Q&A with Kimberly Gold

POST: As a teenager, you worked in the local Jon Douglas office as a receptionist. Tell us about that experience.  

KIMBERLY: I was 17 and a senior at Palisades High when I began working there after school and on weekends. This was before voicemail, so I operated a switchboard and actually took handwritten messages for each agent in the office. Little did I imagine I would be working with these very same agents seven years later selling real estate myself.

POST: Where did you go to college and what was your first job after graduating?

KIMBERLY: After PaliHi (class of 1988), I attended San Diego State University and majored in liberal studies with an emphasis in education, thinking I would become a teacher. But the summer before my senior year, I interned at KROQ, the alternative rock station in Burbank, and had a great time working with the DJ’s and lively staff. However, I was more interested in learning the sales side of radio, so I talked the sales manager into letting me accompany the account executives on their appointments and learning all about selling airtime. After that summer I knew I would pursue a career in some sort of sales. When I graduated, I became an account executive in radio, selling advertising and writing commercials for a station in Ventura. A year later, I was recruited by the sales manager from KROQ, who had joined a new alternative rock radio station in San Diego.

POST: So what prompted you to leave radio sales for real estate?

KIMBERLY: I was the top account executive at the station, but I was also ready to move back to Los Angeles, and in 1995, my mom approached me and said she was going to list a new home development in the Palisades Highlands and was looking for agents to become part of her sales team. She thought I would be a perfect fit. I jumped at the opportunity. In radio I was essentially selling air, so the idea of selling something tangible was certainly more appealing. I moved back to L.A. and got my real estate license to head up the on-site sales team at the Alta Mira development in the Summit. After selling all 56 homes, my mom and I represented another new gated development in the Highlands, The Peninsula, which consisted of 49 homes. During this time I was also representing buyers and sellers of other properties, but it was selling these 105 homes in a four-year period that helped me gain my expertise in real estate. Many of the clients I have continued to represent over the years are those I met selling these developments.

POST: What do you remember about the early months of your career, learning the ropes and working with your mother? 

KIMBERLY: I was so excited about working in a profession that I loved and working alongside one of the people I admire most in life, my mother. She was so incredibly knowledgeable about real estate that I looked to her for guidance so I too could become a successful agent. She was always so confident in my ability to “do the job” that I knew my goal was reachable. The difficulties I had to overcome in my early years of selling real estate really had nothing to do with real estate itself. The first year I headed up the sales team at Alta Mira was the same year I was getting married. I was working long hours and devoting more time to my clients than to the man I was marrying, but Zac was always so supportive of my career and understood what it took for me to become a successful agent. I then became pregnant with our first daughter when I began selling the Peninsula development. I worked right up until the time she was born and returned to successfully sell out the development just six weeks later.

POST: You and your mom have continued to work as a team beyond the Highlands days.

KIMBERLY: In 2008, we formed an exclusive real estate partnership, Properties By Gold. We work so well together and there’s nobody I can trust more than my mom to give our clients the service they deserve. We share in all the responsibilities and decision-making, from marketing to negotiating, and we love working together; even our most challenging days end with a smile. Our clients also love having dual representation.

POST: How and when did you meet your husband? 

KIMBERLY: Zac and I met the first day of college as freshmen. We became best friends and didn’t start dating until seven years later. I guess that’s what you call “taking things very slow.” We were successful in our careers and finally realized we each provided the other with every quality we look for in a partner. We were married in 1996 and our ceremony was officiated by the cantor of the very synagogue my grandparents helped found, Kehillat Israel.

We moved to the Palisades in 1998, and we have two beautiful daughters: Lauren is a fifth grader at Marquez and Chloe is a freshman at Palisades High, where she may be the first third-generation Palisadian student. Zac co-founded the IDEAS Studio in Pacific Palisades in 2005, which provides children’s enrichment focusing on the arts, science and technology. He also owns Zac Hartog Events, specializing in corporate and social events all over the globe.

POST: What are some of the particular satisfactions you gain from working in real estate?

KIMBERLY: The greatest compliment I can receive from a client is the referral of their family and friends. I have a strong work ethic and I fully commit myself to every client I represent, no matter their level of affordability. As a result, many of these clients are now some of my closest friends. I loved going to work every day when I began selling real estate, and I love it just as much 18 years later.