The attrition rate for real estate sales is extremely high. 87% of real estate agents fail to make it in the first five years ( https://clubwealth.com/why-87-percent-of-agents-fail/ ). When you look on the internet, it’s easy to find lots of articles about why people fail. I’ve been selling real estate fulltime since 2004, and in all those years I’ve seen lots of people come and go. It’s not a profession for everyone and I don’t believe there’s a one size fits all formula for success.
The vast majority of real estate sales jobs are 100% commission. We don’t get paid unless we sell a house, and that’s a difficult reality we all face. Bills don’t pay themselves, and the more time that passes, the deeper the financial hole can become. The best way to stay in business is to have reserves you can fall back on. In 2006, after two years of being in the business, I sold a condo I owned at the top of the market which allowed me to establish my necessary cushion. Working in the business, I saw the crash coming and got out while the getting was good. 2009 was a very lean year for me, and I would have switched professions if I didn’t have that financial cushion.
2009 was also the year that I committed to a systematic approach to real estate. There are lots of different systems that can be very effective in real estate sales. Trainers like Tom Ferry and Brian Buffini sell systems that many Realtors ride to great success. I did my own thing, and it all centered around writing a real estate newsletter in Terra Linda, Andy’s Patch. At the time, I was a paid blogger on Patch.com, which is how I came up with the name for my newsletter. I delivered 100 newsletters in my neighborhood, got a call from one of my neighbors and ended up selling a house for her in Marinwood. I knew at that time that if I didn’t commit to doing my newsletter regularly, I wasn’t going to make it.
The key to sustaining my system was enjoying the process. I have always enjoyed writing. I delivered the newsletter on my bike, which was a lot of fun. Every 6 to 8 weeks, I would ride around and drop the newsletters on my neighbors’ doors. 100 houses became 250. I thought 250 was too easy so I upped it to 500. I then ramped up to 1000 because I was getting good results and great exercise. It wasn’t long before I was doing 1500, and before I knew it my route was all 2300 homes! I’d deliver 250 each morning it wasn’t raining and the last morning I’d do 300. As an added bonus, my daughters stuffed envelopes for me. They really enjoyed getting paid and learned how to establish savings accounts too!
At first there was a lot of negativity directed at me. People told me nobody read my newsletter. They said nobody wanted to read what I had to say about the market. I blocked all that out and it wasn’t long before I started getting calls from neighbors who enjoyed my insights! Contrary to what the negative Nellies had tried to get me to believe, my neighbors appreciated what I had to say.
Eventually my knees complained too much with the bike deliveries, and I started mailing the newsletters. It costs more of course, but I get a better response in the mailbox vs. the doorstep. While the doorstep deliveries were able to launch my business, the US mail services took it to the next level.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, I decided to launch a blog on my website. I now include a blog on the back of each of my newsletters. I’ve also been able to drive traffic from my newsletter to my website. When I got my MBA in Internet Marketing back in 2002, advertisers didn’t think you could increase website traffic with offline advertising. That paradigm shifted as the internet became ubiquitous. These days I don’t just get calls from people who want to sell their homes. People go onto my website and email me about selling their houses!
There is a next step in the evolution of my business. There always has to be a next step. That’s why I like doing what I do so much, because I move forward and keep learning and growing.