We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kerri. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kerri below.
Kerri, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
When They Wouldn’t Listen, I Built It Myself
On betting on your own vision — and winning.
Let me tell you about the moment I realized that sometimes the biggest risk isn’t the leap you take,it’s staying put on a platform that was never going to grow with you.
I had been working in real estate for years, and online bidding had become one of my favorite tools to offer seller clients. It’s a powerful option — transparent, competitive, and when done right, it drives results. I wasn’t just a user of the technology; I was one of the people helping certify other agents to use it. I knew the tool inside and out, and more importantly, I knew exactly where it fell short.
After years of using the platform and collecting feedback from the agents I had trained, my business partner and I put together something I thought was genuinely generous: a thorough, thoughtful list of suggestions to improve the usability and interface. We brought it directly to the developer. We laid it all out. We were excited, even.
They were not.
In fact, they made it pretty clear they weren’t interested in our input. Whether it was ego, inertia, or just plain short-sightedness, the door was closed before we even got comfortable in the chairs.
So we walked out and didn’t look back.
Now, I want to be honest with you,what came next was not a fairy tale montage. Building BidThisProperty.com from the ground up took two full years and cost three times what we had originally budgeted. Three times. There were moments that tested every ounce of stubbornness I had in me (and I have quite a bit). There were pivots, setbacks, late nights, and more than a few “what are we doing?” conversations. Building a tech product as a real estate professional is not for the faint of heart.
But here’s the thing about women who refuse to be held back: we don’t quit. We recalibrate.
My business partner and I, along with our two co-owners, kept our eyes on the vision. We had lived inside this problem long enough to know what the solution needed to look like. We had the agent feedback. We had the expertise. We had, frankly, receipts on everything that wasn’t working. We just needed the courage to see it through… and we did.
Today, BidThisProperty.com is operating in 17 states with hundreds of agents using the platform regularly. We built exactly what the market needed because we were the market. We understood it, we’d worked in it, and we refused to wait for someone else to get it right.
And that other company, the one that didn’t have time for our suggestions? They’re out of business now.
I don’t say that with any satisfaction. I say it as a lesson: the marketplace has no patience for tools that refuse to evolve, and neither do the professionals who depend on them.
We are now preparing to fundraise to expand and grow BidThisProperty.com, and I can honestly say this company would not exist if I hadn’t been willing to take a leap of faith. Not a reckless one, a calculated one, built on years of experience, real user insight, and an unshakeable belief that we could do this better.
The risk wasn’t building the company. The real risk would have been staying somewhere I had already outgrown.
Kerri, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Origin story · Built From Nothing — On Purpose
A story about grit, leverage, and refusing to be anything other than exactly yourself.
I didn’t come from money. Not even a little bit.
I was raised by a single mom doing her best for three kids. We were on welfare. We were that family, the one that received the holiday gift donations and the Thanksgiving turkey from the community drive. I knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end of someone else’s generosity, and I filed that feeling away somewhere deep. It would shape everything that came after.
Because I didn’t wait around for things to change. I got resourceful early, selling pet rocks and hand-made art pieces, caroling for tips around the neighborhood. By 12, I was babysitting. By 14, I had my first W2 job as a host at a restaurant. I understood one thing clearly and completely: if I wanted something that wasn’t a hand-me-down or someone else’s castoff, I was going to have to build it myself.
There’s a lot of story between then and now, but let me jump to the part that changed everything.
I set a goal to own property by the time I turned 25. So I saved. Then I saved some more. Then I saved again. And on my 25th birthday, I received the keys to my very first property.
It was the cutest little crackhouse you ever did see, and it was mine.
I mean that literally. The place had functionally been a crack house for a couple of years prior and needed, well, everything. I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. I remodeled, moved in as many roommates as the walls could hold (we didn’t call it “house hacking” back then, but that’s exactly what it was), and started the savings cycle all over again.
That’s when I discovered leverage, and honestly, nobody had properly introduced us before that moment.
As the property value climbed thanks to all the updates and repairs, I took out an equity line and used it to purchase my first investment property. Just like that, one scrappy little crackhouse had become the foundation of something real.
People noticed. Friends, family, colleagues, they started asking how they could do the same thing for themselves. So I got my real estate license, initially just as a side hustle, with zero intention of becoming what I thought a “real estate agent” was supposed to look like.
As it turns out, that was the secret.
I never lost my authenticity. I met people where they were, without judgment, as a peer — not a salesperson. No pretense, no performance. Just real talk about real opportunity. That approach became the foundation of everything I built.
Then the market crashed. 2007. 2008. The kind of collapse that sent most agents running for cover.
I ran toward it.
While others stepped back, I dove headfirst into short sales with a genuine passion for helping people find hope during one of the scariest financial periods in modern memory. It was the wild west… anarchy, a thousand conflicting interpretations of the rules, and an industry making it up as it went along. Honestly? It was very punk rock, and I loved every chaotic minute of it.
Fast forward to today.
Our all-women team of ten is out here kicking serious butt and serving every client with the same energy and commitment, no exceptions, no asterisks. Every demographic, every background, every marginalized community. Especially the out-of-the-box situations and strategies that other agents shy away from. We don’t react to real estate, we anticipate it, always thinking at least two steps ahead.
We’ve also been pioneers in online bidding for our sellers for over a decade now, with results that speak for themselves.
