u/Head_Entrepreneur534

Yes, some people absolutely have advantages. Financial support, family connections, guidance — those things are real. But you also see plenty of people with every advantage who still never take action.

I got into real estate recently and passed the exam while extremely tight on money. Before my license was even issued, I was already reaching out to brokerages, responding to flyers, scheduling interviews, and trying to create opportunities for myself. That was not luck. It was initiative and persistence.

My mom helped with some licensing fees, which I appreciated. But people hear “my mom used to do real estate 10 years ago” and suddenly assume my career is being handed to me. In reality, she hasn’t worked in the industry in years, and I still had to figure out almost everything myself.

What frustrates me is how quickly people dismiss internal motivation. Nobody can force you to study, put yourself out there, handle rejection, make calls, interview, or keep going when things are uncertain. That part has to come from you.

Support can help someone move faster, but it does not create drive. A lot of people use “they had help” as an excuse because it’s easier than admitting someone else took more action.

I’m 31 and recently got into real estate after finally taking time to get licensed. Growing up, my mom was a realtor, so whenever people in the industry hear that, they immediately act like I have some huge advantage, insider knowledge, built in mentorship, or family connections helping me behind the scenes.

The reality is honestly the opposite.

My relationship with my mom is extremely strained, and talking about her honestly triggers a stress response for me at this point. We do not communicate well, and I’ve learned most of this business completely on my own. A lot of the time, when I have tried asking questions, it either turns into chaos, outdated advice, criticism, or just more stress. She also isn’t very active in the current industry anymore, so people’s assumptions about her “guiding” me are pretty far from reality.

What’s frustrating is that people seem weirdly obsessed with the fact she was in real estate. Brokers and coworkers immediately start asking what brokerage she’s at, whether she’s feeding me leads, helping me with contracts, teaching me everything, etc. I even stopped bringing her up entirely in interviews, but one broker looked up my last name, found her license, and still started making assumptions.

It’s honestly been emotionally difficult because I worked really hard to learn this industry myself, and instead of people seeing that, I sometimes feel like my effort gets discredited before I even open my mouth. It almost feels like people think I’m pretending to be self made when I genuinely am figuring this out independently.

At the same time, I also don’t want to overshare personal family issues in professional settings or sound bitter. So I end up awkwardly downplaying it and saying something vague like “she’s not very involved in my business.”

I guess I’m wondering if anyone else has dealt with this in real estate or another career where people assume family connections automatically mean your success isn’t really yours. How do you professionally respond to it without sounding defensive or making the conversation uncomfortable?

I’m a newly licensed agent. I know every market is different, but I talked to the broker of a company, and she said all the new top producers bought Zillow leads.

I probably can’t afford to do that, and was thinking of instead joining a Zillow flex team? She said Zillow flex agents are not good but I don’t believe her lol, since their company didn’t offer that.

I joined a real estate team recently as a new agent, and I’m trying to understand the social dynamics on teams. One of the other newer agents would sometimes give looks to other team members when I spoke, and it made me wonder if there’s underlying competitiveness or cliquey behavior in the industry.

I came into it thinking of a “team” as collaborative, but at the end of the day we’re all independent contractors competing for opportunities, leads, and attention.

Is this normal in real estate teams, especially on higher producing teams? Or did I maybe misread the situation?

I’m newly licensed. I did some shadowing and 2 open houses. I even went to a conference and meet the team. Few days later he calls me and offboards me. It feels wild, because it’s not like I was ever paid, and he claims it was just a business decision, had nothing to do with the conference, and then blocks my professional IG. I’m actually the one who had to pay for gas and the MLS lol.

At the same time, I feel like no genuine mentor would block your professional IG? I got some good experience, but I’m not feeling like I can trust this as a reference. I just don’t understand how you can fire an unpaid person and I should not believe him

Also like, he tried to make it sound like he will give a reference and my future is bright, but people literally off themselves for being fired. I think I did find a backup brokerage but it is so crappy to start all over again and fight for leads

Edit: I did find another brokerage but who gets fired from a brokerage unpaid? He could have passed me to another mentor, or back off while I stayed onboarded. I lost my MLS. Additionally, if I was mentoring someone, I would continue to follow them on IG to keep light contact and see where they end up. Maybe he was too young to mentor.

ANOTHER EDIT: My thinking if I was a mentor is this person is unpaid, at least back off and just throw them a few showings but blocking to me demonstrates defensiveness as well. If he can make a business decision then I should too!