222. Accidental Empire Builder: How Getting Fired Led to Freedom w/ Guest: Betsy Pepine

When life unexpectedly shatters your plans, do you see rubble or building blocks for something greater? For Betsy Pepine, a corporate layoff while suddenly single with two toddlers became the catalyst for an entrepreneurial journey that would transform her life and countless others.

Raised with the expectation she'd become a physician like her father, Betsy initially compromised by working in the pharmaceutical industry after pivoting from pre-med to business in college. Though financially rewarding, the work left her feeling disconnected from her purpose. When corporate downsizing forced her hand, she embraced the opportunity to completely reinvent her professional identity in real estate.

The transition wasn't easy. The first six months tested her resolve as she confronted an industry culture that felt reminiscent of high school politics. But Betsy persevered, discovering that while houses might sell themselves, the real fulfillment came from guiding clients through significant life transitions.

What truly sets Betsy's story apart is how she evolved from solopreneur to visionary business leader. When a key employee left citing the lack of family atmosphere, growth opportunities, and community involvement, it sparked a profound shift in Betsy's approach to leadership. She established core values centered on putting her team first, implementing policies like a zero-tolerance no-gossip rule that fortified an award-winning company culture.

As her brokerage flourished, Betsy strategically expanded with vertical businesses—a real estate school, title company, mortgage company, and property management firm—all serving the same client base while creating additional value streams. Her commitment to community impact led to establishing a nonprofit addressing affordable housing needs, perfectly aligning with her mission to improve and empower others' lives.

Through her book "Breaking the Box," Betsy now helps others identify and overcome the limitations they place on themselves—whether from gender expectations, family origin, or societal norms. Her journey reminds us that our greatest setbacks often clear the path to our most authentic success, and that time—not money or status—is our most precious asset.

Ready to break free from your own boxes? Share your thoughts in the comments and subscribe for more conversations that will transform your mindset and perhaps your life.

Chapters

• 0:00 Mindset Cafe Introduction
• 0:20 Meet Betsy Papin, Real Estate Powerhouse
• 1:40 Childhood and Breaking Away from Medicine
• 5:17 Corporate Disillusionment to Real Estate Pivot
• 10:09 Building a Brokerage and Vertical Businesses
• 18:21 Creating a No-Gossip Winning Culture
• 36:26 Breaking the Box and Personal Legacy

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Yeah, it's Mindset Cafe. We all about that mindset. Gotta stay focused. Now go settle for the last. It's all in your head how you think you manifest. So get ready to rise, cause we about to be the best. Gotta switch it up. Gotta break the old habits. Get your mind right. Turn your dreams into habits. No negative vibes, only positive thoughts. What is up, guys?

Speaker 1: 0:22

Welcome to another episode of the Mindset Cafe podcast. It's your boy, Devin, and today we are honored to have a special guest on the podcast not podcast podcast Betsy Pepin, and she is a entrepreneurial powerhouse in real estate. In being an author, she is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Pippin Realty. I don't want to give too much into her story, because I love when it comes from the person themselves and tied into their background, but her story is going to be one of those that you guys should definitely take notes on, because, at the end of the day, the Mindset Cafe is about learning from other people's stories and applying the way they overcame obstacles to your own life to get better at least 1% every single day. So, without further ado, Betsy, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to hop on the Mindset Cafe.

Speaker 2: 1:16

Thanks, devin, I'm happy to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:19

So I don't like to dive into how'd you become an entrepreneur. I like to start way back when, right, what was your childhood like? You know, what was your bring up in. You know because that kind of gives some context to you know your story and how you got here, but what was your childhood like?

Speaker 2: 1:40

It was, I think, great. I'm one of three. I've got an identical twin sister, which is a unique experience. I think People always ask what it's like to be a twin and I don't know, because I don't know what it's like not to be one, but that was. That's been an interesting part of my journey, but, no, it was great.

Speaker 2: 1:58

My dad is still a practicing physician at 83 years old and he's very inspiring because he's so passionate about what he does and it was so nice to have that, to see that in my in my dad. My mom was a stay at home mom, but no, we all my sisters and I all went to the same college. We did have a lot of. In fact, I was listening to one of your episodes recently where the gentleman your guest had never considered anything but entrepreneurship because he grew up in that environment and that's all he knew. And so to see his friend's dad go to work from nine to five seemed so foreign to him. And I had the opposite.

Speaker 2: 2:37

I, my dad, was a physician. We actually worked in the summers with him. That's all I knew, and there was definitely an expectation that all three of the girls his girls would be physicians. We were all pre-med in college and there was pressure to be a physician because they definitely, I think, sold it as this is what anybody would want.

