SHOW TRANSCRIPT

 

[00:00:05] Speaker 1 Welcome to another episode of the Go with John Show. I’m John Jorgenson and today coming to you solo, my team has been asking me to talk about the 18 months my family and I spent living in an RV and I was convinced by my team that it was real estate related because it was my home. I did live there with my family for 18 months and you know, there were a lot of interesting things that came about it. So how did it all happen? So my wife and I had always planned on buying an RV when our kids went to college, which was, you know, four years from when we actually did it. And when COVID came along, we had an opportunity to purchase a 30 8ba was the floor plan 38 B I’m sorry, it was a 37 be a tiffin motorhome bus and it was 38 feet long. And it was it was quite a shock moving out of our house in McLean, Virginia, which was fairly large and into a 300 square foot bus. And, you know, at first it was a lot of fun and it was really exciting. And we got on the road, it was COVID. Everybody was locked down and we were working and going to school from from the RV. And I think the first challenge we had, I got to talk about some of the challenges at home. I talked about some of the great things about it. You know, the first challenge we had was the wi fi connections and the opportunity to connect to the Internet was not nearly as good as I expected it to be. So my vision was that we were going to be able to drive around and, you know, park at campsites and park it. You know, there’s a lot of Class A where you have to have a Class A RV, which is kind of the bus style to even get into them. And I thought we’d be able to park at campsites in these class AA resorts and tap into the Internet and go to school and work at these facilities. And it turns out a lot of these places have a wife, an Internet connection, right? And then they set up a wi fi hub and everybody connects to the same Wi-Fi router. And as soon as you get ten or 15 or 20 people trying to use one connection, it slows down and bogged down. And the video glitches and if never mind if you get two or 300 people trying to get on, you can’t even get on to the Internet. So that was really frustrating. So the first thing we did is we bought one of these wine garden dishes that you put on the roof of your your your bus, and it allows you to get kind of like a hotspot right inside your bus. So I tried that. That didn’t work out as well as I expected either. However, I will say that a lot of my friends that I made along the way and some other folks that I know that that live in their RVs are very, very happy with their wine gardens, internet connection. So I did not have the same luck that they had. So I don’t know if it was something that I was doing technically wrong or if my expectations were higher than theirs. But when I get online and I’m doing a video conference meeting, I expect to be able to have the meeting without the Internet glitching at all, and maybe the other folks are using their Internet connection differently than I was. So I was, you know, again, this was two years ago, right? We’re talking 2020, right, when COVID started. And now we’re I’m having this conversation in 22 and things may very well have improved over the last couple of years. So so that was a challenge. And how I finally solved it for me was I just started using the hotspot on my phone. So if we didn’t have five bars or four bars on our phone, wherever we would parked, we would go like if I had a meeting or if the kids had to go to school, we would go to a Walmart parking lot and we would throw out one of the slides. My wife would turn on her hotspot. We would turn on a hotspot for the iPad. Each one of the kids would log on to a separate hotspot. I could use my hotspot for my meetings, and it actually worked out really well. It just took us a while to figure that out. So kind of once we got into the kind of the mechanics of being able to work in the bus, it didn’t take us long to figure out that the hard part about being in an RV is the the moving and, and it’s the transition from parking to moving and moving to parking. And I’m not talking about necessarily parking. At a Walmart. When you’re sitting there trying to do school or meeting for the day, you know, it’s when you get to a campground, you get to a campground or you get to a parking space. It takes a lot of energy to set up your RV. So so you can live in it. Right. So when you’re going down the road. Here’s another misconception I had. I see these busses going down the road, and my vision is that everybody’s inside the bus, they’re watching TV, people are in the back, you know, working or somebody, you know, you can sleep in the in the bed while the bus is going down the road. And it’s really not the case. I mean, when you’re moving this massive vehicle down the road, the wind blows you around. It’s it’s it’s interesting to drive, which I’ll talk about that in the next segment after we take a break. But when you’re going down the road, you’re really just kind of in a giant car. You’re you’re somebody’s got to drive it. You typically have somebody in the passenger seat. And then I had my in my case, I had my two kids right behind the driver’s seat in a on a couch that had seatbelts on it, and they would watch T.V. or they would try to do something while we were going down the road. But it really the travel time in the bus moving down the road was not nearly as productive as I expected it to be. I thought, you know, my wife would be able to drive and I would be able to work, which actually did happen, you know, more often than not. But the quality of the work time was not as great as I thought. I’d be totally relaxed, like when you’re on an airplane, not the case. So, you know, the driving of the bus, which I’ll talk about in in the next segment, is a really interesting exercise. But but overall, I think the, the, the two biggest misconceptions actually the three biggest misconceptions were ability to connect to the wi fi ability to work in the bus and then what it was actually like to be, you know, kind of going down the road in the bus while you’re doing it. But there are a lot of great, great things that came out of spending time in the bus with my family. I mean, you know, I always say to everybody and it’s kind of tongue in cheek, but it’s true. If you want to get to know your family really well, move everybody into a little bus and live there for eight months because you will get to know every aspect of everybody’s personality really well. And, you know, fortunately in our family, we all get along really well. Certainly we have our tensions. And when you get everybody cramped into a little space like that, especially for three or four or five days in a row, if you’re moving parking, moving parking, you know, and you’re traveling every day, you know, it can get tough for sure. But I mean, we look back on it. It was a great experience for our family. We have, you know, 90% great memories of our time in the bus and we have 10% of the time that we want to forget. You know, and I think any any family would have would have the same thing. So we’re going to take a quick break. We’re going to come back. I’m going to talk about driving the bus and I’m going to talk about some of the other experiences we had while we were living. We call it our covered. We call it the covered bus. All right. We’ll be right back. All right. So welcome back. Still here talking about our family experience in the RV. And I think one of the most notable things was when I was doing my research and I was trying to figure out if I was really going to do this or not. I learned that different states have different requirements for licensing RV drivers, and Virginia did not require an RV driver’s license. And that’s really interesting to me because I think they should. So basically, I had never driven a bus before in my life. I went to the RV dealership, I bought the RV and they basically tossed me the keys and say, Here you go. And I’m like, Well, I’ve never driven this thing before. How do I drive it there? Like to take it for a couple of laps around the parking lot and it’ll be good. I’m like, Wow. So I did. I have my wife and kids stand in the in the dealership entryway while I did it. I’m like, okay, well, let me drive this thing on my own first and took two laps around the parking lot. I loaded up the family