looking for talent now, so that when you do need to hire, you will have already identified some people you want to work with. You are thus creating that situation “where passionate people find a place where they can make an impact.” You are opening the door and changing the lives of the people you bring onto your team.

Looking back, aren’t you extraordinarily grateful to the people who introduced you to your current position? Have they not directly impacted your well-being, your family, and your future? Of course they have!

Now thank those people by making this your most important work right now. Bring your passion and your care to this role. I promise you that more rewards and opportunities will find their way to you when you operate from this state of being.

It’s my commitment with this blog to connect with and help as many people as I’m able. If you have a question or would like a third party opinion on something, I’m happy to help. Simply drop me an email: egilbert@kw.com