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I am thrilled to announce a significant addition to my Real Estate credentials: the American Warrior Real Estate Professional certification.
Last Friday was a day that I had been looking forward to for a long time! A friend and Mortgage lending Professional, Randy Mitchell had invited me to a Continuous Education event put on by his company, Fairway Independent Mortgage Company partnered with the American Warrior Initiative. As I said, I had been looking forward to this event for a long time. After 7 weeks, I left Baby boy at home with his Grandparents and spent a day of amazing professional development with my brokerage team. Most of you know that the Military is very important to me, as my husband is a very involved E6 with the Missouri National Guard.
The American Warrior Initiative is a nonprofit organization created by Mortgage Lender Louise Thaxton and Veteran Mom and Author, Karen Vaugh. The mission of AWI is to “bring awareness of the challenges facing the men and women who have served in the military when returning from war”. The boot camps they hold as continue education train realtors to, “handle with excellence the home purchase needs of active duty and former military clients”.
Now, you might think the training was focused on the details behind a VA loan and how to work hard to get these contracts sealed, but that wasn’t it. This training was purely to open our hearts and connect us to the military community. Louise Thaxton, spoke on her experiences and the people she’s been thankful to meet who serve our country. Her organization raises money for many initiatives that give back to our service members, giving “service dogs, business grants, home upgrades, mortgage-free housing, and more.” At our training day, we got to witness the giving of funds to a local Kansas City Veteran to have his dog trained as an emotional support companion. These funds were actually donated by participants and matched by the AWI organization. I tell you, there was not a dry eye in the room when this man was awarded these funds and even better we got to see sweet Sophie (his dog) and the connection they had as well.
The leaders and presenters all showed up in combat boots, purchased from The Boot Campaign. The Boot Campaign encourages Americans to #LaceUpAmerica and show an outward expression of support by wearing these combat boots. In 2022, 91 cents of every dollar spent on the site was donated to programs for Veterans and Military families.
Our day ended with a guest speaker, one that I was honored to meet and my husband was shell shockingly jealous of me for getting to listen to. Jason Redman, is a Navy Seal, Author and entrepreneur. He shared with us his life changing experience as a Navy Seal and how he persevered through some of the hardest times in his life, and to be honest a harder time than any of us can imagine. He described in detail the experience he had in Iraq that changed his life forever, if you haven’t heard about his story I highly recommend looking it up.
What was most inspiring though, was the way he chose to change his perspective on life and overcome anything thrown at him. He challenged us to change our perspective and get rid of the words “Bad day” from our personal vocabularies. He lead us to think hard about our “first world problems” and reflect on the “problems” that we let dictate the trajectories of our lives and days. “If you’re not being shot at and the person next to you isn’t dying, it’s not a bad day” he said. I took that challenge literal, I will no longer be accounting days as “bad”. Now, there will be tough days and hard days but there are “No Bad Days”.
After the presentation, we were all gifted a signed copy of Jason’s second book, Overcome. He has three books total and I suspect more to come! I was able to take my copy up and get it personally signed for my husband, who like I mentioned was extremely jealous of this experience. Jason was so kind and thankful for my husbands service, but meeting him was truly an honor to me.
This training was life changing and I plan to continue attending every single year and encourage other Real Estate Professionals to attend as well. If you are a Veteran, or you know a Veteran who is needing to buy or sell, or is curious about their benefits and the process, please reach out! I am honored to serve, those who serve.
