“The honest lessons from a Coast Guard veteran who traded sea duty for escrows — and wouldn’t trade it back.”
Real Estate Insights
Four years ago, I walked out of the United States Coast Guard after 20 years of service and stepped into a career I thought I understood. I had bought and sold my own home. I knew the neighborhoods. I had watched the market. I figured the transition would be smooth.
I was wrong — not about the work, but about everything surrounding it. Real estate is a business, and nobody hands you an operations manual on day one.
So here’s mine. Four years of full-time experience distilled into the things I wish someone had told me — and what they mean for the people I represent.
1. You’re Not Just an Agent. You’re a Business Owner.
This one hit fast. The Coast Guard ran on structure, chain of command, and clear mission parameters. Real estate? You are the structure. You set your own schedule, manage your own marketing, track your own leads, handle your own accounting, and build your own systems from scratch.
Taxes, technology, branding, follow-up cadence, continuing education — none of it comes with a training pipeline. Nobody at the brokerage is watching your performance metrics and scheduling a counseling session if you fall short. It is entirely on you.
For a veteran, that freedom is both exciting and disorienting. I had to build the business that supports the work before I could do the work well. Four years later, I still invest as much energy in running the business as I do in serving my clients.
💡 For Buyers & Sellers:
When you hire an agent, you’re not just hiring someone with a license. You’re hiring a business — their systems, their processes, their professionalism. Ask how they run their operation. It tells you a lot about how they’ll run your transaction.
2. I Am a Salesperson. And That Took Some Getting Used To.
Here’s one I didn’t see coming: I am a salesperson. I never thought I’d say that about myself. In the military, you execute the mission. You don’t pitch it.
But real estate requires you to sell yourself before you can sell a home. You’re constantly building relationships, earning trust, articulating your value, and asking for the business. That’s sales — and there’s no way around it.
Learning to embrace that identity took time. I had to get comfortable having conversations about why someone should choose me, following up without feeling like I was being pushy, and confidently presenting my approach to clients who were interviewing multiple agents. Once I accepted that being a good salesperson and being a person of integrity are not mutually exclusive, everything started to click.
3. Real Estate Is a Marathon. There Is No Instant Gratification.
In the military, the feedback loop is relatively tight. You complete a mission. You get an eval. You advance. Real estate doesn’t work that way.
You can put in six months of work — calls, showings, negotiations, paperwork — and still end a quarter with nothing to show for it. The market moves in cycles. Buyers go quiet. Sellers get cold feet. Escrows fall apart. And you keep showing up anyway.
The agents who last are the ones who can stay consistent and motivated when nothing is happening. That mental toughness? That’s something the military did prepare me for. I just didn’t expect to need it here.
4. This Work Is Deeply Emotional — And That’s Not a Weakness.
I vest a lot of myself in my clients. When a buyer I’ve been working with for months loses a home to a stronger offer, I feel it. When a deal falls through because the other side didn’t do their job, I take it personally. That’s just who I am.
I’ve had two deals collapse at the final hour because the agent on the other side went silent. Calls unanswered. Emails ignored. Texts left on read for days. The buyers I was representing were left holding uncertainty while I kept making contact with a wall.
And then there’s the harder lesson: people will say and do whatever it takes to get a deal done — even if that means stabbing you in the back. I knew going in that not everyone operates with the same standards. But experiencing it firsthand, watching someone smile through a transaction and then undercut you without a second thought, is something different entirely. It’s a gut check.
In both cases, the deals died. Not because of anything my clients did wrong — but because of poor communication and a lack of professional accountability from the other side.
I’ll be honest: that still bothers me. It should bother every agent. We are dealing with people’s lives, savings, and futures. This is not a casual business.
⚠️ What That Means for You:
Not every agent treats your transaction with the same urgency and integrity you deserve. When I represent you, I communicate proactively, I follow up relentlessly, and I will never go dark on you or tell you what you want to hear just to keep a deal alive. You get the truth — always.
5. People Will Ghost You. Build Thick Skin Anyway.
This is the part of real estate school they don’t teach you. Leads go cold. Clients disappear. People who seemed ready to buy suddenly stop responding to every form of communication.
Most of the time, it has nothing to do with you. Life happens. Finances change. Fear sets in. People would rather quietly fade than have an honest conversation. I understand it — I don’t love it, but I understand it.
What I’ve learned is that you cannot let the silence shake your confidence. You follow up, you stay professional, and you keep your pipeline moving. The clients who are meant to work with you will respond. The rest will find their way back when they’re ready.
Thick skin is not indifference. It’s the ability to care deeply about your clients while not letting the uncertainty of the business — or the occasional bad actor — erode your foundation.
6. The Ebbs and Flows Are Real — And They Never Fully Go Away.
There will be months when you have three transactions in escrow simultaneously and can’t catch your breath. There will be months when you wonder if the phone will ever ring again. Both are part of this career.
West Oʻahu is an active, growing market — but it is still subject to interest rate shifts, inventory cycles, and broader economic conditions. The agents who survive those cycles are the ones who planned for them and built a business resilient enough to weather the quiet stretches.
Four years in, I still feel the tension of a slow month. I just know now that it doesn’t last — and I know how to use that time to build instead of worry.
Still Here. Still Learning.
Four years of full-time real estate has made me a better agent, a sharper businessman, and a more empathetic advocate. I’ve had some of the most gratifying professional moments of my life helping military families find their homes in West Oʻahu. I’ve also had weeks that tested everything I had.
The honest truth? I wouldn’t trade it. Not the hard deals, not the fallen escrows, not the ghosted leads. Every one of them made me better at this.
If you’re thinking about buying or selling in Hawai’i — whether you’re PCS’ing to the island, making your first move, or ready to sell after years of building equity — I’d love to have a real conversation. No fluff. No pressure. Just someone who’s been through it and knows what it takes to get you across the finish line.
📞 Contact Desmond Cura | REMAX Hawaiʻi West Oʻahu | 808.679.5276 | DesmondCura@remaxhawaii.com