Kris Dumke, 31

The commercial real estate business can be tough.

There is no question about it. The hours are long, deals can be complicated, there are vast stretches when you don’t get paid and sometimes, after months and months of work, transactions fall apart.

Photo by Mark Wemple

But hard work is all about perspective, and from Kris Dumke’s point of view, it’s not really that difficult.

Dumke is the managing broker of Bridgewater Commercial Real Estate in St. Petersburg. He founded the firm in 2018 when he was 25 years old alongside his mentor, industry veteran Dan Huntington.

The two worked together at Coldwell Banker with Huntington chasing the deals and Dumke working in the background doing marketing and "making things look better" online. When they decided to start their own firm, Huntington, who was in his mid-60s at the time, said Dumke should take the lead as broker.

Since its inception, the firm has added seven agents and closed about $200 million in deals.

For Dumke, who credits Huntington for teaching him how to put deals together, getting to this point has taken a lot of dedication and sacrifice. When he first started in the business, he drove for Uber and Lyft on nights and weekends to make ends meet as he waited for deals to start closing.

But that extra effort and the tough times pale in comparison to what could have been.

Dumke’s parents are serial entrepreneurs who have opened several businesses throughout their lives. Although they had no experience in agriculture, about 20 years ago, when Florida opened as a place to grow blueberries, they bought a former orange grove in Plant City.

They began to grow blueberries as a way to make money.

Agriculture is a tough, relentless, 24-hour business, though, that often leaves you at the mercy of outside forces. Just the weather alone means you have to worry about hurricanes and freezes, is it too hot or too cold, says Dumke.

He spent much of his youth working the farm and then went at it full time for a year after graduation. But it was not for him.

So, Dumke switched to real estate. At first, the plan was to get into residential real estate, but his father pointed out that meant working nights and weekends. Commercial real estate is not 9-to-5, but it is mostly Monday through Friday, allowing for at least an attempt of finding more of a work-life balance.

That’s what Dumke wanted after years of being tied to the farm. To make life, well, for a lack of a better term, easier.

“I kind of grew up in that hard-working mindset of, the plants don't care if it's Easter Sunday. You’ve got to pick blueberries. Plants don't care if it's Christmas. You’ve got to frost protect. There's no weekends. There's no holidays. You just go have fun whenever you have fun. You work when you have to do the work,” Dumke says.

“In real estate, you get out of it what you put into it. So, you can work hard, and eventually you will start to reap the benefits.”