Angie Ramirez built a thriving, market- proof business one small step at a time. Her story serves as a model for any agent looking to take their business to the next level.
An E-News Featured Article, March 2008
Angie Ramirez has been a licensed real estate agent in Southern California for nine years. But looking back, she feels like the first six years hardly count. That's because it wasn't until three years ago that she discovered a whole new approach to her business that revolutionized not only her career, but her life as well.
The twist to her story is that what Angie discovered wasn't some radical new approach to business. Rather it was her discovery of proven tools and strategies - a road map to success, if you will - that allowed her to tap into the potential she always knew was inside her. She always knew that she could be more successful. She just didn't know how to crack that code, which led to uncertainty in her career.
It was at a Hobbs/Herder Gateway seminar in April 2005 that she finally saw the path to real estate success and committed herself to pursuing it wholeheartedly. Less than three years later, she's regularly meeting her latest goal of closing 12 transactions monthly resulting in gross commissions in excess of $400,000 annually.
A Life-Changing Experience When Angie arrived at that Gateway seminar, she looked around her and saw agents from all walks of life achieving extraordinary results. These agents looked like her. They sounded like her. They were ordinary people who had found their own path to success. Angie paused and asked herself a question.
"Where do you want to be, Angie?" she said.
Her answer wasn't much different than what any agent wants. "I want to be known as somebody who took her business to the next level," she said. "I want to live an incredible life." She was nervous about making change, but beginning to realize that to achieve her goals, changes had to be made. So Angie sought the advice of one of her mentors, her broker and owner of NewKey Financial Corp., Richard Lee.
"He asked me, 'Are you serious about your business? Do you want to be like these people who are closing 100 million a year? If you want a business like that, you have to treat your business like it now.'"
It was at that moment that Angie adopted the newfound commitment to her career that dramatically altered her income ever since.
Pursuing the Dream Using her own dreams as motivation - Angie has what she calls a "dream board" with all of her goals and aspirations written down on it - she dedicated herself to making those necessary changes in her career. She took the systems she was exposed to at the Gateway and began putting them in place.
Angie deserves major credit for not trying to bite off more than she could chew. She knew she needed to change her business, but she also needed to keep doing the things she had been doing to keep her business afloat in this time of transition. Her solution was to come in 90 minutes earlier than normal and stay an hour later every night. By devoting two and a half hours every day to working "on" her business and getting her systems established, she steadily achieved massive change.
By living by the mantra, "Small steps taken over and over again lead to big results," Angie completely transformed her business in the span of 12 months. Notice how she didn't expect immediate results but rather took the time to build her business. This is how success is achieved in real estate. She found a proven approach and then took the time and effort necessary to put those systems in place, and all it took was the discipline to work "on" her business instead of focusing on the immediate result.
Angie Newkey Ramirez
