Webinar: Is Real Estate The Right Career For You? (Part 9)

Sameer Amini: Hey, welcome everyone. Let's get started. Thank you so much for joining this session. The question I want every single one of you walking away with the answer to is right here on the screen. Is real estate the right career for you? Should you go out and invest your time, your money, and your resources starting this career? Now, I'm going to go through a lot in this session. So as I go through the slides, I've already mentioned this, feel free to drop questions in the chat and I will visit all of them, and I will answer them. Now, let's continue. So what we're going to be covering today, first, we're going to determine fit, whether real estate aligns with the kind of person you are and the skills you have and the lifestyle that you want. Second, we're going to understand the realities. Now, there's a version of real estate you can see on social media, TV.

Sameer Amini: That version does exist, but it's not the full picture. I want to show you what an actual day looks like, what an actual week looks like, what the year really feels like. And third, most importantly, by the end of the session, you should be able to make your decision whether it makes sense to invest your time, your money, and your energy into this path or not. Honestly, if you walk away from this session thinking, "Okay, real estate is not for me," that is also a win, just as much as someone walking away saying they are enrolling tomorrow. Both are clarity, and clarity is what we're here for today in the session. A little bit about me. My name is Sameer Amini. I've been in the business now for just around 12 years. I've been in sales. I've been a broker. I've been a managing broker, a broker of record for other brokerages. I've run my own companies.

Sameer Amini: I've done a lot behind the scenes, in front of the scenes. Today, I work on the operations side of one of the top brokerages in Toronto, which means I see what happens behind the scenes, the compliance, the deals that fall apart, the agents who actually succeed and the agents who don't. I also train through the college programs, and here at Career College Group, I'm the lead facilitator. So if you enroll into Career College Group, there's a very good chance we're going to see each other again, and I'm going to be on the other side actually helping you through the content. Now, I want to share something with you, something personal. Twelve years ago, when I was thinking about a career, I was actually sitting in a session exactly like this one. Ours is definitely going to be better, but a session similar to this.

Sameer Amini: And I'll be honest, okay, at that time, I did not understand what it actually meant, what a real estate agent is. I had no idea what the job really involved. It was through one of these career nights, or back then they called it career night seminars, that I went to, and I figured it out. So I get exactly where you are right now. That is why in this session, I'm going to not just give you surface level. We're going to go a lot deeper into a lot of the points. I'm going to give you depth because, again, when I was doing these sessions back then, I know that's what I needed. All right. Let's get into it. So first question is, what is a real estate agent? Let's start with that basic. Because if you ask the average person, they'll say something like, well, they show houses. They dress well, they drive a nice car, and they just show houses. Again, it's like saying, what's a doctor?

Sameer Amini: Well, it's like saying a doctor takes temperatures. Yes, it's the most visible thing that we do, but it is a tiny fraction of the actual job. Here's how I want you to think about it, okay? A real estate agent is a guide through one of the largest financial decisions a person will ever make. We're talking about transactions of $300,000, half a million, over $5 million. For most of your clients, that is the biggest cheque they might ever write to someone if they're buying, or the biggest cheque they will ever receive if they are selling. You see, these deals are so emotionally charged. They are legally complex. They do involve multiple different professionals in the middle of all of it, such

Sameer Amini: as lawyers, mortgage brokers, inspectors, appraisers, contractors. One of your jobs is to keep all of that organized and to keep your client informed about it all and to protect their best interest at every step of the way, make sure they get the best deal at every step of the way. So let me give you a real scenario because the abstract job description is one thing, but the actual reality is another. Okay, imagine a couple going through a divorce. They've been together for years. They own a home together, the home where they raised their kids. They renovated the kitchen, and through those renovations, they've gone through stresses of that. They made years of memory. Now, because of the divorce, unfortunately, they are at a point that they have to sell. Now think about what that means. They've probably never sold a home before. This was their first one.

Sameer Amini: And on top of everything else they are dealing with, the legal stuff, the emotional stuff, the kids, now they have to figure out how to sell a property that might be worth a lot of money. They do not know what selling means. They don't know how to do it without making expensive mistakes. Nowadays, people might be asking ChatGPT how to do it. People might be watching a YouTube tutorial. But no, it's not that simple. This is where you come in. You walk into the middle of that process, and you become the guide from step one all the way to the end. You take the stress off of them. You explain what's going to happen this week, next week, and after that. You tell them how to prep the home, how to put it on the market, how the showings are going to go. When after the showings, when the offers come in, how are we going to deal with those offers? You tell them when to talk to the lawyer now.

