Shakira Scott’s mom is a real estate broker, and if you ask her, that’s what pushed her to get her real estate license at the age of 18.
Scott graduated from high school in three years at 17 years old, after essentially skipping her junior year because she was ahead. Once she graduated, she started to think about what’s next for her. Real estate and its promise of building generational wealth appealed to her. At 17, Scott started her pre-license real estate course, which overlapped with her freshman year at Louisiana State University. And a year later, Scott was a licensed real estate agent in the state of Louisiana, where she was born and raised, despite constantly being asked, why didn’t she just wait until after college?
“I know what I want from life,” Scott told Fortune. “I kind of felt like why wait when the resources are here and I can do both. Now I have an earlier start than others would, and I’m glad I [made] that decision. It was stressful and it still is kind of stressful, but the good always outweighs the bad.”
Now she’s a 19-year-old real estate agent and a full-time student at LSU majoring in marketing, and she knows exactly what she wants.
“I want to be successful, I want to inspire other people, so they can see that age has nothing to do with your level of success,” Scott said. “If you want something, you can go and get it, and I just want to be that inspiration for people.”
And at just 19, Scott is making six figures, typically over $10,000 a month, she said. In her first two months of being a licensed real estate agent, which was January and February of last year, Scott didn’t sell a single home. The next month, she sold her first home, and said she was “pretty stoked about that.” After listing the home, the sale was pending 48 hours later, and she made $9,000 in commission. Scott’s confidence went up with that first check, and she felt like she could keep this going. In April of last year, the month after her first sale, Scott said she made $21,000 in commission, selling three homes. It’s been a trend, for the most part, for her to make a minimum of $10,000 each month, Scott said.
“I’m not going to lie, when I got those first two commission checks, I kind of went crazy,” Scott said. “But after that, I was like, I’ve had my fun, now it’s time to just save and invest.”
Scott wants to build duplexes in her hometown of Plaquemine, La., and she’s already looking for the vacant land. But for now, aside from being a full-time college student, Scott is working on building her social media platform along with an educational platform selling ebooks she’s written to help those looking to get into real estate. Her ebooks cover such topics as passing the real estate exam and getting sales as a young real estate agent. It all started with people asking her how she got her license and what she’s done to become a successful real estate agent at such a young age, and from there she simply sat down and started writing, as it was one of the only ways she could think of to teach as many people as she could.
In a typical Gen Z fashion, Scott catches the attention of others by capturing the seemingly glamorous parts of her lifestyle. With more than 125,000 followers on TikTok, you’ll see Scott posting clips of herself hopping out of a Mercedes-Benz in a chic outfit, going shopping, and attending fancy dinners. But that’s not all she posts. Scott frequently shares how she got her license at 18 and how she went from zero sales to making six figures in commission, which she said she did with the help of a good broker (her mom in her case) and a solid marketing strategy that helped her secure leads.
“When I first started, I was kind of like a ghost,” Scott said. “I wasn’t doing any type of advertisement, I wasn’t talking to anyone. I just kind of had my license and no one really knew. But once I came up with a good lead generation formula and stuck to it, things really changed for me.”
That meant using social media, marketing herself through digital advertising and physical fliers, reaching out to people and going door to door, letting them know she’s a realtor. Her success is because of her discipline and her ability to find a balance in managing her schoolwork and real estate, Scott said. But even just getting started in real estate at such a young age was hard. Working with clients and handling all the paperwork were two things she had to get used to quickly. However, being able to help people and seeing their reaction after closing on their dream home have made it all worth it, she said.
“People are eager to learn, and you’d be surprised at the amount of people who actually want to get into real estate but just have no clue how,” Scott said.
