Realtor Talk with Robbie Kamaleddine

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Realtor Talk with Robbie Kamaleddine

Robbie Kamaleddine (pronounced ‘Camel-deen’) is recognized as an industry innovator and takes pride in delivering a luxury real estate experience at all price points. After a decade in luxury fashion, he launched his real estate career in late 2017. By 2018, Robbie took home Remax’s prestigious Rookie of the Year Award.

Edmonton has been home to Robbie since emigrating with his family from Lebanon in 2002. He completed his Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Alberta during which he was also heavily involved in the drama department.

Since graduating he has continued his association with Edmonton’s arts community and is a frequent theater goer and avid Fringer. The central tenet of Robbie’s approach to life, both professionally and at home, is a strong conviction about having a positive impact on everyone he meets. He passionately believes that the real estate experience should be dynamic and fun.

Robbie is a horrible dancer.

Description

Real estate agents and salespersons act as agents for the sale or purchase of houses, apartments, commercial buildings, land and other real estate. They are employed in the real estate industry.

Job Forecast

For Real estate agents and salespersons, over the period 2019-2028, new job openings (arising from expansion demand and replacement demand) are expected to total 58,300 , while 58,900 new job seekers (arising from school leavers, immigration and mobility) are expected to be available to fill them.

Employment Requirements

Completion of secondary school is required.

Completion of a real estate training course is required.

Provincial or territorial licensure in the province or territory of employment is required.

Salary Range

Low: $24,746/year
Median: $46,212/year
High: $134,783/year

Job Bank Link: https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/marketreport/summary-occupation/6176/ca

Full Length Episode:

Complete Episode Transcript

Today’s guest is Robbie Kamaleddine Here’s our job talk with a realtor.

Welcome to The Job Talk Podcast, where we talk with people who love their jobs.

Our guests open up about their challenges, surprises and secrets to success in their industries through conversation.

And we explore their careers, past work experiences, and the education that got them to where they are now.

Thank you for joining us today.

My first question for you is, what is it like to be a realtor today in today’s market.

Are things good or are things stressful for you right now.

I think that first of all, thank you for having me on.

But I think that it’s a great time to be a realtor.

It is certainly a tumultuous market.

It is certainly very dynamic.

But there is that succeed do quite well here in Edmonton.

I guess.

Where did you grow up, Robbie.

Oh, goodness.

So I was actually born in the middle East.

I was born in Lebanon.

My family emigrated here in 1991, and we ended up moving to this tiny little hamlet of a town in southern Alberta called Oyen You can’t Google it yet.

They don’t have Internet there.

But it was very, very tiny.

And then my parents went back and forth between Lebanon and Canada.

So I did some of high school in Lebanon.

And then I came back here in 2002 to complete my high school education.

And what’s it like to emigrate to Canada at that age, especially.

I mean, I was I was quite young, but certainly there was a there was a quite a big culture shock despite, you know, the cosmetic surgery I’ve had done to my face.

I’m quite old.

And so I remember, you know, before the Internet and before technology.

And so growing up in a small town was not my vibe.

It was not on brand for me.

And I had big city dreams.

And what was your first post-secondary experience when you left high school.

Oh, it was good.

I mean, truthfully, I feel that I should not have gone into post-secondary immediately.

I have done an excellent job of surrounding myself with successful individuals who have all inadvertently put pressure on me to also, you know, step it up and be successful.

I was doing a general sciences degree and really had no direction.

And you completed but you completed your Bachelor of Science degree.

Oh, of. Course.

And then immigrant parents could you imagine not finishing a degree with immigrant parents.

My. What are you, a doctor.

No, I’m not a doctor yet.

One thing.

Not a doctor. So they had high hopes.

Was that ever a consideration that you would go into medicine.

Yeah.

I had an aptitude for sciences, but really no interest further in medicine.

I really enjoyed botany But you can’t get the job in botany.

That’s not good.

My mom really didn’t know what botany is, and so I was really soul searching.

My my best friend really was pushing me to do a degree in psychology.

He thought that would resonate, and I ended up doing a minor in theater as well, which was a weird combination because those two generally don’t go well together.

