As busy professionals we spend our working lives climbing the corporate ladder, refining our skillset, networking our arses off and in my case, building businesses from the ground up.
Finding clarity in my career was not easy. Yes, I have always been in property, but I haven’t always been sitting in the right seat.
Anyone with a driven mindset will agree that it’s not the lack of ideas that kills our career momentum, it’s the abundance of them.
We’re flooded with options and there are so many roads to take, but which one is right for us? And so we fumble around following the status quo that society imprints, unbeknown to why things aren’t working out the way we’d hoped.
We try to be all things to everyone and people please our way to the top, only to realise that the opposite is what gets you to the golden ticket sooner.
But hang on, what even is that golden ticket?
Well, I call it clarity and flow.
Finding Clarity.
Ahh, clarity. The holy grail.
When we have clarity in our direction and in our person, life just becomes all that much easier. We get into a state of flow and opportunities seem to present at just the right time. But why is it that some of us have a harder time in finding this thing called clarity?
Especially in our careers.
As humans, discovering who we are and what we want seems to be a never-ending journey of trail, error, pain, self-reflection and re-direction.
So.
Who are you?
And what do you want?
If you can answer these two questions, then you’re well on your way to mastering your life.
For me, it took many years to wake up and realise that the life I had created for myself was not the life my soul desired. It wasn’t who I was and it certainly wasn’t what I wanted. (Although my conscious mind had decided years earlier that this was exactly what I wanted for my life.)
After coming off the roller coaster ride of my first real estate business, it dawned on me that I was living a lie. To the outside world, I was branded a success at 25 but on the inside, I felt everything but successful. I thought I had wanted to be a big business owner with a team of real estate agents working underneath me and several offices in different locations. I had built up this grand plan in my mind but when it started to come to fruition, I soon realised it was far from what I had expected it to be.
Rather than rejoice in the fact that I was living out my dream, the realisation I had spent the last 5 years building a business that gave me nothing but anxiety, stress and a shopping addiction was painstaking.
I knew I had to change the game plan if I was to be happy and truly successful within myself.
Letting go of my first business.
Even though all roads pointed to letting go, the decision to sell the agency was not an easy one. After all, it was our baby. We had started this thing from scratch and nurtured it from the ground up. No franchise. No rent-roll. It was everything I thought I wanted and so handing it over to someone else felt emotionally impossible.
The agency sold quickly for a good price.
I took this as a sign it was the right move.
Once I had let go of what felt like a massive anchor in my life, my mind finally had the freedom to take stock of the things I really enjoyed about the business, and those that I didn’t.
Intuitively, I knew I would go back into business at some point, but the next time around, things would be very different. And that I did.
It still didn’t work out.
Still no clarity.
On my third attempt, I felt I got it right. Finally.
This was the Buyer’s Agency.
The business you know me for today.
Interview with the ABC for a property article that went to air in late 2022. Just after this photo was taken, a bug flew into my eye and the cameraman had to help me remove it whilst a crowd of people watched on. I was so embarrassed!
Rather than go big, my plan was to stay small.
Niche and boutique.
This time, I knew exactly what I didn’t want, which made it easy to see what I needed to do to steer my career in the direction it had always needed to go.
Firstly, I didn’t want a team.
I’ve never really been a team player and always felt like I was the strongest link dragging everyone else behind me. And so, there was no team. Just me.
I didn’t want a rent roll.
Despite all the advice that the rent roll is the only saleable part of a real estate business, I didn’t care. I didn’t want the headaches.
Expensive overheads were also on my hitlist.
I wanted to run my new business lean and mean, and so that’s exactly what I did. No unnecessary subscriptions, fancy offices or expenses that couldn’t demonstrate a sound ROI (return on investment).
And lastly, I knew I didn’t want to sell real estate anymore.
This was the big one.
I closed the door on my career as a selling agent and switched my focus to becoming a buyer’s agent.
Once I’d made these decisions and started operating the business in a way that catered to my needs first and foremost, the shift started to occur.
Not only was I attracting the right clients and making more money than what I ever had, I was also having a lot of fun - something I never equated to running a business, especially a real estate agency.
Up until this point it had all been stress.
For the first time, I felt in flow and it soon became obvious to those around me. Like a magnet, I drew in new opportunities, friendships and clientele whom I never thought I would be partnering with.
The best part - I was happier within myself.
Working with the big hitters.
A high-profile CEO of one of the largest firms in the country hired me to find her new home in Brisbane.
A prominent film maker gave me the description of her dream home and I secured it off-market whilst she was in Cannes receiving an award for her latest film that made blockbuster headlines around the world.
A husband and wife who had made over $300M in their business engaged me to buy their Brisbane residence and a top executive from Singapore gave me a budget of AUD $3M to investment in Brisbane.
Two years later we partnered again. This time the budget had increased to $5M.
I had dreamed of working with clientele of this calibre and it was finally becoming a reality.
I had found my career clarity and the universe was rushing in to meet me halfway.
How I can help you.
If you’re still searching for your own clarity, I can help.
Book a 1:1 Mentoring session with Wendy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wendy Russell writes about the realities of a career in real estate. She is a self-made woman and Independent Buyer’s Advocate based in Brisbane Australia, representing busy professionals in luxury home purchases.
