“It makes me sound really old,” Nikki Gogan laughs, as she considers her 18 years in the real estate industry.
“It started out as a Saturday morning office job for me, a casual job, and I just worked my way up from there.”
Nikki started on the front desk at a small agency at 15, before being offered a fulltime traineeship in the office.
She then got her real estate licence but had to wait until she turned 18 to be a property manager.
“Then after a year of property management, I started selling,” she recalls.
Nikki has seen a lot of changes over the years, but feels the main differences are not generational, but between country and city approaches.
“I went from a country market, which is a lot more relaxed, to quite a fast-moving Perth market, and there are just different ways of selling,” she says.
“If I think about the way we used to market in the country, when I first started, it’s very different to launching a property in the city.
“You have professional photographers, copywriters, videographers and styling.
“There are so many more people involved, and it’s quite the production to get a property to where you want it.
“There’s a lot more to bringing a property to market now.”
Surprisingly, Nikki says that damaging her professional reputation didn’t cross her mind when attempting to find love on The Bachelor.
“Maybe I was a little naive in not considering that,” she says.
“When I went on reality TV, it wasn’t about career. It was a completely different mindset, it was more of my personal life.
“My only mindset going in was ‘just be me’.”
This attitude, although not career-driven, has served her well.
“When people do meet me, there are no nasty surprises,” she figures.
“I didn’t think going on the show would harm my career in any way. It wasn’t a consideration.
“I just hadn’t watched a lot of reality TV when I went on the show.”
Nor does Nikki feel it’s been particularly beneficial.
“There’s some form of familiarity which may be helpful,” she says.
“I don’t believe for a second that someone has watched the show and gone, ‘Oh, I want her to sell my house’.
“But certainly if I meet someone now, there’s that familiarity – even if they’re not sure why it is they know me.
“Sometimes it’s a conversation starter or an icebreaker, and in real estate, that’s all we need.”
Look out for other agents in our agents x reality TV series and find out what they got out of it and how the experience changed them for better or worse.