Sameer Amini: When do we need to talk to the inspector and accountant? When you do all of this really well, you bring calm and structure to a really hard moment in this couple's life, and that family is going to remember you forever. That is the kind of work that builds a referral career also. Now, so in this scenario, in that scenario I just gave you, what are you, the agent, really doing? Three main things. One, you're reducing someone's stress. You become the person who says, "I've got this." Most clients are operating in unfamiliar territory. You're the expert who's done this, or you're part of a brokerage who's done this hundreds of times. Number two is strategic preparation and pricing. You walk through the property, you tell them in an honest way what the house needs. It needs decluttering. It needs paint. These things are outdated. Need to update these. You pull what's sold nearby.

Sameer Amini: You build an actual strategy based on numbers that are actually happening in the market, so they know what price to put it, so we can balance how fast we sell and how much we can get for the property. You see, you're not guessing with them. You're using actual market data to help them make decisions. And three, you coordinate other professionals, so the lawyers, all right, mortgage brokers, appraisers. You're kind of the central hub. Without you, all of those moving parts don't talk to each other, and deals fall apart in that gap. That is what your clients are paying you for. They are paying for the expertise that turns a chaotic process, a very stressful process, into something that feels managed, easy, and that's the value proposition. That is what justifies, by the way, the commissions that we charge. Now, the divorce scenario I gave you is just one of many.

Sameer Amini: All right, think of how many other scenarios would exist out there that you are needed as a real estate agent. Imagine a young couple, okay? They just got married. They're living in a three-story townhouse, and all of this townhouse, let's say it's a three story, so that means all stairs everywhere. Then let's say the wife gets pregnant.

Sameer Amini: Suddenly, the stairs become a real problem in their life. They cannot live there anymore. They have to sell, right? And they have to find something more practical, maybe bigger, something with little stairs. They've never done this before. Again, they're going to need a guide. Another scenario. Imagine a family that took on a mortgage. They thought they could afford. Something happened, okay, an illness, maybe a layoff, and now they cannot make these payments. The bank takes over that property. Now the bank needs a real estate agent to handle that entire sale on the bank's behalf, and that's a whole different type of transaction with its own rules. Or imagine a retiree downsizing after 40 years being in the same home, okay? Or an estate sale after someone passes away, and that person that passed away, you're the agent that's needed to help the next person help sell that property.

Sameer Amini: A professional, let's say, relocating from one province to another for a new job. You might be helping investors build rental portfolios. You're going to help them with cap rates and cash flows. Or a first-time buyer who saved for 10 years, they are finally able to buy a home. Each of these ideas, again, these are just... I can't think of all the scenarios, but these are some pretty good common scenarios that happen. And each of these, by the way, is its own world. Each has its own emotional weight, its own legal considerations, its own urgency. Which is why this career, in my opinion, is one of the most interesting careers out there, because you're never doing the same thing twice. You see, every day, it's a new challenge. So let me zoom in. When you take a listing, let's really go now behind the scenes of what the work is. Okay, so step one.

Sameer Amini: When you are helping, let's say, for example, a property owner, step one is research and evaluation. Before you list, they need to know what the home is worth, what the plan is. Step two is paperwork. Okay, we know what the plan is. We know what the dates are, when we're going to do open houses, when we might take offers, and what price we're going to agree on. Now, we do the paperwork to get the property up and listed. Okay? And there's a lot of different paperwork that come into play. Not only do you draft them, you have to understand them yourself, and you have to now explain it to the client so they understand it before they sign it. Step three is then getting the home ready. So decluttering it, staging it. Sometimes you bring in professionals to move the furniture around. Maybe a deep clean is needed, a fresh coat of paint.

Sameer Amini: And at the end of it all, we bring a media company to do the photos and videos at the end. We might create floor plans out of it. The goal is what? To make the home look at its absolute best. And listen, over 90% of buyers start their search online. So nowadays, making sure you have really, really good listing photos, it becomes extremely important. Now that you've done that, let's say now the next piece would be to really zoom in before it hits the market. So what do you do? Decluttering and staging. There's deep cleaning. There's professional media that happens right after. And now that the house is ready, we're ready to go on the market, then we go on the MLS system. That's what we call the multiple listing service, and this is the foundation.

