Sometimes it’s easy to feel stuck where you are in life.
Ella Jones can relate.
Rewind a little over a decade, and she was a single mom of two growing kids. She had a government job that provided a steady income but no path to financial freedom. If there was any light at the end of that tunnel, it certainly wasn’t the brightly shining future she envisioned for herself and her family.
She felt down, especially so when her kids left for the weekend to visit their dad.
So one day, she ventured out in her Orange County, CA neighborhood and started visiting Open Houses simply for something to do.
“It was free and I loved looking at houses,” she recalls.
Perhaps fatefully, later that evening she happened to catch an episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County, where one of the featured “housewives” worked in real estate.
It sparked an idea in Ella… and the beginning of an inspiring journey that, while very much still a work in progress, has arrived on the cusp of greatness over the last 13 months.
Come with us to discover her story.
Becoming a Secret Agent
Without telling anyone, Ella enrolled in real estate classes and earned her license. She found a supportive local broker who was willing to work around her full-time government job, and she started devoting any free time to real estate.
She quickly fell in love with it, sold a few homes and was content to maintain this “secret side job” as just that – a side project for some extra income. Which she did for many years, plugging along selling anywhere from four to 10 homes a year.
Then, over the course of three days in early 2018, everything changed.
Discovering Her New Path Forward
It was January 2018 when Ella attended Tom Ferry’s Sales and Marketing Edge event in Los Angeles.
Inspired by what she learned, the people she met and success she saw possible, Ella became determined to transition out of her full-time job and become a full-time REALTOR®.
But she knew she’d be more effective with someone in her corner.
So shortly thereafter, on Valentine’s Day in fact… she signed up for Core+ coaching with Tom Ferry.
“I knew I had a short window of going from doing 7-10 deals to my goal of retiring and being financially set,” Ella recalls. “It was like an epiphany went off… it was do or die.”
Ella chose to go for it, and her bold decision was quickly rewarded.
Eek… Time for Ella’s First Coaching Session!
Ella nervously approached her first coaching session with her coach, Paul. However, she had a powerful proposal for him: She promised to do whatever he advised as long as he committed to helping her reach a place in her real estate business where she felt comfortable retiring from her job with the city on January 10, 2020. (That’s when her pension and benefits kick in from her current employer.)
Paul’s guidance helped Ella set goals, build her self-confidence and identify action items to help her reach the next level. To her credit, Ella was very coachable and open to Paul’s suggestions.
“I was so thankful for every single nugget of advice,” she says. “He guided me on how to do things that were life changing. I went from $33K to $150K while still working full time!”
Together, they worked on everything from affirmations and gratitudes to time management and number tracking. Ella admits she “never did any of that stuff” previously. The end result was extremely impactful:
“He got me thinking more as a business, not just a hobby,” Ella says.