Career Paths From Texas to the Territory with Liv Thompson
In this episode, Oli chats with Olivia (Liv) Thompson, a Director at LAWD. Liv's early years were spent on Northern Territory cattle stations, and she recently came full circle by selling one of those stations as a real estate agent.
Although Liv's career began in real estate, she took a detour to Texas, USA, working as a cutting horse trainer. Throughout this episode, Liv openly discusses her rookie mistakes, her love for the Northern Territory community, the cultural insights she gained from her time overseas and the evolution of her career.
Here’s an excerpt from Liv talking about life in the Northern Territory:
"Some say it's the last frontier, and I have to agree. It feels like home when I smell rain in the desert or see wet season clouds roll in during the monsoon after months of hot weather.
Then, all of a sudden, it's the dry season, and it's just perfect. I love the [Northern] territory from that point of view.
But what's truly amazing is Katherine's entrepreneurial spirit. People here don't just have jobs; they have businesses, side hustles, and investment properties. Even in the pastoral industry, it's astonishing.
You'd never know if someone was a truck driver or had a string of properties and were absolute millionaires. You simply can't judge a book by its cover here." - Liv
Learnings across her career:
“I think like anybody that looks back on their career, kind of cringes at their early days. I actually did an inspection at Scott’s Creek, and I had no idea about how to do an information memorandum, I just sort of treated it like any other inspection.
I would take them out, and if there was any questions, I'd follow up on it. And I got quite told off actually, because I was unprepared, but you don't know what you don't know, I guess.
I made it my mission to know after that and I actually showed that same buyer a couple of properties in recent years. The first one, I was so proud to give him my information memorandum, which was quite an extensive one, and he actually said last year, ‘You know, we've really watched your career and, we're really proud of what you're doing’".”
Left image: Provided by Olivia Thompson. Right image: Sourced from LAWD website.