It was a huge step out of our comfort zone that meant giving up everything familiar, but we ventured into it. It wasn’t easy, but we were determined to make it work, and going back was never an option.

The opportunity to go into real estate presented itself within 6 months of moving to Canada, and you can probably imagine the language barrier that I struggled with. I was very naive, like most aspiring new agents, talking about how much I enjoyed looking at homes and how I would just love showing people houses.

Well, showing homes is only a small percentage of the daily activities of a REALTOR®, and I learned that lesson the hard way.

So there I was ... young and inexperienced but extremely eager. Word spread, and people referred to me as ‘that German Immigrant girl who just started in real estate’. And what could she possibly have to offer at her age, lack of connections and experience, and poor English skills?

I knew that if I wanted to get anywhere with this new profession of mine, I would need to figure out how to find buyers and sellers. The terms “qualified buyer” and “motivated seller” entered the stage much later.

Meanwhile, I was burning my very limited energy, doing what I saw other agents do. I held open houses, cold-called FSBO's (pretending I had a 'buyer'), I tried to figure out what to say and how to say it to sound clever, I worked most evenings and weekends ... chasing people who didn’t know what they wanted, arriving home exhausted ... to see my beautiful babies and my very frazzled husband along with piles of laundry and a sink full of dishes.

I remember presenting my very first offer, feeling like a deer in headlights. There was so much to learn. More times than I could count, I remember having conversations with clients, not understanding many of the words they were using, trying so hard to catch on, and not letting them notice. When I finally got back home, I would try to look up words in the dictionary (if I could figure out their spelling), write them down in a notebook, memorize them, and try to incorporate them into my daily vocabulary. I still have a long way to go. We’re all on a journey, aren’t we?

In my second full year in real estate, I became the #1 local agent in my marketplace and made it to the top 3% of all real estate agents province-wide! Shortly after, I worked myself up to the top 1% of the, then, 1600+ agents on our real estate board and ... I've held that rank for many years and for as long as I've been actively selling real estate.

Has it been easy? Definitely, not!

Although I did many things right, I did so many things wrong, making a painful amount of unnecessary and totally avoidable mistakes that, sadly, came with a huge price tag. I suppose that is what they call the school of Hard Knocks. I know it so well that I bet I'd make a pretty decent tour guide. Had I only known then what I know now.  

Over the years, I've had the privilege of passing on many of the lessons I learned from the trenches, teaching new agents how to do it right. Many more continue to ask how I was able to create such tremendous success so quickly, especially given my circumstances and limitations, while the average agent in North America struggles to sell about 5 homes per year. 

The answer to that question has become my life's work.