and we went down the road. So the first thing that happened, as we’re driving down the highway, I’m probably going 55, 60 miles an hour thinking, okay, this is good, it’s easy, it’s that smooth where riding on airbags, we’re kind of bouncing up and down a little bit and it definitely felt really soupy. And then all of a sudden, an 18 wheeler went passing by and it literally blew me off the road. And I was probably 4 to 6 feet off to the side of the shoulder. My wife is screaming. She thinks we’re going down in the ditch. It was a very traumatic experience and I was like, Holy moly, that was crazy, right? And I thought it was an anomaly. And so I get back in my lane and now, now my my adrenaline’s up. I’ve got two hands on the wheel and we’re driving and I’m on 95 and I’m going north in 95 from Richmond up towards towards D.C. and then another 18 wheeler passes us. Same thing. I get blown off the road, but this time I’m ready for it because I could kind of feel it coming down. Now I start to get this sensation, you know, and it kind of feels like the back end of the bus gets pushed to the right. And then, you know, I was steering to the right because instinctively, you know, if you’re driving on snow and your vehicle starts to skid to the right, you steer into the you steer into this kid. Well, not when you’re driving a bus. That’s the wrong move. So I start to figure out when the back of the bus goes to the right, I’ve got to hold the wheel, you know, strong. And then as the 18 wheeler or any big truck. Right. Because there’s, there’s you really feel the wind pressure from the vehicle passing you. So as that big vehicle gets to the front of your bus, you really have to steer left into it. I’ll bet you it took me six months to really get comfortable with having these big rigs pass you. You know, it was it was it was probably the worst, worst thing about getting into the RV lifestyle was not being ready for that. And I think part of it is that I started my first RV was my biggest RV and I didn’t have any experience with smaller of our RVs. And if I had, it probably wouldn’t have been such a shock. But along the way in my travels, I met lots and lots and lots and lots of people who just went out and bought a bus and they never had a bus before and they had the same experience, you know, that I had. So in my conversations with other folks along the way, I did learn that busses that have a tag axle, which means that you’ve got three rows of tires instead of two rows of tires. Right. So you have a you have a front you have your front wheels, right? That steer the bus, then you have your back wheels, which that first row is normally for tires. Right. Two tires on each side. And a tag axle is when you have another set of tires behind that, that gives you stability. Right. And there’s just two tires in that third row. It’s called the tag axle. So the folks that had a tag axle said that made a big difference with regard to the stability of the of their RV while they were being passed by 18 wheelers. So that’s just something to think about. If you’re if you’re trying to figure out, do I want you know, there’s a lot of considerations that you have to take in into mind when you’re trying to buy an RV. You know, when you start getting up in that 37, 38, 39, 40 foot length, you know, if you’re going to do more than 38 feet, I would certainly get a tag axle if I were ever going to get another bus. My wife and I both agreed it’s going to have a tag axle because. We just want more stability down the road. It’ll be a little more relaxing. However, I will add that I totally got completely comfortable with 18 wheelers passing me. It really became just second nature. You know, I didn’t even think about it. They’re passing, and I was able to hold the bus steady in my lane. But it took it took a little while. So, you know, one other thing that I think was something that that that I’ll talk about is, you know, when you pull into a campground or you pull into a two, two or an RV resort, a lot of these places call themselves resorts. I challenge some of them for using that terminology, but I will play along when you pull in and you’ve got to set up your bus. That’s that’s an interesting exercise. And, you know, one guy or one gal doing it on your own, it’s really a lot of work. You know, I enlisted my kids and we got to the point where we could do it really in 15 or 20 minutes, but you got to pull in. Our bus had auto leveling jacks, which was great. You could just push a button and these jacks would go down and kind of lift the bus up in the air a little bit. So it was kind of on solid ground. Then you’ve got to hook up your sewer line, which I think you can all imagine is not the most pleasant thing to do. There’s definitely some learning curves there, which I’m not going to talk about on this episode, because frankly, it’s just disgusting. But once you get the hang of it, you’ve got some big rubber gloves on and you get it hooked up and not hooked up. It’s all good. You hook up your water line, you got to plug in your electric and then, you know, you have to switch over to shore power. You get your air conditioners on, you get your slides out and your slides are those things that kind of pop out that make your bus bigger. I think almost all our RVs have slides, even trailers and smaller RV. So so then you get you kind of your living space set up and then you’ve got to deal with all the stuff that got messed up while you were driving down the road which which, you know, you get better and better and better at it. When you have a whole bunch of dishes in the cabinet and you open the cabinet and they all fall out, you learn not to put the dishes back in the way you did it before. But there’s all these learning curves that you have to go through. And I think, you know, the biggest thing is you want as little in your RV as possible. You have to be a minimalist. You want as little you know, when you got four people, it’s hard. And in our scenario, our kids had to make their bed every night because we had a sleep, we had a sleeper sofa. So the kids had to sleep on the sleeper sofa and we had one bed in the back. So we had a king sized bed in the back where my wife and I would sleep. And every single night the kids had to pull out the sleeper sofa, make the bed. But now we couldn’t use the whole front half of the bus because the bed was there. You couldn’t even really walk up to the to the driver’s seat in the passenger seat without literally climbing over the bed. And then in the morning when they woke up, you had to put it all the way folded up, put the cushions back. Right. And then you’ve got kind of the the couch cushions are laying around on top of the dinette that we had. So the bus, when you’re in sleep mode is not really usable. So when you when you decide to go to sleep mode, everybody’s kind of be in their bed that that’s an hour bus. Right now there are busses out there that have bunk bed floor plans in them. And the more research I did about that, I decided that the bunk beds were not right for us for a couple of reasons. Number one, they were not very long. And my my kids are 14 years old now and they’re already almost six feet tall. It’s unbelievable. You know, I think those bunk beds that are in there are maybe five, five and a half feet tall. Don’t hold me to that. But do your research on that if you’re thinking about buying a bus for the kids to sleep. But in talking to folks over the years, I have heard people tell me and I’ve heard people tell other people don’t get the bunk bed configuration unless you’ve got little kids and you plan to do a lot of traveling. Because once the kids get to a certain size, they can’t sleep in there anyway. And now you have all this space which is very valuable in a bus. Every inch is valuable. Now you have all this space that’s dedicated to beds that you can’t use for anything else other than storage. Right? So I hear folks would start to use that, that area for storage. So for us, it wasn’t the right choice to to to go the the bunk bed route. But for other folks, it would be. So there’s a lot of personal decisions that you have to make, you know, another another decision you have to make if you’re thinking about going this route is do you want the dinette or which which a lot of people don’t do anymore? We liked it because we could use it while we were going down the road to work. I