Speaker 2: 3:04

And it was very difficult because in my junior year in college I had to tell my parents that I was going to pivot from the pre-med track and go into business, and to them they just had no reference point. They thought that was like me literally quitting college and going on the circus. I mean, that's kind of how they viewed business and it was really difficult. And so even when I went, I actually went on to graduate school and got a dual, I got an MBA. But I got an MBA in both marketing, which is what I'm passionate about, but then healthcare management and I spent a decade in the pharmaceutical industry just, I think, to kind of satisfy their desire of their children wanting to be in the healthcare industry and feeling like that's where you should be. So that's kind of how my childhood was Wonderful, I mean wonderful. I'm very privileged, I understand that, I'm very blessed and I'm so grateful for that.

Speaker 1: 4:04

No, I mean that's so amazing. And I mean it is interesting too because with your dad being a physician and he's still practicing a position I mean at least my knowledge of that is like there's not normal nine to five hours, right it's. It could be all over the place, you could. You know, at the end of the day, you're dealing with people's lives, you know, and health, right. So there's a sense of work ethic that comes with that. And I think that, even though there wasn't maybe an entrepreneurial work ethic that was, you know, given off, it was still that work ethic of a physician that you know, you put people first and that's so huge. And I mean because my dad was LAPD, I mean I didn't have an entrepreneur in my family, and so I still give my dad the recognition for giving me that work ethic because he put the people first and knew that he had to show up every single day, that he was required to just like we do it as an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1: 5:07

I think that's so amazing. So you graduate college. What was your first job after you graduated college?

Speaker 2: 5:17

I went from college and I worked at Anderson Consulting, which is like a big management consulting firm. I worked in Tampa Crazily. I didn't even really understand the job. I was really only doing it to check off a box, to get into grad school. And so I get there and I spent three weeks in a room which I never left, learning how to code on the computer which I mean I don't know how I missed that in the theater. And then they sent me to St Charles, illinois, where I spent another three weeks learning how to code, came back and spent two years in cubicles coding on sites at different corporate headquarters all over the country, and it was very lonely.

Speaker 2: 5:58

It was I need to be outside. I need the sun. I live in Florida. I need the sun to be outside. I need the sun. I live in Florida, I need the sun I need, I need. I know this now, but I didn't then. But I I need every day. I need it to be different, like I just need.

Speaker 2: 6:19

I thrive on that, and that was just the opposite of everything I I didn't know my body needed at the time. So fortunately, I only had to do that for two years and then I went to grad school and then went into the pharmaceutical industry and spent a decade in and that was really that was really interesting because I got to spend a decade in. This was in the advent of direct to consumer marketing of pharmaceutical prescription drugs to the consumer. So before you couldn't do that and so now we were being. We were doing radio ads and television commercials advertising directly to the consumer. So to be involved in that was so exciting and what I liked is getting to. A big part of my job was talking to physicians, nurse practitioners and patients and caregivers about the products that we were making, and so I love that kind of people interaction. Where I felt a huge disconnect was, if I was honest with myself, I didn't care about the product.

Speaker 2: 7:14

I just didn't, and I don't know if it wasn't, because it wasn't mine, it wasn't. You know, I didn't have any ownership of the product. I didn't have anything, anything to do with the making of the product. I had to do with the marketing of the product and so, but it was just a product, the class, the industry. I just didn't have a, I just didn't, sadly care about and I felt an incongruence. You know, working in an industry where I would think, gosh, I wouldn't want to hire me because I'm a hard worker, but I don't, I don't really care at the end of the day if they buy this product or not. So but I would have stayed. I would have stayed in that industry because the industry at the time I don't, it's changed a bit but it provided a great lifestyle, great income, great benefits, great travel. So I liked that about the job, but I didn't actually like the job.

Speaker 2: 8:08

But it took a. I was in my, I was 31 and I found myself suddenly single with a one and two year old. And then the company that I was with did a huge corporate layoff because we one of our drugs didn't get approved and I was a part of that layoff and I thought you know what? This is my time. If God, source universe, whatever you choose to believe, is not telling me, showing me a sign that maybe the path I'm on is not the right one for me, I thought that that was it, and so that's when I pivoted and went into real estate.

Speaker 1: 8:42

When I pivoted and went into real estate, I mean sometimes we have to get that push right and you can have a great job, you can make good money and still not be bought in, right? You're doing it to check off a box, like you said, almost like you're doing it because you're good at it. You're doing it because you see the need, but at the end of the day it's not filling your cup. So if it's not filling your cup, that means it's taking from your cup and that can only happen for so long before you end up burning out. So I think that sometimes you know whatever you want to call it. You know sometimes that the universe gives you that push and some people don't see it and other people like yourself. You're like, oh, this is maybe, this is what I needed, and you make you don't just pivot into another company, you make a complete pivot, right, yeah? And so I think that that's so amazing.

Speaker 1: 9:35

I mean, I can say, for me I needed that push too when I was, you know, an employee and, you know, had a disagreement with with my employer at the time and it was like I had been kind of tiptoeing the line of wanting to do it and finally it was just like, oh, all right, you know what I'm just going to take that leap, you know. So now you get into real estate, right, what is that journey like? Because it's an industry. I mean, you went from coding to pharmaceuticals, now we're in real estate. So what was the initial mindset shift of, you know, just having to get into a completely new industry?

