Today we’d like to introduce you to Alina Herman.
Alina, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I moved to the United States from the Ukraine in 2000, with little money and very basic English. It was probably the hardest time, as uncertainty and basic needs like food and housing were my priority. I think the only way to get though moving from one country to another, and achieve something, is to believe that anything is possible, with a lot of grit.
I always loved technology, so this was my natural path to study. I remember somebody told me that becoming an IT architect is very hard and it is only for men. I took this as a challenge. I felt resentment, as in my core I believed I am able to achieve anything I put their mind to.
Moving forward 10 years, I was an IT Datacenter Network Architect in the top FinTech 100 company. I felt accomplished, but surprisingly not fulfilled. I achieved my goal after working really hard for 10 years, and I am not happy? I started asking myself a question, why not? This is when my journey really began.
My search led me to a lot of personal development, self-help books and seminars. With the birth of my kids, my paradigms shifted. Now I wanted to become a better parent to my two little kids, be financially free and archive inner peace and fulfillment. The goal that didn’t lead me to fulfillment, was driven by significance. I was proving to others and myself that I “can” and I had “worth,” but in the end, I was not happy. You can’t convince others that you “can” and you have “worth” if you are not buying into this story yourself.
I began pursuing other goals. My new goals were internal and were coming from my new desire to contribute and to grow into a better person, learn more things about the world for the sake of learning, and share what I know with others.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
When you talk to most people you will hear that their challenges are external like job, money, kids, ex-husband, disability… or you name it.
What I have learned is that external challenges are easier to overcome than internal ones. Let me explain. Only a year after I arrived in the United States, I was dealing with the death of my first husband. At the same time I was going to school, and trying to find a job to pay my bills. When I tried to prove my worth in a male dominated environment to be a better and more hardworking then anybody to become accepted, or when I was working though with my mom as she has late stage 4 cancer or lack of cash flow, after I just quite my fancy corporate job. All these are external challenges, and you will never finding me dwell of it or complaining.
When you challenged beyond what you can take or deal with, then the true solutions come. They manifest in the form of internal growth and realizing that there is nothing you can do about some events in the past or circumstances now. Your choices are to accept the fact that nothing can be done and to accept it in peace.
It is much harder to manage what is going on the inside in our heads than blame and ponder on the external events. I am a big believer in facing insurmountable challenges and growing from them. It is perhaps the reason I left my corporate IT job, I knew that while comfortable with a big salary, I would never get to achieve my new goals and grow. It is also seemed like the only way for an introvert like me to start connecting to new people. I am still working on putting myself out there and reaching out to other people to research on my new ideas.
Property Up – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
My passion for real estate started in my childhood. I remember being a kid and we always had some construction workers working on the house, moving walls or building custom furniture. I watched them daily after school, asking lots of questions. I ended up going to a couple of remodels back in Ukraine as I become older, then I did rehabs here in USA. My husband got his real estate license in 2003 and that is when I started building my first website for his business.
I started working on a bigger website back in 2008 when I realized that we were paying way too much to others for our internet leads. I figured it can’t be that hard. I was wrong and I underestimated how much time and effort it would take to make this happen. After multiple versions of the site, multiple development companies, A/B testing and a lots of out of pocket money, I still didn’t see the desired result.
I was starting to get really frustrated, losing my most important characteristic, my self-confidence. I guess I invested so much time, effort and money that I could not give up.
If you ever read the book Three Feet from Gold, you would know, don’t give up. Lesson learned, I just didn’t reach out to the right people to coach me at the start. I was learning on my own though painful and expensive mistakes. I really had a big idea and wanted to deliver a perfect real estate search portal with lots of bells and whistles. I just didn’t realize that what I was building should be costing over half a million to develop. I think I am proud to say that now we finally have 10,000 monthly visitors and a great number of features, like real estate data analytics, that we put into easy to understand per city infographics. https://propertyup.com/realestate.
We now have a home search based on the department of education school boundary, instead of incomplete and sometimes inaccurate agent data. https://propertyup.com/high-schools
We even calculate our own potential real estate deals based on our own analytics. Perhaps the most impressive feature that we have developed is agent software, where we do predictions on what leads are most likely customer and who should be contacted.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
It is incredible how most of us measure our success by comparing to others. It is perhaps the shortest path to always being miserable in life. You can always find somebody that has a better car, bigger house, higher paying job, more accomplished kids, is skinnier or curvier, that has straighter or curlier hair, and if you are one of those people that live by comparison, you’ll never be happy.
I was there myself, but the moment I shifted my paradigm and began comparing my current self with my past self, I began to feel accomplished in every moment. Even the times of pain and losses and in times of failure, I actually felt better than before, just because I experienced whatever the challenge was and learned from it. I asked myself, what did it take for others I envied to get their results? I realized you don’t get results without sacrifice. I asked myself, would experiencing their challenges really make me happy? I also always remember that there are people out there that are looking up to me and in their eyes, I should be happy and successful, so why did I not feel this way?
In the end, I may not be where I want to be, but I am grateful for where I am now.
Contact Info:
- Address: 18 E Dundee Road, Suite 200, Barrington, IL 60010
- Website: https://propertyup.com
- Phone: 847-847-4711
- Email: alina@propertyup.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PropertyUp/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ay847
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/property-up-barrington
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/c/PropertyUp
Getting in touch: VoyageChicago is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
