HOW I LANDED IN REAL ESTATE
You know you’re headed in the right direction when you feel like everything is starting to align.
The old saying, ‘it doesn’t feel like work if you like what you do’ or is it, ‘enjoy what you do and you won’t work a day in your life’?--I’m notorious for messing up sayings. My husband teases me relentlessly about this, but he always gets the gist. In this case it is: ‘you don’t have to hate your job if you find something that clicks and you like doing every day.’
That’s me. It actually happened for me when I stepped into real estate.
I had other jobs including teaching and marketing and, although I liked both, they certainly didn’t give me the feeling that real estate does.
It’s not just that I like real estate, more that it feels like I was supposed to do this.
Before I moved back to my hometown in Connecticut, I lived for a good decade or so in Cambridge, Boston. I loved it there.
When I decided to move, I knew I wouldn’t pursue a job in the education field, like I had in Boston. I liked the anonymity that the city provided and was honest enough with myself to accept that education would not be a good fit in a small town like Mystic, Connecticut.
When I returned to Mystic, my family members here who own a local jewelry store, wanted me to help open a second store right in downtown Mystic. This was exciting because, as you’ll note, I am obsessed with Mystic, especially the downtown area straddling both Groton and Stonington.
I helped them get the store up and running, met all of the shop and restaurant owners in town, and felt this huge sense of belonging. Even though we had kept our place in Harvard Square, just in case we felt the city calling us back, there was no returning. I felt at home and not just in a familiar way. Our small town had changed and was turning into a destination–I was swept up in the wave of it all.
While I helped the jewelry store get settled, I was also handling marketing and community outreach. It allowed me to flex my creative muscle and meet people–which I love to do.
Though I learned the marketing aspect as I went, it actually came fairly naturally to me. I love social media platforms because they allow for connecting to an audience. I also love collaborating with small businesses and the way we help each other.
I loved connecting with other local business owners so much that I ended up participating in the local Downtown Mystic Merchants group. It felt like we were a little family of locals, trying to navigate the increasing tourist population. This really gave me pride in the Mystic area. I consider the merchants friends and neighbors now, after seeing what struggles and triumphs they’ve been through, and still have a strong yearning to support them all.
But it wasn’t just these two jobs that prepared me.
As I started real estate and reflected on why it clicked, I realized it was a lifetime of experiences that prepared me:
It was riding in the back of my mom’s car and studying the street signs as a kid
It was memorizing weird stats in order to pledge to a sorority
It was honing the non-verbal communication skills while traveling solo in foreign countries
It was the psych and public speaking classes in undergrad
It was the multicultural relations class in grad school
It was preparing for being in front of a classroom
It was opening real estate apps at all hours of the night, when all was quiet, so I could stalk who was selling their houses–and for how much
It was pushing myself into uncomfortable situations and then pushing through towards growth
It was landing on my feet, even if I stumbled, because I’d jumped enough times to have the confidence to know I’d be okay.