Speaker 2: 10:09

Well, it was definitely scary, you know. I remember I hadn't taken a test in a decade and I didn't know if I'd be able to take you know, pass the state exam. I was petrified of that, you know, and I think that's crazy. Now, when, see, I actually have a real estate school now and I help people pass that exam, but when you haven't taken an exam in a decade it's very scary. And then I had two kids to support on an income that was very tenuous at best. But I did say to myself, kind of like I had lost everything. What else?

Speaker 2: 10:44

There's nothing else to lose, right, I had lost my job, I lost my marriage Like it's not going to get worse, right? So that's kind of the mindset I went in with. And I did go in with. I said, okay, betsy, you've got two years. I had built up a nest egg that I knew that the girls and I could survive minimally on two years of income that I had saved if I just didn't sell a house and that did provide me some comfort. And then the first six months were very rough. I did not know if I was going to make it.

Speaker 2: 11:18

It was an industry. It reminded me of high school and why I hated it so much. It just at least in our area, it seemed like a very. I think when people so, when you're an entrepreneur, it's it's your money, it's money out of your pocket, and when you're in real estate, it's any money that's transacted in the deal is coming directly out of a person's pocket. It's not some corporate budget and oh, it's okay, we don't need that, or it's fine, we'll pass on this or whatever. This is directly impacting somebody's take home pay. I think people act very differently when that happens. I see ethics go out the window, I see things that I just had not seen before and behaviors that I had not seen before except for, like in high school, where we're young and we're doing stupid things, and so that really shook me and I didn't know if I would survive. I didn't know if I had the skin tough enough to survive it. People, you know, people want to get a deal, so they talk badly about you. I mean, it's just again. It was just very immature and so it took me six months to say I'm going to have to either grow a shell or get out of here.

Speaker 2: 12:33

But I really enjoyed the work. I loved helping people. I mean, houses sell themselves. We're we are facilitating a major, actually usually two life events for them, because the buying and selling of a house is a life event. You ask anybody you know to name the houses they bought. They can name every single one.

Speaker 2: 12:51

But then you ask them, why do they need to buy the house? And it's almost always precipitated by another life event. So we get to walk customers through their two major life events, which is just an honor and that's what I love, um, so I stuck with it because I loved it so much, and so then I did that and did it for two years. At two years in florida you can become a broker, but honestly, I did not feel um competent enough to be a broker and represent myself. At two years, I didn't feel like I had enough experience under my belt to legally represent myself in terms of keeping myself out of trouble. There's so many nuances to real estate that I wasn't aware of, so at four years I then went and became a broker and then I started building.

Speaker 1: 13:33

So what's I mean? This is like my my confusion too, because I think I always interchange the terms. And now that I do know that there is a difference, what's the difference between a real estate agent and a real estate broker?

Speaker 2: 13:47

Oh. So now it's confusing because in some States they call you a broker the minute you get your license. In Florida you're a sales associate for two years. You get your license and you are. You're a sales associate for two years. You get your license and you are a sales associate. After two years you can sit for the broker exam and become a broker. So then you can become a broker. Then you have broker of record, which is you are running a brokerage. But, like I run a brokerage but I have agents that have earned the broker designation, so they are called broker associates, because you can't have two brokers. A broker in the name broker in florida is you are managing a brokerage. So you're a broker associate if you have the education and you have the license of a broker, but you're not. You're working for somebody else.

Speaker 1: 14:37

Okay.

Speaker 2: 14:37

And a sales associate is just. Most people are sales associates. They have their license but they don't have their. They're not running the brokerage.

Speaker 1: 14:46

Jim Collison, esq. Got it. Okay, that makes more sense. So it's almost like because we franchise our business. So it's almost like franchisor, franchisee and, for an our industry, trainer, right, yes, Okay.

Speaker 2: 14:58

Yes.

Speaker 1: 14:58

Yes, that makes a lot more sense. I mean, I'm in California so I know there is a difference between you know. They say real estate agents, which is everyone and anyone. Then all of a sudden I've heard people calling themselves, you know, brokers, and then they're like oh yeah. I have a brokerage and I'm like, okay.

Speaker 2: 15:16

And then to further confuse you, there's the term realtor, which people use that incorrectly. So realtor anybody with a license to sell real estate, whether you're a sales associate or a broker, can choose to become a realtor. That requires additional education and paying dues, and you're saying to the world I'm going to hold myself to a higher level of ethics than is required with just the debt, with just the license, and so that's the realtors okay.

Speaker 1: 15:50

So I mean there's levels to it and it's almost like different, different certifications or licenses, and then you kind of go up the chain. I mean that definitely, definitely does make sense. I mean, I know this is a little side tangent and I kind of gave you a fair game warning. This is how my brain kind of works. I've heard of people and maybe it's one of those social media things I'd never really bought into it, but I've heard of people trying to sell courses on like you can sell homes without a real estate license and all you know and flip houses and all that kind of stuff. Is that someone that's acting as a sales associate or kind of a whole different game in itself?

