I have interviewed a plethora of businesspeople in my life.
Every once in a while, someone says something that stops the conversation. Not because it is dramatic. Because it is so plainly true that you wonder why nobody says it out loud more often.
Carrie J. Little said it about 40 minutes into our episode together, and I have not stopped thinking about it since.
“It’s when you hope for the work that you’re wondering why it’s not working.”
That sentence should be printed and taped to the wall of every new agent orientation in the country.
Who Carrie Is
Carrie is a managing broker in Illinois and Florida, founder of Smart Girl Media, a national speaker, and a bestselling author with nearly 30 years in the industry. If you have been in real estate for any amount of time, you have probably been in a room where she was teaching. But the version of her story I knew going into this episode was the polished one. What I did not know was what happened in 2008.
The Year She Almost Lost Her House
Carrie was going through a divorce. The market was collapsing. She knew she was not going to be able to make her mortgage payment. So she did exactly what she would tell any of her clients to do in that situation.
She got a spiral notebook. She picked up the phone before she missed a single payment. She wrote down the date, the time, the name of every person she spoke with, and exactly what was said. She managed the process like a professional managing a client through the same situation, because that is what she was.
She did not hide from it. She did not hope it would resolve itself. She documented it, worked it, and came out the other side with a year of deferred payments, a paralegal certification Boston University paid for, and a much deeper understanding of what her clients go through when they call her scared.
She told Jeffrey and me she had never shared this publicly before. I understand why it took time to say it out loud. I also understand why she said it now. The story is not about failure. It is about what you do when you are in one.
The Thing She Said That Changed How I Think About Agents Who Struggle
Earlier in the conversation, we were talking about how she built her first client base with no marketing budget. Doorknob bags. Laundromat flyers. Walking her subdivision every month until it was too cold. Home buyer workshops where she let the loan officer and the attorney and the inspector do most of the talking.
She closed her first transaction within 15 days of getting licensed. She had three transactions closed before 9/11.
I asked her what the difference was. Why do some agents build fast and others stall?
Her answer was precise.
“We have people that come to class, they show up, and they’re the smartest, brokest agent, because they won’t pull the trigger.”
She was not talking about courage in some abstract sense. She was talking about a specific pattern she has watched for nearly three decades. Agents who spend more energy learning than doing. Agents who wait until they feel ready before they start. Agents who confuse preparation with production.
She was not ready when she got her license. She could not type when she got her first job in tech. She was showing model homes without a license because she had bought in the subdivision and knew it better than the paid staff. She has never waited to feel ready. She has just started and figured it out.
Give Yourself the Work
The philosophy that ties all of it together is something she calls “giving yourself the work.” She does not tell her agents what to do. She asks them what they are willing to do, builds a structure around that, and holds them to what they said. Because she has learned that an instruction someone else gives you rarely sticks. Work you assign yourself almost always does.
Her son, 24, told her recently that the hardest part of working for himself was simple: “I have to give myself the work every day.”
Twenty-four years old. Already figured out the thing that keeps most adults stuck.
What I Want You to Take From This
If you are building something right now and it feels like nothing is moving, I want you to ask yourself one question.
Are you working, or are you hoping?
Not hoping in the motivational sense. Hoping in the passive sense. Hoping clients call. Hoping the market shifts. Hoping your brokerage sends leads. Hoping the timing is better next quarter.
Carrie built her first year of business by walking her neighborhood with doorknob bags and showing up at laundromats with flyers because she did not have another option. And she will tell you that not having another option was the best thing that could have happened to her. It forced her to give herself the work.
Twenty-nine years later, she manages brokerages in two states, speaks nationally, and owns investment properties she has never sold. None of it started with a plan that was fully formed. It started with the next available door and a willingness to walk through it before she was ready.
“Before you quit your job, ask yourself: where is your business going to come from?”
Listen to the Full Conversation
Carrie’s full episode on Outside the Corporate Box is available now. She goes deep on the pre-foreclosure, the 12-month exit plan she built before leaving her franchise brokerage, how she manages 50 agents without micromanaging, and the one thing she would tell her younger self about investing.
Follow the show and catch every new episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2606315/follow
Outside the Corporate Box, Episode 03.
To follow Carrie, find her on Instagram at @smartgirl.media, Carrie Jo Little here on LinkedIn or search Carrie Jo Little on any major platform.
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