As I kind of, you know, made up my degree like a dirty prom dress.

But here we are. I enjoyed it in the end.

Well, I like the diversity of science and the arts with with theater.

Are you still acting.

No, I haven’t acted in a very long time.

Unfortunately, I have this dream of what I’ll be doing with my life.

My job takes over so much of my day that I really don’t have much time.

I go to the fringe and I try and participate and volunteer and, you know, sponsor theater organizations.

But to physically do it yourself, it’s just so time consuming.

I haven’t done it in years and truthfully, I’m not very good at it.

So I’m doing the World Service.

Will get into your career as a real estate agent.

That’s what this video is all about.

I’m really interested to know you graduate from science.

What is your first job.

What’s your first real job.

Oh, God. Okay, so I had.

A. Very loosey goosey plan of what I wanted to do.

So I have a degree in psychology.

It’s a B.S. with a minor in theater.

My long term goal was actually a master’s degree in drama therapy.

And in order to achieve that goal, I had to do volunteer work at Alberta Hospital in an outpatient program working with outpatient schizophrenics.

And I quickly realized that psychologically, I did not have this mental barrier that all of my doctor friends had where they could detach and separate and protect themselves from the outside world.

And I became very sensitive to the patients that I was working with, and it was really emotionally taxing.

And it does not help when the person who’s supposed to be guiding you is crying hysterically.

Yeah, yeah.

I hope I don’t cry in this episode.

You know, if you cry and cry over empathetic disaster, it is going to be a two hour podcast of two grown men crying.

Yeah, well, that’s okay.

We’re. We’re in touch with our feelings.

Okay, so you’re in that job and you’re starting to question it a little bit.

So that was volunteer your work throughout university.

You actually worked retail.

So for me, I was trying to find my way and I, I think I struggled for a long time to realize what I was good at.

And the answer was always was always there.

But throughout university, I paid my way through school by working a commission based retail job of just clothing.

And when I finished university, I thought, okay, well, this is what I’m good at and this is what I’ve, you know, achieved success in.

So I may as well continue with that.

So I ended up moving to luxury retail instead, luxury retail, luxury retail.

So in university I kept odd jobs.

So I worked at this clothing store part time and then I facilitated graduate student experiments in psychology, which is also quite fun because I would book appointments and, you know, run the experiments and just, you know, have that have a blast doing it.

And you were you were happy doing that.

Okay, let’s let’s get into it.

Why did you decide to become a real estate agent.

I didn’t.

I was coerced.

My again, my best friend who really you’ve actually interviewed her before, which is quite a spicy lady.

Yeah.

She kept saying you should become a real estate agent and for me, it was it was tricky.

I had this other job and had achieved quite a bit of success in it and had definitely, you know, Edmonton’s a small city.

I’d made a name for myself as a personal shopper.

My problem was I was starting to feel like I hit a glass ceiling.

I was starting to feel like there had to be something else.

And so I started to explore other options.

I started to think, okay, what am I good at.

What can I do.

And unfortunately, I felt a great deal of resentment because I spent ten years working to be a personal shopper and growing my business and growing my network.

And I felt that if I were to switch careers, I would lose everything.

Yeah.

Whereas if you were a lawyer or a doctor, if you transferred to a different city, your knowledge transfers right over.

And my friend just kept saying, you should become a realtor.

And I have to this day I have kind of a spicy relationship with real estate.

It’s not as regulated as other industries, and I think there’s a lot of room for improvement.

But she kept saying I should do it.

And so I was, you know, toying with the idea of doing my LSATs And I was trying the idea of new nursing school and what am I going to do.

And I thought, you know what, let’s just get my real estate license and not tell anyone and just do it completely under the radar.

And did re successful keeping it under the radar.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I’m a little bit of a loose lipped Lesley. A couple of my close.

Friends do, but. No one else did.

Okay.

I first question I have with this is your parents is real estate agent is is that high.

Is it does it go doctor, lawyer, real estate agent for them, do you think.

No, no.

So so it’s doctor and then also doctor and engineer and then lawyer.

And so I had to explain my.

Yeah.

What a realtor does.

They don’t have real estate agent in the Middle East.

They don’t, you know.