would sit at the dinette and actually work while my wife would be driving. And we had. Out at the dinette. So we could you know, that’s another thing. I’ll just digress for a second. How many people can you seat in your bus with seatbelts so they’ll tell you at the dealership, I had nobody really wear a seatbelts. When you’re going down the road, you know, I just feel differently. I wanted to have my passengers belted in and in our particular bus, I think we could seat easily seven. Let’s see, we had one two in the front, right driver’s side, passenger side. We had two or two seatbelts on the couch and then we had four seatbelts on the dinette so we could have eight great. Two, four, six, eight. We could have eight people seat belted into our bus going down the road, which is really unusual. There aren’t very many busses that that have that many belts in it, you know. So, you know, we were thinking about using the bus, going down the road, being able to do homework, being able to do business work while the bus was moving. And, you know, again, I think I already said it earlier, you know, but that was a misconception. You know, living in the bus and operating in the bus while it’s going down the road is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Internet connectivity was a lot harder and just physically trying to work in that thing. When you’re worried about an 18 wheeler blowing you off the road, I mean, it’s hard to relax and and do anything when you’re when you’re going down the road. So so, you know, another thing that you’re going to want to consider if you’re going to do a bus is do I do the the diesel engine or do I do the gasoline engine like I personally have been a diesel guy since the beginning of time, since I could afford my first diesel engine, I’ve always had diesel. And, you know, when I was really young and I bought my first truck, I couldn’t afford diesel. The diesel engine was $5,000 more than a truck with a with a gas engine. So I just had to I just had to buy gas fueled vehicles once I got into my first diesel vehicle. It really was amazing at how incredibly easy it is to maintain and how long it lasts. I mean, you can do your own research on this, but the diesel engines are just phenomenal. They don’t they don’t get old and tired. They get they get stronger and better as they age, in my opinion. Right. Do your own homework. I’m not certainly pretending to be an expert on diesel engines, but I have been driving diesel trucks and and diesel equipment, you know, for 25 years. And when I went to buy an RV, I wouldn’t even consider a gas engine. Now, the diesel RV, I think, adds about at the time it was about $50,000 more for a diesel engine in the bus. But for me, the quality of the ride, it’s heavier, you know, it’s a diesel pusher. So the engines in the back pushing the bus versus the gas engine in the front, which is pulling the bus. And, you know, when you have the gas engine in the front, you’ve got the engine right underneath you while you’re driving down the road. So it’s louder. I believe you have heat that comes into the bus from the engine, you know, so, so all things considered for me, a gasoline engine wasn’t even an option. But you have to you have to decide how are you going to use the bus? So when I bought it, I thought we were going to be on the road, working on the road, moving around a lot more than we found out was practical. Practical. So if you’re going to buy an RV and you’re going to drive it two or three or 4 hours and you’re going to park it for a week to go on vacation, then I would do the gas engine. Right? But if you’re going to be traveling the country and you’re you’re living in this thing full time that I wouldn’t even consider a gas engine, that’s that’s just me. But think about how you’re going to use it and what is it going to be for you. And I’m going to add, you know, one other thing which which, you know, comes from my experience in real estate, don’t only think about how you’re going to use it today, how are you going to be using it four or five years from now? Right. So if you have 12 year old kids and you’re thinking about the bunk beds, it’d be great for them. Well, when they’re 16, those bunk beds probably won’t be so great for them. So try to see how long do you think you’re going to keep this bus? How are you going to be using it and who’s going to be in it with you? You know, if you’ve got lots of grandkids and you’re going to have different grandkids traveling with you all the time or or staying with you, then the bunk beds may be a great choice. Right? So it’s everybody’s different. And, you know, my decisions were based on me and my family and things like that. So so that’s a lot about the mechanics of how we got into it. And, you know, some of the, some of the my experiences with the bus and interacting with the bus and, you know. I’ll close this segment out and then I’m going to come back and I’ll tell a couple of stories in the last segment. You know. Another. I’m trying to focus on my misconceptions. Right, because everybody turns on, I think not everybody anybody who’s thinking about getting an RV one day will watch the RV TV shows, which, by the way, we used to watch in our family all the time. We had them on all the time and then we bought the RV and we haven’t watched one since. Not one. And let me tell you why. Because they are not giving you the real deal. If you want to learn about I mean, this is the best advice I could give anyone because we got into this RV and then you’re at the campground and then some kind of warning light comes on or you’re the worst thing. The worst thing ever is like your black water tank fills up. Now your black water tank is where all your black sewage goes. You can figure it out for yourself. And, you know, you open up a valve, you drain it, and then you closed the valve and then it’s just supposed to work again. Well, so think about it for a second. So in this little 300 square foot bus, we had two bathrooms, we had one shower, we had three sinks, we had two toilets. We had to think about all this equipment. Right? There are so many hundreds of things that can go wrong and they never, ever, ever talk about a single one of them in these RV shows. I don’t care what RV show you’re watching, the only thing they show you is people going down the road, watching movies in the back of the bus, campgrounds, hiking, riding their bikes, canoeing on beautiful lakes, traveling through the mountains, enjoying amazing views and meeting people along the way. Right. I think that’s the best way I can sum it up in 15 seconds. Then you get in your bus, you’re sitting there and your black water tank won’t drain and you get this warning light. So you get your phone out and you start searching up. Okay, black water tank won’t drain. Now you get 100 videos with 100 different guys and gals giving you all these different explanations on how to cure this problem. This is one the reality of living in your RV sets in. You’re like, Huh? I never came across any of these videos when I was doing my research on an RV. And, you know, you can you can start searching up online if you really want to know what it is to live in an RV. Start searching up. You know, how how how to my leveling jacks aren’t working. Let me just try to think off the top of my head some of the things we ran into. So I would say search up satellite dish connectivity issues. Right. And I can’t get my wine guard to connect black water tank not draining or toilets won’t flush or you know, once you start searching up stuff, you’re going to start coming across people who have dedicated YouTube channels to how to fix all the things that go wrong in your RV. If you want to learn what it is to be in an RV and live in an RV and spend a lot of time in an RV, watch those channels before you buy an RV, because if I had, I would have probably had a much more realistic view of what it is to tell to live in an RV for 18 months. The fantasy would have been quashed before I ever put my first mile. I still think I would have done it right, but I would have been more educated about what it is. And I and I think my estimation and this is not based on anything but my own opinion and just the people I met along the way, probably 70 or 80% of all the folks that are driving around in an RV bus started out in a tent and then they went to a camping trailer. Then they went