Ten years.

I got my real estate license in 2012 and spent four years learning under someone else's wing. I had good people around me and I soaked up everything I could — the contracts, the conversations, the way you talk to someone on the worst day of their transaction.

In 2016, I decided it was time to take everything I'd learned and make it my own.

I'm not going to pretend the last ten years were smooth.

Have I made mistakes? More than I want to admit. Hiring ones. Business ones. Ones I saw coming and made anyway.

Have I cried? Oh yes. In cars, in closings, in my kitchen at 11pm.

But all of it — every hard year, every wrong turn, every lesson I would rather have learned some easier way — made me the business leader I am today. And it gave me a kind of perspective I couldn't have bought: I know exactly what I want the next ten years to look like, and I know what I'm no longer willing to do to get there.

A decade. A lot of houses. Even more people. Too many experiences to count.

I am grateful for all of it. Even the tough stuff. Honestly, especially the tough stuff.

To my family — you have put up with me, my crazy ideas, and my big dreams for ten years running, and you still love me anyway. There is no version of this company that exists without you.

To my son — you've been my showing assistant, my staging assistant, and my second set of hands more times than you ever signed up for. You've grown up inside this business. I hope one day you look back and see what we built while you were in the back seat.

To my friends — you believed in this when there was nothing to believe in yet. You cheered before there was anything to cheer for. I've never forgotten it.

To every version of this team — and there have been several — thank you. Different people, different chapters, different rooms. Every one of you is a reason the next chapter got to exist.