From Newsroom to Real Estate

Speaker 1: [Music] hi I'm Melanie bar welcome to the she builted experience with Melanie you're here because you want to experience the life and business that you crave join me as I talk to women who have successfully built it a career and business that they love we dive into the topic of how they built it and talk about everything from Having the courage to make career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech innovation magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so let's dive in mine Perez was born and raised in New York City prior to making her career leap into residential real estate at compass in Los Angeles she was an award-winning producer for ABC News covering politics business and real estate and later became a freelance editor for Los Angeles magazine as a journalist meline learned valuable skills that she applies to her real estate career today gaining people's trust and respect excelling in high pressure situations and reacting with speed composure and precision thank you

Speaker 2: so much for joining us today meline

Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me tell us about who you are and about your early career experiences leading to becoming

Speaker 2: the founder of meline Perez properties uh well it's been kind of a long road I'm originally a lifelong New Yorker went to college at Wesleyan and then came back to to New York City and started to create random housing book publishing and grew tired of that and decided to switch careers and and I attended Columbia School of Journalism and as I was leaving there I was offered a really amazing opportunity to become a producer for ABC News and I covered National politics and I was there for a long time and it was a great amazing experience and then at some point my family and I decided to relocate to Los Angeles I felt like it was the right time to make a move in doing so I decided I was going to make an overhaul and choose a career path that served me better journalism is amazing but it can be pretty brutal and so I wanted something that enabled me to live my life the way I wanted to on my terms and real estate for me was was that option I had always thought about doing real estate in New York but it's a very different market and Los Angeles is more welcoming I decided to get my real estate license about six years ago and it's been growing ever since so I'm I'm now a residential realtor at compus and I serve all of Los Angeles and it's really been an amazing

Speaker 1: journey and I really love it congratulations on building your business that's wonderful and you had an incredible career leading up to making your leap into real estate what gave you

Speaker 2: the courage to say I'm going to make this change I've had and built this incredible career in journalism but it's now time for me to make a shift and leap to do something different I've always been the kind of person who is resilient but it also recognizes when it's time to

Speaker 1: reinvent yourself and with the relocation and starting a family as well I felt like it was time to reinvent myself while doing something that had always kind of been on the back burner something I had been interested in but it was hesitant to do because going out on your own and and basically working for yourself because you know essentially I am an independent contractor is very risky but I had the confidence to do it and I had the skill set and the determination and obvious I had worked in very very intense High deadline high stress environment so I knew I could handle it I did my research too you know I spoke to a lot of other Realtors did a lot of my own interviewing kind of pulled my journalism skills in a bit to figure out if it would really be the right fit for me and it was but you know I really took

Speaker 2: my time with it I'm really glad you said reinvent yourself because so often we get on a path and then we don't give oursel permission to make a change and our lives change as we go through them maybe we have a family maybe we make a move across the country or we just wake up and decide what I'm doing right now isn't really fulfilling me I think I'm ready to make that leap to do something

Speaker 1: else yeah absolutely and I think I'm lucky in that I can I usually can sense when that moment is happening in my life and it's happened multiple times like I said I left publishing went to grad school relo I think it's really imperative as women that we recognize as we're growing and changing that our careers sometimes need to change with us that for me was a really important element of of my decision and

Speaker 2: I love that you said you noticed that

Speaker 1: you were ready it's trusting yourself yeah you have to have a good support system you have to have people around you who are helpful and we'll be honest but also will support you in in that change because it is a big deal but you also have to trust your instincts in your gut and my gut was telling me that you know journalism was no longer realistic for me for a lot reasons I needed to do something I was really more enthusiastic about and I also loved the idea of being self-employed for the first time really in my life I had always been in the corporate world and felt like I didn't need to be managed I had enough drive and motivation to work for myself and so I think that really was the Tipping Point for me to say yeah

Speaker 2: of course I can do this I probably always could have what is one of the most important things that you think building a successful business has taught you and how does that help you in

Speaker 1: running your business today there's been a lot of lessons along the way one of the things that's taught me is to trust your instincts to be sure to surround yourself with good mentors and good people who are going to guide you because when you're starting in something new you need that and that has really contributed a lot to my success I think because there's always people I can bounce ideas off of and I think it's

Speaker 2: to not really go It Alone even if you are working for yourself and to find resources and people who have already done what you done and kind of study their path and study their wins and losses and kind of use that information to inform how you operate thank you for bringing up Community because that's one of the reasons why I started and launch she built it because I realized so many of us need the same resources and it's so much better to take a trusted resource to say hey I've worked with this person or company I had a great experience or one of the most fun things for me is seeing the women in the she built it community

Speaker 1: doing business with each other yeah

Speaker 2: that's a huge part of it that element of collaboration and especially for women is so essential I'm in an industry that you could argue is M dominated having that sense of community with other female realtors and and other female clients is really really important to me you know to be able to to bounce ideas off of and also just kind of build my business and build theirs at the same time and support each other in both

Speaker 1: directions what is one of the most memorable experiences that you've had while building your business today

Speaker 2: I've had a few one specific deal that always stands out in my mind that that it happened right when Co hit and we were really uncertain about what was going to happen with the market here in Los Angeles although the market here has done very well but at the time we didn't know and I had clients who ran into a house and were desperate for it and fell in love with it and they accepted an offer within an hour of going on the market and we didn't get it and it was a really big learning experience for me because what happened was the listing agent was getting screamed at by a million other AG agents for doing that and I didn't I was trying to help her actually and I was very nice to her because she was in a tough situation I said look my clients left this house if I can get you a backup offer will you accept it and she said you know what you're the only person who's been kind to me today absolutely I went home I submitted that backup offer long story short the original buyer fell through and my clients got that house and to me that was such a lesson in you get what you give and you never know when you're going to CRP pass to people again and always be kind in your interactions even if it's not your natural instinct or you're frustrated or whatever and so that was a really big moment in my career and it was amazing for my clients too because they just like got their dream house and it was just so wonderful to hand them the keys and that's really one of the joys of my business the other thing is I learned this probably within the first year how important branding is there are so many real estate agents in Los Angeles and you have to find a way to stand out my marketing background and my journalism background definitely helped me but also reaching out to my community of context and them helping me to kind of brand myself who am I what's

