Athena Brownson
speaker
330 appearances
8 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard May 2025
Athena Brownson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I ended up going into the field that I never in a million years thought I would end up in, and that is real estate. Now, I say I never thought I would end up in real estate because A, I don't think anyone grows up saying, oh, I'm going to be a real estate agent when I grow up. That's just not something you hear very often. But more in the small town that I was raised in, Breckenridge,
There were more real estate offices than t-shirt shops. I grew up thinking real estate was, I had the preconceived notion that it was a little bit corny and there were the kind of used car salesman mentality, even though my dad is a home builder. So I grew up on job sites. I Followed him.
I have very fond but funny memories of going to job sites with him in the freezing cold, watching his projects unfold and develop, and watching the impact that he had on this town. And it was pretty incredible, but it was something that my dad did. Because of that, as a young person, I wanted to make my own path.
I went into interior design after graduating from college, and I was working in the interior design industry, both in Denver and Breckenridge, designing hotels, high-end residences, but I didn't feel that I was being fulfilled. To me, it was a nine-to-five job that I was counting down the hours to get through. I had a dear girlfriend at the time, still one of my best friends.
And she is one of the most successful real estate agents in the country. She is top 1%. Thank you, Charlotte. And I was having dinner with her one evening and she said, Athena, you love people. You love homes. You love design. Why are you not a real estate agent? And I scratched my head. And to be honest, I had never even thought about it. This was 10 years ago that this conversation happened.
And she said, just meet with the owner of my company. I really think that you two would hit it off. You have very similar, like how you do business and how you view people. You're very relational. I really think that you two would hit it off. So I met with the owner of her company actually two days later. And this was a small real estate brokerage in Denver.
And I was so impressed with his approach to business being relationship based business and not transactional. I was so blown away with this. He's like sunshine in human form. Still a dear mentor, friend of mine that I quit my job the next day, signed up for real estate school and got my real estate license about two months later. And that was 10 years ago. And here we are.
The path since I got my real estate license has been one that I never in a million years could have predicted. I say that as you will learn more of my story throughout this episode. I think we go into life and all things with an idea of what life is going to look like for us. And for me, the beginning of my real estate career, I was Studying under one of the most amazing agents. He was my mentor.
I had an amazing coach. I had really incredible people around me and I was succeeding pretty early on. And in real estate, you generally say it takes time. A year to really get going and three years to really start being successful. After a year, I found myself having great success, really building amazing relationships. By year three, I like to say I thought I was at the top of the world.
I had grand visions of what my real estate future was going to look like. Life never goes to plan. And I learned that the hard way. And I think we all learned that the hard way. I was diagnosed with Lyme disease, which I will also explain more of about seven and a half years ago. So in my three and a half years into real estate, I was like at the top of my game, thought I was invincible.
All of a sudden I started getting very strange illnesses for a young, healthy person. And I was diagnosed with Lyme disease and Lyme disease, unfortunately, for me, took out my immune system and caused multiple autoimmune diseases. So the last seven years of my life have been, first of all, I don't even remember what it's like to feel okay. I live in constant chronic pain.
I get plasma transfusions four days every month. My world pretty much revolves around trying to stay alive and trying to fight this really horrific disease that never in a million years I thought I would get. And I like to say that if life did not give us adversity and challenges, we would never have the opportunity for growth. But man, I would not wish this way of growing on anyone.
But that's where I am. I run a successful team at Compass here in Denver. I still love real estate as much as I did on day one, if not more. Love the people I work with. And through this journey, I have learned so many incredible things that I'm excited to share with you. But it has come through adversity and through fighting every single day to keep going because
There are most days I don't want to. And to be able to have a career for me, real estate, that is something I'm so passionate about and is my why. I work with people that I love, that I built lifelong relationships with and helping them to really buy and sell a home is the biggest transaction you do in your life. And to be a part of people's lives in that way and a part of
each chapter through home, that's my why. And it keeps me getting out of bed even when I don't want to. So it's really been an evolution of understanding what my why is and building my toolkit for continuing forward even when I don't want to.
So I was 25 years old and that's when I was diagnosed with Lyme disease. I am not actually sure when I was bit. So the way you get Lyme disease is a tick bite. I personally have never even seen a tick. We don't have a ton of ticks in Colorado, but as a professional skier, I was traveling globally, and I was in heavily wooded areas. So at some point, I was bit by a tick.
That tick was carrying Lyme disease along with two other co-infections that I am also fighting. And... Lyme is interesting as it lays dormant in your system until something weakens your immune system and it can come out and take over. For me, I ended up having neck surgery. I broke my neck skiing and my immune system took a hit from having neck surgery.
It was weekend, and that's when all of my symptoms started to act up with Lyme disease. And I was really fortunate that a doctor knew a lot about Lyme disease. It's something that is a little bit new in the medical field. There's not a ton of doctors that are very Lyme literate, I like to say. And I was very fortunate to be diagnosed immediately.
It's been seven and a half years, almost eight now of fighting Lyme disease.
I would love nothing more. And I was in the same boat. I had no idea what Lyme disease was before I was diagnosed with it. In fact, when my doctor suggested that we do testing for it, I laughed because I was so unaware of Lyme disease. And I also was very naive to how significant it is. So Lyme disease is interesting because it affects everyone differently.
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