Speaker 2: 16:27

You can. If you're doing it for yourself, you can do that. You can flip houses, you can do whatever you want. If you are representing yourself, you don't need a license to do that, so that that would be the way they're doing that. You can also wholesale without a license, so you can. You can find deals for people and um and then close it like at an attorney's office, and you don't. You don't need a license to wholesale all right, I don't.

Speaker 1: 16:54

I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole. It's in a. I can't get confusing. So what I do want to ask, though, is like, because you built your own brokerage, correct, is that correct? Is that correct, all right? So you built your own brokerage, and your brokerage you know because, starting off, you know, we start off as a small business, and you've grown it to be named in the Inc 5000 a few times, if I'm not mistaken. So what was that journey like? Because that's not an easy feat.

Speaker 2: 17:22

So the journey. It was funny because when I started my brokerage I had no vision. I just started it because I knew I didn't like to work for somebody else and I was going to be a solopreneur. I was going to work out of my house. I have my broker license, which allows me to work for myself out of my house and work for nobody else. And that's what I did. And then within a couple of years, over time, people just ask agents ask if they can work for you because you have to keep your license under a broker. And so some of the agents in the community would ask periodically hey, can I hang my license with you? And I would say, yes, but please know I don't offer any. I don't offer anything, I'm working out of my home.

Speaker 2: 18:05

And so a couple of years into the brokerage me having the license, you know, it's like I'm looking around and I've got six or seven people working out of my house and it got a little crazy. And so I had the wherewithal to get a coach and he's like Betsy, you got to go big or go home. And I'm like well, I'm already home, let's go big. So, literally like the next week I went and bought a office building and we moved into the office building and then he helped me create a plan on growing a brokerage. So that's what I did first and then, once I got the brokerage established I do get bored very easily I think entrepreneurs do and so once that was established, I said, ok, well, what other services can I offer customers and agents that we're already serving? And that's how I opened up title and Mortgage and the real estate school and the property management company and then eventually the nonprofit. It was just a matter of what other services can we provide in this experience that will help our customers or our agents.

Speaker 1: 19:12

Hold on, you just skipped over, like it was nothing, all these different businesses that you just established. You know, like you just made it sound like I did it.

Speaker 1: 19:21

No, no, no no, no, no, not that it was like oh, I just added this and did this and built this. So I want to dive into that because, believe me, I get where, being an entrepreneur, like you know, I have the same problem. Um, I mean, that's where the kind of this podcast kind of established from too. And so you said you, you're, you have your brokerage, you I heard, I heard title company, I heard a nonprofit, and I feel like there was one more in there that I had Property management real estate school, okay, the real estate school, that that one's I want to start there.

Speaker 1: 19:52

That one's interesting because I have a friend in another business, you know owner, who is a barber and he started a barber college and I've kind of dove in and asked them all you know, I was like that's so interesting, I didn't know you could even do that, right. So what was that process like? Because I mean, you already said you had, you know, let's say, six agents working under you and so essentially you weren't even planning on becoming a mentor in a sense, and it kind of just happened.

Speaker 1: 20:22

And so inevitably you start to have a mindset shift because you start to realize other people are kind of looking up to you, you know, as this, the top person, even though you're like, just yeah, you can hang your license here, I'm working out of my home, don't you know? That's all, I don't offer anything. But then they're like, okay, yeah, fine. And then they're they're watching everything you're doing. So what was that change in your mindset? Really realizing that you actually have influence and can, can help other people along that journey and get to the dream that they want to, you know, have a business or have a lifestyle and a career that you know you were able to establish, know, have a business or have a lifestyle and a career that you know you were able to establish.

Speaker 2: 21:05

So, yeah, my, my mission in life is to improve and empower the lives of others. That's what drives me every day. And so that is what, like, even when I had them working out of my house, you know I helped, like I the. For me, the best thing I can see is they come to me, they do so well and then they they leave me and start their own brokerage Like that's success. You know, that means the world to me, that I help somebody change their family tree because now they have the tools to do what I did. So I look at it from a mindset of abundance, not scarcity, and I'm always trying to help people. So I look at it from a mindset of abundance, not scarcity, and I'm always trying to help people. So I was doing that even when I didn't really even have a plan. It's just, I think, in my nature to help people and improve their lives. To me, if my presence doesn't make an impact on someone's life today, then why am I here? So I try to enter every situation, every meeting, thinking how can I make someone's life different and better by my presence.

Speaker 2: 22:05

The school came came about because, as I grew my, our niche has been we really are strong in training and training and development. Because of that, of my need to improve and empower the lives of others, and so that tends to attract a newer agent who doesn't have any knowledge of the industry. And I thought, well, how can I get to new agents before they even are agents? And that's through the school, because then they spend a week in our inside, our office and I get to know them very well. I don't teach the school anymore I used to, but I don't teach it anymore but I know exactly at the end of that class who's going to make a good fit and who's not. So it's really been a wonderful recruiting tool for us. And then we added additional classes to help our own agents with their. You have to do continued education once you get licensed, and so we have a benefit to all the agents to have the school not just a recruiting arm.

