A business I found along the way.

After corporate life, I went back to working independently.

When I left the corporate world, I tried a number of things. I went back to being an independent entrepreneur and explored different kinds of work and business.

Somewhere in that period, real estate entered the picture.

What began as another direction gradually became something much more permanent. Roughly ten years later, it is still an important part of what I do.

There are things about the work that fit me very well.

Real estate gives me a degree of independence and control over my time. I can organize much of my own schedule, work directly with people and stay involved in something very practical.

That flexibility has also given me room to explore other interests, learn new things and work on projects that might have been harder to pursue with a more rigid schedule.

It comes with tradeoffs. Income can be irregular. A good transaction can carry you for months, while another period can be unexpectedly quiet. Deals change, clients change their minds and sometimes a lot of work produces very little.

After doing it for years, I have come to appreciate both the freedom and the uncertainty that come with the business.

A front-row seat to a city that keeps changing.

Most of my real estate work is in Panama, which means the business has also become one of the ways I experience the country around me.

You see neighborhoods change. New buildings appear. Buyers arrive with completely different priorities. Families move, investors reconsider their plans and parts of the city develop in ways that are sometimes difficult to predict.

Working inside that process gives you a different perspective from simply watching the market from the outside.