A friend of mine just started her real estate career, and she made a great decision in joining our office!

Any new job is both nerve-wracking and exciting at the same time, and real estate is no different.

So what has she learned in her first two weeks?

Krystal started with our company about ten months ago as a receptionist with all the intent of becoming a Registered Real Estate Salesperson.

I’ve always thought that starting at reception gives agents a great introduction to real estate and prepares them like no course ever could.  As I told Krystal, when she writes her final real estate exam, everybody in the room will have spent the last week studying how to write up an offer, while she’ll have spent the last ten months typing up real offers for real agents.

There is a lot of red tape to cut through in order to get licensed as a Realtor in Ontario, but Krystal wrote her final exam, passed, and subsequently started in our office two weeks ago.

On the first day of her new job, I noticed a huge problem with her ability to effectively work within this industry…..she had no car!  The poor girl was the victim of an unfortunate “incident” a few months ago, and has yet to receive her windfall from the insurance company.  Sure, you can start your job, maybe work for a few weeks and get your bearings in the business without the need for a set of wheels, but when you get that first client, and you suggest “Hey, I’ll double you on the handle-bars of my bike,” the client might not respond like you hope.

A car is the first prerequisite in this business, and contrary to popular belief, you ARE allowed to work in the business without an Audi, Mercedes, or BMW.  Although, I have yet to see an agent riding a Vespa…

For the first week, Krystal spent every afternoon driving around with another agent seeing agent open houses.  Most people think of an “Open House” being on a Saturday or Sunday for the general public, but while you people are all busy during your weekdays with work, we are having our own private open houses exclusively for agents.

Krystal spent her afternoons tagging along with another agent, but I told her that she has to venture out on her own.  Another new agent started at the same time as Krystal, but she caters to a completely different clientele.  I told Krystal there is no point in her tagging along if this other agent is looking at exquisite Rosedale mansions and palatial estates.  She needs to be checking out every condominium in the city, since she is 26 years old, and that is her demographic.

Krystal came down to see me at my desk one day, and she plunked this piece of paper down on my desk.  “Oh….My…..GOD,” she exclaimed.  I took a look at what she had handed me, and it was an invoice for $1600 from our friends at the Toronto Real Estate Board.  “Welcome to the business,” I told her.

“Are there any other unexpected expenses I should consider?” she asked.

“Krystal,” I replied, “Show me one day in this business where you don’t have both an expected and an unexpected expense, and you’ll never have another day like that again.”

Within one week, Krystal had ordered new business cards, booked a session with a professional photographer, bought various maps of the city, cleaned out Business Depot to furnish her desk, purchased some new business attire, and of course she purchased the obligatory Blackberry Pearl.

Krystal is mulling over the purchase of a new laptop, which I think is 100% necessary in this business, and at last glance she is busy setting up her personal website.

Krystal’s first experience out in the real world of real estate came last weekend when she ran her first open house.  She and another new agent decided to host the open house together (made sense since Krystal had no car!), and the result was about 2-3 people coming through the house during the space of two hours on a rainy day.

“Anything good on TV that day?” I asked her.  I told her to get used to it, and next time just find the liquor cabinet in whoever’s house it was.  Sometimes you are absolutely slammed, sometimes you have two hours to yourself.  It’s a crap-shoot, although one that comes with an educated guess.

This past weekend, Krystal worked another open house (this time by herself), and again she ended up disappointed.  I dropped in on her during the open house and we chatted briefly as I realized nobody had come through in the first hour, and nobody came through while I was there.

She asked me why she had worked two open houses and didn’t have one good lead.  I told her that you have one chance at an open house each weekend, and you really have to choose carefully.  She was working at a $1,500,000 newly-constructed house in an area inhabited by families and where the average home-buyer for that product was probably over 40-years-old.

First of all, these open houses aren’t nearly as busy as a lower-priced home for which there are more buyers, or a condominium in a trendy area with a lot of walk-by traffic.

Second, can she really expect to pick up $1.5M clients in her first week as a Realtor, at 26-years-old?

While these were things that I discussed with her, I sensed she already knew this, and was already mulling over how to proceed going forward.  The issue at hand is that she is so new to the business that she doesn’t know where she wants to work, what she wants to specialize in, and where her clients are going to come from.

Ultimately, her decision to work at Property A versus Property B really didn’t matter too much since she was so new that really all she needed to do was “get out there” and expose herself to the general public.  Part of getting to know the business is getting to know yourself, since your business really is selling yourself and since you are your own brand.  And if she does work the same open house next weekend or a nearby one, perhaps a few people will remember her…

The one thing she did learn from her first two experiences hosting open houses was that you need to do this every single weekend, from now until eternity, or else you really aren’t giving it 110%.  Whether you pick up clients by hosting an open house or not, you’re still working, and many new agents come into this industry, say “I’m here,” and then forget they actually have to work.  Business doesn’t just come directly to you….well…..unless you are this one agent in my office, and you have “connections.”  Ugh….anyways…

Krystal finally ordered some of her own open house signs, since she had been borrowing mine and covering up my name, and she scoffed when I told her they cost $75.00 each, and she needs at least 4-5 of them.

“When do the expenses stop piling up?” she asked.

“When you leave the business,” I dryly responded.

This week, she is working on some marketing and advertising which she is going to send out to some condos in the West end.  At this point, and forgive me for using this saying but it’s the only one that that fits to a T, but she is essentially “throwing sh!t against the wall and hoping some of it sticks.”  She’s sending out flyers, which most people throw out anyways, and she’s doing it for the firsttime.  Advertising is about continuity, and about forcing people to remember your name, face, and brand.  If she sends out four-thousand flyers and gets ONE call, she should thank her lucky stars.

There are two things Krystal needs to focus on at the onset of her new career: 1) learning the business, 2) obtaining clients.

What good are you if you don’t know the product you are selling?  If you can’t effectively negotiate?  If you don’t know the in’s and out’s of mortgage, appraisal, home inspection, construction, and all the other industries that come hand-in-hand with real estate?  People pay for your expertise, and you don’t gain ten years experience in your first month.  This business is learned from the ground up, and Krystal has a head start since she worked at reception in a real estate office for ten months.

And as Krystal is learning the business, she needs to find a way to earn people’s trust both with respect to buying residential real estate and for the odd seller who is looking for a young, energetic, hard-working Realtor.

Every single day in the city of Toronto, one, ten, twenty, or a thousand young people say to themselves, “I think I’m going to start a career in real estate.”  So many people think this industry is easy.  Well, easy to get into, maybe.  But easy to make money in?

The failure rate is higher than any other industry I know of, with 90% of licensed agents leaving the business inside of five years.

Krystal won’t be in that 90%, and this I am sure of.  She’ll work hard and pay her dues, as everybody should.

Nothing is free in this world.

And real estate is no different…