Keren Gonen - Real Estate Powerhouse After Coming To The US With 2 Suitcases and $800
Keren Gonen, a top-producing New Jersey real estate agent whose journey is as inspiring as it is powerful. Born and raised in Israel, Keren grew up in an entrepreneurial household before moving to the U.S., where she built a thriving logistics business alongside her father. After experiencing profound personal loss and a major life pivot, Keren reinvented herself—diving into real estate at 39 and quickly becoming the #1 agent in Sussex County, closing nearly $24 million in sales volume in 2024. Beyond her professional success, Keren is a passionate leader in her community, serving as President of the BW NICE Sussex Chapter and founder of Referral Roundtable. She shares how resilience, service, and connection have shaped her career and life, and why helping others is at the heart of everything she does. Tune in to hear Keren’s remarkable story of entrepreneurship, real estate success, community leadership, and personal growth—a true masterclass in turning obstacles into opportunities.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Discover how building financial freedom through real estate can change your life and open new career doors.
- Learn the key steps to smoothly transition into a real estate career and avoid common rookie mistakes.
- Unlock the power of mentoring to fast-track your success and gain insider knowledge from experienced agents.
- Master customer service techniques that turn clients into loyal fans and boost your referral business.
- Explore marketing strategies that attract the right buyers and sellers, helping you stand out in a crowded market.
The key moments in this episode are:
00:00:00 - Introduction and Karen Gonen’s Inspirational Real Estate Journey
00:02:34 - Starting a Real Estate Career from Scratch and Overcoming Challenges
00:05:24 - The Power and Importance of Mentorship in Real Estate Success
00:08:44 - Leveraging Sales and Customer Service Skills to Excel in Real Estate
00:11:15 - Building Lifelong Client Relationships for Sustainable Business Growth
00:14:45 - Overcoming Adversity – Keren’s Journey from Israel to Real Estate Success in the US
00:19:35 - Entrepreneurial Roots – How Family Business Shaped Keren’s Work Ethic
00:22:44 - Transitioning from Bank-Owned Properties to Traditional Real Estate
00:23:39 - Community Involvement as a Strategy for Real Estate Success
00:29:02 - Growing Real Estate Business Through Teaching and Lead Sharing
00:30:15 - Building a Trustworthy Real Estate Brand and Accessibility
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Full Transcript:
Keren Gonen
If you don't work, you don't eat. It's that simple. No one's going to tell. You can't make a million dollars in a year for your own profit and your own benefit. But on the other hand, if you don't go out there and you don't sell houses, there is no security blanket. When we came here, I don't have any rich family members where we could get money. You just hit the ground running. And that's what I've done from day one.
Mike Swenson
Welcome to the Real Freedom show where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportun in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together. Hello everybody. This is Mike Swenson. Welcome to another episode of Real Freedom where we talk about different ways that people build time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. If you want to get started on your real estate journey, check out our website, free freedom through realestate.com we love to share great stories, articles, examples of people using different things inside of real estate to help kind of build the life of what they want to have happen. And so super excited about today's guest. An amazing story, I think for people. If there's a reason why you can't do something or you can't get into real estate, hopefully Keren here will inspire you of why real estate has been successful for her quick backstory. So Keren Gonen, raised in Israel in an entrepreneurial household, came to the United States shortly after the Gulf War with two suitcases and 800 bucks and you and your family were able to come in and succeed. And so now you got into real estate at the age of 39 and have been now a top producer. And so closed nearly $24 million in volume in 2024. Number one agent in Sussex County. So super exciting. And this is why I love real estate. Right, anybody, no matter what your background is, what your transferable skills, that you come into real estate with whatever you're doing, there's a way to succeed. And so excited, Keren, for you to be able to share your story with us. So welcome.
