Monique Fuentes

I attribute my success to staying knowledgeable and adaptable, and committing to lifelong learning. I also focus on building strong client relationships that often grow into lasting personal connections. In addition, I believe success starts with serving my family and my immediate sphere of influence, which has consistently guided how I show up professionally and personally.

Stay knowledgeable and be a lifelong learner, because this is an interesting industry where laws change, policies change, our contracts change, the industry changes, and you have to be a chameleon in this industry. You have to be able to move and flow with the changes, and if you can't be adaptable, then you're not gonna last in this business. You have to be able to move and be fluid with the industry and rates, and just continue to grow and be knowledgeable and learn and be educated constantly. Lifelong learner's probably the best advice.

Be prepared that it's a brand new business, and you have to treat that accordingly. It usually takes 3 years to really get going - if you're lucky, you can get some right off the bat. But you have to think about it as a business. You have to have capital in order to get started, and the money may not come right away, so be patient and make sure that you are well informed and well-educated in all the ins and outs of the business, so that you are not disappointed and you can be setting yourself up for success. I would recommend lots of education classes and courses. Mentors are also very helpful in this line of work, as well as accountability partners and coaches.

If anyone follows real estate, the market volatility sometimes - it can be feast or famine. So you have to really be good about your investments in real estate and educating people, and being more of a consultant and helping to guide them at the right timing that they're looking to make their investments. There's good markets and not-so-great markets, so it can be a rollercoaster of emotions at times depending on your knowledge of the market. It's really good to have a couple different niches, which I definitely have. One is to help people going through divorce and working with people that are having to divide their largest asset at times, helping out the family law community. And then also working with senior citizens - since my grandparents were my first clients, I decided to get my SRES designation and help seniors that need to move or need help in that process.

Honesty, integrity, ethics - I'm a very transparent, honest person, so making sure that we are like-minded. My clients become like an extension of my family, so I definitely believe in somebody who feels similar in some of the ways that I look at life and family and my relationship and my spirituality. I kind of want them to be in line on a lot of different levels other than work as well, because it's a very intense relationship that you have with someone, sometimes for longer periods than others. One of my best friends I met through having him take 6 years to find the property, and he was the officiant for my sister's wedding last year. That's what I mean when I talk about my clients sometimes become family.