Speaker 1: 23:02

I think that's so awesome. And then I mean the mortgage side, the title side, those three things right there I mean I'm a huge on for, for at least for myself is a lot of entrepreneurs will start building a carwash and then they build a subway and then they build in, they go all over the place, right, instead of building business verticals within where you currently are. Because at the end of the day, if you start spreading yourself out into different industries, there is another entrepreneur that is giving a hundred percent to that industry and they are going to outperform you. Right, yeah, but, but but that's the thing is like your lane can be widened and become like a freeway because you create these business verticals which feed the main business and at the end of the day, they are separate companies and still say serve the same purpose.

Speaker 1: 23:54

So I think that's so awesome that I mean you did that. And that's such a interesting you know way to go about it, cause you get to find, like the kind of the best agents, or who's going to be the best, one of the best agents in the start, you know, and then give them that that job, instead of having them go look for a job right out the gate you're like hey, you know, we have a role for you here. And then it's almost like you're getting to recruit and make money in the recruiting as well, instead of vice versa, right, so I think that's so cool. So and then you mentioned you have a non. You started a nonprofit. What was?

Speaker 2: 24:27

the nonprofit. The nonprofit is Pepin Gives. So when I was in graduate school, crazily one of the classes I was able to take for credit was I was in Philadelphia. We went into West Philadelphia impoverished area, gutted row homes and rebuilt them with our labor, which was donated, and donated supplies, and then we sold these houses at cost which was nominal to cost burdened families. So that experience just really impacted me.

Speaker 2: 25:00

I've always been interested in real estate, but seeing how a house truly changes the trajectory of a family was very impactful to me. So then, when I had these life events and I was trying to decide what am I going to do when I grow up, I thought, wow, if I could impact lives like that on a daily basis, how cool would that be. And then so I. That's how I got into real estate. Well then, what I wanted we?

Speaker 2: 25:24

So service has always been a um, a core value of my own, and it was one of the companies and we actually changed it to impact, because the whole point of doing service is impact. And when we did that in 20, I think 16, I think it was 2016. No, 2018. We created the nonprofit because we wanted to funnel all of our service activities into one area so that we could have a greater impact in a smaller area, and that is addressing the affordable housing issue in our area, north Central Florida.

Speaker 2: 25:57

We live in the highest cost burden county in the state of Florida, and so we've partnered with Habitat for Humanity and we help build affordable housing, and what I love is that it truly is a hand up, not a hand out. These families have to qualify, they have to go through education not only how do you maintain a home, but also home finances and budgeting so they really are teed up for success, because the last thing we want to do is foreclose on them. So that's just been a just a wonderful. You know we're serving a community that would never be in a position to use our services otherwise, and I love that. So that's how that arm came to be.

Speaker 1: 26:40

No, I mean that's amazing. And again, what's crazy is it's a vertical of the same industry Like that's. I mean I actually helped start a 501c3 nonprofit and it was when I was personal training. We started a nonprofit basketball private school or charter school for this travel ball, basketball kids and stuff, and I thought it was so cool and that's one of my future goals is to start an arm of, like the franchise that is a nonprofit and something again same as you in the same industry that you know the gym and the franchise is all in. But I think that is so awesome that you did that. So I mean before, before I want to take a pivot to the book and everything like that. I do want to ask you built now multiple companies and it's not easy to build one company, let alone build and scale multiple companies. What is your key to building a winning culture within your companies?

Speaker 2: 27:39

Oh, I learned that the hard way, just because I didn't have an eye on that at the very beginning and I had a key employee leave me because of that. I was in the pharmaceutical industry the one that I had left at the time. You know it was very transactional with with. I was selling my time and they were selling a job and it was an equal exchange and that's how I kind of when I went into real estate, that's what I assumed. The world was still like that, and what I found very quickly was that the people younger than me were expecting more from their employers. And so the first real person that left me, I asked her why, and she said there's no sense of family here, there's no growth path for me and there's no opportunities for me to give back to the community. And she was right on all three accounts. Those things were farthest from my mind. That was a point when we had the eight people working out of my garage and I had zero plans and what I didn't understand. Like I had put my own company in a box where to me, it's you went home to your family, you went home to volunteer. Well, this woman was telling me no, she's coming to work, to be a part of a big family and to, you know, to volunteer in this setting. And that was just earth shattering to me. I'd never experienced that and I was like, oh my gosh, okay, so I love that. I had never even envisioned that again because I hadn't seen it modeled.

