Our family has been involved in motorsports for over 20 years and the last 5 years, the attention has been on my 25-year old son who now races a Super Late Model stock car at Irwindale Speedway in Los Angeles, CA.  As I sit in the spectator stands fretting and fidgeting as I always do when he's racing, I study the field and have discovered a distinguishing similarity between Real Estate careers, and stock car racing. 

Picture this if you will: In stock car racing you have a field of cars, lets say 25, that all want to win.  You have the 5 well sponsored teams with endless budgets, they're fast and you just can't catch them. Then there are 10 teams that do ok and have a few sponsors to help and generally just hang on.  Lastly the 10 teams (such as ours) that are unsponsored, private/family owned and operated, really work hard to get things together from race to race.  The fast guys start at the front, and generally stay there.  The guys in the middle and towards the back are working the hardest to get to a top-10 finish; to be recognized Looking at Real Estate successes, you see the top producers that had momentum going into this down time, they planned well and put their $trategy in place...these folks will be hard to catch.  Then you have the seasoned vets and part-timers that are at a pace to get some sales, maybe not as much as they'd like, they may be trying different things to get their business up to speed.  Now the new(er) agents such as myself are seeing all the new innovations in technology and marketing; it all costs $$, and in this soft market, we're hungry!  I've entered this career at a very awkward time and probably trying harder than anyone to make it work and just like the race car teams running at the back, I will keep trying everything possible to get closer to the front.   

To finish, my son sits 10th in points after 2 races where the average field size has been 24, he's driving hard and not afraid to try harder.  To mirror his and his team's efforts, I am taking what I have and implementing as much into growing my business as I can without breaking the bank.  I know I'll finish better than a lot of others who will give up and go away because I love Real Estate and I want more of it!