Speaker 1: My Style what's my logo what's my vision that was a huge moment in my career when I realized how important that is to set you apart from this huge huge crowd of agents that people could choose why choose me it made me realize how important that was and I think that has really contributed to my success look I haven't been doing this that long six years in this business is considered still relatively new and yet I've had a ton of success and I really do believe The Branding and the messaging was one of the most important things I did you

Speaker 2: are so right because you can be an incredible in real estate and if no one knows you exist you can't help people so you're so right it's that marketing and branding and getting your story out there because clients want to know who you are and this story about finding the home for your clients and being kind I see why that's a memorable experience because Co was so stressful for everyone and you had no idea what she was going through and that kindness seemed to really pay off and then to help someone again during the stressful time to find their dream home yeah it was really it was just like one of those Great Moments where real Esty can be extremely stressful and competitive but when you have those moments it reminds you of why you're doing this in the first place and

Speaker 1: I think the other piece is also just being true to yourself being honest having Integrity there was a point in time when I felt in the beginning I had to temper my New York nature of talking quickly and being very direct and honest because I didn't want to Spook La clients and I realized that that was a mistake and now I am who I am and I think that's actually brought me so much more business because I've earned so much respect for being honest and saying hey maybe we shouldn't buy this house or maybe this is the right house for you and that was another hard lesson to learn is like you you don't have to pretend to be anything you're not and in fact by being true to you you're going to draw in more people than you would the other way because authenticity clients can see through that if you're not being your true self and when you're trying to buy a house you really want someone that's on your side and tenacious so I see how that strength can

Speaker 2: be to your advantage yeah absolutely I mean essential in this business to be tenacious and the authenticity doesn't always happen here in any market so you know having that under my belt and that reputation really does set me apart how has your business shifted over the last year and what obstacles have you been

Speaker 1: able to overcome to be honest my business has never been the as strong I've always done really well but this year has been really phenomenal we've been lucky in that you know business has maintained here it's still very active Market but in terms of Shifting I mean you know the day-to-day is tricky you know we have all kinds of obvious covid regulations we must obey and extra forms and extra rules and they're constantly changing them so it's been a lesson and being able to constantly adjust in a way that we didn't have to Prior and so being willing to learn new systems and new documents and and new methods on the fly has been a huge Advantage for me that's how my business is changed but I think my personality and my willingness to learn has really again like really helped me a lot this year and you can see that through your career path and with all that shifting and changing what

Speaker 2: is your strategy for management for staying on task to accomplish what you set out to do and motivating those

Speaker 1: around you I do something called time blocking which is really important which is basically like I lay out my month now obviously real estate is not something you can always predict but I have a general calendar for every month where I time block when I'm going to work on my marketing when I'm going to work on my email campaigns when I'm going to work on that sort of stuff that I can predict I've committed myself to that time window to do that project and I'm not going to change so I I don't let things slip I'm also very good about me constant contact with past clients I have a whole CRM system set up through my agency and they remind us to follow up so I'm very good about that sort of stuff as well that's great because you never know when a ient going to give you a referral you don't and it happens so often and sometimes it's just touch base you know it's like hey how are you doing you guys doing all right in Co do you need anything and then suddenly they'll come up like oh you know by the way my cousin's looking to buy house and you're like oh okay had I not reached out and in in genuine concern with my clients I really make a point of staying on top of that on purpose and in terms of motivating other people it's just about management and being being respectful and everybody works differently you know I have people on my team and it's important to understand personalities and how people work best and learn best and to be patient because sometimes it takes some time to figure that out a lot of people are visual Learners versus auditory Learners and so on and so learning people's strengths and learning how they learn best has helped keep the people that I work with motivated I think because they feel they feel seen magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that

Speaker 2: brings us joy what is one tip that you can leave with us today about how you

Speaker 1: find and live your joy it's a day-to-day thing for me it's something I have to remind myself sometimes you know my son is my why I do all of this for him I also do it for myself and the joy is really in the clients it's helping them sell their family house that they raise their kids in and the emotion that's involved in that and getting them through it and then sometimes it's a it's getting a buyer a house that has 37 offers and they win and it's those wins and those moments where you're helping someone make the biggest purchase of their life and seeing just how happy they are and then months later you go to their house for a barbecue or a dinner and it's like wow I really influenc this person's life forever that's where the joy of of this business comes for me it is really really rewarding at the end game to see how much you've helped someone's life mine your kindness and your tenacity and your care for your clients really shines through congratulations on the business that you have built tell our listeners how and

Speaker 2: where they can find you you can find me on my website mop.com I have a strong Instagram Presence at the same handle reach out to me via email text or call I am extremely accessible and I respond very quickly I love talking to people even if it's just questions so I'm always happy to

Speaker 1: talk if you are to Sheil it we'd love for you to join us we offer Community memberships masterminds Innovative virtual events and meaningful connections to entrepreneurs and corporate leaders please also check out our Sheil it shop curated products from women-owned businesses who put their heart and soul into their beautiful and Innovative products we offer Sheil it business Consulting and the Sheil it blog thank you to everyone around the world who joined today thank you to my editor Rich stalino please down download And subscribe wherever you get your podcast and until next time together let's let nothing stop us from experiencing the life that We crave [Music]