Jesse Van Nek, broker-owner of Gympie’s REMAX Property Group, used to measure survival in eight-second increments.
Long before taking home national real estate trophies, the Rockhampton-born agent was risking life and limb on the professional rodeo circuit, taking on 1,000-kilogram bulls across Australia and the United States.
Today, Jesse is steering one of the fastest-growing property footprints along Queensland’s Sunshine Coast corridor, applying the exact same psychological grit that kept him alive in the arena to dominate his local market.
His transition from the professional rodeo circuit to the property world was far from a comfortable corporate handover.
Returning to Australia around 2016 at just 22 years old, Jesse realised that while his peers had picked up trade qualifications or established long-term careers, his single-minded focus on bull riding had left him completely unprepared for the reality of everyday life away from elite sports.
“I was kind of oblivious to what normal life looks like away from professional sport,” Jesse says.
“I was doing concreting in between, and that very quickly became hard on my knees because I’d beaten my body up like you wouldn’t believe. At 22, I shouldn’t have had as many injuries as I did, but going into labor jobs wasn’t an option that would be viable forever.”
His entry into the industry happened entirely by chance while hanging out at a friend’s practice venue, where he was mentoring younger riders and staying connected to the sport; it was there that he crossed paths with Jesse James, who was a sales consultant at the Ray White office in Redlands Bay.
Needing a clear career path to protect his battered body, Jesse sought guidance from his cousin who was a trusted mentor, asking him what business he would choose if he could start his life over.
When his cousin immediately suggested real estate, Jesse made a split-second decision to completely redirect his relentless focus.
The early years, however, were brutally tough, as adapting to the slow burn of real estate tested every ounce of his patience and nearly forced him out of the industry altogether.
“I actually quit real estate five times,” Jesse reveals, opening up about his volatile early transition.
“I disliked real estate with the way that it was and what it can do to people, because it can really burn people out and wash them up, and I was the experience of one of those. In bull riding, I lived from event to event, getting that quick dopamine fix every Saturday.
“Real estate doesn’t give you a break from Saturday to Saturday; it’s near six days a week, you never even catch a breath, and you might be working with a client for three or four years before a listing happens.”
It was only after taking deep mentorship from Jesse James and learning to ditch transactional thinking for authentic human connection that his career completely skyrocketed and that foundational lesson in relational selling became the absolute bedrock of his personal business philosophy.
“I was this raspy little bull rider who thought he might have known something, but the truth was I knew nothing,” Jesse says.
“The one thing he really drummed into me was the importance of forming relationships, and that has been the true underpinning of all the growth I’ve experienced. It is about communication, bonding, and creating real relationships versus just looking at the transactional piece.”
The bond between the two men remains so unbreakable that Jesse James will be standing at the podium as the master of ceremonies at Jesse’s upcoming wedding to his business and life partner, Teesh Ottesen.
The results of that relational philosophy speak volumes and after establishing REMAX Property Group, Jesse was recognised at the national REMAX annual awards, taking home the coveted award for Business Growth for an Individual Sales Associate.
His team has strategically capitalised on massive regional migration patterns, with industry data showing that 80 per cent of buyer inquiry in the Gympie region originates directly from the Sunshine Coast.
“When we opened the business up here, the median price was four-seventy, which was identical to where another coastal market was when I first started out,” he says.
“It is literally watching history repeat itself, and it gives me the opportunity to encourage people positively to remain calm and keep getting involved with real estate in this region because there is so much opportunity, especially from a development point of view.”
Despite his rapid rise, national accolades, and expanding footprint, Jesse remains intensely humble and deeply grounded; his relentless work ethic stems from a childhood spent in Westwood, a tiny township southwest of Rockhampton, where financial hardship forged his early ambition.
“There was a point when I wanted to try bull riding for the first time as an eleven-year-old, and my parents couldn’t afford the thirty dollars for me to ride that night,” Jesse says.
“That set a dream for me, showing me how poor and lacking of money our family was when my mom and dad had to take the gear off me.
” As soon as I was making an income from bull riding, I moved out early to soften the blow on them, coming home to hand over money… I was completely driven for financial freedom.”
To navigate the high-stakes environment of business ownership, Jesse relies on the exact same mental conditioning he used to survive mounting savage bulls. Ever since he was 17, he has studied self-image psychology, drawing heavily on Dr Maxwell Maltz’s classic book, Psycho-Cybernetics, to maintain composure under immense pressure.
Today, he uses those same principles to train his team and foster an internal culture built entirely around shared growth.
“Growing this organisation has been one of the toughest things we’ve ever endured, and I would even say this is as tough as riding bulls in terms of the pressure and the mental rehearsal required to stay conscious and balanced,” he says.
“If you are off your game in either arena, you get chewed up and spat out, but we stay completely detached emotionally from the outcome by obsessing over our daily process.
“Winning for me now isn’t about the money; it is honestly about watching other people get that same winning feeling through their own personal and professional growth.”