I get to step into people’s lives and help them with one of the biggest financial decisions they’ll ever make.
I get to help the growing family find that extra bedroom and the veteran who’s been all over the world find a place to call home. I get to be a shoulder to cry on when it’s a family home being sold after someone’s passing. It’s as honorable as when I was at the bedside of a sick patient. Helping people is helping people, and that makes me happy.”
That’s Elle in a nutshell.
A registered nurse and certified realtor with The Property Pros, Elle Probst is humble and kind, giving the best of herself to everyone around her. “In both industries, health care and real estate, people need an advocate. They need someone who’s compassionate and who’s listening to them. I believe that’s my role as an agent, just as it was when I was a nurse.”
Nursing is, quite literally, in Elle’s blood. Her great-aunt was one of the founders of the second oldest hospice in America—Hospice of Northern Virginia, established in 1973—and helped grow the program throughout the U.S. and the Philippines.
“She was an oncologist,” Elle says. “But she saw more and more patients struggling with what to do at the end of life: Where do you go when every other option is exhausted? She wanted them to have every comfort at every stage of life.”
Year later, she rallied for Blue Cross Blue Shield to accept hospice as a paying source for end-of-life care. It is thanks at least in part to Elle’s great-aunt that hospice care is widely available today.
Wealth in Health
Obviously proud of her legacy, it’s no surprise that hospice care was Elle’s health care passion—something she herself wouldn’t discover right away. “First, I was a children’s hospital nurse, but that only lasted six months because it was so heart wrenching, to see the kids suffer,” she says. “From there I spent five years as a cardiac nurse in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, before returning to the Alexandria/Falls Church area, where I became the nurse liaison for hospice patients. That’s when I first fell in love with hospice care.”
But life has a funny way of altering our plans. In 2004, Elle found herself relocating to Orlando, Florida, to take a job in the cardiac catheterization lab at Sand Lake Hospital, where her trajectory rapidly changed. “Sand Lake was a little community hospital at the time. I was working per diem, and they asked me to come on as an assistant nurse manager. And my career just grew from there.”
“In both industries, health care and real estate, people need an advocate. They need someone who’s compassionate and who’s listening. I believe that’s my role as an agent, just as it was when I was a nurse.”
The hospital had already opened a second cath lab before a fateful merger with Orlando Health led to Elle’s team suddenly managing nine hospitals throughout the region.
In this role, she helped develop the open heart backup program at Orlando Regional Medical Center and earned her nurse practitioner degree before turning her focus to her new role as heart failure program coordinator.
Her goal? To reduce readmissions from 26.7% to under 16%. “I developed a trial where each patient was screened coming in through the emergency room, went through our protocol, and received their medications before they got discharged,” she says. Within two months, readmissions had decreased to 14.6%, and would ultimately settle at less than 12%. “It was an overwhelming success!”
So overwhelming, in fact, that the program was replicated at a number of regional hospitals, and Elle was tasked with developing a similar outpatient program. All told, these programs were the seeds that would eventually grow into the wildly successful Orlando Health Heart Institute.
The Art of the Deal
While the heart program was her biggest career accomplishment, it also quickly became her greatest stressor. “The work was incredibly rewarding, but I was working nonstop and losing time with my son. I had no life outside of work. I was completely burned out.”
On Dec. 8, 2015, Elle stepped out of nursing and into entrepreneurship, becoming a franchisee of Painting with a Twist. “I had no idea how to run a business, or a franchise,” she says with a smile. “But it looked fun, and I wanted something completely different.
She built a location in Clermont and, in typical Elle fashion, was incredibly successful. “The franchise model is a great way to get that experience because it’s like a floor plan; they give you the tools to succeed—if you’re willing to do the work,” she says. “I got a crash course in business development, from the construction buildout to finances and monies, and hiring people, and bookkeeping, and how to get an alcohol license. I didn’t know it at the time, but it really set me up for my real estate career.”
She was named Painting with a Twist’s 2016 Rookie of the Year, and secured the rights to a Winter Garden location. But as fun as it was, it still didn’t give her the flexible lifestyle she wanted. So when she had the opportunity to sell in January 2019, she took it, changing course yet again to take on real estate full time.
Like many new agents, she cut her teeth working in model homes for a builder, KB Home. She didn’t stay long, but she did refine her knowledge of the market and negotiating skills while she was there.
In her first year as a bona fide realtor, she only sold one home. But she was undeterred, and by year two, that number grew to eight, and then the third year was 20. This year,ambitious as ever, her goal is to sell 30 to 40 homes.
“Here’s what I love most: I wake up every day unemployed,” she says. “Every day, I need to find business, and that keeps me motivated. You see a lot of new agents drop off really quickly because they don’t treat it like a job. The ones who actually succeed are ones that treat it like a business. Success doesn’t happen over night.”
A House in Order
Elle is both talented and experienced at the human side of her job—networking, negotiating, and client relations. What she admits to being not-so-good at is the business and finance side. “And that’s where Rachel comes in,” she says.
LanDesign and Go Figure have been working together for close to 15 years, possibly longer, but neither Randy nor Rachel want to do that math. Suffice it to say, both of their businesses have grown exponentially over the last decade and a half.
She’s referring to Rachel Siegel, owner of Go Figure Accounting, whom she first started working with in 2019. “In the beginning, it was as simple as separating personal and business accounts. I was always mixing my money, so that’s the first thing Rachel taught me,” she says. “Then she helped me get the business organized the right way, as an S-Corp instead of an LLC. I ended up paying a lot of taxes my first year. It was painful.But then I actually got money back the next year.”
Thanks to both better business planning and implementing Profit First to further improve her cash flow, Elle finally enjoys the flexibility she has worked three separate careers to achieve—and even has enough in the bank to start planning for retirement.
“Rachel makes it so easy. She lets you do anything you want in terms of how you handle your business. If you want to do all the bookkeeping yourself, you can. Of course, for me, it’s not my expertise, so I put my faith in her to set up the bank accounts and allocations. She helped me thrive financially, in a way I never imagined possible.”
Elle credits the Profit First plan for all her, well, profits. But she also acknowledges that it takes some getting used to. “At first, it’s confusing. But I’ve been learning more in the last two years, and now I understand why there are different accounts for owner’s comp and operating expenses and taxes. And paying myself—I can’t tell you how freeing it is to have my money working for me! Now I’m not waiting for a deal to close to be able to pay my bills.”
Patients Are a Virtue
Today, Elle is living the life of her dreams. She has the freedom to travel and work from anywhere, and the financial protocols in place to move forward with confidence. As Rachel often likes to say, Elle finally gets to work on her business, rather than just working in her business.
“I don’t tell a lot of people that I make more in real estate than I ever did in my nursing job. In my second year, I made my nursing salary in the first four months,” Elle says. “Still, I truly miss my patients. Patient care was my number one priority. But now I treat clients like patients, so it’s a different spinoff—the best of both worlds. Which is why I always say, ‘I can save your life … and your deals!’”