Keren Gonen
Thank you, Mike. Thank you for having me. I think what's really important for your listeners to know is that if you put your mind to it, you can do anything. And like you said, I did grow up in an entrepreneurial home, but I never thought of real estate. Never crossed my mind to get into real estate. I really do believe in karma and in things happening the way they're Supposed to. And what you have to do is just find, follow, or go through the door, whichever way you want to look at it. So for me, I started in real estate because my then partner said he wanted to flip in Vernon, New Jersey. We were living in Ringwood, New Jersey, and he said none of the agents were calling him back. And so I was in between jobs and I said, you know what, I'll take over the conversation. I'll try to get people. And so for two weeks I was calling, texting, emailing, and no one was answering me. And one night I was very frustrated. And at the dinner table, I'm telling my partner, you know, don't these people need to sell a house to make money? How unprofessional. Why isn't anyone calling, emailing, texting me back? And I'm going on and on and on. Because I'd always been in business and in sales. So I know what a professional is supposed to sound like, look like, speak like I know all of that. Nobody was calling me back. And so I said to him, I don't know what the issue is. And he said, well, you're not doing anything specific right now. Why don't you just become an agent? And that night I was signed up for class. The following Monday I started. And a month later I had my license. So once I got my license, I had gone straight into real estate. I've always been very ambitious. And so I went straight into sales. Unfortunately, 2017 was Sussex county in New Jersey is about six months to a year behind the rest of the state. And so at that point in time, all the bank owned properties were what we had to sell. So these were sales, 30, 40, $50,000. So even though statistically speaking, at that point in time, a real estate agent, a new real estate agent, would sell one house a year and would make $8,000. I sold 19 houses, but only made $35,000. Between the tiny commission check, between the commission split with my broker, between all the expenses. And it wasn't about the money. It's never about the money for me. It's always about helping people and finding them a place where they want to be. And so that was my first year. I absolutely loved it. And I think for me it was more about the relationship, which is why I prefer to be a buyer's agent, even enjoy listings as well. For me, the connection with my buyers is always deeper than my connection with my sellers. And it's a lot harder, it's a lot longer of a relationship because you're Seeing tons of houses together, you're going from place to place, you're experiencing all the failed offers, all the inspection issues, all the negotiations. So it kind of puts you in together with people on a much tighter basis. With my sellers, I have a great relationship, but it's just a little different. So when I first joined, I really wanted a mentor. So I went to my then broker and I said, can I get a mentor? Because it was something that was offered from the brokerage. And he said, Keren, you know what? You've been in business your entire life, don't even bother, it's not worth it. I really think that had I gotten a mentor, I would have gotten to where I am today much faster. Even though my sales are great, I have a big market share in my area, I am a top producer. I think I would have gotten more out of mentorship, which is why from my first year, I've always mentored agents. When my then broker came to me and said, would you be willing to mentor? And I said to him, this is my first year, I don't even know anything yet. He said, you know plenty. You know more than these people that have been in the office for 30 years. I would like for you to mentor. And I've always been someone that wanted to help other people. And so I said, sure. And it's funny because most of the agents that I mentored became top producers also in their first year. I said to them, you know, we made circles of excellence the first year. If I did it, you have to do it. And so my mentees often followed that recipe for success, which is really exciting. And now that I'm a broker, I have a lot more agents under me that I help train. And I think anything is possible. Just put your mind to it. What agents need to realize is that you need to focus more about your clients needs and what's good for them, not about what's good for your pocket. So if someone is buying a hundred thousand dollar house with me or a million dollar house with me, they're going to get the same exact experience, the same customer service, the same communication. That part doesn't matter to me at all. But I came into the industry with zero experience in real estate. I did have sales and management under my belt, but I'd never been in real estate before. So that was a brand new industry for me.
Mike Swenson
Well, what's interesting to me is like when I first got into real estate, I came in on the admin side and on our team, I feel like we did a good Job of getting people into production quickly. And what I love is people coming from outside of real estate is they don't know what the norm is or what they should or shouldn't be doing. And so if you show them, here's a path where you could try, you know, close two to three houses a month, shoot for that. Like, they don't know. The average agent, you know, sells four or five houses a year. And so if you just say, hey, if you do these things and if you plug into this, hopefully you can get into higher production more quickly. And so especially people with past backgrounds in sales, you know, somebody who sells cars. I don't know what a great number is for somebody who sells cars, but it's like, if, you know, like this is what I need to do, you just do it over here. And what we do find is there's a lot of agents that are super lazy and unambitious because they do think, oh, I can just sell one house every other month or two and call it good and, and be happy. But you can do a lot more. And there's no limit to how many houses you could sell. You know, you can sell a thousand if you want to. You've got to build out your systems, but there's no cap, which is the awesome part. So with your background then in sales and marketing, I'd love to hear, because I think everybody can succeed in real estate utilizing kind of what they've learned in the past. What do you feel like were some of those, those qualities that really helped you to transition well into real estate?
