Finding True Job Satisfaction in Real Estate

Real estate is an entrepreneurial business. Each agent or broker who makes it puts his or her heart, soul, spirit, effort, professional and personal self on the line every day. In some ways, this puts you a step ahead of the general population, because it's unlikely you went into the risks of entrepreneurship for something you didn't feel passionate about. Sure, some people are only in for the money, but, from experience, they don't end up succeeding as well as those who do it for the love of the industry itself, the freedom of self-employment, and the ability to have just that little bit more control over their lives. With risk comes reward, and that reward is job satisfaction.

I recently saw a blog post on motivation by Chester Elton, co-author of What Motivates Me: Put Your Passions to Work, with Adrian Gostick, and it struck a chord. Elton wrote about his 20+ year career as a consultant, particularly the last 10 years, in which he and his team conducted three research studies on workplace trends, comprising more than 850,000 interviews. All those interviews, all that research, all that data answered some questions. More than that, it highlighted a "key difference in those people who are most energized on the job."

So what is that key difference? Well, Elton says, "The happiest have aligned more of their work with their core motivations. As for those people who are most unhappy at work, as you might expect, their jobs are out of whack with what they are passionate about."