to maybe a large trailer, then maybe they went to a small class, see? RV Right. People just kind of graduate to the next level and they know all about camping and they know all about this stuff before they even get to the bus, you know? But I would I would say there’s probably 20 or 30% of the people out there that just, you know, they go through their whole lives and they’re like, yeah, one day I’m going to buy an RV and I, I, I’m going to move into this thing and it’s going to be great. And I think for those folks, I would advise, spend some time on the YouTube channels, find the channels that tell you how to fix things and learn what it is, because literally you cannot call it. You have to be able to solve some of your own challenges with with your bus because those RV mechanics are expensive. You can’t always get them. They don’t show up sometimes for three or four or five days. And a lot of these things you can fix yourself. You’ve got to like to tinker and work on things. And I’ll tell you, if if you don’t, there are going to be a million people around you at wherever you are parked that are going to be savvy at how to fix problems. And a lot of these folks love to help. Other people. There’s a lot of retired folks out there that know their boss inside and out. And if you start having a problem and you start asking around the campground or the resort or wherever you are, they will come out of the woodwork to help you. And I will say that the number one greatest thing about the RV lifestyle is the people you meet along the way. And there there is you know, I’m going to take a quick break and then we’re going to come back and close out and I’ll just wrap up with some happy thoughts. But but arguably, I met some really great people, some really interesting people, people I would have never met in my in my life. And I’ll talk about that right when we come back after this break. All right. So just to kind of wrap up, I’m a you know, I’ve talked a lot about, you know, the thinking that went into buying an RV and driving it and all of that. You know, I’m going to add one thing about driving an RV. Do not pull into any parking lot where you are not 100% convinced that you’re going to be able to get out. I never got stuck, but I pulled into a Starbucks one time and I thought I because I was kind of looking at it from the road, I’m like, Oh, yeah, I can get through it. I can get through there. Well, I got into that parking lot and I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t back up. I got cars behind me, got in the drive thru line and we were stuck there for maybe, I don’t know, 30, 40 minutes. And the only way I was able to get my bus out of that parking lot and I had people blocked it, you know, so you can imagine there’s cars parked. I pull the bus in, there’s a drive thru like line coming in behind me so I can’t back up. So I had to wait for like four or five people to leave so I could pull in my bus through the parking spaces where our cars were parked so I could get through. So I only did that once, but that was quite something too. So, you know, I’m kind of I hope I’m done with the advice for this episode. But, you know, that’s another thing that pay attention before you pull your butts in is something make sure you can get it out. So so the people along the way, I would I would say that when you are in various different campgrounds and resorts and you get out and you meet people and you ask them, Hey, what do you do? Most of them are going to say, You’re retired. I like to say, Well, what kind of work did you do? What what industry were you in? And, you know, I have met people from all walks of life. I’ve met engineers. I’ve met people that were in, you know, the NASCAR industry. I’ve met I met a police officer who was working with the LAPD at the time of the O.J. Simpson saga. And I you know, I got to talk to him. He was parked right next door to me and a lot. And we we we spent three or four days chatting and we talked about what it was like for him to be a police officer. He was a detective at the time. He was a directly working on the case. But, you know, it was interesting to hear his perspective of what was going on within the within the organization at the time. So any any type of industry that exists, if you are meeting the folks in the campground, you’re going to find people from all walks of life. And the stories they have and their perspective they have is, is amazing. And I think some of the resorts that you’re going to go to, you’re going to find that there’s a lot of people living full time in their RV. They don’t even own a house. And that’s amazing to me because I don’t I don’t know if I could do that or not. But, you know, and these folks have had a career and then they’ve retired and they’ve moved into their RV. They have kind of a home base, one really cool home base that that I’m aware of is I’m going to throw a plug out for Riverbend Resort in Florida. That’s right. In LaBelle, Florida. And it is one of the coolest RV resorts that I’ve ever seen. And there’s a lot of people that live there. They’re snowbirds, and they come down and they live there in the winter, and then they go back to their home in the northern states in the summer. And there’s a group of people that live there full time, and I’ve spent a lot of time at Riverbend. There are some amazing people there. I’ve made some great friends there. But this place, if you look it up online, has an RV, it has a RC racetrack where you can raise your RC cars. Now you do you do have to be a member of a club to race your cars there. But if you’re if you’re there and you have a remote control car, I’m sure they’d let you join in in as in a certain fashion or not. So they have a sailing club where where folks sail remote, broken, remote control sailboats on a on a on a lake. The resort is right on the Caloosahatchee River, where they have a boat dock and they’ve got folks with boats that you can go out. And some of them are happy to bring you on their boat and take you up and down the river. They’ve got a train set that they set up every winter. When I say winter, it’s summer down in Florida, right? So they set up the train set for Christmas and it’s really cool. They’ve got an amazing clubhouse. They do all kinds of events. So, you know, and I’m sure there’s other resorts out there when you get on line, you know, there’s a lot of Facebook groups that have these are RV resorts. By the way, I got to I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Pickleball Club at RV. I’d be I think I’d be banned from the resort if I didn’t mention that, because those folks are serious and I don’t play pickleball. But man. They play pickleball and they are competitive. And it’s amazing. And it’s and it’s a great spirit of of folks down there. And I’m not trying to give you a comprehensive view of Riverbend. Riverbend just happens to be the resort where I’ve spent the most time and I know the most about it. And I’ve never been to another resort anywhere that has so many different activities that that Riverbend has. They have a huge pool. They’ve got two hot tubs. And and it’s just amazing. It’s a really, really cool place. But there are other places out there. So when you think about, you know, all the folks that you can meet, they are you know, you’re going to meet, you know, ex-police officers, engineers, farmers, any any kind of profession you can think of. You’re going to meet them. And they’re most of the folks, I would say, are very eager, are open and and willing to spend time with you sharing their stories. And as much as you want to hear or learn from other folks, they’re out there. All right. I’m going to talk about two really cool things that I think everybody should consider if they’re if they’re going to go RV. And the first thing is, we never did this. We haven’t done it yet, but and my kids might be too old for it now. And but many, many, many, many people told me, you have got to go do the Disney Wilderness RV experience, because I would always ask people, you know, where should I go? What kind of a great experience did you have? Some always are one place where you went, where you think we have to go. I would ask a lot of people that question and most people came back with, if you’ve got kids, you’ve got to do the Disney Wilderness experience. I never did it. I haven’t done it yet, but I just want to throw that