Keren Gonen
I think for the most part it was really my customer service because a lot of agents out there are doing things differently than I do and, and I actually pride myself on my customer service. My clients know that I'm up at 5:30 in the morning and that I turn into a pumpkin around 10:30. So if you text me or you call me between those times and I'm not with another client, I'm picking you up. We're having a conversation. It could be every hour if we need to talk, that's never a problem. I think other agents are more of the mindset, well, I'm working 9 to 5, so if someone texts me at 7 o' clock in the morning, I'm not answering. Or if someone texts me after five, I'm not answering. Whereas my clients know they have all this spread of time in order to have a conversation. Because sometimes you want to know what's going on with your house at 10 o' clock at night and all the lenders that I work with and the title people, they often get text messages from, from me after hours because this is how I work. And I tell my buyers and my sellers, if I give you someone and you call them and let's say it's after five and they don't pick you up or they don't call you back, please let me know because we need to have a conversation. If I'm working, they're working. And so if they want to get the referrals from me, they know this is what I expect from them. And I think people just need to understand that you need to care about the other person. And for me, the recipe for success is really simple. Treat other people how you would want to be treated if you were in their place. It's that simple. So if I'm curious at 8:00 in the morning, what's going on with my offer and I want to text my agent, I'm answering that text because I can not, because my day of work starts at nine until five, but if it were me buying a house or selling my house and I just thought of something, I want to talk to you now because in five minutes I'm going to forget and then I'll get angry that I didn't talk to you and you're my agent. And so this is why most of my clients actually turn into lifelong relationships. I was just at a client's baby shower literally two days ago. The day before that, I went out to dinner with another set of clients. Like, this is how life is. You stay in touch with your clients because they've become friends, because you've gone through this process and, and you've been there for the highs and the lows and the after purchasing and after selling. And that's how you end up getting more business. Because it's not just that one transaction. It's their cousin, their mother, their friend, their neighbor. This is how it works. So agents really need to do a better job staying in touch with past clients because you never know where the next referral is going to come from.
Mike Swenson
I remember before I got into real estate, between our sales and purchases and friends, that I had referred to our agent because I had a fantastic agent. We loved working with her. I think I had counted 50, 15 pieces of business in the course of. I think it was four years that she got. And then the odd thing, enough is then when I told her that I was getting into real estate, I don't think I've heard from her since then outside of outside of the times that I've just reached out, like, hey, just want to check in and see how you're doing, type thing. And so. But I. I get it, right? I mean, yeah, it's. It shows a little bit that it was about the transaction, not about the relationship. But I think, you know, kind of thinking about your story, get into real estate. There's so many people out there who had an experience where they're like, they just kind of realize, I think I can do this better than the agents that I know. You know, whether, like, in your case, you just started, you know, like, okay, I think I can do this. Let's just jump right in. Or people have, like, hey, I bought a house, and the agent that I had was terrible. I realized I could do it better. So now I want to get into real estate. And so there's kind of, like you said, this customer service piece of. If you've been well trained in a past experience of doing great customer service, there's a lot of agents that don't do it well. And so you can come in and have success just by those simple practices of treating people well, responding to them when they reach out to you, and other things like that.
Keren Gonen
Exactly. Well, the funny thing is that four of my clients became agents, and they're in my brokerage. So one of my. One of my agents in my office is actually one of my first Zillow calls nine years ago. And he bought, sold, bought, sold. I don't even remember how many transactions we've had. And then finally when he got his license, he went to a friend's brokerage, which I don't knock anybody, but I always stay in touch. He went to a friend's brokerage. It didn't work out. It wasn't the right fit for him, and he let his license go. And then when he came back into the industry, he called me up. He was still living in his house, his last house that he bought with me in Sparta in Sussex County. And he said, Keren, I want to get my license back, but the only brokerage I can see myself going into is yours. Can I join your office? And I said, absolutely, come on in. One of my other agents is the son of two of my buyers. And so when he came of age and he wanted to get into real estate, he said, even though I'm getting calls all the time because I was in school, he said, the only one I would consider learning how to do real estate from is you. Because he and his parents had looked for four years and had switched agents all the time because they never found their person until we met. And over the spam of about a year and a half, I think we saw over a hundred houses, but they ended up getting the perfect home. And so he said, you're the only one that I want to learn from, because I want to be just like you. And I said, you know what? I'll teach you everything I know, because why not? So it's twofold. One hand, yes, you become competition, because we're all independent contractors, but competition makes us better. And teaching someone how to be a good real estate agent, they ask you questions, you're not thinking of looking for that answer that makes you better at your craft. And if it does, then why not do it? Why not help other agents do better?
