Meet Allie Altschuler | Real Estate Agent

We had the good fortune of connecting with Allie Altschuler and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Allie, what habits do you feel helped you succeed?
I’m by all accounts a healthy-living person: I work out, I eat right, blah blah blah. But this trend of toxic positivity…this Mark Wahlbergian scheduling the “successful people” try to foist on the regulars…I think for most of us, it’s bullshit and it does more harm than good. The relentless goal setting has a tendency to make you feel 2″ tall. I don’t wake up at 5 am and meditate and workout and take an ice bath and make a dream board before breakfast. I wake up and groan and immediately doomscroll like most of my compatriots. So what habit do I have that DOES help? When it comes to my business, I make sure that I don’t allow myself the habit of focusing on numbers and money. If you focus on your income, you’re already off track, but that’s what so many realtors seem to do. Once you’re in the habit of focusing on sales goals, you lose sight of the point of the job: helping people. So that’s the primary habit, the Golden Habit, that does actually breed positivity and success: Just focus on helping people…after your morning doomscroll.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Even as a realtor, a lot of other realtors make me feel itchy. As a group, we’ve earned our reputation as egomaniacal sleazeballs. But there’s a rebellious league of honorable realtors out there, and I’m proud that my team and I are a part of it. The barrier to entry in this business is low, but so is the success rate. Once you’re looking at agents who are actually good at their jobs, you can pretty quickly separate out the ones who are successful because they’re constantly looking out for number one. I’m proud that it took no coercing to make sure that my teammates and I are never, ever those people. We realize that awards and accolades and supplemental degrees (lol, come on, really? in real estate?) don’t matter at all if your client doesn’t miss hanging out with you once the transaction is over.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Oh boy, my head spins trying to plan a week in LA because there are 30+ different versions of LA. If my best friend were just like me (she is not,) I’d suggest:

Dinner at Golden Deli in San Gabriel, a class at Yoga House, a long wander around the Norton Simon and the Natural History Museum; sushi at Sushi Gen in Little Tokyo (and fresh strawberry mochi from Fugetsu-Do); sitting on the patio in front of the Pasadena Playhouse at Saso having a long, loud, cocktail-laden dinner; Ethiopian lunch at Messob on Fairfax followed by scouring every inch of Cannonball and Tilly; and always, always, any show at Largo, sandwiched by rounds of drinks at Roger Room.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My mentor in real estate, Steve Clark, has been instrumental in my success in this business; my husband, tattooer Danny Dunbar, has been a never-ending well of support. But the unsung heroes who’ve really shaped me as a person, the women in my corner before I even met my husband or my mentor, are the women of V-Day Studio City. V-Day Studio City is a chapter of V-Day International, the non-profit that raises money through performances of The Vagina Monologues. Through working with a non-profit, dealing with vulnerable people in very stressful situations, and producing a decade+ of shows on a shoestring budget, I’ve learned endless lessons about humans, community, strength, patience, and fortitude. “How are you so calm?” is a common question I get from anxious clients. I think the default is to attribute that calm to having practiced yoga forever, but it’s actually because I’ve stood on stage alone blathering about my vagina. That’ll make you feel like you can do anything gracefully.

Website: www.clarkliving.com

Instagram: @alliealt

Yelp: https://yelp.to/8ASs4WxAinb

Image Credits
Alex Zarour, Sami Drasin, Walter Brady