No, you trade one camel for a goat and then it’s a whole, you know.

Yeah. How is that about it.

It’s it’s not the same.

And so definitely there was an uphill battle trying to explain to my parents, this is what I’m doing.

And they were horrified because I had gone to university for five years and they didn’t understand how I would, you know, throw it out all the way.

Major They weren’t happy with my previous career either.

So wait a second.

May I ask what they do for for their work.

They own a restaurant.

They are okay.

And obviously they’re entrepreneurs.

Yeah, they’re entrepreneurs.

So that’s high on their list.

I think there’s it’s immigrants.

Okay, you come to Canada for your children to become a doctor.

Not so they can help people. Oh, God, no, not for them to help people.

It’s just so they can have money.

That’s the whole point of being a doctor.

Okay. I sense to my parents.

Well, I sense it’s probably pretty, pretty common.

But I think there’s a close tie.

I think there’s like close tie between lawyers and real estate.

I think.

Yeah, it’s I mean, that was one of the first things that really shocked me about this job is that, you know, you hire a real estate agent who is creating a legally binding contract.

They are writing a document that is going to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And they’ve never been to law school and that’s quite shocking, you know.

And so for myself, I was very gun shy to put pen to paper or, you know, you know, fingers to keyboard to create these contracts.

So that while I didn’t go to law school, I couldn’t possibly think of all the terms and conditions. And, you know, looking at this contract from every angle to protect my client, be it on the buying or selling side.

Yeah, yeah.

Let I’m going to ask you a boring question and I don’t want you to go on.

I’m not asking you to go on and on with this.

Okay. How does somebody become a real estate agent.

What is the education.

What’s the first step to completion.

It’s very, very linear.

So we are governed by the Real Estate Council of Alberta.

Here in Alberta, obviously, every province is its own thing.

So you basically apply online and you do a mini quiz to say, you know, well, you’ll be kind of, you know, circle the picture of the house.

It’s very simple, nothing fancy.

And then you do a series of courses.

There is to court at the time and they could have changed.

This is year five for me, but at the time you had to do two fundamentals of real estate courses and then you to do a specialization course in my case, residential real estate.

And then if you want to do commercial, it’s a separate course and property management is separate course.

But you can obviously you can continue to build on that and and take these courses.

How long how long do the how long does the course take.

So you are given 18 months per course.

I was adamant that I was gonna get it done immediately.

They’re very, very dry.

They’re very boring.

I’m a quick reader and so they don’t allow you to read them.

They read them to you in a very monotonous, slow paced voice.

And as someone who’s probably ADHD, that did not work for me.

So what I had done was every day after I’d work my personal shopping job, I would go to the Starbucks on one or ninth Street and Jasper Avenue, and I would force myself to listen to this, you know, these readings for a minimum of 2 hours.

And some days it was exactly 2 hours and some days it was, you know, I would be on a roll and I would continue.

But as a result, I finished the entire program in two and a half months. Wow.

But that’s because there was no you know, failure was not an option.

And I just wanted to get it done.

And you did this quietly.

I love that you did that. Okay.

So what do you receive once if you receive a license or a certification, would.

You receive a license to operate in the industry.

But then you need to tether your license to a brokerage.

It doesn’t work by itself and you need to be licensed under, you know, be it Remax or Royal LePage or Century 21 or any of the other many brokerages.

Do you approach the brokerage or what happens with.

So some brokerages hire people.

It really is a weird interview process.

I have a high opinion of myself, so I interview different, different brokerages trying to find the right fit.

There are so many things I would have done differently had I, you know, had any semblance of understanding of what real estate was.

The courses give you a very dim picture, but they don’t actually teach you how to operate in real estate, and they certainly don’t teach you how to find a brokerage.

So I interviewed a couple of different brokerages and then found one that I thought made sense and ended up getting licensed there.

What stands out for you that you would have done differently specifically as you were starting.

I mean, one of the the biggest misconceptions about realtors, it’s a license to print money.

And certainly realtors can make quite a bit of money.

What people don’t see is the amount of money that it costs.

And so brokerage fees are all over the place.

You know, a lot of major brokerages, you’re paying 1500 dollars a month just in brokerage fees.

