Picture this: I’m a stay-at-home mom ready to jump back into making an income. I start a virtual assistant company to be able to have the ability to stay home because childcare is expensiveeee. I have a small handful of clients, none of them are real estate related. I get introduced to a real estate team who needs a TC. I jump on the opportunity to work for them and start learning anything and everything there is to know about a real estate transaction and how to be a TC, with no training or skills development. The owner of the team wants to start expanding into new market centers, so with barely having grasp on how to do one state’s transaction coordinating, I am now responsible for another state too. And then another. And another. And all of a sudden I am hiring another TC because my responsibilities have gotten too much for one person and, oh, by the way I am now director of operations and we have 25 agents, sorry no make that 30, ah wait, 40. And they all need trained and also we’ve tacked on 10 more locations, sorry I meant 18. And by the time I’ve figured out how to properly onboard an agent I now have to make sure I know how to manage my admin staff because they’ve doubled, sorry tripled. But now that I’ve brought on and trained over 150 agents and oversaw the closing of 3000 transactions, I can confidently say that where I went wrong was that I didn’t insist on formal leadership development.

The technical stuff? That was the easy part to figure out. The transaction management, tracking, systems and operations… That wasn’t the hardest part. What was the hardest part was transforming into a leader without having clarity from my leader on what was expected of me.

Now, I am a figure it out person. I go with the flow, I’m calm under pressure, and I’m one of those weird people who are annoyingly chill in times when everyone else is feeling chaotic. Maybe it’s because I have ADHD and that’s just a typical day in my brain, who knows. But had I known that in the summer of 2019 I would have started a career that would lead me down a path of stress, chaos, self-development, and yes, success, I would have looked for someone in my organization, someone who knew the day to day of what I was dealing with, to mentor me. I was thrown into being a mentor while I was still trying to navigate my way through being a transaction coordinator and all of a sudden I blinked and I’m Chief Operating Officer and have multiple teams of admin and agents who report to me or one of my Directors.

About a year in, I requested to meet with an operations coach and this provided me with a once a week, 30 minute development opportunity. But I was so insecure about the job I was doing inside my organization, that it took my coach and me 2 whole years to find a sliver of confidence that I was doing a half-way decent job. And while my coach has been perhaps one of the most pivotal people in my career, she only knew what I was telling her, what I decided I wanted to talk about that day, whatever I could get out during our 30 minute calls. She didn’t know what I didn’t tell her.

And the things I wasn’t telling her? Well, they were probably the things that needed to be said the most. 

So here’s what her answers probably would have been, had I told her what I should have:

1. It’s okay to fail. You don’t need to have it all figured out. You’re learning and growing as much as those around you. It’s not always your fault if something goes wrong. If you know to your core that you are doing the best you can, then you are doing your best.
2. Burnout only leads to disappointment. Disappointment to yourself, your family, and those that matter most to you. If you give every single ounce of your energy to your job, you don’t have any left for your real life. 
3. You’re allowed to have your own goals. Your success is not tied to your organization’s success. Your worth is not tied to your productivity. You should have your own goals and aspirations and they are just as, if not more, important than those of your business’s.
4. You don’t need to be anybody but yourself. And if they don’t like you for exactly who you are, f*ck em.

So, if you are in a situation where you are not getting the development you need to become the leader you want to be, or even if you just want to be around other operations people who want to grow their careers, the real estate operations leaders mastermind group is the place for you. We’re pouring into everyone through mentorship and acceptance, bringing accountability and clarity into your every day. Build your confidence alongside those that *get it.* 

Operations doesn’t exactly get the trophies or, shoot, even a high five sometimes. And it can be hard to grow our confidence without the people in our corner that understand what we need to hear, even when we don’t actually say it. Even if you’ve been in the real estate operations game for a while, or you’re brand new but know you want to be more than a task checker, there’s something for everyone.

And on building confidence, it’s totally (unfortunately) normal to have imposter syndrome, but check out this podcast if you ever feel like you keep having to fake it till you make it and truly never know when you’re actually winning.