The Unconventional Path That Worked
Enya Absi is not someone who arrived at real estate through the front door. She went to McGill for business school, transferred to the University of Edinburgh to study law, moved to London to work in music industry legal affairs, then came back to Georgia in February 2020. COVID hit five weeks later. She stayed.
In the years that followed, Enya wore a lot of hats. Restaurant work. Legal affairs for a personal injury attorney. Staging and interior design. And eventually, a front desk position at Bolst. That last one turned out to matter more than she expected.
She got her real estate license while juggling five jobs. She set a goal of closing five houses in her first year. She closed 18.
In this episode of The Justin Landis Show, Justin and Enya sit down to talk through how that happened and what any new agent can actually take from it.
The Front Desk Changed Everything
When Enya took a position at the Bolst front desk through the Office Ambassador program, she did not think of it as a real estate strategy. It was a job. But something shifted quickly.
Sitting at that desk meant she was surrounded by real estate conversations every single day. Agents were coming in and out. Deals were being discussed. Problems were being solved out loud. Without trying to, she was absorbing the industry from the inside.
That environment did something that a training course cannot replicate. It made the work feel normal before she ever had a client of her own. By the time she started selling, she already knew how agents talked, what problems looked like, and what it meant to stay calm when something went sideways.
Justin has watched other agents go through the Office Ambassador program and sees the same pattern. The agents who spend time physically in the office, around other agents, grow faster. It is not magic. It is proximity.
Five Jobs and Nothing to Lose
When Justin asks Enya how she made it work while juggling five jobs, her answer is simple. She had nothing to lose. That framing matters.
Agents who come into real estate with a lot riding on immediate income tend to make different decisions. They take the safe route. They hesitate on the difficult calls. They second-guess themselves when a deal feels uncertain.
Enya came in knowing that her other income would cover her if real estate did not work out right away. That freedom, even when she was genuinely overwhelmed, gave her room to take risks and stay focused on the long game. She said yes to showings that did not convert. She showed up for clients who no-showed her. She let deals breathe instead of forcing them.
The combination of having no ego about the outcome and genuinely caring about the client turned out to be a powerful one.
What Actually Drove the Numbers
Enya is the first to admit she did not have a system in her first year. No CRM workflow, no scripted follow-up cadence, nothing that would look impressive on a coaching call.
What she had was flexibility and authenticity.
Flexibility meant she built her schedule around her clients rather than expecting them to build around her. If someone could only do evenings, she did evenings. If someone needed a Saturday, she made Saturday work. She was not rigid about her time because she understood that her clients' schedules were not rigid either.
Authenticity meant she was not performing the role of real estate agent. She was just being herself. Honest, direct, warm, genuinely invested in helping people find the right home. When clients sensed that she was not thinking about her commission, they trusted her. And trust, more than any script or follow-up system, is what generates referrals.
Justin has seen the data on this. The number one thing buyers and sellers want from their agent is someone they can trust. Enya gave that off naturally, and it showed in her numbers.
The Case for Joining a Team
Before landing at Justin Landis Group, Enya had conversations with multiple brokers and heard more than once that she would do fine on her own. She almost believed it.
She chose the team anyway. The pay cut was real. The tradeoffs were real. But the alternative, starting from zero with no mentorship, no one to call at 10pm when an inspection report confuses you, and no framework for how to handle a difficult negotiation, that cost was higher.
Bolst's Elevate and Advance program was a specific turning point. It taught her how to actually sell a home, not just get a license. Mentors sat with her through early transactions, drafted emails alongside her, and walked her through inspection reports step by step. That guidance compressed years of trial and error into months.
She is clear that a team does not have to be a forever arrangement. But for the first six to twelve months, she says the mentorship is simply worth more than the extra commission split.
Imposter Syndrome as Fuel
Enya came into real estate during a year when every experienced agent was talking about how hard the market was. Transaction volume was near historic lows. She heard all of it.
She made a decision to not let it define what was possible for her.
Her logic was straightforward: if she could make it work in one of the harder years in recent memory, then what becomes possible when the market opens up? She treated the difficulty as a baseline, not a ceiling.
That mindset did not eliminate doubt. She had plenty of it. But it reframed imposter syndrome as information rather than verdict. The people she was nervous to be around, the high-producing agents with long track records, turned out to be the most generous with their time and knowledge. You do not learn that by watching their Instagram. You learn it by showing up.
Put the Blinders On
One of the most direct pieces of advice Enya offers is also the simplest: stop watching what other agents are doing.
Real estate is a business where everyone is marketing themselves, all the time. It is easy to look at another agent's social media and feel like you are already behind. That comparison is almost never useful and is often actively harmful.
The agents who break through fast are the ones who decide early that the only business that matters is their own. They focus on the clients they have, the relationships they are building, and the skills they are developing. Everything else is noise.
Put the blinders on. Build your business. Be yourself. That is the advice she would give to anyone starting out, and it is the advice that shaped her first year.
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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.
