My first week as a real estate agent in St. Louis!

Written by: Dana Eller

Well, it happened. My first week as a Real Estate agent came and went in what felt like a blink of an eye. And, I’ll tell you what…I feel awesome. I honestly don’t remember the last time I have felt this refreshed!

It’s Friday afternoon and, when I would have normally been getting ready to wrap up my work week and getting MORE than excited for the weekend ahead and having time off, I am now instead thinking about all of the new and exciting opportunities that this weekend will bring for my work in Real Estate. New contacts, more time to build relationships, OPEN HOUSES on Sunday! I am actually EXCITED to have work to do over the weekend. I know, that sounds crazy, right? I feel ecstatic, stimulated, unfamiliar, transposed, eager, and a million other feelings, and it.is.freaking. awesome.

So, here’s the deal. I decided back in February of this year that I wanted to become a Real Estate Agent. It hit me like a ton of bricks. A total “aha” moment; which hasn’t happened to me very many times in my 30 years of life. I had been working in industrial sales for the past 5 years, and was in advertising and media sales prior to that (right after I graduated college). I’d been ready for something new to happen in my work life for quite sometime, but I didn’t want to jump into another position with a different company that wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do. The other, bigger problem was, I didn’t know what I wanted to do! That is, until I had my “aha” moment.

It happened when I was in Milwaukee traveling to visit with my customers for my job as a Regional Sales Manager with a plastics manufacturing company based out of St. Louis. While I had always enjoyed visiting the state of Wisconsin (I think it’s beautiful there, especially Madison), every time I had to travel to visit other manufacturing companies I would realize just how much the job was not for me. I was doing pretty well with the job; making fairly good sales bonuses and was a top producing rep for the company. I have never had a problem being able to talk to people. In fact, I’ve always enjoyed it (hence the sales jobs). But, trying to “talk shop” or become genuinely interested in what all goes into a zero-turn lawn mower with men who were mostly 2x my age was not something I could end the day feeling good about. I mean, I am a 30 year old female who grew up taking dance lessons and loving make-up and Barbies for christ’s sake. I spend most of my free time decorating my house, shopping for cute clothes, and making sure my nails look nice. Clearly, that job was not going to work for much longer than it already had. It simply wasn’t for me.

Needless to say, over the next few days I spent a lot of time going over all of the details of getting into real estate. I talked to my husband to be sure he was supportive (which, I knew he would be), researched the education options I had for the salesperson course, talked with a friend of mine who is a broker (and who now holds my license 😊 ) to gather additional feedback and information regarding the costs associated with becoming /being a licensee, signed up for the certified online course I had found online, and jumped in. This all happened within a week! Since then, I dived into my education and planning for self-employment head first and have never looked back. I truly feel that this is my calling and is a career that I will enjoy every single day.

They say that love and passion coupled with hard work and devotion to your work is a recipe for success. I couldn’t be more excited to see what the future will bring.