This is a common question, but not one that usually gets an honest response. You’re more likely to get a beauty pageant answer from an agent who claims to aspire to the real estate equivalent of wanting world peace. Instead of providing a beauty pageant answer, I will share with you the answer that shocked the manager who took me on when I first became a real estate agent.

Joining a real estate brokerage is similar in some ways to getting a typical nine to five job. It requires sitting for an interview with the manager to see if you might be a good fit at the brokerage.

I didn’t have much luck even getting to the interview stage at many of the brokerages I reached out to. The reason for this is that it’s a bit of a crap shoot taking on a new agent. It requires a lot of work to train them. And after all that training the likelihood of them making it in the business is slim to none.

I was able to get two interviews. The first brokerage where I interviewed didn’t work because they went out of business a couple of weeks later. This was fortunate for me because the second brokerage that agreed to meet with me was one of the most respected and prestigious brokerages in midtown, although I didn’t know that at the time.

When I met the manager, she asked me why I wanted to be a real estate agent. I told her I wanted an occupation that rewarded effort, which is something that my current job did not allow. 

At the time I was working at a Toronto based studio that was contracted out to create animated children’s television shows for a multi-national film studio based in Florida. I held the position of a technical director, which required finding creative solutions to any problems that came up in the production of the show.

The job had low expectations for productivity, and I would often get into trouble with management for being too efficient at my job. My efforts would undermine the studio’s profitability if the studio that had hired them knew that the work could be done faster and better.

I told the manager at the brokerage that the idea of working at a job where one is expected to do the bare minimum, with no opportunity or reward for trying to be better or more efficient, was a suffocating and soul-crushing proposition to me. There was no way I could commit to that for the rest of my life.

The manager then asked me why I thought real estate would be a good fit given my lack of a background in a traditional sales job. I told the manager it occurred to me I could make it in real estate after having a bad experience with a real estate agent who had helped me buy a property. 

From start to finish, there were many things the agent said and did that made the experience unpleasant. It was all very ego driven. It was all about that agent. After closing the sale, I wondered if everything the agent did was to serve my interests or the agent’s.

And yet, despite the agent’s poor service, the agent was successful. I reasoned that if that agent was successful, then I could be too, but in a different way. I would commit to doing my job in a way that was sympathetic to the needs of my clients and offer a level of service that I didn’t get from that agent. I would make them the hero of their journey.

I was staring off and reminiscing while recounting my experience working with that agent so I didn’t notice the manager’s reaction until I stopped talking. The manager was shocked. No one had ever given her those reasons for wanting to be a realtor.

After all the years I’ve been in real estate, I understand now why the manager reacted in that way. I didn’t know at the time, but the experience I had with that agent was common. Having an agent want to take a client-first approach was rare, and I think still is. 

Most people, even today, who want to get into real estate are compelled to do so after seeing the supposed glamour of the job as represented in a reality tv show where the agents are presented as larger-than-life personalities, driving fancy cars and flaunting themselves like fancy peacocks. Or they have an experience with an agent who is incredibly successful and want to emulate exactly that. With dollar signs in their eyes and the vision of eventually flashing their pearly whites on a billboard, they want to build a business with themselves as the focus. Someday, they hope they too can say “Work with me because I’m #1!”.

That wasn’t my desire or approach when I became an agent and still isn’t. My approach is still client-focused. In my interactions as an agent, when representing a buyer or seller, my golden rule has been, and always will be, to ensure that the best interests of my clients are being met. The paycheque is secondary.