Meet Karen Bernardi

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Karen Bernardi a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Karen, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

I think we all have many stories and experiences we can look at and say we came out stronger from. And if you think about the definition of resilience, the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness, I think a lot of people look at it as you had to of survived something or experienced something to build it. But for me, I think it is my ability to stay confident in who I am and stay focused on the positive no matter what it is I am encountering in life. You can shine a negative or positive light on everything you encounter, and I firmly believe that your level of resilience directly correlates with the lens through which you choose to see the world through.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I started my Real Estate career juggling the demands of being a working single mom with teaching myself everything I needed to know about real estate. Over the last 35 years I have emerged from living in a tent and getting support from EFAA (Emergency Family Assistance Association), to building a successful Real Estate Team that now contributes back to EFAA, among many other non-profits in our community.

A big part of my success I think can be contributed to my focus on always doing what is right, looking for what problems my clients have that I can solve, my commitment to my community, and being willing to do things I don’t want to do. Breaking through your own personal barriers is where true elevation can be found.

In my free time, I enjoy spending time with family, being active, traveling, and I’m really into pickle ball right now.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

One of the most important qualities that contributed to my success was being coachable. You have to be able to set your ego aside and absorb/replicate everything your coach, mentor, or educators are teaching you. I joined a coaching program at the start of my career and maintained it to this day. Also, being able to set your ego aside in negotiations and look for the win-win instead of being right. In Real Estate, and I am certain many other industries, you are dealing with a lot of the same people over and over again and it is important to have good relationships with them.

Being creative and being able to think outside of the box will also help you with success.

Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?

It is important to develop your strengths and delegate the tasks you are not as strong at (if they are not producing tasks). I learned quickly that I was great at sales and negotiating, but I was horrible at documents and administrative type tasks. I found others who were strong in those areas though, so I could focus on the high producing tasks and make my business more profitable. I built my team with this concept of specialization, which was unique for the industry at the time. Delegating is key to taking your business to the next level. Even delegating at home. I’m not a good cook, so taking that off of my plate at home left a lot more space for things that were better contributing to my business and happiness.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thebernardigroup.com/

Image Credits

Rockin Media