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This post was updated May 30, 2024.
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Broker Spotlight: Pam Blair, YogaBug Real Estate
Name: Pam Blair
Title: Broker/Owner
Experience: 17 years broker
Location: Portland, Oregon
Brokerage: YogaBug Real Estate LLC
Rankings: Top 500 in Portland metro area (top 5 percent) in Production
Top 0.7 percent in customer satisfaction as a 5 STAR Real Estate Award winner for 11 years in a row
Team size: Three (myself, my husband and our assistant)
Transaction sides: 18 in past 12 months
Sales volume: $8,883,000 for the past 12 months
Awards: Master’s Circle Diamond-Platinum Realtor
How did you get your start in real estate?
Before I moved to Portland, I had two very good friends in Santa Fe who were a wife/husband real estate team and they helped us sell our home there. They said that I should consider real estate and I thought that they were crazy. They worked seven days a week seemingly non-stop and didn’t seem to have any life balance.
Within a month of moving to Portland, the light bulb came on for me and I realized that real estate would allow me the freedom and challenge that I needed. I could use my background in research, finance, psychology, art and entrepreneurial spirit to create a business with unlimited income potential. I could weave my strong drive and passions into one fun, thriving entity. That entity became YogaBug Real Estate LLC.
What do you wish more people knew about working in real estate?
You don’t have to experience burnout to be successful. I am a huge advocate for building a sustainable business. There are many ways to do this but for me it was daring to combine my love for yoga and health with real estate.
This felt like a risky move but in the end, it cultivated the quality of clients I wanted to work with as well as a culture that I enjoy living within. I work as hard an any other Broker but I don’t experience burnout because my business feeds me on multiple levels as much as I feed it. It’s a dance.
What are 5 things you’d like readers to know about you and your brokerage?
- We have the most adorable real estate office in the world! Our Shasta Airflyte Trailer Lil’ Bug makes me smile and want to go to work every day. Plus, our clients love it.
- The only reason that I was able to weave my passions of yoga and real estate together is because it is who I am.
- Our team puts quality before quantity always. It is a foundation of our business.
- As a wife/husband team we have clear, distinct roles and this makes us more effective. I am the leader, negotiator, information hub and my husband sprinkles fairy dust around our clients so that they don’t know why they feel so good. Seriously though, he is amazing with buyers.
- YogaBug is a culture that supports holistic, mindful living through real estate and community involvement. We rely on expertise and intuition equally.
Find a mentor. This can be a very lonely business and extremely overwhelming especially as a freshly licensed broker. Find someone who is willing to be available to you on a regular basis when you need help, support you as an individual and who will hold you accountable.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help often. Real estate is learned by doing so find someone who emulates where you want to be in five years from now and learn everything that they are willing to share.
What’s one thing you wish every agent knew?
It is how we respond to our failures that define our careers. Real estate is one of many fields that praises success, sales and numbers. What people do not talk about enough is that anyone who is wildly successful has typically failed just as big as they have succeeded. It is how we respond and come back from the failures that will determine the degree to which we thrive.