The Plowing, The Planting, and The Harvest: Khadeen Brooks on Building Endurance in Real Estate
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Khadeen Brooks had a corporate job that looked good from the outside. On the inside, she says, things were unwell. On this episode of The Justin Landis Show, the JLG and Bolst agent joins Justin to talk about what it actually took to walk away from a stable career and build a real estate business, including the parts nobody warns you about.
Therapy, a Career Coach, and a Strategic Exit
Khadeen didn't jump into real estate on a whim. As her dissatisfaction in corporate America grew, she noticed her own personality starting to change, and that was her signal to dig into why. Rather than repeat the pattern she'd seen in others, quitting one job just to take another similar one, she took a more strategic approach. She started therapy to work through what she was feeling emotionally, and hired a career coach to help her figure out what came next professionally. The two worked in tandem: therapy on the inside, career coaching on direction.
Through exercises with her career coach identifying what she enjoyed (problem solving, engaging with people) and what she didn't (being behind a screen all day), real estate started to surface as an option. Her coach encouraged her to explore it seriously, so Khadeen reached out to realtors on LinkedIn and had coffee chats to learn more about the business before committing.
Building a One-Year Financial Runway
Before making the leap, Khadeen got honest about one thing everyone in real estate has in common: no paycheck on day one. Knowing that financial insecurity was a personal trigger for her, she worked with her financial planner to build a detailed one-year runway, understanding her expenses, what she could lean on if needed, and how she'd need to adjust her lifestyle to make it work.
The Rejection She Wasn't Prepared For
Khadeen describes her early days in real estate as a wake-up call. Her formula up to that point had been simple: set her mind to something, work hard, and get the result. Real estate broke that pattern immediately, because the other person in the deal has to want it too. The wave of no's, missed appointments, ghosting, and being left on read hit her harder than she expected. She describes it, only half-jokingly, as traumatizing, because she was doing her best and still not getting the results she was used to.
Building Endurance Through Faith and Reps
Getting through that period, Khadeen says, came down to two things: her faith, and simply putting in more reps over time. A turning point came during an end-of-year reflection with a friend, when she realized she was crumbling after every no, going home and losing entire days to it. She realized her tolerance for rejection was, in her words, negative, and the only way to build it up was to keep doing the work rather than avoiding the discomfort.
She also had to let go of a one-size-fits-all communication style. Recognizing that different clients need different approaches, some prefer texts, some need calls, some need appointment confirmations the day before, helped her stop taking missed connections so personally and start adjusting her approach instead.
There Wasn't One Big Turning Point
Asked whether there was a single moment things clicked, Khadeen is honest that there wasn't. She describes it as a gradual accumulation of small shifts rather than one flip of a switch, something that required time she had to actively give herself. A big part of that shift came from surrounding herself with a community of people who both encourage her and challenge her, not just people who commiserate, but people who ask what she actually did the day before.
Bringing Her Whole Self to the Business
Khadeen credits a lot of her growth to the community at her office, where agents at every stage of their career, from newer agents to those with 20-plus years of experience, are willing to share what they've learned. She describes herself as naturally curious, always ready to ask a question and listen, which has helped her build strong relationships both with colleagues and with clients. She brings that same authenticity to her client work: tailoring her approach to each person's personality while staying true to who she is, bringing education, enthusiasm, and a sense of fun to a process she knows can otherwise feel stressful.
Her Advice: Control What You Can Control
For anyone earlier in their real estate journey and feeling the sting of rejection, Khadeen's advice starts internally. She describes her journey using the metaphor of plowing, planting, and harvest: reaching the next stage always requires a season of discomfort first. Even high-producing agents face ebbs, flows, and plenty of rejection, so building a real comfort level with volatility matters more than trying to eliminate it.
Her advice breaks down into three areas: control your mindset and how you relate to uncertainty, control your finances by building a real plan before making the leap (even without a financial planner, a calculator and an honest look at your spending will get you started), and control your activity, since consistent effort compounds over time even when individual results don't show up right away.
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Justin Landis is the founder of Justin Landis Group and Bolst, two of Atlanta's leading real estate companies. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and three daughters and has been selling Atlanta real estate since 2008.
