by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
When you spend time working on someone’s physique you end up transforming their mind and spirit as well.
As a former personal trainer, Kris Pedersen, director of new sales development at Lifestyles Realtors, learned how to really listen to people and help them achieve their goals.
“A lot of people don’t listen,” said Pedersen. “Many people like to speak more than they like to listen. Everyone likes to talk, so I would just sit back and listen before responding to them. I have a unique understanding of people.”
That way he could find out things about them and find things to talk about in the future and make their time with him more enjoyable.
That technique transferred over well into real estate where it is important to listen to customers to find out what they need and want.
“You have to have a different hat on for everybody,” said Pedersen. “You have to learn how to deal with different people.”
He was a personal trainer at the Ponte Vedra Inn and Club for six years and before that he spent four years with Powerhouse Gym as a trainer.
He also learned how to build relationships, which now help him in his new profession.
Pedersen was first introduced to real estate through a client, Michael Bugg, president and broker of Lifestyles Realtors.
“Michael said with all my contacts and all I knew about Ponte Vedra Beach, I should get a real estate license,” said Pedersen. “He got onto me for about six months to get into real estate, so finally I decided to take night classes and got my real estate license.”
He decided to continue training and just do real estate on the side.
Pedersen’s first sale was $1.3 million, propelling him forward into a full-time real estate career a year ago. He achieved a record sale of $4.5 million in his first few months as a Realtor.
Pedersen continued doing general real estate at Lifestyles Realtors for a few months until Bugg approached him about his developer contacts, of which he had many from his training days.
“For the first month, I spent learning the comparables, neighborhoods and everything about real estate that I could,” he said. “I had trained a lot of the wives of area developers. When Mike went to meet with developers, I knew a lot of them from training their wives, so he took me with him on one of his meetings. I helped him get the deal together. Valencia was my first project and then he started asking me to go to more meetings with developers.”
After working with developers for a few months, Bugg offered Pedersen a salaried position as director of new sales development.
Pedersen’s new responsibilities include the coordination and oversight of lenders and their programs, initial pricing strategies and marketing during community conversions. He meets with the developers and gets the entire marketing package ready for them to sell their product.
“I do all the pricing for the units and bring in the lenders and title staff into the picture,” said Pedersen. “I put this whole picture together for the developer and say ‘Here is your management, sales staff, lenders and title staff.’”
He then hands them off to others in the company to complete the deal while he moves onto the next project.
Though real estate is a long way from personal training, Pedersen is happy to have his past to help him in his new job.
He played baseball in college intending to have a professional baseball career after school. A shoulder injury ended his baseball career and while in physical therapy he found his new one - personal training.
“I decided to become a personal trainer because I liked that field and it was more flexible with my time,” he said.
The new career has produced a family, too - he has been married to Danielle, director of operations for Lifestyles Realtors, for a year and a half.