EPISODE 1: LAURA DELONG

On the first episode of The Brad and Taylor Show, we’re sitting down with Laura DeLong of Laura DeLong Realty!

 

Follow the link to listen to the episode one podcast on Apple Podcast. Short on time? We wrote a summary of the conversation down below!

 

 

This episode starts off with Brad and Taylor introducing Laura and starting a discussion about what Laura did that day.

 

Laura explains that she finally was able to find time to take down the Christmas decor around the office, as Laura, Brad, and Taylor begin talking about real Christmas trees vs artificial Christmas trees.

 

Brad then asks Laura how she got her start in real estate, prompting Laura to tell her story.

 

Laura explains her time working as a dental assistant for 9 years before choosing to leave her job to be a stay-at-home mom. She tells Brad and Taylor about her teen who was going through a challenging time, causing Laura to decide that she needed to be a full-time mother.

 

Fast forward 3 years, Laura and her husband took an interest in flipping and selling houses. At the same time, a friend came to Laura and asked her to manage a real estate brokerage. This was Laura’s first introduction to real estate as a career, aside from considering getting a real estate license for the sole purpose of flipping houses.

 

Laura notes that coworkers at Delta dental would tell her that she would make a great real estate agent, as she’s very personable. She brushed this suggestion off as a joke, as she was interested in philanthropy.

 

After deciding to move forward with managing the brokerage, Laura decides that she’s going to get her real estate license to flip houses, but has no intention of selling houses for others.

 

While Laura had no intention of selling houses for other people, her entire perspective changed when a woman from church needed help selling her house. The woman came to Laura asking for help, as her husband was being incarcerated and she couldn’t make any more payments on the house.

 

Laura agreed to help but was hesitant about selling, as she was still waiting for her license to come and she was very new to the business. She mentions that she was overwhelmed by the paperwork involved with selling a house, as Brad and Taylor nod in agreement.

 

Laura ended up negotiating a deal for the woman by not only selling the house at the full price but getting the bank to take $5,000 off as well. Laura recounts this experience as what changed her mind about real estate, as she realized she could help people for a living while selling real estate.

 

Going back to the earlier conversation about being a dental assistant, Laura explains that she’s had a desire to help others from a young age. She explains that she originally wanted to be an orthodontist, as she had braces for many years and feels that the ability to improve one’s smile is life-changing.

 

After having a child at a young age, she decided to become a dental assistant instead. Brad, Taylor, and Laura take a moment to laugh about how different real estate is from the dental field and how interesting life works out sometimes.

 

Laura then goes back to explain where her journey as a real estate agent went after that initial sale. She reflects on spending as much time as she could learning under the brokerage she was working with, as she was attending any events and training necessary to learn about the business.

 

She goes on to explain that contrary to her initial anxiety about real estate, paperwork is actually the easiest part. She acknowledges that she has a desire to serve people and talks about her experience as a realtor with clients.

 

Clients would routinely tell Laura that she wasn’t an average realtor and that she wasn’t pushy like many others, going as far as to say that Laura seemed more like a friend than a realtor!

 

After 17 years of working in real estate, Laura mentions that she’s always learning and that each experience is different.

 

Brad asks Laura about new realtor tips, to which Laura responds that new realtors need to get up and go to work each and every day. She talks about how she did all her own marketing from day one, going door-to-door with her marketing materials.

 

After discussing her journey as a realtor, Taylor asks Laura about a poster she saw regarding Laura’s biological father. Laura goes on to explain that she found out around the age of 15 that the father who raised her was not biologically her father.

 

After spending a great deal of time reaching out to detectives and using DNA databases like 23&Me and Ancestry, she was able to find her biological father.

 

After figuring out the identity of her father, Laura reached out by mail, sending a picture and suggesting that he may be her father. Laura’s biological father reached out and said he wanted to meet her while she was attending a real estate event in Chicago.

 

She immediately leaves to meet him. She recounts her time with him as short-lived but incredible, as he passed away 2 months after meeting him. She gets emotional, talking about how incredible the experience was, as she learned so much about herself and got a sense of closure realizing she is very similar to her father.

 

Lastly, Brad, Taylor, and Laura end on a silly note, debating whether or not a hot dog qualifies as a sandwich. After laughing and weighing the possibilities, Laura decides a hot dog isn’t a sandwich and jokes that she’ll perform more research to give Brad and Taylor her final answer.

 

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