March 1996
Chapter/LAUNCH of my Real Estate Career
Decide to DECIDE
What made me want to get into real estate? Good question.
Well, let me go back and give you a little bit of background about myself. So, in March of 1996 I was living in California, working in a grocery chain grocery store, owned by Smith’s Food and Drug, which I had worked for previously in Arizona, where I grew up. At one point they opened stores in California and I took a transfer to California. During that time, to stores in 1996 I had been employed by Smith food in probably 88 or 89, I think I first got hired on with them in the video department you know like where you would check out your videotapes before I don’t even think, no, blockbuster existed then,
but I worked in the video department and then I moved up into cashiering on the front end and checking people out, and then I started working overnight shift and doing on price changes on within the price change time where I was working overnights.
I also quickly got moved up into a management role. So when I went to California, took this job transfer. After my first year at ASU, to live in California by the beach and soak up all the fun that was going to come with that. I spent several years there five or six years there and loved it absolutely loved it, but at one point, I want to say it was 96. Smith’s Food and Drug decided that they were no longer going to hold the stores open in California, they were going to sell them off. I happened to be employed, and working within one of the stores that were going to be closed completely and not sold off. And it was a Redondo Beach address which is where I was living. But directly across the street was Inglewood so it was an area of Redondo Beach Inglewood, there was El Camino Community College nearby, that I attended. And, um, At any rate, they decided to close the store so when that went on. I might have been 2324. I had to decide what was I going to do now with my life, and I looked around and I realized that most of the people that I knew that worked within the company that did not have college education’s kind of got stuck there they didn’t move up, they didn’t move on. And there was nothing wrong with that, but if there were there were husbands and wives married working within the company and they really struggled on those paychecks to provide for their families and I didn’t want that to happen for me. I also didn’t want to meet somebody fall in love and live in California and struggle for the rest of my life, although I would have loved to have stayed there. Don’t get me wrong. The weather I enjoy much more than let’s say Phoenix when it’s 115 outside. So, the chain announces that they’re going to close my store, and I think they gave us like three months notice maybe two months. It was fairly quick. And so I started thinking about what am I going to do because to pull on employment and live in California was not going to work. It wasn’t going to be enough. So I quickly realized and decided I was going to have to move home, and then live, either with my mom or my father for a while until I could get my, you know, get myself settled. And I think I moved in with my mom for a short while, was able to get a transfer and start in one of the stores here in Arizona I loved the manager that I was working for Super team oriented great guy took really good care of the employees I was super lucky to get hired on at all because the company had said that nobody would be eligible for rehire but some of my friends that were here in Phoenix, spoke up for me and got me an interview within the in front of that store manager and I actually was able to even move over into the management role that I was in in California, and hold my place. So, it was like march of 96 March, 8 of 96, they closed my store in California, and I moved home, and I decided, my mother had been in real estate in, in Arizona for many many years and she was successful with it. And my grandmother had gotten licensed in like the last three years, and she was doing fairly well with it and, and, you know, supplementing her lifestyle with it fairly well and I thought well, they have some natural talent I must be able to just flip the switch and do the same, so I thought okay I’ll go get my real estate license and try it out those magic words I’m going to try it out and see how it goes. So I got licensed and. On March, 8, a year to the day that they had closed my store in California. I wound up getting an argument with a new manager that had taken over the store I was working in that was accusing me of something that I had not done. And I looked at him I’m like, you know what, I’m done I’m out of here. Here’s my best I quit. I’m leaving and at this moment I had my first. I had just had my first closing and I had my second set of clients, pending. And the I had gone, gone to my classes gotten my license got everything up and running. And, but, you know, it was like one file closes and then like two months later one file closes. So I was getting ready for one to come up and close, and that day this manager picked a fight and, and basically accused me of doing something that I had not done I had actually been keeping documentation to show, who was doing it within the company. And I don’t remember exactly what his words were to me but he called me unprofessional and I looked at him and said you know what, here are my keys to the store. Here’s my vest. I am out I quit. I am not working for you. I will not be treated this way. And he looked at me and said, I was extremely unprofessional for quoting in that manner and I said only if you want to speak about on professionalism, while you’re yelling at me out here on the front floor of the store in front of all of these customers. Don’t go there with me right now, like, I’ll call into corporate and I’ll talk to somebody above you, but we’re not having this conversation on the floor, and I left that day. And it was the best thing I ever did because it forced me to move forward and really lock down some business plans and
make things move in the correct direction for my real estate career. So, that was fantastic. It was a huge leap of faith. It came at a point in my life where I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t prepared by any means, but I also knew I wasn’t going to stay and continue to work for Ragelio that store manager, any longer. He was just a tyrant and there was no reason for it, so I knew also though, entering real estate that it’s an extremely hard long hours, crazy business, and that you have to stay on top of it, focused and not allow it to become your life so I also knew if I was going to enter real estate that I absolutely was not going to allow it to become my life. And that was the number one thing that that I was concerned about I was worried that I would lose myself lose my identity
And get absorbed by the monster, if you will, of what real estate is, or can be if you don’t keep control of it, so I wanted real estate to allow me to create a life. I did not want it to become my life. Those were the key things that I knew going into it.
And then I had to figure out how do I sustain myself and bring business in on a daily basis so that’s basically my backstory of how I decided to go into real estate it wasn’t planned it wasn’t plotted out. It was family of three generations and I thought, they can do it I can do it. And pretty much anyone can do it if they can tweak certain things within their business model or their practices or what their beliefs are, you can get moving fairly quickly in the business as long as you don’t get lost with all of the shiny objects. So, I’ll go into that deeper at a different time though so okay so that’s what brought me to deciding, making that final decision and fully deciding to go get my real estate license, and then rip the band aid off and just do it 100% and not allow myself any landing pad or cushion.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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