What to do after you get your real estate license

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Hi guys!

Just for background:

So I graduated about a year ago, (major in marketing) moved to Tampa in October 2016 and got my first duplex (not FHA like I wanted to do but I used a conv loan instead) the other unit is rented by BP guidelines (thanks BP!) I don't have a career I love and fulfills me like I hear a lot of people saying so after long and hard thinking I have decided to become a realtor. (I wanted to start doing wholesaling with a direct mail campaign but I decided not to get to ahead of myself and said let me start with a good foundation since I have no experience.) I am currently studying for the test online while still keeping my 9-5PM job.

So here are my questions:

After getting my license what steps should I take to set myself up for success? Or what should I be doing now while preparing to take the exam. I'm a very frugal and keep a tight budget, I will have an emergency fund of about 6 months of living expenses since I'm not sure how long it will take for me to start making money worse case scenario.

I am all down to work hard, network, knock on doors, cold call, etc.

Should I go for a big brokerage firm like: Keller Williams, Remax, Century 21? or look for something smaller? Goal is to become a top producer, learn, help others, use skills to continue investing.

or should I do a year of a mix salaried job and commission like I see on Indeed which requires a license for my first year:

Property management assistant, real estate firm assistant, researcher? (other suggestions?)

Any tips would help, thanks! 

[Ryan Huggins]

Six month emergency fund is a nice start. It is usually 6 months before you see your first deal. I would personally recommend 12 months IN ADDITION TO having about $4k for start-up costs (signs, cards, dues, etc.). It cost me about $3,200 just to get my MLS access, Supra Key (to get into homes), local association membership and state and local "union" memberships. On top of that, you'll need signs, business cards and to spend some cash on marketing. DO NOT fall for the bright and shiny baubles that will come your way. You will be deluged with offers for chatchkas with your name on them (pens, coffee mugs, note pads, you name it). These are not necessary and are a very quick way for you to be parted with your money. An even faster way, is to buy leads from zillow or Realtor.com (or anyone). Zillow is about $2k-3k per month in my area and their leads aren't worth the paper they're not written on.

On top of all that, welcome to the world of being self-employed.  You now need to buy your own health insurance (I went from a hospital job paying $4/month (yes, that's right and I got free damn near everything) to paying close to $500/month for dam near nothing.  On top of that, you'll have to pay estimated taxes... each quarter... bases upon what you expect to earn the upcoming year.  As an office drone, your company paid those for you each paycheck.  As your own boss, you need to do this.  It hurts.

As to what brokerage to go with, that's the million dollar question that gets asked all the time on Active Rain.  My recommendation is as a new agent not only do you need to find a company who's goals and "personality" work with yours, but has a top-notch training and mentoring program.  What you learn in school does not prepare you for the real world.  There is a cost to this, you will start out at the lowest commission split (usually you keep 60%, your broker gets 40%).  As you progress, you get more and more of your commission in some companies (like Keller Williams), but you reset at the beginning of each year.  Once you have production under your belt (and a good amount of it) you can renegotiate this split or leave for a company like Re/Max that doesn't have a split (just a monthly "desk fee").  Re/Max won't usually have a training program, Keller Williams and Coldwell Banker and Century 21 almost always do.  Out here the KW program was crap (I ended up training an agent in January who was buying one of my listings because her "coach" was worthless and nowhere to be found.  Hopefully that gets better now that someone I know took over aspects of the training program.)

As to part-time/full-time... either do this full-time or go find another line of work!  This is a job that will have you working evenings, weekends and some holidays.  This is not a side-job as many of the trainings, networking and "this is how you do it" stuff happens during the day.  Sure part-time can be done, but I've seen it really backfire for people and their clients.  Real estate sales is NOT a hobby.  I cannot emphasize that enough.

One cold stat out here is that 60% of new licensees never see their second year.  It is not an easy job, it is not a fun job (at times), you will get stabbed in the back and you will pull your hair out at times.  You can put a lot of time, effort and money into the job with zero return on investment (see my comment about buying leads and chatchkas).

Once you get your license and your cards and marketing stuff ready, door knocking and cold calling are great, mailers are great but can get pricey.  Holding open houses for other agents to pick up clients is great.  There is no one "silver bullet" that will get you a deal/listing.  Multi-pronged approaches and timing is what works.  Get your OWN website and use your own email do not use your brokerage's email (mine is a bad example of this, but I'm the brokerage).  When you leave for greener pastures (a new brokerage), you do not want your clients to not be able to get in touch with you.  Build your site's SEO while you are with this big companies (link to it) and do some blogging to build up your content.  Eventually that will get you leads.  Those leads tend to be stronger as they came to you directly.  Also, when it comes to social media, start small.  Don't go hog wild creating an account on every platform.  Maintaining a presence on one is hard enough, let alone 10... even with help!  Focus on one or two big ones (Facebook, Instagram) and really build those up.  Twitter is pretty much gone the way of MySpace and I don't recommend Snap Chat.

Any questions?  Feel free to reach out to me.