Mike Swenson
Absolutely. Real quick, before we dive more into the real estate side, I do just want to touch on your. Your back. Right. You've got a very unique story, so would love to just take a minute for you to kind of share that background of coming to the US and, and kind of what that was like and probably be great to hear, kind of how that helped shape you, your work ethic, values, things like that as you got to the US and then, yeah, we can kind of jump back onto the real estate side. But I wanted to touch on that quick, too.
Keren Gonen
Sure, not a problem. So we had the Gulf War in Israel, and it was pretty much all of eighth grade. And my father was a paramedic. And so he would literally go five days into the AR and he would serve as a paramedic. Then on Friday, they'd release it to go home. And by Saturday night, he would have another order to go back. And so he said to my mother, either we leave the country or I'm going to die of a heart attack. So we left the country at the end of the Gulf War. In April 28th of 1991, we came to Connecticut with two suitcases, four people and 800. And that's all we had on this earth. There was nothing else because we left kind of in a hurry. We just needed to get out. There was no way my parents were going to stay. And so we stayed with friends. And then we moved to Fairfield, Connecticut. Moved every year there. I went straight into freshman year, and then in the summer of my junior year, my parents moved us into New Jersey. And at that point, and I think I. One of the things I didn't share is I've moved 29 times in my life. And so that's between continents, between countries, between states. Plenty of moves in between. But what I saw from my parents, and I think this is what my kids see in our household, was that they worked day in and day out. There was all work every day. But when we went on vacation, the rest of the world died. Nothing mattered. It was just us and our parents, and that's all that mattered. There was no phone calls in the middle, meetings, appointments. There was none of that, which is what I do with my kids when we go on vacation. That's it. And what I tried to explain to them is there are two types of jobs you could do. You could work for someone else and build their dream and have a secure paycheck every week or every other week. But when you want to go on vacation, you have to ask for permission. There's a limited amount of time you can go and you're not getting paid, usually the same amount of money. Whereas on the other hand, you have an unsecured type of job. You work as much as you want, but there's no glass ceiling. No one's going to tell you how much money you can make because of your expertise or because of your position or however. And this is how I actually told my son, who was thinking of going into real estate. I said to him, if you work hard, you're going to make money. I will give you all the tools, just like I give to every other agent in the brokerage. But if you don't work, you don't eat. It's that simple. No one's going to tell you you can't make a million dollars in a year for your own profit and your own benefit. But on the other hand, if you don't go out there and you don't sell houses, there is no security blanket. When we came here, I. I don't have any rich family members where we could get money. You just hit the ground running. And that's what I've done from day one. Because if you work and if you seed and if you care about other people, you're going to be successful. There's no secret sauce, there's no hidden agendas, there's no special anything to real estate. You just have to work and you just have to care about your clients more than you care about yourself, which is actually in our ethics. That's. That's in the oath that we take when we become agents. Unfortunately, some people forget that during their career.
