Debbie Chauvin

Debbie Chauvin wakes up every morning and glances at a list of her goals for the day. She understands that she will not fulfill all of them in a day’s work, but the infinite process of satisfying the ever-growing list, coupled with enough moxie to leave a guaranteed job to quench a thirst for challenge, has paved the way for Chauvin to be one of the area’s top real estate brokers.

Now the owner and founder of Real Estate Express n which has since joined the Weichert national franchise umbrella n and 2011 president of the Bayou Board of Realtors, Chauvin and her team of 13 agents saw their production numbers increase by 49 percent from 2009 to 2010.

“I just pretty much got up one morning and at the age of 40, I decided I wanted to do something different,” Chauvin said. “I opened up the newspaper one day, and I said, ‘I worked in legal and insurance,’ and I figured if I could handle those aspects in an office setting that I could probably get out in the field and sell real estate and handle the legal issues there as well. So I did … My career took off from that point.”

Chauvin worked for 20 years as an administrative assistant for an oil company. Now near the end of her 53rd year, and the beginning of her 13th in real estate, Chauvin credits a diverse business approach for weathering the housing market crisis and only losing two of the area’s 50 agents during a tumultuous time for the industry.

After she worked five years under another broker, Chauvin branched out and created Real Estate Express. Since the move, she has sold a variety of real estate, including commercial, residential, waterfront and land-locked property, and she keeps her overhead costs down by renting office space to two companies and housing a tenant at the end of the building.

“So despite any type of change or downturn in the economy, I’m going to survive regardless,” she said.

Motivation, setting and meeting goals and abiding by smart business principles have helped make Chauvin successful in a business she hadn’t considered 15 years ago, but all would be lost if she hadn’t maintained a level of persistence.

“I was fixing to give up at the end of that first year when I saw what I made all year long, and market conditions were extremely good back then,” she said. “I kept telling myself this is what I want to do, so I didn’t give up and next year I went back out in the field and I doubled my numbers. They’ve either doubled or tripled from that point on.”

Title: Broker/owner of Weichert Realtors Real Estate Express

Age: 53

Family: Husband Kerry, two stepdaughters, Brandy Lejeune (34) and Brittany Poche (26)

Education: Assumption High School graduate, attended Nicholls State University

If you could add one more hour to each day, how would you spend it? With my husband

First job: Clerical position working for the Veteran Affairs in Napoleonville

What did you want to be growing up? X-ray technician.

Describe yourself in one word: Motivated.

What advice would you give to a woman in business? “Just work hard. Don’t give up. When you’re in this line of business, you have to get up and you have to be self-motivated every morning. If you get out of the bed and you’re not, you’re not going to be successful.”

If you weren’t doing real estate, what would you be doing? Either gone back to school to fulfill what I wanted to do or working behind a desk as an administrative assistant.