If you can sell tubes of lipstick, then perhaps you can sell houses. At least, this approach has worked for Centurion Realty agent Amy Kafka. Before joining the real estate field two years ago with Centurion Realty, she worked for seven years at the Clinique makeup counter. She loved it and thought it would be what she would do for a career by moving up their corporate ladder. Yet Kafka realized that corporate cosmetics and her life goals did not mesh.
To move up the ranks, lots of travel would be involved, and the possibility of having children and balancing this career looked slim. Kafka, who got married on May 22, wanted to stay in her hometown of Chattanooga more and eventually start her family with husband, Josh Martin.
While contemplating chan-ging careers, her husband to be had rental properties, and so Kafka became involved by taking real estate classes. Two days before Kafka took her test, she met principal broker and owner Nate Durham of Centurion Realty when he showed Martin a foreclosure property and was the only agent who had returned his inquiry.
Kafka says she soon realized that Durham and owner and office manager, Mary Patrick, were both easy to get along with and had formed a family environment at their office.
“My family owns small businesses, so I never saw myself with a big company ever,” Kafka says. “It seemed too cutthroat. In my Clinique world, even though Clinique is a huge makeup company, we were all together, and my counter manager was my boss for five years and one of my closest friends. I love that type of hormonal fuzzy environment. I know they are looking out for my best interests.” Centurion Realty opened in 1981, and has been owned by Durham and Patrick since 2007.
“We strive on being a full service real estate brokerage. We do a lot of foreclosures, residential, and commercial properties,” Durham says. “Our biggest difference from other companies is that we want agents who even if they are new, can learn. We have a belief that if we pick the right agents, then we don’t have to charge monthly fees.”
Durham says Centurion Real-ty strives on getting good agents who if not already great are going to be soon with their guidance, since Patrick and Durham do a lot of real estate themselves.
“We’re here to help everyone, and help them grow, because if they make money, we make money, but if they don’t make any money, it’s not like we charge any fees like the other companies do,” he says. “Our agents represent us, so we want our agents to be the best in town because we want every time someone says ‘Centurion Realty’ to have had a good experience.”
Kafka says Centurion Real-ty has been very good to her, and she appreciates that her broker is there in the office if she needs assistance. “I’ve heard horror stories about people making appointments with their broker, and they don’t ever see them. I call [Nate] at 8 p.m., and don’t think anything of it, and the same with Mary,” she says. “When you go to TREES and learn all this stuff, they teach you how to take your test, and your test is nothing like the real world, and there’s always something that comes up that I don’t know what to do. I’ve learned more just hanging out with them, going out on a daily basis.”
In business at an early age, helping her parents sell infant wear to hospitals, Kafka says she has learned how to be skilled in taking things on herself and making more out of them. Her job also allows her to be the people person she lays claim to and to break from the traditional desk job. Kafka also enjoys meeting the melee of people the job offers.
“One day, I’m letting an electrician in for an electrical survey, and the next, I’m showing a house. You get a lot of different opportunities, one thing here and one thing there. I’m a talker, so it’s good I’m able to do what I like to do,” she says.
One lesson she has learned from her time in real estate is to refrain from getting wholly emotionally involved. Kafka says she is big on relationships, but also knows not to take things personally when they go wrong.
Kafka’s also worked on up her patience skills and her accommodation for the needs of her clients.
“You’d be amazed at some of the requests you receive,” she says. “I’ve learned to be accommodating, and I’m used to that because I had to be accommodating in the makeup world. I feel like the skills there only set me up for success in this.”
Clinique is the No. 1 counter in Chattanooga, so Kafka became skilled in the competitive element of sales, and found she was naturally good at it. A lot of these business skills she learned in Clinique have moved over to her real estate world, such as follow up, which she touts as a huge element necessary for success in sales.
Kafka’s jokes that “it’s always either feast or famine at our house,” because her husband is on commission, too, as an AFLAC insurance agent.
Kafka says she enjoys working on the buyer’s side of things. As an avid shopper, she can compare her job to shopping, but in this case, she shops for the perfect house for her clients. Seeing the responsibility of a brokerage, Kafka says the work she does is enough for her for now. She spends her free time exercising, traveling and spending time enjoying her new married life, husband, and dog in Tunnel Hill, Ga.