Mike Swenson
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Keren Gonen
Sure. So my parents when we lived in Israel, they had their own shipping company, export and import. So they were always working seven days a week. Well, no, six days a week they were working. And so all I saw my parents do is go to work, come back home in the afternoon. My sister and I thankfully were always taken care of. We never had any concerns about whether or not our parents loved us or wanted to spend time with us. But I think for the most part we always knew that yes, we had money, but we weren't wasteful. When we went on vacation, we did whatever we wanted. There wasn't any, oh, you know, that's really expensive, let's not do that. We always did whatever we wanted. And I do the same with my kids. They see me and my husband working and that's all we do. And we work, work, work until we go on vacation and then we do the extravagant style. We do whatever we want, whenever we want, but we work really hard to get to that place and that's what they see. And so you always have options. Unfortunately, some real estate agents are part time agents or their significant other has a job where they don't care as much whether or not they sell. And I feel bad for those buyers and sellers because if you don't have your agent full time, you're flying blind, which is what Happens when you take like a limited service listing I have very often because I'll show my clients anything they want. Whether it's a for sale by owner or a limited listing. I'll show you anything because for me it's not about the money. I might make less money because it's a limited service. I might work harder because the other agent, all they did is put it on the MLS and that's the only thing they get paid for. But I'm going to do my job and their job because I want to work for my clients and I want to get them a house or I want to sell their house. And so I teach my agents all the time, if you want to sell a house, get ready to do your job and theirs because if you want to close, you're going to do whatever it takes. So yes it is the listing is responsibility to do do A, B, C, D. As a buyer's agent you don't have to do this. But if you don't do it and the other side doesn't do it, how is it going to close? It's not. So that's. That part is what I try to hammer home with my agents because a lot of them just say, well he's supposed to do that, I'm not supposed to do that. But I try to tell them it doesn't matter. Supposed to, supposed to pointing fingers at each other, nothing is going to get done and then nobody will get paid.
Mike Swenson
It's awesome to see to your point that, that anybody can be successful in real estate. And yeah, all of that upbringing that you had really shaped you into the type of agent that you are. You know, somebody who really has that care mentality and great service. And then obviously you plug in your sales background and management experience. And so I just love how you know, people can get into real estate and be successful. Now you mentioned about doing bank owned properties and things like that. Early on talk about kind of maybe transitioning to a little bit more traditional real estate for people wondering kind of how did you go find that business? How did you build that database up or that that customer list up as you continue to grow?
Keren Gonen
Sure. So most of the bank owned leads came from my broker. Unfortunately I was on a 5050 which is why I made so little money. But that's fine because it just meant that I had to run around a lot more to make the amount of money that I wanted. So I've never had an issue with working hard. I always had an issue with hardly working because I'm a Control freak. And I'm very energetic, and I like to have my hands in many things. But what I did when I first joined real estate, I had actually moved right after getting my license. So I moved into the town I live in now, which is Vernon, New Jersey. But I knew no one, literally no one. I knew my landlady. That's all I knew. Didn't know anybody else. But what I did do is I went into the municipal building and I said, how can I help? Can I help with the senior citizens, Whatever they're doing, serving them lunch, having birthday parties, holiday parties, I'll just come and help. I don't want anything. I literally don't want anything. I just want to help because I wanted to get my face out there. I started a new. A brand new networking group that didn't exist in my area. I went to all the charity events. I volunteered to help in the charity events. So I did a lot of things which came back to me because I don't advertise in my town. I believe I do enough for my town where people know my name and they know my face. And I think that's something some agents are missing. When you don't have a mentor and you don't know what you're supposed to do. Seed I shot in tons of different directions. So I did all the usual stuff everybody does. I did the. The placemats at the local diner. I did the receipts in the supermarket. I did the carts in the soup. I did everything. Anything you can think of, I've done it. And then after looking back, because what you have to do, it's checks and balances. I invested my time and I invested my money. Where did I get a return, if any? And that's what was important. And once I focused and found where the referrals were coming from, where the leads were actually coming, that's when I knew where I need to put all of my time and energy into. And so I still get referrals from people locally where they say, well, I saw you at the senior center. You were serving us the holiday dinner. Do you have your card? Even people from the municipal building, they see my face so much at the municipal building that they're like, hey, my whatever needs to sell a house. Do you want to get a listing? Yes, please.
Mike Swenson
You decided the placemats was the best use of your money, so you invested in all placemats at every restaurant, everywhere.