That doesn’t include your insurance, that doesn’t include relicensing, that doesn’t include anything else.

And so knowing how to negotiate from the word go and negotiating your own worth and saying, you know, this brokerage is offering it for this much amount, this brokerage is offering you for this month, a month, this much a month by the tongue twister.

Yeah. And, you know, it does provide, you know, knowledge is just so powerful.

That’s my generic quote for the day.

You’re welcome. Write that down, children.

I’m going to write the note.

anything, anything else.

Stand out for you for what you would do differently.

I guess this is the question that I would ask you would be what has surprised you throughout being a real estate agent.

God, I’m in a perpetual state of surprise from the moment I wake up to the moment I collapse, you know, in that real estate is a really weird job.

I can genuinely say I love my job and I don’t know how many people can say they love their industry.

I just I get so much energy from it.

And the highs are high. The lows are low.

What’s surprising to me is that especially when you’re working under one of the bigger brokerages, is you’re buying into a franchise and you’re a business owner.

But there’s no steps that most brokerages don’t really offer you anything beyond superficial guidance.

You have to figure it out.

You have to you figure out your brand and you have to figure out your marketing, your identity, things like negotiation, things like creating a contract that’s not given to you.

You have to figure it out.

Which is why the industry has over an 85% failure rate in the first two years.

Are other real estate agents open to helping you out, or is the competition so high that they don’t want to help you.

I mean, it’s tricky.

So the way the market is now, there are the old school realtors who have been doing it since the early 1800s and still using those same photo.

Yeah, you look great.

I have strong opinions.

So there are the old school realtors that have been operating under the same business platform as they were in the early eighties and early seventies.

And that’s fine because they’ve obviously been very successful.

There are newer agents now who are also incredibly successful, usually to be successful in this industry.

If you look at it historically, we had been in the realtors that are very successful, have had a parent or a mentor that was also in the industry, the kind of guy guided them in.

Just as I said, the failure rate is so high.

There are people that are very kind and congenial and we’ll just offer advice and assistance.

That can be you.

Now, Robbie, you could be the change in the industry.

I want to ask you about your practices on that.

Okay.

Well, let’s let’s talk about your day to day.

I’m guessing each day is different for me because you’re you’re dealing with different people all the time.

Yeah, it’s it’s very dynamic.

So some realtors will intentionally try and market themselves in one way or another.

I find that even when you try not to, you do tend to gravitate in a certain direction, whether it’s certain communities or certain buyers or certain sellers.

You do kind of find your your niche.

You, you I see from day to day, correct.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So I mean, it is very difficult.

What I love about the job is that it’s so dynamic.

You have to make it structured, which is something I struggle with.

But typically I wake up, I’ve been on a an early morning workout kick, so I get up at 530, I do a workout at 615, I hit class go Orangetheory Day and then I just go, I get text messages at all hours of the day.

So I generally wake up, I have emails, missed calls, text messages, whatever.

I’m absolutely glued to my phone.

I won’t do more than three buyers a day if I if I’m juggling several buyers, because if I’m showing, you know, 6 to 8 houses for each one, that’s a lot of houses.

Usually I will meet someone for coffee at one of the 16 coffee shops that I’m supporting.

Yeah, but it’s very dynamic.

I’m all about supporting local and so I try and immerse myself into different communities as much as possible.

And you know, you’re just juggling one meeting after another.

So in a day I could have, I don’t know, 11 different interactions, 11 different meetings, just running around with different people you have to be on at all times.

Yeah, seven days a week, 24 hours.

Seven days a week. You know, this is a fallacy.

People say, oh, well, you work for yourself so you can just work as little as you want.

Yeah, that doesn’t that doesn’t work. If you want to be successful.

And, you know, my friends can attest to this, it’s it’s very difficult to set boundaries, especially when you’re first starting, because when you are meeting people, it needs to be around their time.

So people are generally free evenings and weekends and sometimes mornings.

And so you can’t say, Oh, I’m not going to do this because guess what.

There’s going to be someone else that will.

And so setting those boundaries are important, but you need to recognize when to set them.

I will often be working at two in the morning with the expectation that I’ll be up again at 530.

