One of Us

Kathleen Floryan

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Kathleen Floryan is a real estate professional with eXp Realty and the incoming chair of the St. Johns County Chamber of Commerce Ponte Vedra Beach Division. She grew up in New York and had a successful nursing career, eventually moving to Northeast Florida, where she established her real estate career in 2006.

You are the incoming chair for the St. Johns County Chamber of Commerce Ponte Vedra Beach Division. What are your hopes and plans for the local group in the year ahead?

The PVB Division Board of the SJC Chamber of Commerce is a very dynamic and engaged group of business professionals all working towards improving and supporting the local business environment through networking, educational and advocacy programs. My hope is of course to continue to reach out to and welcome new businesses as they open in the Ponte Vedra Beach and Nocatee areas and acknowledge their successes as we have in the past.

More importantly, our focus will be on retention of the current membership especially recognizing longstanding Chamber members who have made impactful contributions to the community of Ponte Vedra Beach through their business endeavors. Membership retention is a key to the mission of the Chamber of Commerce. 

   

How long have you been a member of the Chamber’s Ponte Vedra Beach Division?

When I came to Florida in 2004 as the administrator of the St. Augustine Surgery Center, I made the decision to join the St. Johns County Chamber. Two years later, when I made a career change and moved to the Ponte Vedra Beach area as a fulltime residential real estate professional, I rejoined the chamber as an individual business in the Ponte Vedra Beach Division. For the past three years I have had a role on the PVB Division Board, last year as secretary. 

You are a successful real estate professional here in Northeast Florida. Tell me a little about what you do. Do you specialize?

Thank you for that compliment. Indeed, I have had a great career in real estate in both Ponte Vedra Beach and Nocatee. I owe much of that success to my affiliation with the Chamber of Commerce. My specialty has been in the area of oceanfront/waterfront residences as well as golf course communities.

Most recently, I have become a "Certified Golf Life Navigator," which connects golfers based on their handicap and about 80 other data points to their best choice of golf course and neighborhood. This requires me to know as much as possible about the area golf courses, not just in Ponte Vedra Beach but all of greater Jacksonville.

I have continued my education in the real estate field over the past 16-plus years that includes multiple certifications from Luxury Home Marketing to New Home Construction.

I’m always interested in how people select and pursue their careers. Can you tell me about your career path and how you got into real estate?

Like for many people real estate is a second career. I was pretty burned out from my 38 years in a nursing career. In 2005 (you remember that was a booming market), we bought some investment condos in Jacksonville. Everyone I met while I was a nurse, was a real estate agent. I am sure you have come across the same phenomena here in NE Florida.

So, one of the agents I met recommended a new condo community being built in Jacksonville just off Old St. Augustine Road near Baptist Hospital South that also was just being built. It looked promising; what did I know? So, we bought three of them. I knew as an RN there were tons of regulations in health care, and I’d better learn what those regulations would be if I was to manage my investments without breaking the law, so I took the real estate course and got my license.

I was still working for a while as an operating room nurse part time and then when I decided I'd like to go full time in real estate (because you really can't do it well part time) my husband Dan exclaimed, "You are taking your hobby and making it your career?" And my reply was, “Watch Me!”

When challenged and told I can't do something, that's when my Irish gets up and becomes a motivator to prove otherwise.

What do you like best about what you do?

So, there are a lot of parallel skill sets between my nursing skills and real estate skills.  Both require a deeply personal trust and relationship building skillset. In my nursing career from critical care to hospital administration, to home health adminstration, lobbyist, educator, researcher, to business management, I was able to apply those skills to running my own business with compassion and understanding of the human condition.

The physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual work of my role as an RN was the foundation for my real estate career. In health care there were emergencies and dealing daily with death and dying. In my real estate business, there are no “real estate emergencies” — with the exception of resuscitating people these days when they see home prices soaring. But seriously, here are my 6 D's in real estate — Diamonds, Diapers, Divorce, Downsizing, Dementia, Death. We all go through life cycles and those cycles often require a change in circumstances, again it is parallel to what I've seen in health care. These 6 D's are typically one of the reasons people call me to help them.  

How do you like to spend your free time?

My two children are grown and live in Columbus, Ohio, with my four grandchildren, so most of my free time is spent sailing with my husband Dan on our 38-foot Hunter Sloop. Recently I competed in a sailing race with the St. Augustine Sailing Sisters to raise monies to benefit the Betty Griffin House and St. Francis House with their goal of empowering women to better their lives and circumstances.

Other pastimes include walking on the beach, which is across the street from where I live. Training and exercising my new 9-month-old Springer Doodle dog, Riley, is taking up a lot of spare time.

Other activities are constantly reading, periodically swimming and occasionally swinging a golf club — although what I do with that club is not exactly what most would consider playing golf.

And most importantly, being involved as much as I can with my church at Our Lady Star of the Sea.