My very first showing as a real estate agent was for dear friends of our family.

I want you to understand how much that mattered to me. These were people who had known me since I was a kid. People who had been at our table. People who had watched me lose a business and start over, and who called me anyway, because they wanted to be the ones to give me my first real shot.

So I wanted to be perfect for them.

I got there early. Twenty minutes early, sitting in my car doing that thing where you rehearse a conversation nobody else knows is happening. I had my folder. I’d printed everything twice. I’d gone through the walkthrough in my head the entire drive over, room by room, like I was preparing for a performance.

Then I couldn’t find the lockbox.

I circled that front porch like it owed me money. I checked the gas meter. I checked the hose bib. I checked the railing, the side gate, the water shutoff. I checked behind a bush that, in my memory, has since grown into a small forest with its own weather system.

And the whole time, my clients were standing on the driveway. Watching. Waiting. Being lovely about it, which somehow made it worse.

When I finally found the thing, a brand-new problem introduced itself. I had no idea how to make my key open it.

I pressed things. I held it at angles. I turned it over and tried again. I am fairly certain I asked it nicely. My very first showing, and I was locked out of it, standing on a porch in front of people I had known most of my life, feeling every one of my brand-new credentials evaporate in the sun.

Here’s the part I didn’t appreciate until years later.

They just waited.

They didn’t check their watches. They didn’t suggest calling the listing agent. They laughed with me, not at me, and they waited.

Because they hadn’t hired me for polish. They knew me. They knew how much I cared. They knew I was the person who figures things out, because they had watched me do it under much worse circumstances than a stuck lockbox. And they knew that whatever happened on that porch, I was going to make sure they were taken care of.

They believed in me before I had a single reason to believe in myself.

I borrowed their belief that day. I used it for months. I kept using it until I’d built enough of my own to start giving some away.

I think about that porch all the time now.

Because here’s what I’ve learned about first-time buyers. Everything is a lockbox.

The words are new. Earnest money. Appraisal gap. Contingency. Escrow. The paperwork is new, and there is so much more of it than anyone warns you about. Everyone in the room seems to know rules that were never explained to you, and they’re all moving fast, and nobody stops to check whether you’re following.

And underneath all of it is the exact fear I had on that porch. What if I do this wrong, in front of everyone?

So here’s what I want you to know.

Firsts are wobbly. For every single person who has ever done one. Including, spectacularly, me.

The people who look smooth doing this have simply done it before. That’s the entire difference. It’s reps, and that’s the whole of it. You can borrow mine.

You’re allowed to borrow my belief the way I borrowed theirs. Sixteen years, hundreds of families, and every kind of market this state can produce. I believe we can get you home, and I’ll keep believing it on the days you can’t.

There are no silly questions here. Not one. Ask me the thing you’re embarrassed to ask. Ask me the same thing twice. Ask me the question you already asked your brother-in-law and got a confusing answer to. I’m a 100 percent judgment-free zone, and I mean that in a specific way, because somebody once stood on a porch in the heat and refused to judge me.

That’s what I’m handing forward.

I can’t promise your first move will be graceful. Mine sure wasn’t.

What I can promise is that you’ll never stand on the porch by yourself. And that one day, this scary first will be a story you tell with a smile, probably at somebody else’s kitchen table, probably to someone who needs to hear it.

Whenever you’re ready, I’m here.

Joyful real estate that feels like home.

WITH JOY,

P.S. What’s Jennuine Living, again?

We’re a gaggle of REALTORS(R), Lenders, and Creatives that makes joyful real estate feel like home.

We bring creativity, peace of mind, and a sense of delight into one of life’s biggest transitions, so that our clients’ experience:

-> More joy, less stress and fewer “oh crap” moments.

-> No guesswork, no surprises, just honest communication.

-> Connection first, here, you are family.

We love new friends, so visit our website, see a bit of our good work for our community, or follow us on the ‘Gram to join the family.