Sameer Amini: You see, in our region, in GTA, it's called Toronto Real Estate Board, and the Toronto Real Estate Board is what we are a member of, and they have their MLS listing. That is one of the biggest systems out there. So when you go and search for homes online, let's say you're on realtor.ca, those platforms, and get the information from the MLS system. And how do we access the MLS system? It's through the Toronto Real Estate Board. Because I'm in Toronto, that's going to be my real estate board. Second is the online platform. So all other websites you can see out there are

Sameer Amini: going to start picking up the property data and start putting it on the market and start actually advertising it. So a lot of agents might go and put social media content on Instagram and TikTok nowadays, right? And they make short content about the property. The marketing, this is where it can get extremely big. You could, for luxury homes, let's say, in the office we're dealing with, a lot of the luxury properties that we deal with, we might put it on Mansion Global, Wall Street Journal, we might put it on Forbes. We might find big, big places that we know have a great audience for us to market it even more than what we would typically do. Okay? Then comes open houses and showings. It's you going on a Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 to 4:00. People are going to walk in. You might invite people before the open house. You might door knock the entire street.

Sameer Amini: You might send flyers to people inviting them for this, right? There's a lot of work involved there. And then finally, let's say showings are going to happen. After all the showings, this is where the offers come in. Now you see, when it comes to an offer, it's not just about, okay, who's giving me the highest price? It's about the whole package. What conditions are attached? Is there a financing condition? Is there an inspection condition? Is there a certificate condition for a condo? There's so much involved. Now, I've seen deals, by the way, where the person had the highest price compared to other offers that were on the table, but the other offer won because they had a better package. The closing date was better. There might have been no conditions in there. And then negotiation. So this is where you're going to earn it.

Sameer Amini: So if you're a strong negotiator, you can find tens of thousands of dollars for a client during these moments. And that's the difference between someone who knows what they're doing and someone who is just winging it. Okay? Now, if you're saying, "Sameer, well, I'm not really good at negotiating. Is this job for me?" Again, when it comes to negotiation, it's a skill that you can practice and become really, really good at. Right now, before you even enter the business, there's a lot of content and resources that you can go to where you can practice your negotiation skills even before you hit the business, okay? No one's born with it. We all learn it through training and repetition. So now you've done a great job. Negotiations go well, and now the offer is accepted. What happens now is you move the property to firm. Let's say all the conditions are met, the house is now sold firm.

Sameer Amini: Then we enter what we call the closing period. So typically two to three months in Ontario. During that window, the seller is basically preparing to move out and the buyer's preparing to basically move in. And you're coordinating during this time with lawyers, with lenders, maybe moving companies, to make sure everybody's ready for the day of closing. Now, what is the day of closing? That's the day where the buyer gets the keys to the house, the seller gets the money for their property. Most likely, that might be the day or the next day that the buyer's actually moving all their stuff. So that moment, watching that first-time buyer get the keys to their first home, and watching a family receive the proceeds, if you're on the seller side, because they're going to be getting that big cheque on closing date for their property. Those moments is what makes this career absolutely worth it.

Sameer Amini: Okay? And that day, by the way, is also the day that you get paid your commission. So it's also payday for you. Now, before you decide, I just walked you through everything. I tried my best to give you a lot of the details that goes into just one transaction. There's a lot more involved, but I kept it high level. Now you might be thinking, "Okay, well, I changed my mind, actually. This is so much work. Why would I want to do this?" So let me share something with you. Personally, after 12 years in this, this is honestly the best career I have

Sameer Amini: chosen for myself. Okay? I wake up genuinely excited to see what's ahead of me because every day is different. Every client is its own unique problems. Every home, every transaction is different. So you get to learn alongside all these years that you're in this. But, so the version of the real estate that you see on social media, the nice car, the big cheque, and just opening doors, that's just a highlight reel, okay? It is not the full picture. So what you do not see is the hours of unpaid research that we're doing. The deal that falls apart completely, by the way, a few days before the closing date because the lender refuses to give the money. The Saturday morning where you book showings, but the person completely ghosts you, doesn't show up, and you've driven there 50 minutes and you're at the property.

