The Punk Rocker Turned Bad Ass Businesswoman
Meet Jenelle Isaacson Etzel, CEO/Founder of Living Room Realty
Dear Fabulous Readers,
When you think of the creative arts, what comes to mind? Music, perhaps? Or art, dance, or theater?
What about business?
For me, founding companies and organizations is creativity at its finest. All around us, ideas are swirling in the ethos, points of light pulsing within invisible shimmery waves, searching for the perfect person at the perfect moment to make magic, as postulated by writer Elizabeth Gilbert in her book Big Magic.
That’s what happened with my firms: I was the perfect person at the perfect time to receive, act on, and lead. As we grew and as I ideated new service offerings, adjacent non-profits, and growth strategies, I felt like an actress in an improv troupe, a sculptor shaping raw materials into beauty, a painter with an endless canvass of hundreds of communities seeking more bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly conditions. And with my most recent creation—Eastside Jewish Commons—I felt like a scriptwriter, director, and producer rolled in one.
So it didn’t surprise me when real estate visionary Jenelle Isaacson Etzel walked up in paint-splattered cargo pants to join me for lunch at an outdoor cafe and said that she started her firm as a way to support her music and art.
Her journey started as the lead singer for a touring punk band, earning her an experiential MBA negotiating contracts, arranging travel, managing schedules and budgets, writing songs, and performing.
“I was helping a friend set tiles and it hit me that she lived there for free because she owned the house and rented out rooms to others,” Jenelle explained. She went and got a real estate license and quickly found success with folks like her who didn’t follow the “traditional” path: go to college, get married, have kids, buy house. This market gap—creatives, single parents, tradespeople, people pursuing non-traditional career paths—became her crusade. They too, she thought, should realize the benefits of homeownership, and she would be the one to help. Not just her, but an army of brokers like her.
She started her own company, Living Room Realty, in 2009 when she was the sole provider for two daughters under the age of two and real estate was way, way down. Pretty much everyone around her told her that her timing was off, but she embraced the challenge. In this speech, Jenelle explains,
“Success was the only option. What I took away from my time in my girl’s punk band was, you don’t ask for permission. No one’s going to invite you to the table.”
At she went to find brokers, she realized that recruiting based on current numbers wasn’t going to work, because everyone’s numbers were down, including top producers encouraging clients to hold off until the market improved. Instead, she decided to focus on two core things:
Were they volunteering, playing on or coaching a team, or otherwise involved in their community? “I knew,” she says, “that when the market came back, their community would show up to support them.”
Did they have a smile on their face? “Because it doesn’t get any worse than it is right now, and if you can’t find the joy in it, you won’t survive, and I can’t afford to be around you financially or spiritually as we build this and get this off the ground.”
Today, Living Room Realty, a certified B-Corp, sells more than $1 billion annually and differentiates itself by applying a membership model rooted in peer-to-peer learning and support. A mom of two teenage girls, Jenelle employs 24 in the real estate brokerage, property management, and maintenance divisions of her company and oversees more than 100 brokers.
Jenelle uses the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership (Dethmer, et.al.) as a core part of her business strategy. She credits her Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) cohort with getting her through COVID-19 and says to invest in your people, encourage them to stand up for themselves, and never make a hiring decision under duress.
In her excellent JoyPunk podcast, she interviews business leaders carving their own lane, including fabulous female founders like Jessie Burke of the Society Hotel, Michelle Cairo of Olympic Provisions, Jill Kuehler of Freeland Spirits, and Katie Poppe of Little Big Burger, Boxer Ramen, and Blue Star Donuts. (I also recommend episode #11, the matchmaking contest that led to her meeting her husband.)
Jenelle radiates with the dazzling, intoxicating, even intimidating conviction of a person who knows exactly why she was put on this earth and is doing that exact thing, showing up as her perfectly unique self, applying the eye of an artist and the ear of a musician to business, creating opportunities for herself and others.
Let us all take her advice to heart: “As founders, we need to find and embrace our singular, irrepressible selves and be brave enough to take action without apology.”
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken” Oscar Wilde