Speaker 2: 29:05

So once I got my, we aligned our, we got our core values down, and that really was the start of creating a great culture. And then what I did was I. It was interesting. In my research I read all these books on great culture, some of the great companies that are known for their culture, and then I came across this award Florida gives this award to best places to work, and so I contacted the director and I said send me the application. I mean, I had no position to even really even apply, but I wanted to see what are they looking for, because that, would you know, that's to me like the vision I always. I'm very visual. I need to see what the goalpost looks like, and so I put that on my vision board and several years later I applied for that and we won.

Speaker 2: 29:54

But, only because that woman quit and I asked her why are you leaving? And that started the whole thing, and then we really became known for our culture.

Speaker 1: 30:04

It took several years, but yeah, so what was your key for going from where you were? I mean, you read the form and everything like that, but what was maybe one? I don't want to give away all your secrets, but what was one crucial thing that you changed that allowed a culture to start to flourish?

Speaker 2: 30:27

For me. I think it was just recognizing the mindset that I am working for them. They're not working for me. They are truly my highest priority clients, because if I don't have them, I don't have a company, and so I put them before any buyer or seller, regardless of income potential. A buyer or seller, highly networked people can do. My staff and my agents are my first priority and that was a that was a shift for me. I didn't. I went in thinking, oh no, the buyer, the, the buyer and the seller of the homes are my clients. They're not my clients. They're they're secondary clients, but my true clients are my, the people that work for me.

Speaker 1: 31:15

That is, I think, one of the biggest keys from going, as I mean, I learned this the hard way too from being a solopreneur to becoming a business owner and to actually understanding what that meant to be a business owner is that your job is essentially to serve your team Like my job. Now, you know. People ask me oh, do you still do personal training? I was like I want to say my day is just, you know, problem solving and asking what the team needs and how do I make it? You know, their lives better, more efficient and so forth, and creating the opportunities for them. So I think that's so awesome that you said that. Um, and so what would you say? I know there's another. This is cause it's so interesting, the industry you're in it's. What would you say? I know there's another cause it's so interesting, the industry you're in it's so at least from the outside, cause I've seen only TV shows.

Speaker 1: 32:03

I have some friends and family that are in real estate, not to the level you're at, but it seems so cutthroat, or it can be so cutthroat, right, not not in the way of like car salesy, but from like the TV shows, for example, like selling sunset, like you see all the bickering and the gossip and, you know, trying to snake people's deals and so forth. Now, if someone's becoming a real estate agent right now maybe not going for a brokerage but, you know, wants to get into real estate sales, what is one of the keys that you would say? To start establishing themselves without having to be ruthless? I believe me or maybe it is being ruthless, but me I believe that being collaborative or being, you know, in working together you can get more done. You may not get the whole pie, but why not have a piece of a bigger pie kind of deal? But what was, what would be your advice for, let's say, a new real estate agent coming onto your team?

Speaker 2: 32:58

I mean, I think in any area of life, if you have a mindset of abundance and not scarcity, I think that's so huge. I mean we will not say a negative thing about another agent. We won't. And I always tell people be prepared to say it twice. If you're gonna say it to me, you're gonna say it to the. If you're going to say it to me, you're going to say it to the person you're talking about too. You know. So we actually have in our office policy manual and no gossip policy and and it's a one strike and you're out. We don't tolerate that.

Speaker 2: 33:33

There are other, there are other companies that don't feel that way. I just don't. We're here for such a short period of time on this earth. I'm not. I want it to be as pleasant and as enjoyable as possible, and I and those people do fine too. I'm not saying they don't, I just that's not the way I choose to run my business. That's not the agents that we are trying to attract. We have occasionally had to rehome people because we found that that was not a consistent value that somehow we missed in the interview process, and we will do that nicely. You know, wish them well, but going with a mindset of abundance.

Speaker 2: 34:11

The other thing, what I have found because you're right, and at least in our industry is that people are very cutthroat and they don't like to share ideas, although I do like to share mine. I do highly recommend to my agents to get out of this city and county and look for your training and your education. Yes, you can do it online, but you don't meet anybody, you don't get to exchange ideas. Go to another market, because those agents will talk to you. They'll tell you what's working, what's not working. They don't view you as competition. Now you have another referral source. They might refer you leads. So network with people outside your direct competition and usually you'll find get yourself into mastermind groups. Usually you'll find realtors will open up in when they know that you're not in their direct vicinity.

Speaker 1: 34:58

No, that is so true. I mean, that is a great way to think about it too is like if other people are gonna view you as competition if you stay local, why not just go outside? Because now you break that barrier down. One thing I do wanna say is I love the fact that, instead of saying we fire people, it's like you use the we re-home people. That little word of you know, I was like that was clever, but the no gossip policy is interesting. This is the second time I've heard that that policy my aunt is, you know, is an entrepreneur, and I later learned in life that she was an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1: 35:33

But she has a marketing company and a huge, a huge marketing company and they deal with, you know, brands like target, walmart, all that kind of stuff, and it's all about social media influencers. And I had her on the podcast when I first started and she had mentioned that and I was like you can do that. And she's like, yeah, she's like it's one same thing one strike, you're out. And I was like interesting, you know, and it really does keep the culture, you know, it does, you know, because at the end of the day, like it's so easy to get frustrated and then start gossiping.