out there because so many people told me about it along the way that I think you should explore it. And the folks would say to me, It is so cool that you will never even go into the Disney Park. That was kind of a reoccurring theme. When you pull your RV in there and you park it just the campground is so amazing. You’re not going to want to leave it. So I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I did hear it from a lot of people. So I’m going to talk about the the the best trip that we took that we still talk about today was we went up to Michigan in in the RV and shame on me, but we had the bus and there’s was a little bit of a rebel in me still. So the governor says, don’t come to Traverse City. Then, of course, I think we all know we heard like the next weekend the governor and her husband and or maybe it was just her husband was was launching his boat and was boating in Traverse City. Well, I’m like, okay, if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for us. So we’re in the bus and we didn’t really have anywhere to go. We said, let’s go to Traverse City. Right? And that was what drove us there. It was just let’s just be rebels and go check it out. So this was right at the beginning, I think, when we were in the throes of COVID. You can obviously timestamp it by when this this conversation happened. It was within a few weeks of of this event. So we got to Traverse City and we we had a you know, we we parked at a really, really nice resort, really high end. And we we got in our car, which we were towing behind the, the RV, and we went to Traverse City. And it was it was a little uptight. There was a lot of I think there were a lot of there was a lot of security down there. Everybody was wearing masks. And we didn’t really go into any of the stores. We just kind of walked around and checked it out. And then we went back to our to our bus and we’re kind of exploring things to do. And there’s a lake up there called Lake Charlevoix, and it was amazing. And we started realizing we could rent a boat and we’re like, Yeah, that’d be a cool thing to do. So we rented a pontoon boat and we rented a tube and we’d never been tubing before. And we spent, I don’t know, four or 5 hours out on Lake Charlevoix tubing. It was it was one of the greatest experiences we’ve ever had as a family that we would have never had if we hadn’t been in an RV and it wasn’t planned. And so not only did we tube, but we were on this this pontoon boat had like a 200 horsepower engine on it. So it was pretty fast. But we were able to kind of stroll around this lake on the boat and it was just a really cool, magical place, you know, Lake Charlevoix. So here’s what here’s what if you search it up online. Lake Charlevoix is a lake in Charlevoix County in Michigan. It’s the third largest inland lake in the state of Michigan with a surface area of 17,200 acres. So really a cool place. I can’t I can’t stress enough. So that was a lot of fun. We had a great experience and that was. You know, two years ago. And my kids still talk about Lake Charlevoix today, and I can guarantee you we will find our way back there with or without an RV at some point in our life. So that that to me, that whole area up there is amazing. Amazing. So, you know, in closing, I’m going to say, you know, spending 18 months in an RV with your family is not for everyone. That I will certainly say. And it takes I think a lot of it takes a lot of discipline. It takes a lot of structure. It takes a lot of patience. It takes a lot of empathy. Right. You have to really understand what the other people in the bus are going through and how hard it is for them because it is hard. I will not sit here and say that it’s a it’s a ball of wax. And, you know, there were some stretches of time where, you know, you’ve got, you know, week after week after week where it was just massive amounts of stress because we couldn’t get online with a clean connection. We couldn’t get school assignments turned in. My meetings were glitching and, you know, we were really questioning our decision. But we, you know, we kept pounding on finding a solution to our challenges. We got through them. We ended up at Riverbend Resort in LaBelle, Florida. We ended up parking the bus there for a long time, many, many months. We were there and I learned that parking and existing in one place is a lot easier than moving around. And, you know, if you’re moving around every week, that’s tough. And it’s and it was a mistake and I didn’t know it at the time. You know, if you’re going to spend a lot of time in a bus and you’re going to move around, you know, I think you want to park for at least two weeks at a time, maybe three, you know, because the process of packing everything up, bringing in the slides and, you know, there’s a button on the dash of our on the side, left hand side of our RV that says travel mode. And you push that button and it brings up the jacks and it puts the air back in the air bags so you can drive your bus. And it took me a long time to realize that travel mode is much more than just bring it up the jacks travel road travel mode is a mentality. Travel mode is a way of existing. When the bus is moving right, you’ve got to secure your refrigerator. All your food in the refrigerator has to be secured. Bubble wrap you know, I recommend you put bubble wrap in your fridge to hold everything tight, you know, bring in the busses in having people in their seatbelts, having your stuff out that you’re going to want while you’re in travel mode. Because once you go to travel mode, maybe you can’t get to some of the storage compartments that are that are under the bus. And, you know, you’re not really you know, you’ve got to have a DVD player out and ready, accessible and plugged in to a TV if you want your kids to watch TV while you’re in travel mode. So travel mode is when the bus is being packed up or moving or unpacking, and then you’ve got kind of camping mode or living mode, which is much more relaxing, trust me. I mean, I think the the big challenges you come up with when you’re in camping or when you get to you get a light that you’re that your black water tank is full of, your gray water tank is full. And for some reason, it doesn’t drain the way it’s supposed to. And you got to deal with something. You learn pretty quickly how to deal with most of the things that come up and most of the things that come up are easy to deal with. Most of once you learn your equipment and you understand how your equipment works, it’s pretty easy. So, you know, I would say I will probably never, ever do this again with my kids. I think that my wife and I, it’s highly likely we’ll end up with with a period of time in our lives where we are. RV And again and we had a lot of fun. And I think for me, I love meeting people, right? And I think RV is something different for everybody. Some people love camping, some people love hiking, some people want to be roughing it in the woods. Like, I never went to a single state park, but a lot of people talked about how great the state parks are and they’re affordable and you’re really getting close to nature and there’s not a lot of amenities. And, you know, that wasn’t my thing. You know, some people only want to be at class-A resorts. They won’t even go to another type of campground. You know me, I like meeting the people along the way. That’s my my pleasure is meeting the other folks, hearing their stories learn and, you know, learning. And that’s one of the reasons why I have this podcast is, you know, I. I find the stories fascinating and hopefully I get better and better at bringing them to you. But, you know, the RV thing was a thing that we did for COVID. When somebody told me I had to lock that in my house, I said, This is never going to work for me or my family. Not only am I hyper, my wife is hyper. I got at least one kid who could have managed it very well. But the other one, no way. We survived in lockdown. We had to do something. So that was our solution. And I hope you’ve enjoyed, you know, hearing some of my stories. You know, feel free to comment on Facebook if you want to chat more about it. I’m happy to answer any questions that folks have, if I can. But there it is. That’s my RV story. I did it for my team. I hope you enjoyed it. And that concludes another episode of the Go with John Show. Go out there and build something extraordinary.

