Before we get to the three reasons why you shouldn’t be a real estate agent, who am I and why should you listen to me?

I'm Matt Giggs, and I have been an estate agent for twenty eight years. I’ve seen thousands of people come and go and I know what the recipe for success actually looks like. Most of those who come end up going.

I don't want you to do that - I don't want you to put your time into something which is just fundamentally not for you. I don’t want you to set your expectations in the wrong way.

Estate agency has been brilliant for me. It's taught me so much about myself. It's helped me in my life and has probably saved my life in some respects, which sounds a bit grand. But I've been doing this for a long time and I'm telling you I was the new boy, the trainee without the car, and now I train people all across the UK.

I teach agent business owners how to scale their businesses without sleaze. I’ve handled, with teams, over a billion pounds worth of property sales in my time, and we have broken every single record that there is to break. Now, that's not bragging because I can tell you right now what works; what doesn't work. And not just from a business perspective but from a personal perspective, too. Which is why I'm going to share with you the three reasons why you shouldn't become a real estate agent in the UK.

Oh my God. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve asked people why they want to come and be a real estate agent only to hear about how much they love houses. They just love property.

After they finish going on about how much they love property, there’s not much I can do but look at them and say it's not surveying - loving houses is not the point. If you love houses or property and design, fantastic, go and be a designer. Go and be a surveyor. Go and be an architect. Go and work on what you love - houses and design.

What I’m telling you right now is that loving property is not a good reason to become a real estate agent. This work is all about people. You have to love helping people. So don't make that mistake.

The second reason you shouldn’t be a real estate agent is that you want to earn lots of money straight away. Oh my God, the number of people who come in and think it's going to be easy.

They think they’ll just open a few doors. Answer a few calls. Take some offers and go and give them to the client. Then the commission's going to roll in.

No way is that going to happen right off in year one.

I'm telling you right now - year one is about understanding people and understanding yourself. Getting to know their needs and learning how to deliver their outcome doesn't happen overnight.

To be a real estate agent, you've got to genuinely want to help people. That means putting in the work to really understand what they need and how you can give it to them. If you're going to survive and thrive in this industry, get the idea of easy money out of your head.

So on to reason number three: you want everything to be easy and comfortable - all the time. You don't actually like problem solving. You don't like challenges. You don't like “situations”. You don't like to feel outside your comfort zone.

If this sounds like you, you are going to hate being a real estate agent. Full stop.

Again, if you don’t like to solve problems and meet challenges, you are going to hate this industry.

Every day of being a real estate agent means dealing with situations as they come - good and bad. You’ll start the day by tying up a sale. Then the phone rings, and you learn a sale has just fallen through. There is a problem over here. Someone's not happy over there. All day, every day, you are thrown into pressure situations.

To thrive in this industry, you've got to have the ability and the resilience to really break through and really understand that pressure is such a big part of what you're going to do day to day. So if you want the easy life when you think it’s all about opening doors for prospective buyers, think again, it's not. You must enjoy problem solving and meeting challenges to thrive as a real estate agent.

I'm really interested to hear what your experiences have been. Were you sold this dream? Or have you come in and really not seen what you expected from day one.

If you enjoyed this post, please head over to YouTube to subscribe to my channel: Matt Giggs - Your Real Estate Agent Coach. Once you do, make sure to hit the notification bell so you won’t miss any great content.