Today we’d like to introduce you to Manny Cruz & Alicia Chiang-Cruz.
Alicia has been a licensed real estate agent since 2015 after leaving the banking industry. Manny has been a licensed real estate agent since 2018 after leaving the restaurant industry. At the time before leaving the bank, Alicia was pregnant with our firstborn son, Oliver, who was born in 2016. Alicia had been a licensed real estate agent since early 2015 but was unable to actively work in real estate due to a conflict of interest being that she worked for a bank. When Oliver was five weeks old, she decided to move past the banking world and into real estate where she began working for Keller Williams in Rancho Cucamonga.
In 2018, our second son Maxwell was born and after many years in the restaurant industry, Manny decided it was time to move on and jumped into real estate where he began working for The Now Agency in Rancho Cucamonga. After a short time there, we both decided to join our current brokerage- WERE Real Estate- which is based out of Covina/ Rancho Cucamonga.
The deciding factor in both situations was our family in all honesty. Both industries were great, they provided plenty of opportunity for us to grow in and we were both in very good positions before leaving. Manny was a Field Leader for Chipotle and Alicia was an Operations Supervisor for Wells Fargo. As great as those jobs were, the roles we had were very demanding and kept us away from home- a lot. After having our first son, we realized how much more time we wanted to spend raising our children rather than being away from them. It was a really tough and scary decision, but ultimately (two of) the best decisions we’ve made.
Don’t get us wrong, real estate is also a very demanding industry in itself. You could even argue it is more demanding to a certain degree. As with most sales jobs, we don’t necessarily have the luxury of customers running to our doors to pay for a service. We have to actively work at finding the business and clientele without any guarantee that it will result in a commission check. There is a lot of behind the scenes work that go into taking a client from the initial contact stage all the way through to a completed sale or purchase. For this reason, we have to absolutely put our best foot forward with every opportunity to ensure our clients can accomplish their real estate goals, but also so we can earn a living.
The benefit for us in taking this risk is being able to not only work together as a Husband and Wife team but also the fact that we get to work on our terms. We have the chance to spend plenty of time raising our two boys, and we get to plan our schedules to fit our needs as well as our children’s needs. We also have an awesome network of people we get to choose to work with. We, of course make it a point to tailor our schedules to fit our client’s needs, but we have been fortunate enough to work with REALLY awesome families who also understand the importance of family values. While leaving the corporate world was scary, the reward of doing so has been more than worth it for us both.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
It hasn’t always been a smooth road. As with any job, there are bumps along the way- some of which you see coming and some that catch you completely off guard. We are fortunate enough to have an awesome group of people surrounding us who help make the challenging times easier to navigate through.
Some of the early challenges we faced stemmed from the career changes themselves. Going from the corporate world to the self-employed world is not typically something most people can wake up to and do flawlessly. There are a lot of things to learn, skills and habits to build, and mistakes that get made which help you learn how to be better moving forward. You don’t have a “boss” to keep you on task or tell you what needs to be done, there are a lot of different strategies to learn to bring in more business, and you have to get comfortable with being on camera or talking to strangers who don’t always want to talk to you.
Real Estate can be very intimidating in a lot of ways. You are literally helping someone accomplish one of their biggest lifetime goals or purchase/sell one of their biggest assets. You want to get it right and you want it to be a smooth process every single time, but there are things that can come up during the process that can be very challenging.
As you know, we’re big fans of The Cruz Family Realtors. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Our mission and focus is to help as many people as possible accomplish their real estate goals by simplifying the process as much as we can. Buying or selling your home does not need to be a confusing, complicated journey. We believe that honesty, transparency, communication, and education are the keys to a successful transaction. Our commitment is to provide all of the facts needed to make an informed decision when buying or selling your home, as well as to educate our clients along the way.
As a husband and wife team, family values are extremely important to us. We know that buying or selling your home can be intimidating, which is why we treat our clients as extensions of our own family. The most important thing people need to know about us is that day after day we remain committed to our clients. We treat them as if they are our own family and before we lay our heads to rest at night, we always make sure our family is taken care of.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
Not necessarily related to work – Alicia is an AVID listener of The Arm Chair Expert podcast by Dax Shepard. She is also big on mindfulness meditation. She really enjoys @mindset.therapy on IG for daily motivation.
Manny enjoys listening to Andy Frisella and also has a motivational quote app that sends motivating/ inspiring quotes daily. No particular podcasts are his “favorite” however he is open to listening to a variety of different podcasts.
These things aren’t life-changing in anyway however they do provide a little extra push especially when we feel like slowing down.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.cruzfamilyrealtors.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cruzfamilyrealtors/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cruzfamilyrealtors
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CruzFamRealtors
- Other: https://www.zillow.com/profile/aliciaachiang/
https://www.tiktok.com/@cruzfamilyrealtors?lang=en
https://www.zillow.com/profile/mannycruzrealty/