 

 

[00:01:45] Speaker 2 I’m great. Good.

 

[00:01:46] Speaker 1 Good. Thank you. So we’re talking today about what people are always asking me, and I’m sure you. Yeah. What is it like to be a real estate professional? What is real estate like for you? What is it been like for you at the various stages of your career?

 

[00:02:05] Speaker 2 Well, I think it has been the best career, the best job, the most satisfactory job you could ever wish. Starting out as a realtor, I remember in class that I was so excited every week coming to class, and the more I learned about real estate, the more excited I got. And as soon as I was done with my class, I was out there getting my feet wet and I never slowed down and I never looked back since. It is a to be successful. It is a full time job. And what does that mean to be successful? It means different things to different people. And thank goodness for that, because to some of us it means everything. The sky’s the limit and to others it’s sell a house a month and that’s success for them. And to me it is to sell as much as I can, and preferably I do sell a house a week every week for 37 years. And I love that it does get you out, you know, many hours of the day, you’re on the road. You do work on weekends, some evenings as well. But remember, it is what you choose to do. It is your passion, it’s what you wish to do. And also whatever happens, if it is to be, is up to me. So you have to get out there and get it. And whatever you are looking to do in real estate to be successful, you can do it.

 

[00:03:34] Speaker 1 So when you first started, you obviously followed kind of the guidelines that they gave you in your class, right? You were networking. I remember I was with you. You were handing out you still to this day when we go to dinner somewhere, if you don’t have a relationship of the waiter or waitress, they are getting your business card along with the tip.

 

[00:03:59] Speaker 2 Yeah. I really try to be all around and take every opportunity I can to leave a card, introduce myself, and of course, in the circles I travel, so many people know me already. And and it’s just it’s really great. It’s wonderful. You you put in a lot of effort to get to that place in life where you have made it. And you can you can coast also a little bit for a while and yeah.

 

[00:04:31] Speaker 1 So what is your so the industry is changing. It’s always changing, which is good. But I remember you would sometimes run out of the house in the middle of the night, 2:00 in the morning.

 

[00:04:42] Speaker 2 Well, that was the olden days. Yes. And I would say the olden days were when there were no computers and Internet and scanning. And you saw.

 

[00:04:55] Speaker 1 And most people did not have a fax machine in their home.

 

[00:04:57] Speaker 2 Now, not in the seventies and the eighties and the early nineties, I guess 2000 maybe. And a contract was not ratified until it was delivered. So you were negotiating the contract all through the evening usually, and you had to drive to the seller with the buyer’s contract and get it signed or get initials and back to the other party and get an initial and then back again to get it delivered in order for it to be ratified. It was definitely a lot more driving. I used to call myself the Beltway Bandit because we agents were literally on the road at midnight and 1:00 in the morning by the time we got home.

 

[00:05:40] Speaker 1 Right. And now they’ve changed the contract not too long ago that the workday ends at 9 p.m.. Yeah. Isn’t that nice?

 

[00:05:47] Speaker 2 That’s wonderful. I just don’t know what that means.

 

[00:05:50] Speaker 1 Yeah, no, you don’t know. That’s not for Lillian. Yeah. So. So what is your week look like? How many days a week are you interrupted at dinner with a phone call or how many times a week do you have to go out and work or work at your desk after dinner? Tell us about your weekends. What is your what does your life look like as a top performer?

 

[00:06:13] Speaker 2 I’m very structured and I just believe to get up in the morning and be ready to go. I am ready to list and sell the house any time of day. I don’t have to go home and change clothes. I don’t have to go pick up any papers anywhere. I’m ready to meet clients to list their home and to meet them to go out and show a home or just a notice of a phone call pretty much up in the morning at 730 in the office by nine and 830 sometimes. And then the duties of the day follow up with emails, phone calls, feedback, calling for showings and my listings call my clients at the end of the week. Weekly seems to study pricing on the home, so make sure that your listings are priced right. What is selling? So be sure that you follow up with. New listings coming on the market, listings that are withdrawn and just keeping up with all the market analysis for many different neighborhoods is a lot of work and that happens at the end of the week for the weekend so the sellers can get the update for the week and what has been happening all week. So you have to be regimented to get all that done and ready and get that sent out. So when we come to the weekend, there’s usually an open house on Sunday that definitely usually showings on Saturday because the client is off from work. So you find yourself on the road showing houses in various places in all over Northern Virginia, going out west to Leesburg, out to Percival Hamilton, or you’re going into Arlington, Alexandria, and it can take all day Saturday and then you have Open House on Sunday from 2 to 4. So yeah, you have time off on Sunday, but I find myself doing something almost every weekend. But remember, it is my choice and I do have wonderful quality time with my husband, believe it or not, and he loves to be my driver. So on weekends, if we’re showing, which is wonderful, he’ll drive and I’ll talk. I can make phone calls, I can follow up. I can do all those things while somebody else is driving. So that is really nice. But it’s not everybody’s choice to work every day. We just have to remember who we are and what we want to do. And that’s the beautiful thing about this job that it is what you want it to be and you can do whatever you want to do. It just depends on you.

 

[00:08:49] Speaker 1 So how many days a week are you working after dinner? Is that every day you go home after dinner?

 

[00:08:56] Speaker 2 Most of the time after dinner there’s usually a couple of phone calls. But for comparison, on Tuesday night I got a contract at 6:00, so we had a quick dinner and I had a process to contract, make copies, drove to my seller’s home and presented the contract, negotiated the contract, made corrections, got it signed, drove home, had to put it in the scanner, scanned it and emailed it to the agent so she would have it as quickly as possible. And then she had to get it to her clients. And by this time it’s 930 in the evening and she had to get it to her buyers for final initials and getting it back to me, because time is always of the essence. You don’t want to put off tomorrow what you can do today and get that contract ratified the same day. So I had it back by 1030 or 11:00, all ratified. So the house was sold Tuesday night, but at that time you more or less have been in action, you know, all the way from 6:00 besides dinner and then till 11:00 at night.

 

[00:10:05] Speaker 1 Yeah. So the fact that you when somebody calls you and you drop everything to go show a home or somebody calls you to list their home and you drop everything and you rush out to do it right away. How much do you attribute that to your level of success that you’re having today? Is that a key factor?

 

[00:10:25] Speaker 2 Well, I think I don’t really know, but I think it’s definitely a key factor that you are able to say, when would you like me to come over? I can be over this afternoon or I can come tomorrow morning. And if you hear any hesitation at the other end of the line, you also can say, Well, I can come tonight if you are not available during the day. Right? I would be happy to come after dinner. I have made it a practice to have dinner with my family every day. I used to just go any time and now I will say I can come after dinner. So that can mean any time. It can be seven or 730 or 8:00. And but it’s important that you listen to the thinking on the other end of the phone, because you say, I have to think about when you can come over. There is a reason and you want to just throw it at them that you also available tonight. And very often they will say, oh, that would be awful, that would be wonderful because I don’t get home from work until six and on and on and on. You also can offer if there’s any hesitation. Well, I can meet you tomorrow morning at 730. It’s no problem. And so you see, you find yourself being available. I mean, if you want to be successful, you have to be flexible to the client’s schedule. That is our job. That is, if you’re in this job, that is what it takes. You can’t be choosers too much. You want. Sure you can. You can put your foot down and say, I’m not doing this. I’m not doing ain’t doing this. Ain’t do. That is, I hear from some agent, but that’s not me. I choose to be available if they want to see me at 730 or eight. I’ve done that numerous times. We do the job at that time and right away you are scoring a point with the seller to be, Wow, here I have an agent. She can meet my needs, what I need, and that’s a plus. You are already halfway there to get the job.

