Three Years into Keller Williams – What’s Next?

Earlier this week I started receiving LinkedIn notifications that ‘People liked your work anniversary‘.  Part of me was surprised to realize that I had just completed three years at Keller Williams NYC and that my total real estate career was well into its 6th year.  Where does the time go?  I had never worked at one company for three full years.  Previously, I was on the effervescent and perennial powerhouse Blumstein Team at Corcoran

for just over 2 years and before that just shy of 3 years at Mediasmith in San Francisco.  The only longer living pursuit was a goal to have my own business, which, when I think about it, I have been doing since before most humans understand what business is and much less how to run one.

My first business was with my sister – as children we would go to our neighbors and pick up recycling for $2 a bag (split 50/50 of course).  After DC inevitably started collecting recycling along with trash I put out flyers and started a neighborhood business. I’d mow, shovel snow, paint, move chairs for an elderly piano teacher hosting recitals in her home.  Whatever someone needed, I would do it (driving people had to wait a few years – I started this at 12 years old). By college I had tasted the freedom that comes with working for yourself and knowing that worker harder AND smarter was a self-fulling loop of financial gain and (separately) life satisfaction.  While I had mostly abandoned that philosphy in SF it became a large part of why I left the west coast and one of the main drivers of succeeding in New York City. As a bonus, I hear that if you can make it here you can make it anywhere.

Fast forward 5+ years and I have built a solid business in real estate. It started with someone else’s team and now I have three great agents, a part-time admin and affiliates in Queens and Jersey.  For a couple years The Braswell Team has been the top real estate team in New York City on Yelp, something that drives us to maintain and improve our customer service daily.  So far this year is off to a great start with a couple closed sales and many more in contract.

So what is next then?

Well, I want to keep building this business, maybe do some expansion to DC or SF. But what else? Business isn’t everything. I’ve started volunteering with City-Meals on Wheels in the Upper West Side and will keep that up.  I have been working with the start-up Ox Verte and want to continue exposing companies to office catering that emphasizes whole foods and using local/organic ingredients. I want to spend time with my niece who is incurably adorable and for the first time made me feel real love for a tiny human being incapable of doing anything for themself.  I want to spend more time with my parents – DC isn’t that far.  Who knows – maybe I’ll find that someone who shares similar ideas and goals and we want to build a life together (way more difficult than making it in NYC it seems).

Ryan Serhant, an agent on Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing has a catch phrase in the opening credits: “Expansion. Always, in all ways”.  It sounds as funny as it reads. But not only does this apply to successful business practices, the concept also speaks to the idea of continuing to grow yourself – your capabilities, your hobbies and interests, your patience, your understanding.

So I guess that is what’s next for me.  I’ve created a thriving, growing business in real estate (that wont be on Bravo,ha!), but now it is time to expand myself.  Expand my horizons.  Expand my purpose. Expand my search for meaning.  The only thing I don’t want to expand is my waistline with all the great restaurants here.  So with that, I am off for a Friday afternoon run on the West Side Highway.  See you around!