Interview: Tricia Lee, Power Broker at Compass NYC & Beauty Expert

By Angela Tai

You’ve held multiple positions at high-profile companies like MAC Cosmetics and The Corcoran Group. What factors led you to ultimately decide on becoming a Real Estate Broker at Compass? 

At this point in my life, I would say it was meant to be. At the time when I started, I had only done beauty and really didn’t know that I could do anything else. I ran these salons and everyone would come to me for advice. Everyone looked up to me as the expert even though I worked in beauty and didn’t know a ton about other industries. I owned a business in Prospect Heights which is a very popular Brooklyn neighborhood. I was always involved in real estate, future business owners would come to me and ask me what I thought of lease agreements, open houses, etc. The recession hit in 2009 and I was opening a brand new salon - an extension of my business. Nobody else was making money and everything was closing. I definitely noticed that real estate was something that always bounced back in ways that a small business couldn’t so I decided to look at it from this perspective: I can sell something to anybody. I think I’m very influential and convincing! I figured I could go into it and make some money - real estate is built on relationships. You’re helping people with transactions, emotions, etc.; real estate is all about relationships. You’re doing it with people you love and who really trust you; honestly, you can be a surfer who happens to be in real estate to pay the bills. I use real estate as an excuse to plan open houses because I love event planning. I wanted a far more flexible schedule and I was rewriting my life and real estate became a part of that plan. 

You’re also the founder of Girl Gang Network and the Vice President of BNI Manhattan Chapter 37. In regards to the Girl Gang Network, what do you hope to impart to other female entrepreneurs through this business networking series? 

When I first got into BNI, it was 18 of us getting together and reminding each other of why we’re the best at what we do; we made a commitment to build referrals amongst each other. You know, being a woman that’s not only a business owner but a quintessential business owner, I speak to small business groups all the time. I’m viewed as more of a small business owner than I am a realtor. Essentially, I just copy catted the whole concept. It's very curated and it has no plan, it’s literally me sitting down and I made a list of 9-12 people and all of us prepare an activity before each meeting (we haven’t done it since COVID). We’ll go do a beauty night and we’ll shop and get a coupon but it’s a very small investment that I make and put together so that we can all talk about the challenges of what we do. It’s been great to expand upon our relationships and also been great to really get to know them and what they do. 

What is it about Brooklyn that made you fall in love? 

I wanted to become the best at what I was doing - the funniest thing for me is being on 42nd street and seeing a cowboy playing his guitar. I figured I could be whoever I wanted to be and immediately fell in love with New York, primarily Brooklyn and its extreme diversity. I came from Arizona where I was a 2% minority, I didn’t get to know about anyone else’s life other than white American lives’ so I wasn’t able to capture and appreciate Asian American, Jewish, Caribbean cultures, etc. I loved the diversity that I had never had. I love the passion for New York’s small businesses and diversity, it’s the simple things like watching my neighbors have anxieties and celebrations and there’s very few places in the world where you can have that. 

In July, you were named one of the top seven real estate brokers in Brooklyn - congratulations! What is the most challenging aspect of your work now? Biggest challenges that you had to overcome in real estate?

You can get comfortable. Truly, the biggest challenge for me was telling someone or anyone that I was something else now. I didn’t know how to redefine who I was, I didn’t realize that what I did for a living defined so much of who I was. I think that was probably the biggest struggle for me - to not get caught up with who I was or how I was defined. I don’t think people do it to us,  we do it to ourselves. A lot of times, people are fear-driven. It can feel very isolating so the biggest struggle for me was rewriting my life. I changed everything in my life in one year - it was like a whole life intervention because I wanted to have much more freedom and the ability to dictate my own schedule. I had to get to a place in my head where defining myself based solely on my career wasn’t as big of an issue. I was doing great things in real estate and I wouldn’t share it with anyone or on my social networks because I felt like a fraud. I realized that nobody really cares or pays attention, we’re making this all up in our heads and I have learned to sear that into my brain. 

In retrospect, what were the most important business decisions that later led to your success? 

One of the most important things I apply to what I’m doing is what I actually want to do. You have to ask yourself: “What is it that I want to actually do?” This is an important question because you have to wake up and do it everyday! I feel like I get a request to pick my brain at least 5-6 times a week but I always ask what they want to do because you’re doing this work day after day (especially during my time at the nail salon) so what you want is extremely important and sometimes we don’t even consider that. I’ve had phenomenal success but I’ve also had shocking failures. That has taught me when to walk away. When I opened up the shop, right before the beginning of the 2008-09 recession, I persevered and all of the other small male business owners on that same street in Prospect Heights closed down their businesses because of the bad economy. Sometimes, things happen and you just have to keep going. I don’t think everything needs to be such a story - sometimes you have to say let’s make a better decision and move forward. I think too much perseverance can be dysfunctional. You do have to recognize growth when it’s not necessarily positive but it helps make for a better life. The only thing I say is that I should’ve gone into real estate five years earlier because I would’ve been killing it. If I look back now, I’d say to always be considering what you want to do and if you lose it, change course. 