 

[00:12:32] Speaker 1 So what I’m hearing, if I can summarize for you maybe, is that you first have to define or you have to quantify what is your definition of success? Yes. Right. So if you want to be a realtor, if your definition of success is I want to sell one home a month, you have to set the goal and then you have to behave appropriately in order to achieve that goal.

 

[00:12:58] Speaker 2 Yeah, you set your goal and you have to do the activities to up to.

 

[00:13:03] Speaker 1 Two better way to say it.

 

[00:13:04] Speaker 2 And so it is Stephanie. But I’m not satisfied with the House a month. I mean, my success is I want to do as much as I can. Yeah. And that’s just what I want. But everybody has a different threshold and that is the beauty of this job. It can be something for everybody. You may be perfectly happy to just play around with real estate and sell a house here and there. But if you really want to be a professional and by that I mean knowing the market, knowing the pricing and when you make an appointment on a Tuesday afternoon to meet a client at 730 in the morning, you got to do your CMA, you got to fill out the listing papers. You got to pull all the marketing material that you need to show what you’re going to do with that listing. You have to study the whole CMA. You better know all the information in all the paragraphs, remarks of all the comps, because that is your ammunition. Should there be any information there that you need when you finally meet this seller in the morning and you got to do your homework ahead of time and you learn a lot from reading all the listings as to what happened in the sales. And I think we need to you need to know that.

 

[00:14:21] Speaker 1 Perfect. All right. Well, thank you for that advice and good luck. You got to get on with your day. I know you got.

 

[00:14:27] Speaker 2 More fun with.

 

[00:14:28] Speaker 1 Thanks for stopping in. We appreciate it.

 

[00:14:30] Speaker 2 To go and people to see.

 

[00:14:32] Speaker 1 That’s right.

 

[00:14:32] Speaker 2 Okay. Bye.

 