But more than any of that, what drives us is this: we’re not just doing real estate transactions. We’re helping people build generational wealth. We think of ourselves as real estate wealth advisors, and alongside our partners in the top 1% across the US and Canada, we show up with a servant’s heart and an abundance mindset, every single time.
I came from nothing. I built something. And now I spend every day helping others do the same.
That’s not a hustle. That’s a calling.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
The Day I Lost My Best Agent — And Found a Better Leader
*On resilience, accountability, and the hardest mirror you’ll ever look into.*
Most people assume resilience means powering through loss without flinching. Staying strong. Keeping it together. But the most meaningful test of my resilience didn’t ask me to be tough, it asked me to be honest.
I lost my best agent. My longest-standing team member. The kind of person whose absence you feel before you’ve even fully processed that they’re gone.
I could have told myself a comfortable story about it. That she was moving on, that it was just timing, that these things happen. Instead, I sat down with her and asked her straight: *Why are you leaving?*
Her answer stopped me cold.
She wasn’t leaving because of the market, or a competing offer, or something I had done wrong in the obvious sense. She was leaving because I hadn’t given her room to grow. She was my buyers agent, a genuinely exceptional one… but she wanted to learn the listing side of the business too. And I already had someone for that role. So without ever meaning to, I had quietly put a ceiling over the head of someone who only knew how to reach higher.
She didn’t leave because I failed her dramatically. She left because I failed her quietly, consistently, over time.
Some leaders would crumble losing their anchor person. Some would get defensive, or busy, or sad. I did all of those things briefly, and then I got curious.
Where was my own DNA in the reason she walked out the door?
That question is not easy to ask yourself. But it’s the only question worth asking when someone you valued chooses to leave. Blame is simple. Accountability is the harder, more useful road.
What I found when I looked honestly was this: I had built a team structured around roles, not people. Everyone had their lane, and I had kept them in it. Efficient, yes. But it was quietly suffocating the very ambition I had spent my career celebrating in myself.
After she left, I went to my team. Not with answers… with a question. I asked their permission to reconfigure everything. To blow up the lane structure and rebuild something where every person would have the opportunity to learn all aspects of the business, to participate broadly, to grow into whatever they were capable of becoming.
They said yes.
That was eight years ago.
Today, I have grown some of the most capable, dynamic women in this business. They are not specialists boxed into a corner, they are full agents, running in every direction, busy with all things real estate in the best possible way. For better or worse, I created that. And I could not be more proud.
Resilience, to me, is not the refusal to be shaken. It’s the willingness to look at what shook you… really look at it… and let it make you better. That agent’s departure was one of the most important lessons of my leadership journey. I just had to be brave enough to learn it.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
The Tattoos Were Always Part of the Strategy
*On building a reputation by refusing to be anyone other than yourself.*
If you’ve spent any time in real estate, you know the aesthetic. The stiletto heels. The luxury sedan. The perfectly pressed blazer and the smile that says *I summer as a verb*. It’s practically a uniform, and for a long time, the industry treated it like a prerequisite.
I showed up with tattoos and wild hair.
Unapologetically. Enthusiastically. And with absolutely zero plans to change either.
Let me be clear, choosing authenticity over conformity is not the easy road. In a world where so much of the real estate industry is built on a particular kind of polish and presentation, looking like me means you have to *prove* yourself in rooms where your appearance already has people forming opinions before you’ve opened your mouth. I’ve felt that from other agents. I’ve felt it from clients who weren’t sure what to make of me. I felt it early and I still feel traces of it today.
But here’s what I discovered: the proof was never going to come from looking the part. It was going to come from knowing my craft so deeply, caring about my clients so genuinely, and delivering results so consistently that there was simply no argument left to make.
So that’s what I did. I outworked the doubt. I out-knowledged the skepticism. And I out-cared everyone who thought this industry had a dress code.
What I didn’t expect was how much my difference would become my greatest asset.
The clients who found me didn’t find me despite who I am, they found me *because* of it. People who felt unseen by the traditional real estate world. First-generation buyers who didn’t know where to start and needed someone who would meet them without judgment. Sellers who wanted straight talk over salesmanship. Communities that had been overlooked or underserved by an industry that had spent decades catering to a very specific demographic.
They saw someone who looked a little like the outside world actually looks, and they exhaled.
That’s when I understood that authenticity isn’t just a personal value, it’s a market differentiator. There are a thousand agents who can do what I do technically. There is only one who does it like *me*. And it turns out, there are a lot of people who were waiting for exactly that.
My reputation wasn’t built by fitting into this industry. It was built by being so genuinely, consistently, unapologetically myself that people knew exactly what they were getting, and kept coming back, and kept sending their people, because of it.
The tattoos didn’t hold me back.
They helped people find me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theeastbayagent.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themondayteamagents/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/themondayteamkw https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100083806625399
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?heroEntityKey=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAAD_VdMBQF8LdoptMBu1KQkR9PGx-QwgMck&keywords=kerri%20naslund-monday&origin=RICH_QUERY_SUGGESTION&position=0&searchId=fc099dc0-cbff-48a8-9473-bcd9fb6def13&sid=zLk
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kerrinaslund1/featured
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/kerri-naslund-monday-the-monday-team-oakland
- Other: Tic toc https://www.tiktok.com/@themondayteam?ug_source=op.auth&ug_term=Linktr.ee&utm_source=awyc6vc625ejxp86&_r=1
