Real Estate Badassery

Kendyl Young is a badass.

It’s true. And yeah, I get that this isn’t a term often associated with REALTORS, but I promise you she embodies it fully.

But let’s back up. How do I KNOW she’s a badass (and yeah, I just wanted to say that again)? Aside from the fact that the body of evidence supporting my assertion is sizable, I was lucky enough to sit down and chat with her–TWICE!–about real estate, being an innovator, risk, and an industry that she thinks has gotten far too male, pale, and stale.

Let’s Start At The Very Beginning (I’m told it’s a very good place to start).

Kendyl comes from a world deeply entrenched in real estate. Her mom was a REALTOR extraordinaire–someone who was among the “who’s who” in SoCAL real estate–and was surrounded by the ins and outs (and endless peculiarities) of the industry. So when she graduated from UCLA, Kendyl suited up and went to work for corporate America, but quickly realized that world wasn’t something for which she was cut out. She had already been molded to fit another world entirely, so it was to real estate that she turned and it was there that she found her calling and the domain in which she could shout her barbaric YAWP.

By the way … there aren’t a ton of REALTORS who inspire references to Walt Whitman, but Kendyl isn’t your run-of-the-mill agent. I digress.

She made a name for herself by being The Smart REALTOR. She was a brainiac who sold houses to other brainiacs. She learned the business inside and out, and soon realized it was a business she wanted to change. After a brief stint at a smaller agency, she’d signed on with Coldwell Banker in Glendale–the epitome of traditional real estate brokerages–and though she was enormously successful there, she knew that the traditional business model wasn’t one to which she cottoned and that, one day, she’d turn the whole shebang on its ear.

An innovator with a creative spirit

A Seismic Shift.

By 2013, Kendyl had long since made a name for herself by being a straight shooter who spoke her mind and as someone who told people exactly what she thought (good or bad) and also someone who wouldn’t settle for the status quo (doing things the way they’d always been done simply because that was the way things had always been done was a fat load of poppycock, as far as she was concerned). That wasn’t enough for her. She had grown increasingly frustrated by an industry that was controlled by “righty tighty whities” (for the record, it’s expressions like that which have made me pledge my eternal devotion to this spitfire) and a business that was, quite frankly, male, pale, and stale.

An innovator with a creative spirit, Kendyl was ready to strike out on her own. She wanted to practice real estate the way she envisioned it. She wanted it to be something that was fun, technically sharp, educational, beautiful, and quite simply, DIFFERENT. So in the summer of 2013, she created DIGGs, a division of Dilbeck Real Estate Real Living and fired the shot heard round the real estate world. It was nothing short of a seismic shift in the industry.

DIGGs (a clever play on “how’re the new digs”) was founded on the principles of great design, education, innovation, and deep empathy for the real estate client. Its business model is different. It works from the client’s point of view, rather than the brokerage’s. It employs clever use of social media, innovative use of video, and rich, sensory experiences for its clients. Moreover, it gives Kendyl a place to stake her foothold in the industry and to tell people to move over because things, they are a-changing.

Kendyl’s move started a trend in real estate. There are now agents staking out on their own left and right, agents who are no longer willing to toe the line of the traditional business model and do things in the same old tired way. And that’s badass. When you take a risk and have the balls to say, “THAT’S IT. I’m doing this MY way!” and have a stream of folks say, “YEAH! Us too!” well, that’s a sign that you’ve done something right.

Every industry should have a little Kendyl Young in it. Every business should have more than a modicum of badassery. Do you have it in yours?

As for Kendyl, we don’t know what she’s got up her sleeve next, but we know one thing for certain: whatever it is, she’ll shout it while standing on a table. With a megaphone. She’ll do it loud and proud and some other third thing that rhymes with -oud. We love that and hope to have a front-row seat when she does it.

About the Author Happy Grasshopper

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