Sameer Amini: The client who calls you at 9:00 PM on a Sunday, panicking because of an inspection report that they received on a Sunday. So this career rewards people who are willing to do the work that nobody sees. For the right person, those challenges are exactly what makes the work absolutely meaningful. So why would you choose this career? Okay, I'm going to put it into three big reasons. Number one, I keep saying this, every client is unique. So that means every project, every transaction is its own project. You're never doing the same thing. If you are someone who gets restless doing the same thing every day, then this career is kind of like the antidote. Number two is continuous learning. The market in real estate changes. Rules change. New rules come in. Old rules get replaced. Interest rates move. New neighborhoods become hot. New marketing platforms, new technology is out there.

Sameer Amini: So you're constantly on your toes making sure that you are ahead of the game, and if a new rule is there, you know it well. If a new tech is there, you've already played with it, and you know how it works and how to push yourself above the edge, right? And number three is the diverse opportunities. You do not have to stay in one lane. Once you start in real estate, you could do residential, and residential, you can get into pre-construction. Or even into commercial. Now commercial, you could just have 10 years of your entire career just doing leases in commercial, or you're just buying and selling businesses. Even within that, you could just be buying and selling, let's say, just pizza restaurants and nothing else, and you're an expert in that. You might want to become an investor yourself. You might want to open up your own brokerage.

Sameer Amini: So when you start in real estate, there are so many branches you can get into. Personally, I started as a real estate sales representative, as an agent. I am now in operations. The path is rarely a straight line, and that is actually the appeal of it. So here's the reframe I want every one of you to completely hear clearly. Getting into real estate is exactly like opening a business. It is opening a business. The only difference is you do not have a physical storefront, but everything else about running a business is extremely true. So what does this mean practically? So here's a few things you should be noting down. Your income is commission-based. So let me give you the real math. Say you help someone sell a property, okay, worth a million dollars. Typical total commission is about 5%. You would charge 5% for that.

Sameer Amini: Half of that commission goes to the cooperating brokerage or the other brokerage who brings the buyer, and you're on the listing or the seller side. So your side keeps half, let's say 2.5%, and they keep two and a half. Now, if you do the math, 2.5% of a million dollars is $25,000 on that one

Sameer Amini: deal. That's one deal, one paycheck. Now, second is there's no income ceiling. Imagine a career, okay, with no limit on how much you can make. You don't have to ask anyone for a raise. You don't have to worry about losing the job. You're creating the business yourself. I know agents today that personally make well over a million dollars in commissions. They do over 50 deals a year. And I know agents who make under $50,000. The range is enormous, and where you land in that range is completely up to you. Third is personal control. So you decide your clients, your niche, your marketing, your hours, and how aggressive do you want to grow. If the idea of being your own boss really excites you, I'm going to then say this, this career is one of the most accessible paths to entrepreneurship in Canada. So let me pull the numbers on the screen for a second, okay? $25,000 on one deal.

Sameer Amini: So that means if you close one deal a month at that level, at that same number, you're looking at $300,000 a year. That math is real. The agents I know personally, who are doing one to two deals a month consistently are absolutely in this income range or higher. Now, I'm going to give you the honest version because I don't want to oversell. In your first year, most new agents close anywhere between zero to six deals in the first year. That year is what I also call the build phase. Statistics consistently show that a large number of agents, new agents, leave the business within the first two years, and the most common reason is that they do not have a financial runway to get them through that build phase. So when you're thinking about whether this career is right for you, the question is not, can I make a lot of money?

Sameer Amini: The answer is absolutely yes, you can make a lot of money, but the agents who put in the work, who build their network, who follow consistently, they get there. Six figures, some seven figures. So the real question you should really ask yourself when you start this business is, can I sustain myself for 12 to 18 months? My first 12 to 18 months, can I sustain myself while I build the business that's going to be making me money? Now, that's a different question, and the answer largely determines whether you'll be successful here or not. And I like how it here says 100% effort-based. So on the lifestyle side, this is one of the-- A genuine perk is you set your own schedule. If you have kids, you can drop them off at school, get back to your office or home or your brokerage, and do some real estate work.