Speaker 1: 36:04

But it's like, look, that's not what we're about here. And we are. We are a team at the end of the day, so I think that's so awesome. So I do want to pivot, you know, and I don't want to, you know, get get away from it, cause I can go down this, this rabbit hole. I love everything that you're saying, but you wrote a book right Breaking. It's about overcoming the limitations that we place on ourselves. But what was the inspiration for writing that?

Speaker 2: 36:26

Oh. So a couple of years ago, I found myself just increasingly unhappy and I was frustrated. In fact, it took me about a year to even admit that to myself, because on paper I felt like my life looked pretty good and I know that I'm blessed beyond belief, and so I didn't feel like I had the right to even say that I was unhappy. But I wasn't happy and through journaling and meditation and yoga and bioenergetics and therapy, the common thread that I uncovered was that throughout my life, there's been times when I feel very, very confined.

Speaker 2: 37:10

It's like when you, if you ever had the misfortune of purchasing a mattress from Amazon, and it arrives on your doorstep in a box and you're like, how does that mattress fit in that box? And you rip it open, and then two days later, the king size mattress has expanded to the size it was designed to be. Well, I sometimes I feel like I'm in that box and it I haven't ripped the tape open, um, ripped the box open and so, um, I started journaling about them, I started sharing my ideas with other people and in my stories and it resonated with a lot of people and, again, because my mission is to have improved the lives of others. I wrote the book truly with the hopes of just changing one person's life. If somebody read this book and they looked at something in a way that they hadn't looked before and this caused them to make a move towards a more authentic life, then the effort was worth it, and so that's that has been my goal of of writing the book and why I wrote the book.

Speaker 1: 38:02

No, I mean that that is so awesome and awesome, and I love your core value that you keep mentioning. I mean that is, you know, we have company core values, but we have and those kind of stem from our personal core values, and one of mine is it's, you know, impact right, and it's to have a positive impact on as many lives as I can, while I can, right, and so when you keep saying that it's funny, I just keep smiling because it's like that is literally one of my core values, so it's so awesome that we're in alignment. I wrote a book as well and that was the same thing. It can change one person's life. That's all it was. That's all it was for. So what are some of the metaphorical boxes that people maybe hold themselves or feel like they're in in business and in life?

Speaker 2: 38:40

Oh, they're everywhere. So, like for me, the box, one of the biggest boxes was you know you had to be a physician and your industry, your gender, is a box. You know, I have. I have gotten positions and afterwards I had been told it was because of my gender alone. But that is very offensive to me. That's a whole nother topic. But you know so your gender puts you in a box. Your family of origin puts you in a box. Your industry, your friends and peers, your religion, your race. I talked to a guy whose health was putting him in a box. He's diabetic and he's viewed differently because he's a diabetic. When people find out he's a diabetic.

Speaker 2: 39:21

I had a girlfriend during COVID decided to let her hair go gray and then about a year ago I saw her and her hair was my color, brown. And I'm like you know what happened. I thought you were going gray. She said, betsy, I became invisible. And I'm like what do you mean? And she said I got when she had gray hair. She said storekeepers would just you know, store clerk would just ignore her. She'd get bypassed in line. She said it was like I didn't exist. She said I couldn't believe it. So there's so many boxes that we we are put in and we put other people in. You know, I remember I mean just a really simple example, not not detrimental, but a girlfriend of mine was saying she had to leave because she was running to a dinner party. They do this wine party where they take a country and they bring the food in and they bring these wines in for the countries, and she had to go to her friend's house and I was and I was just curious, I said who's, who's, who's?

Speaker 2: 40:15

the host and she said father John, father John, like father John at St Francis. And she's like, yeah, and I was like what? Like I couldn't, couldn't, you know, marry those two images in my mind. But why? You know we, you know, we think the minute we hear somebody's a priest, we start thinking things. We know nothing about that person other than what they do start creating this idea in our head and it I the problem is with the box, you know, I, I have I tell the story where, when my girls were young, we would walk these trails and they were really young and we would, we would explore and I would show them I love nature and I would show them the different barks on the different trees and the different leaves and the different shapes, the different colors when they, when their leaves drop we also have pine needles here, it was really pine cones all these different things.

Speaker 2: 41:07

We would do this every day. Then, when they got older and I a little bit older, and I would say, okay, tree, this is a tree, this is a leaf, right, so they would learn the names. Well then, when we would do this walk and I would stop and we would go through the thing again, my one daughter, my older daughter, maria, this walk and I would stop and we would go through the thing again. My one daughter, my older daughter, maria. She'd pull my hand and she said, mom, I already know that's just a tree, and it's like they're so curious before they know the label. But once you, once you slap a label on the thing or a person, you stop seeing them. And that's where I think the real harm comes in with boxes, no, definitely.

