I Picked My Daughters Up on a Wednesday and the World Kept Spinning

There's a specific kind of guilt that comes with being a parent and an agent at the same time. You're at the park with your kids but your phone is in your hand. You're at a showing but you're thinking about the school pickup you're about to be late for. You're never fully in either place. For a while I thought that split feeling was just the cost of doing this work.

I got into real estate partly for the freedom. That's the pitch, right? Be your own boss, set your own hours. What nobody tells you is that "set your own hours" often turns into "work all of them." In my first two years I was more tethered to my phone than I ever was at a salaried job. The freedom was theoretical. The on-call feeling was constant.

Last Wednesday looked different, and I want to describe it, because it's the whole point of why I changed how I work.

I picked Juniper and Willow up early. No reason. No special occasion. We went and got the kind of ice cream that ends up everywhere, and then we walked down by the river and threw rocks in for what felt like an hour (it was probably twenty minutes, time moves strangely when you're four). My phone was in my bag. A client had texted that morning and I'd already handled it, because my systems were doing their job and I wasn't the only point of contact for every small thing.

I didn't feel the pull to check it every few minutes. That part still surprises me.

This didn't happen because I started caring less about my business. It happened because I built the business differently. When I moved to eXp and got into Powerhouse, one of the first things I learned was that protecting your time isn't a reward you earn after you hit some magic number. It's a structure you build on purpose, early, before you think you can afford to.

So I built it. I set up systems that handle the small stuff. I stopped treating every text like an emergency. I leaned into a model where my income isn't tied to me personally answering my phone at 7pm on a Wednesday. (That last part matters more than I can say. When the way you earn doesn't require you to be available every waking minute, your evenings stop belonging to other people.)

I won't pretend it's perfect. Some weeks are still chaos. There are nights I'm answering emails after the girls are asleep, mornings where one of them can't find a shoe and I'm running late to a listing appointment. Mountain living and two kids under six don't exactly produce calm. But the difference is that the chaos is mine now. It isn't a system designed to keep me permanently available to everyone except my own family.

I think about the version of me from three years ago a lot. She believed being a good agent meant being endlessly reachable, that slowing down would cost her the business she was trying to build. She answered texts at the dinner table and felt virtuous about it. She was wrong, but I understand why she believed it. The whole industry is built to make you believe it, and the agents who look most successful are often the ones modeling exactly that exhaustion.

What I'd tell her, and what I'll tell you, is this. The clients worth having don't need you at every hour. They need you to be good, to be honest, and to do what you said you'd do. You can be all of those things and still pick your kids up on a Wednesday. The two aren't in competition, no matter how loudly hustle culture insists they are.

That Wednesday afternoon, sticky hands and wet shoes and all, is the actual reason I do any of this. Not the volume. Not the awards. The ability to be fully in one place with the people I'm building everything for.

If you're a parent in this business and you've been quietly wondering whether the constant tether is just how it has to be, it isn't. I'd love to walk you through what changed for me. Reach out whenever you want, and we'll talk about what a more sustainable version might look like for your family.