Episode 323 – Sarita Dua, Principal Broker At Keller Williams Realty Professionals

  Are you goal-oriented? Are you sure you’re in the right place right now professionally? Develop the entrepreneurial mindset you need that can drive you to reach more success. Tune into this episode as Principal Broker Sarita Dua discusses her unique journey at Keller Williams Realty Professionals. She loves engineering and getting specific answers, but she realizes she wants something more as time goes by. She shares what triggered her to start a career in the real estate industry and the factors that contributed to her decision. --- Sarita Dua, Principal Broker At Keller Williams Realty Professionals Welcome to episode 323. Thank you so much for reading. We get to talk to an agent who has done something I've never heard of for a realtor yet in over 300 interviews. I won't tell you what it is. You have to read to find that out but we're going to be talking to Sarita Dua. She's in the Portland area with Keller Williams. She has Ask Sarita, which is her website AskSarita.com. That's been her branding for years. She created that prior to even getting her license. That gives you a hint about some of the things that Sarita does. Let's get this thing started. Sarita, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Bill. It's great to be here. I can't wait to chat with you. You have a very interesting story. You know that. It's unique for a realtor to have the background you have. Would you agree with that? Yes and no. We all have crazy unique stories but I've never stopped and thought about them. I do probably have a little bit of a unique path. There are only a 320 plus interviews. There might be 6 people who knew they were going to be a realtor when they were 12. It's always that second path. It seems like it's such a heavy influence there. You're in Portland doing some great stuff. We'll chat about that but you're not a native Oregonian. Let's start at the beginning. What was home for you? Where did you grow up? I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. My parents are immigrants. They got married in India and settled in Michigan in 1964. I was born and raised there. I've had some people from Michigan but maybe not Detroit. I love the way these answers can go and never know. First of all, I want to hear a little bit about growing up there. Give me the biggest misconception about that area. Detroit is not as crazy, rough or violent as some people assume that Downtown Detroit is scary. I had a great Midwestern upbringing. We did grow up in the suburbs and Detroit, the city, Downtown has changed a lot. There was a time when we didn't hang out there and the biggest surprise in Detroit is Downtown Detroit itself. It is the place. We call it the D. It's where all the sports teams play. It's got a burgeoning food scene, great rooftop bars and craft breweries. It's a fun place. Most people would not know or even assume that. They would avoid downtown because of some preconceptions from way back when. [caption id="attachment_4330" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Keller Williams: The cool thing with sports management is you can work with the team. You can do the ticket size and sales and sponsorships. There's so many elements of it. And the idea is to kind of try different things out, to figure out what you like and what you don't.[/caption]   What part of the suburbs did you go to? I grew up in this place, Shelby Township, Michigan. I was born and raised in Warren. My dad was 30 years in Chrysler. Back then, especially if you were from a different country like India, it was the Silicon Valley before Silicon Valley. A lot of young engineers from countries like India were able to get to Detroit, Michigan because companies like GM, Ford and Chrysler needed engineers. That was a way for my dad to get there, get citizenship, add value and provide a contribution to the companies. That’s how that started. We were always tied to automotive to the point where I couldn't wait to get out. We're going to talk about real estate cycles. There were automotive recessionary cycles where my dad, uncles, other family members and cousins were always nervous if they were going to get laid off or not. I didn't want my livelihood to be tied to an industry that was up and down. I went to a small college that was tied to automotive. It was called at the time General Motors Institute, GMI. It's rebranded as Kettering University. Although I didn't work for automotive, I worked for a hospital and Intel. All of the students did a 5-year program for a bachelor's instead of 4 but you did 3 months of school and work all 5 years and graduated with 2.5 years of work experience. Ninety-five percent of us graduated with good job offers. I have to bring this up. I grew up in San Diego. I’m a huge fan of the San Diego Padres. I worked for them for twelve years later on but in 1984 and I don't know if you remember this or not, the Padres played the Tigers in the World Series. There was this guy named Kirk Gibson who was a real pain for the Padres. We ended up winning one game. That was a year the Tiger started 35 and 5. They were an amazing team. Do you remember that at all? I don't mind outing my age. I graduated high school in ’87. We used to listen to a garage sale stereo component set. It was an AM/FM radio with two speakers. We still listen to baseball and games either on TV. We didn't have cable back then. If someone else was watching anything else, we couldn't watch the game. It was Kirk Gibson, Chet Lemon, Lance Parrish and Alan Trammell. I remember all of them. Detroiters love their sports. Sometimes it's tough to be a Detroit fan like the Lions. It is a curse to be a Detroit Lions fan. We had the Pistons, the Bad Boys regime of the Pistons as well. We'll talk about my journey to Portland but I do miss having 4 to 5 major teams in your market. We only have one in Portland. We have MLS Soccer but we have mainly NBA basketball. Not to be a football fan and not having an NFL team is rough. I discovered you posted on social about your son getting an internship with the Lions, which is fantastic. I had one year with the Chargers there. It was nice. My question is, first of all, did you and your husband, I don't want to say, curse him with the Detroit Lions fandom but is that the case? [bctt tweet="We all have crazy unique stories. We take that unique path to success." username="billrisser"] We became less Lions fans when we moved from Boston and we were Patriots fans. I was less of a Lions fan in my adult years. I was a Lions fan growing up. I love the Vikings too. I was weird but my brother was a diehard Lions fan. All of my cousins are Lions fans. My son is at the Lions. I’m proud of him for getting an internship in the NFL. He'll be a senior in the fall of 2022 at Syracuse Sports Management. What was fun about this kid is he had sports in his blood. I pick him up from daycare at age 6 or 7. He would be like, “Mama, LaMarcus Aldridge got traded.” I'm like, “How do you know this? You barely can go to the bathroom by yourself. You are a questionable reader.” He didn't have a phone but he knew who had a phone and who would know. Even when he was 10 or 11, he would work his way onto his cousin's fantasy football team. My brother would text me. He's like, “I don't know if we should let him in. He's persistent. It's $100 entry and we do this thing.” I'm like, “Let him learn. Just do it.” The kid won in the first 2 or 3 years every year because not only is he a big fan but he will not let up. He would say to my brother, “Uncle, you got to do this.” He would beat him down by battering him with trades until my brother would probably be like, “Go ahead and take them.” It's fun to see this. It happened to be the Lions but he would've worked honestly anywhere in the sports team. The cool thing with sports management is you can work with the team. You can be in game-day operations. You can do the ticket size, sales and sponsorships. There are many elements of it. The idea is to try different things out and figure out what you like and what you don't. He does love working for a team. He's worked running the summer football camps and liaison between the team and the different high school organizations. He's loving it. Let’s talk about how do you get to Portland? You wanted to get out of the area because it was all automotive all the time for you. What led you to move? A couple of the best things of my life are happy accidents but if you believe, there are no accidents. Maybe it was all by design. I went to college as a Management Major for the first three semesters. GMI was known for having Engineering and Management. Three semesters in, I switched to Electrical Engineering. You're talking about a rare path in real estate. I bucked the trend. A lot of people, not to say that there was anything easy or negative about management but some people switched from Engineering to Management and I went upstream the other way. I have always been strong in math and science. I love the exactness of engineering. If there's a problem, you get an answer and put a box around it. It's right or wrong. I felt like even if I didn't do Engineering, an Electrical Engineering degree would...