New Hampshire Real Estate & Consumer Resources

The reason I decided to end my real estate career was because it turned out to be a job that I hated. There were many things I hated about it once I got a good feel for what the job was really all about, and having come out of 20+ years of another job I didn’t care for very much, I surely wasn’t too crazy about the idea of becoming trapped in another job that I did not care for.

Initially, it seemed like it would be a pretty “cool” job. You know, get out of bed at 9:00, go show a few houses to some customers, maybe attend a closing and collect a check and be home by 3:00 p.m.

I admit I exaggerate a bit here, but it did seem to me at the time like it could be a fun job, and for many people I suspect it is. Alas, that was not the case for me.

First and foremost, it really helps to be a “people person” in a career like real estate. That’s probably pretty obvious since you must go out and deal with people in order to make any money at all.

As you might have suspected by now, I do not consider myself a “people person.” I should probably try try to expand on that a bit since some of you may be picturing some grouchy old character that should be out in the middle of nowhere living in a run-down shack with no electricity or running water.

That’s not quite the case. However, I am not a person who requires a lot of social interaction. I can be as pleasant and approachable as the next guy, but in most cases I’d just rather be at home doing the things I like to do. That’s a statement a lot of people can probably relate to on the surface, so further explanation is in order.

When I was still working in the high-tech industry there were certain jobs that the company was allowing employees to do from home. It involved providing customer support over the telephone. I had wanted to work from home for as long as I could remember, but not only was the job a bit outside my experience, the idea of doing telephone support all day sounded like a nightmare to me. I had occasions to do phone support during my years on the job and absolutely hated it. I found it very frustrating to be unable to put my hands on something and just fix it and providing instructions over the phone — often to people who did not seem qualified to even sit in front of a computer — was not something I enjoyed doing at all.

There was one fellow I knew who went ahead and decided to go try out the new work-at-home program and was accepted. I was talking one day with one of the other guys that worked in the same department with the fellow that had taken the work-at-home job and we started talking about the program.

I was astonished to hear him say that he would never want a work-at-home job like that because he could not stand being at home all day and that he would feel like he was always at work since his workplace was his home.

To me this was like telling me that you would not want to win the lottery because you could not put up with all that money laying around. His feelings about working at home were the complete opposite of mine. I would have been overjoyed to be given the opportunity to do my job from home and give up that tedious commute every weekday. I thought he was crazy, but in reality he just enjoyed getting away from home and interacting with other people. He is the type of person that needs to get out of his house and feel like he is doing something — a “real” job I suppose you might say.

My feelings could not be any more different. I dreamed of starting my own business and working at home and hoped to make it a reality some day. As I have said, I hate reporting to an office every day, attending meetings and working to put another Mercedes in some CEO’s garage. Been there. Done that. Hated it.
Fortunately for me, circumstances allowed me to leave real estate once I got a good dose of it. Spending so much time working on my real estate web page, I had discovered some opportunities that involved Internet-based businesses that I had known about for a long time but never paid much attention to. That quickly changed and I went to work on something new.
Since the only aspect of my real estate career I was actually enjoying (and wanting to spend all my time on!) was working on my web site, an Internet-based business seemed like a natural fit for me. Around the time I had decided to quit real estate the new business was actually bringing in a fairly steady income and because of that, I felt comfortable walking away from real estate and focusing full-time on my new career — one that I actually loved doing.

These days I work from home 100% of the time and I absolutely love it. I don’t think a day goes by where I don’t think about how fortunate I feel to be able to do this. The idea of spending time in some cubicle or office anytime again makes me cringe. Sure, I spend an awful lot of time here in my home office, but for me it’s a completely different situation. In fact, I devote more of my time to work now than I did when I was in the high tech industry but I still enjoy it.

Coming Next: What Exactly, I Disliked About The Job