Broken Warriors mended back to Greatness

Keller Williams Realty El Cajon Revives the Wounded Agent

Were you in the real estate industry and/or related business in 2000-2007?  Weren’t they the most fabulous, fruitful, crazy and financially abundant years of your life?  I had started New Century Title Company with an amazing team  in late 1999, and it got to the point, “if you can make breath on a mirror, you were hired!”  Not really of course, but maybe on occasion!

We were all rolling in the dough, new, better cars, a couple of rental properties, flipping fixers, refinancing every time the rates went down a point or two, boats, vacations, you remember!  And then, around 2007, the “glory days” quickly turned into a tough dose of “Humble Pie!”  We all tightened our belts, but for a good part of the real estate community, including me, we became “wounded warriors.”

At first it was the “part time” agents that left the business, and then the ones who just didn’t have the kind of fight in them  to make it in real estate, in this or any kind of market. But then it went deep.  The good ones, the population of agents and brokers who really had made a difference in their community, they felt they had found their “nitch,” their passion.  It was wonderful to finally give our families and ourselves the kind of life we had only dreamed of, and had been willing to work hard at it.  But day by day, additional soldiers were pulled to the sideline and had to find a way to reinvent themselves, to find a “regular” job with steady income!

Move forward, 2010, since we started recruiting for our new Keller Williams Realty, El Cajon, we are seeing some of these amazing people coming back, heads still a little low, tails still down, ego long gone, but HOPE in their eyes.  As I talk to them, I share that I too fell in the warrior pack, I too have been humbled, (too say the least) but as I love to say from my Lakeside upbringing, “it ain’t my first rodeo!!”  Or as they say, “the second million made is much easier than the first!”…….I’ll take a little from both!

It doesn’t’ take long as we talk, where we are reminded of the basics of working the business of real estate, pulling out the dusty data base, which they never did keep up, as with 98% of agents.  The old familiar words like Prospecting!  Nitch Marketing, Farming, Systems for your business and now, Social Media!  I let them know with Keller Williams El Cajon, they will receive all the training, up to date education, a paid staff to assist them in all areas of their business and two managers who will see them through this journey, but this time, in a way that they will “endure” any future battle storms!

And then, they start dreaming, “in a perfect real estate career, where are you at the end of 2011?”  They have to stop a moment, they forgot how to dream!  “Pay off debt?  Need a car?  Put your kid in college? Get a mortgage satisfied?”

 I love it when they light up!  As they make their choices of what they need and want for the New Year, I ask them, “How much money do you need to make in 2011 to reach this goal?”  And then we start the process of the break down, per month, per week, per day!   How we will set up their marketing systems, get their Social Media running, and block the time for the day-to-day business of real estate.

And the Almighty, the Big One, the Answer, the Solution, it all starts and ends with a big word called PROSPECTING!

Carol Ott  .  Team Leader .  Keller Williams Realty, El Cajon  .  619.733.6500