Yeah.

What are some sex successful methods of.

I’m going to redo that.

I’m cutting this right now.

I’m cutting this because it sounded like I said so, which is.

Like I’m I’m going to tell everyone no.

That you stutter and people this is edited.

This is not repeatable.

You know what.

In order to keep the authenticity of these interviews, maybe I will keep it in.

Okay.

You do you. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

I’m going to keep it in there because my kids are telling me I need to try to add some humor into these information videos. So my question to you is, what is a successful method of advertising.

What works out there for you.

Okay.

Well, you could talk to my older peers and they would say, take a photo from yourself from the early eighties and then never change it.

Okay. No.

So the most successful advertising really, truly is word of mouth.

And so if you approach your business with kindness and sincerity and you give it everything you’ve got and you deliver, I really do think you will get referrals.

Generally, every house I sell results in more houses if I sell something, and it comes with that and I take it as a personal failure because that means I have not done the right job for me, for my clients.

So word of mouth is really important.

Social media is very important. Yeah, yeah.

Across all platforms, you’re you’re doing Instagram, YouTube.

Twitter, Instagram, Instagram.

Yeah.

So I mean, there are realtors that do use YouTube.

There are realtors that use Twitter.

Instagram is the vehicle that is the most successful.

And to be honest, Tik Tok, really very, very random.

Yeah, but I’m an adult, so I use I look at my TikTok videos on Instagram.

That’s how, you know, I’m very fancy.

Yeah my is like getting your Kit Kat with a knife and fork.

My my kids are all over me for when I’m on tik tok.

But what amazes me about Tik Tok is how many funny people are out there.

There is a lot of creative, humorous people.

Human ability to find humor and wit is just so.

And it’s why I love theater so much.

You think, Oh my God, this person is just so prodigiously talented.

Yeah. Yeah.

What was your industry like through the pandemic that we went through.

I mean, it was shocking.

I had a record year in 2020 and then I doubled my business in 2021.

I think that it could have gone one of two ways.

You know, you get these experts in there and no one really knows beyond a shadow of a doubt or with a shadow of a doubt.

I remember that expression insert expression here, please.

I think you.

I’ll bring a note.

I’ll bring a notebook.

Yeah.

Turns out I’m actually not a realtor at all.

I’m just a bunch of squirrels and a jacket.

Well, I’m constantly screwing up.

Seems like I’ll say life work balance.

In an interview, and then you’ll see me wince a little bit.

And I’ve interviewed such generous people that are really trying to help me along.

I love it. Sorry.

What were we talking about.

We were talking. Now.

The question I was asking was, what.

What, what it was like being a real estate agent throughout the pandemic and you said, I don’t want to success.

My bread and butter is to literally go and meet new people and meet them in their houses and then take them to other people’s houses.

So that was the definition of what not to do during a pandemic.

And so certainly we tried to move everything to zoom and through texting and face time and all of that jobs.

But at some point, if you’re going to buy a house, you’re going to go into someone else’s house.

And if you’re going to sell your house, you’re going to have to let people come in to your house.

So it slowed things down for a hot minute and then the industry just exploded.

I’ve just never seen it so active before.

Robby, can you describe a time that you put a considerable amount of time and energy into a sale and then you lost it.

That is your question.

Yeah.

You go and find the first. Okay. Okay.

So, General, and again, I come from a place of extreme privilege.

My clients are so lovely because of how I set up my business.

It’s all just been referrals.

So very rarely do I not have an organic connection with someone.

But there was one instance where I did lose a sale and I did take it quite personally where I you know, it was it was a referral.

I interviewed this lady to to sell her acreage and gave her my strategy and my spiel and told her exactly how we needed to do it.

She was a little tiny bit offended by the verbiage that I had used whereby I said, you know, because we don’t have permits because, you know, it was actually quite sad she had lost her spouse and her health was deteriorating.

So she did not know what what was permitted, what was not permitted.

There was a crack in the foundation. There were so many issues.

And so I recommended using a legal clause which states that the property is being sold as is where it is, with no representations, no warranties.

And I said, this does not mean that the property is condemned.

It doesn’t mean that it’s a bad property.

