If you are an aspiring real estate agent, do these 5 things

If you are an aspiring real estate agent, the difference between burning out in 12 months and building a career that pays for the next 30 years comes down to five non-negotiables I have watched separate the survivors from the 70% who quit. Get these right at the start, and your runway becomes a launchpad.

Direct Answer: An aspiring real estate agent must do five things to succeed: get a state-issued real estate license, join an established team instead of going solo, commit fully (not just show interest), prepare to run a 5-year marathon where the first commission check may not arrive for 6 to 12 months, and clearly articulate why a client should choose you over an agent with 5 to 10 years of experience. Skip any one of these and you join the 70%+ who fail out of the industry.

1. Get Your Real Estate License Before You Do Anything Else

This sounds obvious, but I see people skip ahead to logos, business cards, and Instagram reels before they have even sat for the licensing exam. Stop. Enroll in the pre-licensing course required by your state or country, complete the coursework, sit the exam, and walk out with a license in your hand. Without that piece of paper, you legally cannot represent a buyer or seller, you cannot collect a commission, and no reputable team will let you near their leads.

If you are reading this in Dubai, that means RERA certification through the Dubai Real Estate Institute. In the US, every state has its own pre-licensing hours and exam. Treat this step as the entry ticket, not the destination.

2. Join a Team — Do Not Go Solo in Year One

This is the mistake I see new agents make most often: they get the license and immediately try to fly solo because they want 100% of the commission. What they actually get is 100% of zero deals.

When you join a team for your first 12 to 24 months, you get four things you cannot buy on your own:

• Leads — the team feeds you live prospects so you can close while you learn.
• Mentorship — a senior agent who has worked through 50+ deals and will tell you what works and what does not.
• Systems — the CRM, the listing process, the contract templates, the negotiation scripts that took the team a decade to refine.
• The right network — title officers, mortgage brokers, inspectors, and stagers you would otherwise spend years meeting one by one.

Stay on the team until you can honestly say, "I have closed enough deals that I know how this industry works and I am ready to go solo." For most agents, that is somewhere between 18 months and 3 years.

3. Be Committed, Not Just Interested

Here is the line that separates the 30% who make it from the 70% who do not: interest is not commitment.

Interest says, "I will try real estate and see how it goes. If it does not work in six months, I will go back to my old job." Commitment says, "This is what I do. There is no plan B." Only when you remove the safety net do you give the work the 100% it actually demands. As a Chartered Accountant by training, I have seen the same pattern in every business — the operators who keep one foot in their old career almost never break through. Your fallback option is the ceiling on your performance.

4. Prepare to Run a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Real estate is a 5-year game. The first commission check often does not arrive for 6 to 12 months after you get licensed. That is not a worst-case scenario — that is the median.

So before you quit your day job, build a financial runway that lets you live without income for at least the first year. Then commit to a marathon pace across four lanes:

• Sales activity — calls, viewings, follow-ups, every single day.
• Networking — meeting new people who could become clients, referral partners, or both.
• Industry knowledge — learning what listings move, what neighborhoods are heating up, what financing options buyers actually use.
• Patience — refusing to panic when month four ends with zero closings.

Hurry kills new agents. Obsessing over short-term results makes you discount, oversell, and break trust. The marathon mindset is what compounds.

5. Know Your Why — and Why a Client Should Pick You

Sit down with a notebook and answer two questions in writing:

• Why are you in real estate? What gets you out of bed at 6 a.m. to make calls when nothing has closed in three months?
• Why should a prospect work with you instead of an agent who has been doing this for 10 years?

The second question is harder, and the honest answer is rarely "experience." It might be hyper-local knowledge of one specific neighborhood, faster response times, fluency in a language the local agents do not speak, deeper understanding of first-time buyers, or expertise in a niche like investment properties or off-plan developments. Find the angle no one else in your area is working — and lead with that in every conversation.

Having taught these business-fundamentals frameworks to over 79,000 students across 74+ courses, I can tell you the agents who write down their "why" and their "why me" close measurably more deals in year one than the ones who wing it.

The Quick Recap for an Aspiring Real Estate Agent

Get licensed. Join a team. Commit fully with no plan B. Run the 5-year marathon. Know your why and your differentiator. Do these five things and you do not just get a good start as a real estate agent — you get a great one, and a great start is the leverage point that compounds for the rest of your career.

Your next step today: open a notes app and write a one-paragraph answer to "Why should a client choose me over a 10-year veteran?" If you cannot answer it in writing, you cannot answer it on a sales call.

Keep Learning

If this was useful, these are worth reading next:

• AI for Real Estate Dubai: Complete 2026 Playbook for Agents, Brokers, and Developers
• AI Tools for Real Estate Agents 2026: Best Apps That Close More Deals
• Or go further with the AI Mastery Course — used by 79,000+ students across 150+ countries.
• Try GoHighLevel free for 14 days — the CRM built for agencies and course creators.