Sameer Amini: Then go and hit the gym, have lunch, come back, do more real estate work, and around the time the kids need to be picked up, you can just go and pick up the kids, have dinner with the family. You can work a Tuesday afternoon and take a Friday off. You can take a working vacation. You're not chained to a desk 9:00 to 5:00. And this is real flexibility, by the way, it cuts both ways. Now, your clients work 9:00 to 5:00. Majority of the clients you're going to deal with, they work 9:00 to 5:00. Which means they want to see properties after their work, in the evenings or when they're not working, so on the weekends. Saturday mornings, by the way, are prime showing time. Sundays are you might be doing open houses every Sunday. So when people ask me, "Sameer, do you have a work-life balance?" The answer is yes, but it's a different kind of balance.

Sameer Amini: It's not evenings and weekends off, unfortunately. It is, I just get to design my week, but I work when my clients are available.

Sameer Amini: Again, honestly, for most people who try the 9:00 to 5:00 and they feel suffocated by it, this trade-off is absolutely worth it for them. Now let's talk about a question that I get a lot. The question is, "Sameer, what if I fail? What if I start all this and it does not work out?" So let's define failure for a minute. I want you to compare this to opening up an actual business, a restaurant. If you opened up a restaurant in Toronto, you would need hundreds of thousands of dollars because first of all, you need a place, a location, a space. That space needs to be built out properly for your restaurant. You need to bring in equipment and then staff, and you have this monthly burn because you have to pay salaries and rent and whatnot. And the success rate is honestly not great. You can look this up after this.

Sameer Amini: You can look up the success rate of restaurants in Toronto or any other businesses that you're interested in opening. Now, that's real risk. In real estate, let's come back to real estate now. What do you need in real estate if you're opening up a business? Well, you need a smartphone, you need a laptop, and a car. Assuming you have those three things, you're pretty much good to go. You pay for your courses, your licensing fees, your association dues, but compared to opening up a business, the upfront cost is tiny. So now let's define failure. If you spend, let's say, your entire first year in real estate, and all you did was one deal, just one. I just did the math for you a few slides ago, that one deal equals $25,000, if it's a million-dollar property. So $25,000 is what you made in an entire year of your real estate.

Sameer Amini: If you now do the math, you can now deduct from the 25,000 all of your costs for the courses, for any fees that you joined TRREB, any fees that you joined RECO. You minus all of that, you are still left with, I'm guessing over $10,000 still positive cash in your pocket. So if you decide, okay, you know what? I'm going to try this for a year and I'm going to do just one deal in the year, and I'm going to walk away. Well, you've made money walking away. Ask any other business owner that opens up an actual business. If they walk away, their failure actually costs a lot of money for them. So most careers, again, if they don't work out, you've spent two or three years in school for that maybe, plus tens of thousands of dollars in tuition for it, and at the end, if they walk away, it's a huge cost for them. Again, in real estate, your worst-case scenario leaves you with money in your pocket.

Sameer Amini: And in that year, you've been training, you've been going to brokerage meetings. That means you have real set of skills of negotiation, marketing, contracts, client management. These are all skills you're going to need to transfer anywhere else in any other kind of job. That is one of the most underrated facts about this career. The failure or the downside is genuinely limited. And the last reason I love this career, and the reason I have stayed and will continue to stay, okay, picture this. Someone works for 10 years, okay? They have saved and saved with one goal in mind, to own a home. Ten years of sacrifice for this one goal, and now guess what? You're the person who gets to hand them the keys. The smile on their face when you do that and when they get it and they're walking into their home, that feeling is completely unmatched.

Sameer Amini: There's no career I've seen that gives you that kind of a moment as often as this one does. Or again, that divorced couple I described earlier. You guide them through the worst chapter of their life, and at the end, when the deal closes, they finally breathe. They feel calmer. They thank you. Then they refer their family, friends, everybody they trust.

Sameer Amini: They say, "This is the person who helped me through all this." And it's these moments and it's those referrals that will compound the business. Your business just keeps getting better and better and bigger. So you're not just facilitating transactions, you're helping people through some of the biggest moments of their lives. That's not nothing. So let me now get really practical. So what kind of person actually will succeed in a career like this? Number one, you have to be someone who's comfortable with people. This is a people's business. So if you knock on a door, meet someone you've never met before, you can just easily break the ice, carry a conversation, then you're in the right business. If small talk drains you, meeting new people feels like a chore, then it's going to be harder for you. Not saying you can't do it, you just have to put more effort.