[00:14:34] Speaker 1 All right. So we’re going to take a quick break. And when we come back, I’m going to give you my perspective on what it is like to be a realtor. All right. Welcome back to the Go with John Show on John Jorgenson. And I’m going to talk a little bit about my experience as in the real estate industry, being a realtor. So I got into the industry in 2004 the the way it happened. I guess my mom, obviously you just heard her story was was telling me, hey, you should get your real estate license just as a backup. You know, you never know. You may want to go into the industry. So prior to 2004, I owned a company called Marketing Mania and I was having a lot of fun, really enjoyed the business. But I went to a Brian Buffini seminar and he is a sales coach professional for realtors and was not in the real estate industry. He didn’t know anything about it. And my mom, Lillian said, Hey, you should really go and listen to this guy. And he was in Tysons Corner at the Sheraton. So I went and learned a lot of really cool things from him, which I applied in my marketing business and had a lot of fun doing it. So at some point in time I decided to sell my marketing company and I thought I would dip my toe into the real estate industry. And when I did, it kind of swallowed me up completely. I loved it. There’s a lot of things that are really exciting and fun about real estate, and then there are things that are challenging, which Lillian talked about some. And in our subsequent episode, we’re going to have some folks tell us about their experiences in in the real estate industry. But the fun and exciting part is really helping people. And, you know, you’re in the business and if you’re a practicing realtor, you’re doing transactions all the time and you’re dialed in to exactly what’s going on in the industry and how the negotiations work and all the ins and outs of the transaction and the folks you’re working with. This may be the only time they do this type of transaction in their lives with the current set of rules and regulations and things like that, because the industry is always changing. So somebody who bought and sold a house ten years ago who’s buying and selling a house today, has no idea how the industry works and what the various rules are. So, you know, we’re the coach as the realtor and we’re helping people through the process and that’s exciting. It’s really fun. And you build some great relationships with folks and it’s, it’s, it’s a nice industry and it’s very gratifying, but it is if you are going to be successful, it is all consuming and you have to want that. And you know, Lillian, I asked her one of the questions I asked her was, you know, how often do you have to answer the phone call during dinner? And I knew the answer that question because I’ve been there really for most of my life. And we get as jorgensen’s we we take ownership and many realtors. Right. I’m not just saying we’re the only ones who are doing this, but many successful realtors take ownership of our clients challenges throughout the transaction. And sometimes you have clients who can’t sleep, right, because they’re so they have so much anxiety about the transaction. And, you know, maybe you were chatting with them the night before late because they had concerns or they were worried or they had bought a new house. But now there’s a problem with the sale of their existing home with a home inspection or an appraisal, and there’s some kind of hiccup in the transaction. And your folks have a lot of anxiety and maybe you’re going to get that phone call that can relieve their anxiety in the middle of your dinner. Well, I’m going to want to take it and I’m going to want to get that information and pass it on to my client. And it may be just a simple five minute little thing. And I can send my client a text and say, hey, great news. I just got a phone call from X, Y, Z, and everything’s solved and I’ll call you after dinner, right? So you don’t have to totally blow up your whole plans for the night. But there are times where I think you you have to be ready to take some of these calls, because maybe if you don’t take that call, let’s just say it’s an appraiser or let’s say actually, let me not use that example. Yes, let’s use the example of a home inspector. So maybe the home inspector is calling you. If you don’t take the call and he leaves a voicemail, you may not get him or her until the next day. Right. And you want to put this anxiety to bed. So that’s just an example of how a situation may arise, where you will want to be interrupted in your dinner. You’re going to hear from other folks who say, nope, you know what? I turn off my phone, I turn it upside down, and I don’t even look at it during dinner because that’s just my boundary. And I totally respect that. And it’s it’s it’s important because if you have your phone on and if just on the dinner table, it’s hard to know. Okay, well, which call do I take? Which call? Don’t don’t I take. But I think now that I’m more seasoned, I don’t really have my phone by my side unless I’m expecting a call that is is important. So that’s kind of how I, I handle it. You know, one of the interesting things we’re going to talk about vacations. I didn’t ask Lillian about vacation because I know she doesn’t take any the folks that I’m going to chat with in the next episode, I ask them both, you know, how do you handle vacations? I used to when I was early in the industry, would send out an email saying, hey, I’m going on vacation next week, and which I don’t take vacations very often, maybe every three or four or five years. In fact, I just took a vacation in 2022 and it was my first vacation in six years. So it you know, I’m an entrepreneur and I love business and I love my life. And I’ve got a lot of great things going on every day. I don’t really feel like I need to take a vacation, but my wife and kids, they will say differently. So anyway, I used to tell people, Hey, I’m going on vacation next week. You know, if you have anything, I’ll get back to you when we get back. Or I would have somebody cover for me. And every time I did that, every single person it seemed that was in my database needed to talk to me. And there was some kind of an urgent matter with, with with my listings or an urgent matter with my buyers. And for some reason, for me and the folks that I work with, when I would send out that email saying on my vacation, it triggered everybody to need me. And so, like I said, I don’t go on vacation very often, once every two or three or four years. But now if I am going to take a vacation, I don’t say anything to anybody. I leave. I’ve got people covering me. If there are situations that come up where I’m needed, I will jump in. And this last vacation I took was really, I think the first vacation in my adult life where I literally was able to get away for a period of time and completely disconnect from my business. So it’s it’s only happened once in my life, and it’s because I have such a great team of folks working with me that are able to cover everything that comes up. But when you’re new in the industry, I think you’re get if you don’t have a partner or if you don’t have another realtor that you’re teaming up with one way or another, and that that’s a whole nother episode. But you’ve got to find a way to, you know, break away from the grind. If you’re going to go on vacation with your family, you’ve got to decide, do I want to tell everybody I’m leaving or do I just want to slide away and kind of stay plugged in? And in the next episode, we’re going to hear from a great agent who talks about how she handles her vacation. So I’m going to kind of let that one lay for a bit. So another challenge, I think one of the things that’s really interested to me about the real estate industry is that 20% of the realtors nationwide do 80% of the business. So that means the other 80% of the realtors do 20% of the business. So I am a total Type A person. My mom is a total type-A person. We’re after it, we get it. And so there’s lots of other realtors out there that are really aggressive, want to solve problems, and they don’t want to go to bed with troubles on their head. Right. You want to get all you want to get all the things wrapped up before the day’s over and you want to dot every I and cross every T. Well, occasionally. And if you’re doing volume, it’s probably one or two or three times a year you’re going to let’s just say I’m going to give you two examples. One example is you’re representing a buyer. You’ve been out looking for homes. You find the home you want to write on, you write the offer, and you send it over at 4:00 in the afternoon, you call the listing agent and you get their voice mail. You leave a message, Hey, I’ve sent an offer. I want you to call me back, let me know you have it. You send an email, you send a text and boom, nothing. And you’re like, okay, your client’s calling you at six, seven, 8:00 at night going, Oh, what did they say? What did they say? Well, I haven’t been able to get a hold of the realtor on the other side. So then you go to bed and you’re like, What in the world is going on? And then the next day rolls around, you’re trying to reach this other realtor, you can’t reach the other realtor. You get to the end of the day and you’re like, Okay, well, I’ve got to call the agents broker. I send one last email and I say, I’ve got to make sure this gets delivered, and then the agent shows up and then they you’re talking to the agent, you’re like, Hey, I sent this to you yesterday. What’s going on? And they’ll say, Oh, well, I have a full time job. I don’t really check this email as often as I should. And I didn’t realize you had sent this over until just now. And I’m like, Oh, my gosh, it just makes my head explode, right? So. That is the hardest thing for me is when things happen in this transaction that are totally out of your control and you are having your own anxiety because you can’t get done what you know needs to be done because somebody out there is not doing their job right. And this could happen with a lot of different things. And I’ll just give you one more example. I said I’d give you to. Another thing that’s really, really tough for me personally is when I’m working with a client. And and, you know, I think, you know, when I’m working with someone, we’re in this together, we’re a team. We have to partner on this transaction until we get through it. And I would say occasionally, very rarely, once every couple of years, I will have a client who has their own agenda for how they want to manage the transaction. So, for example, I could get an offer from a listing agent, I could get an offer from a buyer’s agent, I could send it over to my seller, I could review it with my seller, and then they go silent. They don’t return phone calls, they don’t return emails, and they think they’re negotiating or they are. There’s something going on that I don’t understand. But so now I’m in a position where I have to communicate with the buyer’s agent and I say, Hey, I sent everything over, you know, I’m waiting to hear back, right? And that’s really all I can say, right? I can’t tell the, the the other side what’s going on. But I do want to communicate with them that I haven’t heard back yet. I’m waiting to hear back. So over time, when, when, when two or three days start to go by, it’s an uncomfortable position that you have to deal with. So you have to be able to deal with complicated situations. You’re working with humans, you’re working with home inspectors, appraisers, lenders. Sometimes you’re dealing with multiple offers and things are literally out of your control. And you have to navigate the waters the best you can with the circumstances you have, you know? So if you’re the captain of a boat and you are going from point A to point B and you think you’re going to have smooth weather, and all of a sudden a thunderstorm comes out of nowhere. And now, instead of going down the Potomac River and smooth waters, you’ve got three and four foot waves and you got to know how to deal with it. So it’s it’s a fun business. It’s exciting business. It is probably one of the most unique industries I’ve ever been involved with because you have different things coming at you at different times all the time. You get new scenarios all the time, you get new regulations all the time. You’ve got to stay on top of the industry laws and regulations and you’ve got to stay on top of the market. So it’s a lot of fun. There’s a lot of really exciting things about it. You know, there are some downsides, which I, you know, personally, I enjoy the excitement of taking that call at dinner and solving a problem and helping somebody sleep better that night. There is not a lot of people out there that would feel this same way, you know, but that’s part of my DNA. So the the industry is going to be what you make it. You are going to be what you want to be in the industry and so slowly and says, if it is to be, it’s up to me. Okay. So now I want to close with one last thought from my perspective. And remember, we have an episode too. This is a two part series, so I’ve got another episode where we’re chatting with a couple of other folks in the industry and I don’t want to step on their toes, so I’ve already had the conversation with them. So I’m going to try to bring in kind of a thought for folks that may still be listening. So there are so many different types of personalities in this world. There are so many different types of people in this world that are successful in real estate. You do not have to be like Lily and you do not have to be like me in order to be successful in this industry. I, I know people who are very quiet, very reserved, who are very successful in this industry because they are working within their sphere. Right. And I and I think that your ability to be successful in this industry is going to be directly linked to your ability to communicate to your sphere of influence. Who are the people around you that will trust you to help them through the real estate transaction? So it doesn’t matter really what kind of sales skills you have or what kind. People’s people skills are important and they certainly help. But I know realtors who are very successful, who don’t have the kind of people skills that you might expect them to have in the industry. So there’s lots of different ways to be successful in real estate. So if you’re thinking about going into the industry and you want to explore it further. Listen to episode two, and then I would reach out to Rachel Foster. She’s our broker at the McLain Long and Foster office. 7037901990 And for you military folks that are listening, it’s 7037901990. So get a hold of Rachel, she’ll talk to you. And in fact, Rachel is one of the folks that’s in the next episode, so you can listen to her. And it’s a great industry. It’s a lot of fun, it’s exciting. It’s different things to different people. It is what you make it. And as Lillian says all the time, if it is to be, it’s up to me. So it is a lot of fun. If you have questions, comments, you want to hear more from me about this, you know, get us on the Facebook page and we can talk more about it there. So thank you for listening. This concludes another episode of the Go with John Show. Go out there and build something extraordinary.