Keren Gonen
Exactly.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. Well, I think it's funny because, you know, sometimes we'd have agents on our team that have these crazy ideas where sometimes they think because I got one piece of business from xyz, whatever it is now, if I just do twice as much or three times as much of effort. We had an agent one time that was really hung up on sending out recipe cards because they had gotten a client one time from them. And we're like, you could print a thousand recipe cards. That doesn't mean you're gonna get a thousand closings just because you got sent one recipe card to one client, you know, and so you have to have that logical piece of where's my dollar? And my time actually working, you know, am I gonna be a good agent by spending all my time putting recipe cards out there? So funny. Yeah. I mean, you had mentioned about just the value of mentoring, and I can hear that through what you didn't have when you first started and what you're now providing to people. I just think there's so much value in. Yeah. Helping people get off on the right foot because it's. It can save you two to three might eventually get there, but. But it's just going to take two to three years longer. And so you can really shorten that learning curve by adding great value as a mentor early on. And so certainly you guys must do a great job with that.
Keren Gonen
Yeah. So for just as an example, I was on a zoom meeting with one of my agents. Nine o' clock at night. I had literally just walked in the door at 8:30. I was out all day. Open houses, Well, I had my own open house. Then I went to show houses and of course my buyers added more houses. And then I had to walk through an hour away for closing at 9am today. So I walked in the door and my agent texted me and he said, I can't figure out zip forms. It's not sending to my clients. I'm really sorry. I said, don't even worry about it. Let's get on Google Meet and let's just do it. And we sat for an hour and we went through the whole thing. And he had tried to do it on his own, which I'll say in his, in his defense, he definitely did everything he was supposed to do. He just didn't know how to finalize it, even though we've done it together. Sometimes you need more than one time, and that's perfectly fine. I tell my agents all the time, I prefer you ask me, then you make a mistake. Because real estate is a serious business. It's all legal paperwork. I don't want you to have any issues I want to make sure that you do things properly, the right way. And as we're going through it, if he doesn't, if he hadn't done anything the way I wanted it, I corrected him. And he starts laughing and he says, I knew you were gonna say that. And I tell him I'm very OCD about the paperwork because everything needs to be lined up and everything needs to be checked off and every line has to have something in it. I don't tolerate it. I said, you're my, you're in my brokerage. That means that my name is all over your paperwork. You represent to me, and if you screw up, that means I screw up. And we're not doing that. So he started laughing and he said, I know. As I was doing it the other way, I knew you were going to correct me. I said, good, then listen to the voice in your head. That's me all the time. And it was just, it was great. But we ended up talking until about 9:30, almost 10:00 clock at night. And this is what you do as a mentor. It's your job to help them be better with you than without you.
Mike Swenson
So now you've been in real estate coming up on 10 years here, or almost to 10 years. What are some ideas or thoughts you have for the. For the next few years?
Keren Gonen
I just want to sell more houses and I want to teach more agents. Because what I do for my agents is I actually give them free leads. I know how hard it is to get started. I'm very grateful to have what I have. And I do believe in karma. So what I give to others will always come back to me. And so I give them free leads because I know when you're a brand new agent, you're broke and you can't advertise because you're broke, you haven't made any money. But if I give you a lead and you learn how to work with that lead with me by your side and you start making money, now you're excited, now you want to go and do it again. Now you understand? And I tell them they always have to have boundaries. If you can only work with, let's say, two buyers at a time, that's all you work with. If you can only do two listings at a time, that's what you work with. You don't push because then that reduces the level of customer service. And once you have bad rap, that's it, it's game over. It doesn't matter what you do. You have that name and it's not only for clients, it's also for other agents. We all know who the bad agents are out there, especially in such a small area such as Sussex County.
Mike Swenson
Wonderful. Well, thank you, Keren, so much for coming on and sharing your story and sharing why you do what you do and how you do it and just the care that you have for people. For people that want to reach out to you, how can they do so?
Keren Gonen
So the best way to reach out to me is actually my cell phone. My number is 551-26-4062. Or you. They can look me up on Instagram or Facebook. My handle on Instagram is Keren Gonen, real estate broker. And it's the same on Facebook. And no matter what, they can always get me.
Mike Swenson
I love it. That's the thing. Whenever I would have to try to find, you know, when we were recruiting agents back in the day, it's like, well, an agent needs to be found so you can find their information. And so, you know, everybody's phone number or email, you should be able to find them pretty quickly through a Google search.
Keren Gonen
So that's absolutely.
Mike Swenson
For better or worse. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Keren, for coming on and sharing your story. Best of luck as you continue to grow both your business and the business of all the agents you care about in the future.
Keren Gonen
Thank you so much, Mike, and thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
