I got my license 2 weeks ago, now what

[Ana Quiroga]

I got my license 2 weeks ago, I am with a team but I just don't know what to do next. I have a build my contacts and I announced it on Facebook that I am now a realtor but I just don't know how to get leads. If someone calls me to list or buy a home, I will probably freak out coz I don't know what to do. What did you guys do to get your first listing. I have watched many cold calling videos on YouTube and I even practiced the scripts but I feel so unprepared. Please help

[Joel Owens]

You need to analyze your finances to see how long you have to perform.

If you have 100,000 saved up for example when you left your job to go into real estate full time and spend 5k a month to live on you have  about 1+ years before running out of money not closing anything and incurring business costs.

Often people have little to nothing to start and are under capitalized for starting a business which is what you are doing. The team is not paying you a salary. You make money when you close a sale and not just when you get  a lead for a buyer or  a seller. Your team leader should be having meetings once a week to go over what is working, what is not, and how to better refine what is working and get rid of what is not.

Your first deal even if you write a contract right away takes about 2 months to close. So filling a pipeline of qualified and highly motivated buyers and sellers is key. If you work with a unqualified buyer you can find the perfect property for them to buy but they can't perform. If a seller is just testing the market with no real motivation to sell (death,divorce, downsizing, moving for job relocation,illness,estate sale,short sale,etc.) then you as an agent can spend all this money marketing a listing to it then not sell. Before spending your time and hard earned dollars you have to set criteria and analyze who you are going to work with and the odds it will lead to a successful closing.    

I do commercial but about 14 years in the business. Real estate goes through cycles of business flows. Right now I see new commercial agents not used to making 80k or 100k a year the commercial broker average and then they are loading up on cars and bigger houses with vacations. When a down cycle happens they will be left with high debt and no cash flow investments to survive.

I do way better than the national average but I save and invest. The goal is to get to a point where your investments pay you enough to live comfortably. At that point you can work on sales because you want to and not because you have to keep doing another transaction to get by.