It simply states that we are not going to get permits, we are not going to offer permits, we are not warranting anything and is very gentle about it.

But I think that it was hard for her to hear and yet we didn’t connect in the same way.

And sure enough, she ended up not listing with me, but she did list with another agent with the exact strategy, with my exact verbiage, with what I know it happens.

So in order to lose one sale in five years, it’s fine.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was very emotionally drained by it.

You know, the world lost. All color was like Pleasantville.

I was just crying hysterically.

My make up. Was.

Just walking the streets, crying.

Crying, you know? Exactly.

I mean, honestly, you have to be a little thick skinned, which is ironic coming from me because I’m such an emotional person.

But you’re not going to win every multiple situation.

You’re not going to land every listing you interview for.

It’s just not physically possible.

And so you need to recognize, did I fail because of something I did.

Did I fail because it was the wrong connection.

Was it not a failure.

Was this a learning opportunity.

And you really need to introspect and learn from every experience.

Did it go to a bitter rival of yours.

Did the real estate agent that take it.

No, it did not go to a bitter rival.

I find that you can achieve far more success with kindness.

And so I try and be as congenial as possible with every realtor in the city.

Yeah, it’s a small it’s a really small city.

And so statistically, you really don’t want to have bad blood with anyone.

It doesn’t serve comedically, it doesn’t serve you.

But also, you know, career wise, it doesn’t serve you.

Yeah. What is a critic.

Offering you a list of people I don’t like.

I’m just. Joking.

Yeah, well, we’ll put it in the notes underneath.

Underneath the video. Exactly.

Who knew what you.

What are the critical skill sets.

Somebody needs to have to be a successful real estate agent.

Thick skin is at the top of the list.

I mean, thick skin is is a big one.

That’s not the most important.

So a mentor of mine once said, your net work is your net worth.

And that really resonated.

So it doesn’t matter how prodigiously gifted you are in the way of thought and thinking and intelligence.

It doesn’t matter how good you are at writing a contract, it doesn’t matter how how learned you are about house and structure and construction.

If you don’t have people to help buy a house or help sell a house, then you’re not going to be successful.

Unfortunately, this industry really does favor people that are either extroverts or are into function.

Extroverts Moment of silence.

Yeah, I’m just I’m just taking a moment to see what my follow up question is on that.

Let’s let’s summarize what you love most about being a real estate agent.

Oh, gosh.

I mean, there really there are so many things I love how dynamic this job is.

I love how it really does offer you the ability to peer into the windows and do people’s lives, pardon the pun, and really help them.

I have been able to assist people in some really tricky situations with some really persnickety, you know, barriers.

And being able to find success in that situation is really powerful.

People don’t realize how invasive it is to work with a real estate agent, and a lot of people don’t realize the positive or negative impact a real estate agent can have.

Again, it’s not 1982 anymore.

Realtors, I mean, a good realtor should be doing more than just putting up a for sale sign and hoping the house sells.

It’s much more of an active process, but to be able to go in, you know, it’s a seller’s market right now.

Houses are selling.

You know, realtors are posting social media.

I sold this house.

Congratulations. It was going to sell anyway.

How did you sell that house.

Did you sell the house with the fewest conditions possible.

Did you sell the house for the most money possible.

How did you navigate negotiations.

So it goes beyond just doing your job.

I mean, I breathe this.

I love doing this so much. Got him preachy.

I’m so sorry I did all of this out the way I started.

This is good.

I’m Robbie.

I’m keeping all of it.

Okay.

May I ask you, you froze for a second.

May I ask you how old you were when you first became a real estate agent.

I was an old withered lady.

I was 30.

30. That’s so young. Yeah.

That’s very old.

Please.

For your guests. I’m not sure if they can tell by the everything about me, but I am a homosexual.

And as such, I age four times faster than heterosexuals.

So is that a you know, is that a scientific fact.

It is. It’s a medical science. Yeah.

No. So I turned I mean, this was a little bit personal, but so I left an eight and a half year relationship.

I turned 30.

I had my very first ever surgery.

I left my career. Yeah.

All at the same time.

So very much was kind of this midlife crisis moment.

