Why Mindset Is Critical to Launching Your Own Firm

When Melissa Alexander left the Memphis-based Cushman & Wakefield affiliate where she’d been part of a top-producing industrial team to launch her own brokerage business in a new city, she was forced to hit the ground running.

“I was in a bit of a square peg, round hole kind of situation,” Alexander, now a senior vice president at Foundry Commercial in Nashville, says. “I had the experience but didn’t have the book of business in Nashville for someone to say yeah, join my shop. I faced a lot of skepticism, especially in a sector like industrial where there aren’t a lot of women at the table. I was saying, hey, I’m here. I’m ready to work. I’m ready to hustle. Just give me a desk, a phone and a laptop.”

Alexander and co-panelists Marissa Limsiaco and DeLea Becker will tackle the ins and out of striking out on your own to develop your own firm in the closing panel of this year’s Women of Influence event in Deer Valley. She says she ultimately found a “very entrepreneurial” option in Foundry, where she wasn’t discounted for being a woman.

“That was very important,” she says. “They believed in me and thought it would be beneficial for someone like me to lead their platform who was starting their book of business in Nashville. It turned out they were right.”

Alexander will also talk about the role of mindset: most women, she says, say they feel like they need to know exactly how to do something before they actually do it. But “we need to really be saying, I have the skill set to master this. Let me take a chance on myself and do it,” she says. “I know I have the skills, the hustle factor and I know what I want. I’m going to take that leap of faith. It’s not going to be easy but will be very rewarding.”

In the year leading up to her transition to Foundry, Alexander dedicated herself to establishing an “unavoidable” social media presence. She launched a podcast, CRE Chats, where she and her co-host break down their insights to questions they receive on Twitter from market observers about industry trends, with the goal of staying on top of what’s happening in the business.

“But because I was so vocal online, it ended up launching me into this person that everyone knew outside of Nashville,” she says. “Anyone can take that same strategy wherever they are in their career.”

Check back for more thoughts from Melissa and her colleagues on the upcoming Women Of Influence “Is it Time to Launch Your Own Firm?” panel in the coming weeks.