Sameer Amini: Second is communication and trust. You need to explain complex things in simple language. You need to build rapport quickly. You need to deliver bad news with grace and good news without over-promising. In this business, trust is the entire currency. Someone can trust you. Everything else about you might not even matter to them. The fact that they can trust you is enough. Third is discipline and consistency. Now, I told you, you get to set your own schedule. That's great, but you do need to wake up for that schedule. You do need to get up for that schedule. So no one's going to wake you up. Nobody's going to set your schedule. You have to set the goals. You have to turn those goals into action steps. And guess what? You have to take those action steps every single week consistently. That means you're going to have to go with the plan, not the mood.

Sameer Amini: The agents who succeed are not the most charismatic. They're just the most consistent people. And one more thing I want you to hear, okay? This is not a business where you have to be a great salesperson. You don't have to sell anyone anything. So if you say, "Sameer, well, I've never had any sales job," and, or "I'm really bad at sales," again, you don't have to sell anyone anything. This business is all about being knowledgeable, having integrity, and being an honest guy. You tell your client their options and the pros and cons of each of those options, and you let them make that decision. That's the job. So challenges. What are the challenges? Now, number one, there's called delayed income. You see, if you, let's say, get your registration done today, you've joined a brokerage today. You've done your training today. Everything is done. Now, today happens to be your first deal.

Sameer Amini: You've done your first deal today. Because you've done a deal, and remember I told you there's a closing period, it's normally from two to three months of a wait, and I told you that closing day is the paycheck day for you. That means if you do a deal today, you don't get paid until months later. So if you finish your courses and do everything, and your paycheck will not arrive tomorrow, it will arrive in a few months. Now, most new agents do not see their first commission for at least the first five or six months. That means the challenges or the challenges.

Sameer Amini: This is why I say you need a financial runway because either savings or a partner's income, or if you have a part-time job or even a full-time job, but you get to still have a good amount of hours to put in real estate, you need any one of these things to bridge the gap because you're not getting a paycheck from real estate anytime soon when you start. The agents who skip this step are the ones who quit by month four because they just need to pay their bills. Number two is the evenings and weekends.

Sameer Amini: So your clients are at their day jobs from 9:00 to 5:00, right? They're going to talk to you at times that you might not want to talk, right? They're going to talk to you at 9:00 at night. They're going to want to do a deal or do offers, and the negotiations can run all the way until midnight because both the seller and the buyer both got off work and got home at 7:00. Everyone has to wait until they're home and until the seller can review it. They've had dinner, and now that they've had their dinner, they're ready to deal with this. It's 8:30. Now, the negotiations, people need time to think. So until a deal is done, it could be 2:00 a.m. in the morning, and I've done that many, many times. So that is a real night in this business. You have to be okay with that. Number three, self-management. Now, you see again, no one's going to tell you what to do tomorrow morning.

Sameer Amini: So when you wake up, you look at your calendar, you decide. If you don't have that discipline, then you don't have the discipline to prioritize the right activities and do it consistently, or the wheels are going to come off fast. Most agents who leave the business in the first year is because of one of these three things on the slide. Knowing about them doesn't guarantee you're going to handle them well, but at least you're going to see them coming. And if you can plan for them from now, you've already separated yourself from most new agents that enter this business. So let's say that everything I've said sounds good to you so far, and you say, "You know what? I know my answer. I want to give this a real shot." What does the path look like? So you're going to visit careercollegegroup.com/realestate, and you're going to go and register, and you're going to go through course one.

Sameer Amini: Course one you read. Once you finish the read, you get to do an exam at your own day and time. You pass the exam, only then you go to course two. Then you pay for course two, read it, and again, however long it takes you, it's up to you. These are all online. Then you book for an exam and do an exam. Same thing. Only once you pass the exam, you go to the next course. Now, how many courses are there? There's course one, two, three. Then after three, you do a simulation session, which is a session you get to join with someone like myself, and we're just going to do activities. We're going to role-play. We're going to put it into actual practical practice where for everything you've read from the courses, we're going to get to practice them together. After the simulation session, there's an exam for the simulation session. You pass that, then you go to course four.

