Today we’d like to introduce you to Jake & Emily Sparrow.
Hi Jake & Emily, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Our journey to being in real estate has been a long one. We got married young like a lot of people typically do in Utah. We started out thinking we knew what careers we wanted to do but over the years that changed, and we both ended up trying a variety of things.
When we first got married Jake was in property management and coaching youth soccer while Emily was finishing up hair school and getting ready to work in a salon. We were in those jobs for around two years when Emily decided working behind the chair wasn’t something she wanted to do long-term and Jake was also making a change by transitioning to owning an insurance agency.
Jake worked for American National Insurance for around five years while still coaching soccer. Emily decided she really liked working in the beauty industry but not as a service provider and she started working at Sego Lily Spa as a receptionist. It ended up being a great fit and she stayed at the spa for almost eight years.
A couple of years later Jake stopped doing insurance and started coaching soccer full time with 6-7 teams each season. These years were a very busy time in our lives. We had our two little boys during this time and almost always worked opposite shifts which made time together few and far between. We got tired of not seeing each other so Jake cut back on coaching soccer and decided to go back to school to get a psychology degree. We thought we would see each other more with him doing classes online from home but taking 18-20 credit hours most semesters, it ended up being as much as another full-time job.
We thought if we could just make it through those couple of years then we would get to spend more time together. Reality hit though and his job as a behavioral therapist ended up being 12-hour days. Emily really liked working at the spa but had started thinking about finding a job working from home, possibly at night to hopefully get to see the family more. This is about the time the pandemic happened, and both of our jobs got shut down for a couple of months. Being able to spend this much time as a family was amazing and something we didn’t want to give up.
Real estate was something Emily had contemplated over the years, but the spa hours had worked well with babysitters for our kids, so she hadn’t made a change before. One night Jake’s mom was telling us about a family friend who had just gotten her real estate license and Emily felt like that was her sign to take a chance and make a change.
She signed up for classes the next day and started doing them in her little bit of free time in the evening after the kids had gone to bed. The more Emily learned in the classes the more she was fascinated by the information and felt like it would be a good fit for her.
Shortly afterward Jake decided to make a change as well, he was not happy with the lack of control over the time he had practicing behavioral therapy combined with the lack of earning potential the industry provided without another 5-6 years of schooling. This led him to join the real estate industry in which we began working together as a husband-and-wife team. It’s been a long journey and a lot of years to get us to where we are now. Looking back our path to real estate wasn’t conventional.
Each job we have had over the years gave us different skills, many of which translate well to real estate and have made us better Realtors. Through working at the salon and the spa Emily learned a lot about how to interact with clients and improve her customer service skills. Being a receptionist also helped her be more organized and improved her communication style.
At the spa, she also worked her way up to being the reception team’s lead and trainer. This built her confidence as a leader while also improving her time management and education skills. Jake’s experience with property management and insurance has helped us understand those sides of the industry faster than most.
He also has a lot of experience with mentoring and teaching through soccer which translates to excellent communication with our clients. Jake understands a lot about how people interact and think because of his psychology degree and time spent being a behavior therapist.
We have realized over the years we both wanted to be in an industry that serves and helps other people but also allows us to keep our commitment to each other and our family, and we feel we have found just the right fit for us!
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We knew going into owning our own business that it wasn’t going to be an easy road, but we were up for the challenge. Jake has a lot more experience with this since he already ran his own insurance agency and youth soccer club. Making the switch was a big change for Emily, going from being a W-2 employee to being 100% commission-based and self-employed. We have gained a lot of freedom with our time and how we choose to run our business but that also comes with its own challenges.
One big challenge is work-life balance. It would be easy for us not to do any work or to let ourselves work way too much and give up the freedom we wanted from this career. Finding that balance and setting expectations with clients is an ongoing process.
We also think a lot of people have the misconception that Realtors just sit around, and the clients come to them with no effort and then we collect a big check. We are responsible for finding all our own clients which have resulted in us becoming more active within our community as well as on social media. Social media isn’t something either of us did much before and has been a big learning curve.
On average we spend 3-4 months working with each client for nothing upfront and only get paid if we can close a deal for them. This creates a challenge with financial planning and making sure that we always have enough budget to take care of our daily lives as well as all our business necessities in between paychecks.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We know there is a stigma about real estate agents that they are dishonest, lazy, impersonal, poor communicators, and just in the business to make tons of money. Our goal is to show people a different more personal side to the real estate industry.
Our team is a little different than other teams because we are a husband and wife, with us you always get two Realtors working on your transaction. We enjoy getting to know our clients and want them to know about us as well. We love knowing we are gaining lifelong friends after we get to work with people.
During a transaction, we pride ourselves on excellent communication because that is what we expect from our industry partners and the people we work with. Everything goes smoother when we are all on the same page and know what is going on.
We like being a part of both the selling and buying sides of a transaction and getting to educate our clients on the process. Education is very important to us because we don’t remember much about buying our first home. What we do remember though is feeling a little overwhelmed and like we didn’t fully understand what was going on.
We just assumed the typical process was having someone tell us to pay this and sign that until the home was ours. We want our clients to understand the process well and feel confident in the decisions they are making. Selling or buying a home is a huge life-changing event and we are honored when people choose us to help them through the process.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
Outside of real estate, our favorite thing to do is spend time together as a family. Our kids are at the age where they love playing games or anything that’s done outside. We also love to travel and have a huge list of places we can’t wait to experience together as a family.
Contact Info:
- Email: esparrow.realestate@gmail.com
- Website: www.sparrowsrealestate.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/sparrows.realestate/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/sparrowsrealestate/
- Tiktok: www.tiktok.com/@jake__em
Image Credits:
Rachel Naylor Photography