Recently, you stated that your “success in real estate seems like it took no time but the truth is [your] knowledge and expertise took a lifetime.” Who has served as a role model throughout your career?

My mom and my best friend are the most influential people to me, and for different reasons. My mom became a single mom when my dad left us, she picked up and moved across the country from New York to Arizona and she started a new job and a new life there. She learned how to drive, take care of a yard, and learned all of the things she needed to do in order to sustain her life. She not only did it but she did it very well, she figured out the whole suburban life fully. This is also how I know how to attack things and I always have that as my base. I think that helps me manage my fears in a way others can’t, my mom rewrote her life at 37 years old with two kids. My friend is a very successful developer, she’s in Miami now and she’s done really tremendous things. She understands the books and she understands the law. As a real estate lawyer, she understands a large part of the financing. We were always the best of friends and we bounced lots of ideas off of each other in regards to real estate and beauty. We were the best of friends and we were meant to be in each others’ fields, which is funny. I think this relationship and so much of what I’m capable of doing is because she lives and suffers the way I do. She understands the simpler things about going to college and not being able to go back home and talk to her parents about certain things, including sororities, social functions, etc. I’m able to do all the things I do because I’ve seen black women doing them. As an example, I moved to New York with $60 in my pocket so you need to make an excuse as to why you can’t do it. We barely knew what a garbage disposal was, our examples were to basically make do with what you have and make it happen. 

Your “Money Matters” event drew a crowd of nearly 200 people last year where prominent individuals discussed the importance of financial independence. The Money Matters workbook is very eye-opening (yet helpful). It’s no secret that countless individuals, especially women and women of color, are struggling with their finances amid the COVID-19 crisis. What are some simple financial tweaks that people can implement in order to help themselves survive and even thrive during this ongoing crisis? 

I think it’s mostly about revisiting your budget. When I ran the salon, I had to do this on a monthly basis. I think it’s just having a really good habit of looking at your expenses every month and having a set plan in place, my first payment plan was $50/month. In the Jamaican culture, they have this thing called vex money because if the person you’re on a date with pisses you off, you want to be able to bounce and leave. Vex money is piss money, you can pivot, change, jump out of the car, whatever you need to do. When you’re younger, it’s enough money to jump out of the cab but now it’s much better to buy your own home, etc. We have those conversations about ageism or retirement but a lot of fields aren’t women-dominated and women aren’t the highest earners so we need to have conversations about that. Every single person who attended that event cried - they were very honest conversations. I make sure I give them real life examples, I ask these people to be very transparent and honest. I also say that you might need to stay off of social media because those ads are just there to target you.I saved up $40,000 from The Polish Bar and I was still $18,000 short so I had to sell my car but it had to work because there was no back-up plan. 

You got personal with InHerShoes.com about recreating your life and mentioned that “Compass has become [your] new partner in entrepreneurial crime.” What do you love most about being an entrepreneur, especially after 10 years of running the Polish Bar of Brooklyn? 

The other day, we did a neighborhood clean-up and typically, we make money off of these neighborhoods but we also like figuring out how we can contribute to these neighborhoods and give back. We wanted to turn Halloween Saturday into something good, we cleaned up on that day and bought the kids along with us and wore costumes. It was something that just worked so I think I really liked the creativity part of it. For someone else, it’s an open house but for me, it’s a party and I’ll make sure I have the best food at the open house. It’s just the creativity that I think is there because you get bored when you aren’t able to express yourself and be creative. I just closed a friend’s house and his place is sick. I loved being able to put together a photo shoot with him, the journey of what we went through together was so special to me. I’m excited about the work that I get to do each week. I share how I bought my first property; in eight years, it tripled in value and I was able to make my first steps. I was 28 when I bought my first property. Women can’t be free unless the money is right — I talk about how we can build wealth through real estate — I love going to Sephora and spending $500 so I have to make sure my money is right. 

Do you feel hopeful about the future?

I do! I really do - I think that I didn’t realize how weighted down I’d been feeling these past four years about different things. If I see people who are trying to get to another country (Mexicans who are treated like animals in cages in America), they’re like me because my family endured the same thing two generations ago. A lot of what’s gone in in the past four years affects me, a lot has happened that allowed me to thrive on a financial level. Maybe it’s because I live in New York but there is hope, it’s important to have a certain level of character and professionalism in our government with who is representing us. I’m an entrepreneur so at the end of the day, I’m in charge. I like knowing that I have that freedom. Sometimes, that decision for some people is to not be an entrepreneur but it’s great because I do get to decide what’s next and there’s a heavy weight that I didn’t realize I had been carrying around. I bawled when I heard the news from the election, a lot of this stuff doesn’t impact me personally but it does weigh on you so it affects you. I’m very relieved and am always hopeful.