Speaker 1: 41:42

And I want to touch on something that you said. In the beginning, too, I thought you were going to go a different way with it and I was like, oh. And then you went the merit system with the gender box and I was like, oh, no, where are we going with this? And then, but honestly, I want to touch on it because I think it is so crucial.

Speaker 1: 42:00

And I say this because, as a business owner, I've had people say you know, why don't you guys hire more guys? Or why don't you guys hire more girls? And it's like I don't care what gender you are, the best for the best person for the job gets the job. I don't care what gender you are to get a raise, I don't care how long you've been here, the best person for the job gets the job. That's how I believe and that's how I'm going to run my company. It's, you know, based off of merit. I don't care You're in color, I don't care your, your gender, you know nothing like that. It's at the end date. I think that's what it should be on, because at the end of the day, when you are get that position, you know you deserved it.

Speaker 2: 42:45

Right, and that's what really I remember when I was asked to be on this board of a bank. You know, I'd always wanted to be on a board and and then so I accepted. And then they told me why I got it and it was like a slap in the face because it's like I had done so many things for my business and for the community and but I wasn't getting this. I wasn't getting the offer because of that. I was getting it because of my gender, which I had no control over.

Speaker 1: 43:03

So yeah, I mean also sometimes those I was getting it because of my gender, which I had no control over. So yeah, I mean also. I think sometimes those boxes like whoever told you that you got that job for that could have been jealous that you got the position because you earned it through all these things you've created and their, their resume of achievements is probably very tied to the bank itself you know, yeah, so that's one way for and I think people try to put us in boxes, especially to our face, when they feel threatened, right?

Speaker 1: 43:33

and to try to kind of put you down a little bit and like, man, did I just get this from my gender? And then you look at their, you take an analytical look and be like why would they say that? And it's like, wait, they started here as an employee, they they moved to manager, branch manager. Their life is here. They have someone outside that can do everything that they can do. That has never worked a day in the bank. So I think I want you to reframe that and be like someone saying that it's probably not because of your gender, it's probably because they're just jealous, you know. So I mean with with everything you have going on. You have multiple businesses, you have a course that accompanies the book, because the book is really story-based and a lot of people are saying, okay, how do I do this?

Speaker 2: 44:28

And so the course helps people do that. And then I've started doing a lot of public speaking, so I'm ramping up my website to focus more on that. So those are the two big projects for this year.

Speaker 1: 44:43

Well, that's awesome. Well, I'd like to ask one final question, and I know I didn't give this to you ahead of time, but if you listen to the other episodes, you probably knew it was coming On. Betsy's legacy wall, right, and I will say, it is not a tombstone, and as many times as I say that to people, sometimes they still give it to me. Right, this is a legacy wall, so it's a quote, it's a message that you would leave for the up and coming generations that you've learned along your life's journey. What would that message be?

Speaker 2: 45:19

It's hard to just pick one. I mean, I sign my books, enjoy the journey, really as a reminder, because I think myself included, you know, we, we tend to worry and overthink and lose sight of the bigger picture of why we're here. So it's a, it's a check-in to just make sure we keep things, the right things, in priority and enjoy our time here, cause at the end of the day, it's such a short period of time, it goes by so quickly and just making sure. You know, time is our most precious asset, but we do not treat it like that. It's the only thing we cannot get more of, and none of us know how much time we have.

Speaker 1: 46:01

Yet sometimes we we waste it on such trivial things, oh, physically and also in our heads, and so, um, that's how I signed my book, so that's probably what I would say no, I think I I love that one and it's it's so true, and this is a lesson that I kind of learned with my business partner when we were and we're still growing fast. But in the beginning everything was growing fast and then all of a sudden we kind of hit a lull, or you know, and then it was like all of a sudden you start panicking and it's like you have to sometimes take a step back and realize how far you've come and enjoy the be present and enjoy where you're at, because otherwise you're not going to appreciate the growth as it's happening as well. So I think that's so awesome, that is so cool. Where can people connect with you and learn more about what you have going on?

Speaker 2: 46:48

Yeah, my website is my name, so BetsyPapincom. And then I'm on all the social channels at Betsy Papin.

Speaker 1: 46:56

Awesome. Well, I will put that in the show notes. Guys, if you're listening, it'll be in the show notes as well as if you're watching on YouTube, it'll be in the video description. Make sure you guys share this episode with a friend. Right? You can pivot at any time in your life. You know Betsy has already shown that, going from coding to pharmaceuticals to real estate, scaling the real estate company and having multiple businesses within it, and being an author as well as a public speaker. So make sure you guys share this episode with a friend that you care about them leveling up their lives. In turn, it'll help you level up your life. But, betsy, I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day and, you know, dropping some knowledge.

Speaker 2: 47:34

Thank you, appreciate it. Devin Life mindset causes shits. Got my mind on the prize. I can't be distracted. I stay on my grind. No time to be slackin'. I hustle harder. I go against the current Cause. I know in my mind it's better to be collected.