Calling
1. a strong inner impulse toward a particular course of action, particularly when accompanied by conviction of divine influence.
2. the vocation or profession in which one customarily engages
3. You have to see this for yourself: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/calling#
What’s your calling? You’ve heard that before right? What were you born to do? What are you “called” to do? “Particularly when accompanied by conviction of divine influence”. Think about it. What is it that you would be doing RIGHT NOW, if you could be doing anything at all in the world where money, obligation, pride had no influence in your life. What is your calling?
Divine influence. Maybe that’s my problem, there hasn’t been much of what one would call divinity in my life for a very long time. And really? Even when there was, I was a kid going through the motions because it’s what was expected of me.
I do a lot of things because they’re expected of me. Blogging tonight in fact. When push comes to shove, I’d probably rather not be putting this particualr blog post out to the world. But the question arose “Why aren’t you blogging?” so tonight…I blog.
I’ve been watching a lot of “Million Dollar Listing” lately. I don’t particularly go in for a lot of “reality TV”. Oh sure I’ve had my bouts with American Idol, Dog the Bounty Hunter, Pawn Stars and Survivor, but I don’t set the DVR to record them or anything crazy like that. But “Million Dollar Listing” intrigued me. It’s about what I do. It’s about Real Estate. It’s about super cool real estate.
I love architecture, always have. I love the way two lines can converge at impossible angles to form an artful entry or grand staircase. I couldn’t tell you tudor from a colonial (OK yeah I could, but I don’t make a habit of it) something either looks right and good to me or it doesn’t. My love of architecture turned into my love of visiting open houses that was masked by my “need to be closer to Seattle because this commute is killing me”. After I was laid off, I had to admit, I just really liked Real Estate.
I chose this profession because I had a kick ass time buying my house. In fact, I don’t remember much at all about buying my first house, other than I basically picked one, my agent led me through the process and handed me the keys. It seemed as simple as that. And that’s the way I want my clients to feel too. Like that was so easy, I could do that. In fact, I’ll give a shout out to “my” agent, Jeff Jensen at Windermere Professional Partners. He’s still an agent and he’s still damn good at what he does. Thanks Jeff, for everything, always.
But Million Dollar Listing is really intriguing to me. Here are three guys, three VERY successful guys, that put a lot of what we as agents do on display for the world. Sometimes they make us look like jack asses. Sometimes they make us look like heroes. At the end of the day, these guys potentially make what I make in a year on ONE TRANSACTION. The aspect of the show I don’t like is that really it looks like these three guys just kinda party and sell multi million dollar properties.
The Realtors that I know that are really good at what they do, work their tails off. On an episode I watched tonight, my least favorite of the three, Josh Altman made a statement: “The successful agents in this business put in a lot of hours. People don’t realize this business is 24/7”.
BAH! Off track. I’ll maybe talk more about MDL in another episode of my blog, but tonight we’re talking about your calling. What is it? How do you know you’ve found it?
I’m really good at what I do. Really good. I don’t say that to boast, I say that because up until recently even with nearly 10 years under my belt, I’ve felt like a relatively new agent. I’ve never seen a “normal” market according to most pundits. The market has either been on a record high, or it’s been on a record low. But since 2004 (Started in 2003) I’ve been a top 20%, in a lot of cases top 10% agent in our office and I dare say Pierce County and maybe even Washington, save King and Island counties.
I love what I do. Really love it. Somedays I complain about the long hours. But in the end, I really love what I do and at this point really couldn’t imagine doing anything else. But is it my Calling? Maybe. But not in it’s current form I don’t think. I honestly want to list peoples homes because I see all the crappy jobs being done out there by other agents. I honestly think I can do a better job than most. My problem right now is finding the time to create the business I’ve always dreamed about.
For a long time I’ve had a vision of what my perfect real estate business looked like. I said it looked like this: 50+ transactions per year. (I’ll do 40ish this year) 1 Full time assistant and 1 full time buyers agent. I will split my time approximately 70% Sellers and 30% buyers and I’ll have one day off per week.
I’ve been crafting the ideal assistant job description over the past couple of weeks. In my head and in Evernote. I’m getting very close to starting the search for my assistant. Very close to getting some of my life back. Very close to having the latitude to find my calling.
What’s yours?