Sameer Amini: Course four is about commercial real estate. Pass that exam, then you go to your second simulation session, which is all about commercial. Again, another exam. Once you pass that, then your fifth course, which there's no exam for, they just tell you what to do next. So in total, you have six exams across this entire program. And once you finish, only then you get to register with Rego and join a brokerage and then start your career. Now, the part I'm genuinely proud of, okay, with Career College Group is we offer it in two models. So there's self-paced and then there's group-based. For the self-paced, you can register and get to the reading at your own pace. You might be the fastest person that can read and finish, no problem. I have seen people finish this entire program under five months. I've seen people that don't even finish at all because they can't do it on their own.

Sameer Amini: They don't like to, or they just fall off. So we have the second option, which is you get to join a group. The group starts all the way from the first course, and we have meetings every week online where someone like me would be there with you explaining what you've read or go through questions or give you real-world scenarios, and you'll see other learners in the same group as you. So you can see you're not alone in this, and you

Sameer Amini: get to build contacts, you get to create group chats with them and talk amongst yourselves and together go through the entire program, okay? If you go through the group option, then we have scheduled everything for you. So when you should do your exam, how long would each course take you? So we've already given you this nice schedule, and it takes around nine months time to finish the entire program if you go with the group option. Now, you can switch between them as well. You just have to talk to our team. But the group model is extremely effective because when I started 12 years ago, I did struggle a lot and it took me a while to get my, I would say, license because I didn't like reading it on my own. So the fact that this exists out there is incredible. Now, I've given you the math already. Okay?

Sameer Amini: So I would say right now, if you do all your courses, the total cost comes out just under $5,000 for the entire program. So once you've graduated, then what happens is you're going to have to pay for certain fees, which I'll go into. But again, for now, keep that number in mind. Okay? Around under $5,000 for all the courses. Once you have completed the program, you're going to join a brokerage. That brokerage is going to help you with your RECO registration. It's going to involve a police check. It's going to involve a few questions. After you've joined RECO, then you're going to have to join a real estate board, most likely, because that brokerage is a member of them. And that real estate board, if you're in Toronto, it's most likely going to be the Toronto Real Estate Board, which they have their own fees for you to become a member. Okay?

Sameer Amini: So all in all, you might be spending altogether, assuming you have a car and a phone, okay, then it's around under $9,000. Just under $9,000 for everything. Then your first month or two with the brokerage is all hands-on training. They walk you through every aspect of a transaction. They're going to help you understand who to reach out to, where to get your first clients, and you're not going to be alone. Those first few months, you're going to transition into the build phase of your business because now you've gone through the training. The brokerage will help you put together a marketing plan, hopefully a business plan. And I tell every single one of the students, pick your first brokerage carefully because the training and the mentorship you get in the first year shape the agent you become.

Sameer Amini: In your first two years as an agent, RECO requires you to complete what we call the post-registration education. This is after you've been registered and you're an active agent. The post-registration courses, just you have to go through a mandatory course. You come back to Career College Group. We help you through that phase as well. You're going to complete a mandatory course and then a few electives. Okay? No exams for those ones. You just read through them and RECO just needs to know that you have completed them because your registration with RECO or your RECO license is up only for two years, and every two years you have to renew it. Okay? Your first two years renewal requires that you complete the post-registration program. Perfect. All right, I'm going to pause for a bit to see if there are any questions.

Sameer Amini: So if you have any questions, go ahead, drop them in the chat, and then I'm going to do my closing comments. Here we have a great amount of attendees in the webinar. So I did have one question earlier which was, what is your best advice for studying before the exams? Before the exams, if I were you, I would make sure that I have understood the e-learning extremely well. There are practice questions in the e-learning that you can go through.

Sameer Amini: If I am part of Career College Group, before the exam, I might book a one-on-one with one of the facilitators with Career College Group and speak to them and talk to them and get their advice on everything you have right, and have those one-on-one sessions with the facilitator. That's really all you need before the exam really starts. And once you've understood the information, the exam is not going to be that hard for you. Next question. So let me, I'm just going to go through the list. Okay, so the entire exam of those courses are based on that course. So if you have a perfect understanding of the content in that book, the exam, I would not be worried about it too much. And again, at Career College Group, we offer those one-on-ones with a facilitator that you can talk to us and we'll help you go through any of those sessions.

