Ever since I can remember, I have always been involved in my mom’s housekeeping business. The only thing that has changed is the roles I serve in it. Dating as early as elementary school, my mom would take me to work with her at first, only helping with small tasks such as taking out the trash and dusting furniture, which escalated to cleaning windows and doors; this, later on, led to vacuuming the carpets and mopping the floors.
Once entering middle school, class ended earlier, allowing my mom to pick me up after school and have me help her clean any of the remaining houses she had left for the day. During school breaks, I would help my mom out; something as short as Veterans Day, where it’s only one day off of class, I would spend scrubbing toilets and making people’s beds. I never had a normal summer break like the rest of the kids my age; my summers were spent with my mom helping her clean houses. The saddest moments were when I would go to a client’s house and see the kids running around in their backyard smiling and laughing, or when I needed to ask the kids playing video games with their friends in their room if they could step out for a couple of minutes while I vacuumed the room and made their bed.
These experiences made me create this inner flame of not anger but sadness. I would ask my mom why I had to spend my summer days helping her clean instead of being able to be home all day playing video games and playing outside with friends. She would always tell me the same exact thing, Alex. I am not sure how cleaning houses will help you in particular, but I am sure that it will benefit you in some sort of way. I, being young and immature would tell her she was wrong and that cleaning houses would never help me. Again and again, I would comment that wiping dinner tables and folding bed sheets would never do me any good in this world. Her response was the same, Alex I am not sure how cleaning houses will help you in particular, but I am sure that it will benefit you in some sort of way.
Year after year it was the same process, and I would still hate going to work with my mom, but what changed was the perspective I saw things in it was no longer Ugh, I have to wake up early to work. Now it’s Wow. I know what it’s like to be responsible and to need to be up and ready to work every morning. It was no longer complaining to help translate for an estimate; it was now Wow, I’m improving my public speaking skills, as well as putting my bilingual skills to use. Any and every action taken was now seen from a different perspective. Many skills were learned throughout the years, but what I would say was the highlight of it all was the interest I created for the homes.
I developed this love towards the world of real estate and the process of buying and selling homes. So much so that it is now my life passion to own my own real estate empire; never before have I been so confident about what I want to do with my life. After many years and maturing into an adult mindset, I am now thankful that my mother would take me to work every day. It allowed me to learn many important qualities that you need to be successful in this world. After all, scrubbing toilets did have something in store for me; this simple action created my inner flame to come out and seek this uncontrollable passion for my future career path in real estate.