Robbie This is the dark part of the the episode, because I spiraled out of a 20 year career at a technical institute where I was dying a slow death because I had lost all passion with what I was doing.

I was looking at a career change, but it’s kind of it’s a it’s it looks like a mountain when you’re going through it because it feels like you’re starting all over.

What advice do you have for that person that’s out there right now that is considering becoming a real estate agent.

What advice do you have for that person.

It’s such a good question.

First of all, I mean, I’m so sorry to hear that you went through that dark time.

And thank you so much for sharing that.

That’s that that’s really important.

I think that more people experience that than not.

Real estate is not easy.

So you can’t you can’t sort of do real estate.

A lot of people say, oh, I’m going to do it part time.

They fail.

You know, it’s one of those situations where you’re you’re in or you’re out.

You need to go in with support.

I need support from clients.

I need support emotionally, from your friends and from your family.

You know, my friends would say, oh, you’re working too much.

You can’t answer your phone after 6 p.m..

That’s ridiculous. You set your hours.

That doesn’t work.

Until then.

I’m helping them buy a house, in which case they need to call me at three in the morning.

So it’s making sure that you have a system of support and recognizing that you are setting yourself up for success and knowing what failure is going to feel like.

For me, I was making six figures doing personal shopping after ten years, and it was very scary to walk away from that.

I didn’t feel fulfilled anymore.

I did not feel like I had become fully realized.

I felt a little bit stagnant.

I wasn’t loving my job in the same way that I was previously.

It’s very scary to leave a privileged situation like that, to just throw yourself into the unknown.

I, I was very methodical and I reflected on it and I thought, okay, what do I have.

I don’t have a law degree.

I don’t have, you know, infinite brainpower.

But I did have this network of people that I had built and just wonderful individuals that I’d worked with.

And so I thought, okay, I’m going to do this, but I’m going to do it correctly.

I had met with a real estate coach who is a lovely person, but his advice was Write a letter to your dentist and let them know that you’re a realtor now.

And I thought, Well, that’s stupid.

So I ended up throwing a party and I thought, Let’s make this, you know, an experience that no one has seen before.

And so I rented a floral atelier in Edmonton.

I hired a wedding planner.

I had my friends who I met at Cactus Club.

I moonlighted as a server for a while and I had them be my servers.

I curated flowers.

I one of my clients does luxury chocolates.

He did my party favors.

I had caterers. It was it was a full shebang.

And I rolled out my real estate career with invitations.

And with this, you know, this fire where failure was just not an option.

And because I had done so much thinking about it and because I was so prepared, I think that really did help launch my career.

But I was scared the entire time.

It’s not easy.

Yeah.

Do you see yourself riding this career out now or do you could you see a scenario where you may make a switch again one day maybe.

I think that it wouldn’t be a no.

I think it’d be the very drama version of yes, and I think that I would build on the career.

I do have aspirations of starting my own boutique brokerage.

I actually job where I plug my brand.

I launched my own little company under the Remax umbrella last month called the Bureau with my business partner And I just want to lean further into that.

I want to offer a service in Edmonton and then possibly other cities that really is a boutique luxury service, every price point and to, you know, do real estate transactions in a way that no one else is doing them.

Yeah.

So, yes, possibly additions.

I have this dream of owning a coffee shop because I love coffee shops, but that would really would be a passion project.

I can I can’t imagine not being involved in real estate in some capacity.

Okay.

Well, Robbie, I want to thank you for your time today.

It was this is one of my favorite episodes that I’ve done.

I’m thinking maybe I’m thinking of maybe throwing an invite to your parents to come on as a guest.

And we can we can talk about how successful their son is.

Okay.

So that’s going to be a no for me dog.

Oh, it’s okay.

Okay, well, if the recording that we had is awful, we may do a follow up interview as as part two.

So many more stories, so many real estate stories and so many weird moments in this career.

Okay. Well, it was a really fun job.

Okay. And that’s all we need to hear.

I’ll wait a year before we do up a follow up episode with you, but thank you for your time today.

Well, thank you so much for having me.

Thank you for tuning in to The Job Talk Podcast.

For more information, please visit us at thejobtalk.com

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