Sameer Amini: If you're part of a group program, it's even better because every week you would have discussed every chapter of that e-learning or module of that e-learning with someone like myself. Perfect. So will this video be posted online? Yes, this video will be posted online. You can go on careercollegegroup.com/real estate. You're going to see all of our previous events and the recordings are going to be there. So what is Mahmud saying? What is the membership fee for license renewal? In two years when you renew, I believe it's just under $500, $600 to renew. Okay? Esther says, "Does everyone begin as an agent or broker?" So you all begin as a real estate agent, or also known as a salesperson or sales representative. Everybody begins like that. And then after two years of being in the business, you can choose to do extra courses and become a real estate broker. Now, what's the difference?

Sameer Amini: A real estate broker versus a salesperson. A real estate broker has more knowledge in terms of how a deal or a transaction gets processed behind the scenes through the brokerage because it's real estate brokers that might be offered management roles and actually even training to become managers. And it would be real estate brokers that can act as broker of records of a brokerage. But a salesperson cannot do those two things. Now, a lot of brokerages, some brokerages don't care that you're a real estate broker, but if you're really good at management, they might ask you to become a manager of one of their branches. But if you're a real estate broker, again, it's preferred. Okay? I hope that helps. Let's see the next question. After the set of nine months with the instructions of due date, does it expire? No.

Sameer Amini: So if you join the group and you're on that schedule and you happen to fall behind, that's no problem. We will help you try and catch up, and if not, you might go into the self-paced, and then whenever another group comes closer to where you are, then you just join that group. So there's no such thing as if you fall behind, you're completely out of the program. No. I want you to keep a note. Once you register for course one, RECO will give you two years to finish the entire program. If the two years mark passes, unfortunately, RECO might have you do the entire education from the beginning. So from course one, once you register, there's a two-year total time that RECO gives you to finish everything. Okay? Manoj is asking, "Is there a place where we can find a place or path that has..." Yes, there is. Everyone, please go ahead and visit.

Sameer Amini: So let me give you one moment while I pull up the website here for everybody. There we go. Perfect. I'm going to bring this here and I'm going to share this tab with all of you. So if you go visit careercollegegroup.com/real estate, you can just go in here through programs, go to real estate salesperson program, and it gives you a full breakdown of exactly what's needed for self-paced or group phase, which courses are involved. It gives you all the details here.

Sameer Amini: And whenever you're ready, you just click apply now and you'll get started. Okay? Courses, exams, they're all here as well. I'm going to post this link in the chat. Give me one moment while I do that. There we go. Done. Perfect. Okay, let's keep going. There's a few more questions. How does one get new leads or new clients? That's such a powerful question. And I would say, Mahmud, there is an actual webinar that we did for this question alone, and it is in our event. So I'm going to try and pull it up right now and I'm going to post it in the chat for you. Okay, if I can just find it. There we go. If there are any more questions in the meantime, please go ahead and drop them in the chat. Okay, perfect. Yeah, we're going to drop that in the chat very soon. Okay? But any other questions? Perfect. There we go. I got the link. So I'm going to copy this link. I'm going to drop it in the chat.

Sameer Amini: This is the link that we did a webinar on for finding clients and being successful in real estate. Extremely powerful webinar. Okay, let me just do a few of my closing comments. So folks, again, I want to say thank you so much for joining. Let's go back here. I'm going to leave this out. Perfect. So let me leave you with this. Okay? Real estate is not the career for everyone. It's a career for people who are willing to bet on themselves, who can handle uncertainty of commission income, who have the discipline to manage their own day, who genuinely enjoy working with people, and especially those people who are under stress. If that sounds like you, then this is again one of the best careers you can pick for yourself. Low startup cost, high ceiling for earning, real impact on people that you serve. Even your worst-case scenario leaves you with money in your pocket.

Sameer Amini: If this does not sound like you, that's perfectly fine. Knowing what's not for you is just as valuable. So again, those of you that are interested, I've dropped the link in the chat. And again, I want to thank you all so much for joining. I hope this was helpful. I hope this was informational. I know when I did one of these sessions 12 years ago, I knew this was all the information I wish I had. All right, thanks so much all for joining. We'll see you on the next webinar.