Jesse Van Nek, broker owner of Gympie’s REMAX Property Group, used to measure survival in eight-second increments before pivoting to real estate sales. Long before taking home national real estate trophies, the Rockhampton-born agent was risking life and limb on the professional rodeo circuit, taking on 1,000-kilogram bulls across Australia and the United States.
From the Arena to the Office
Today, Jesse is steering one of the fastest-growing property footprints along Queensland’s Sunshine Coast corridor. His transition from the professional rodeo circuit to the property world was far from a comfortable corporate handover. Returning to Australia around 2016 at just 22 years old, Jesse realised that while his peers had picked up trade qualifications or established long-term careers, his single-minded focus on bull riding had left him completely unprepared for the reality of everyday life away from elite sports.
He was doing concreting in between events, a physically demanding job that quickly became hard on his knees. “I was beating my body up like you wouldn’t believe,” he says. “At 22, I shouldn’t have had as many injuries as I did, but going into labor jobs wasn’t an option that would be viable forever.”
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His entry into the industry happened entirely by chance while hanging out at a friend’s practice venue. It was there that he crossed paths with Jesse James, a sales consultant at the Ray White office in Redlands Bay. Needing a clear career path to protect his battered body, Jesse sought guidance from his cousin, who suggested real estate if he could start his life over.
The early years were brutally tough. Adapting to the slow burn of real estate tested every ounce of his patience and nearly forced him out of the industry altogether. “I actually quit real estate five times,” Jesse reveals. “I disliked real estate with the way that it was and what it can do to people, because it can really burn people out and wash them up, and I was the experience of one of those.”
Relational Selling
It was only after taking deep mentorship from Jesse James that his career completely skyrocketed. The foundational lesson in relational selling became the bedrock of his personal business philosophy. “The one thing he really drummed into me was the importance of forming relationships, and that has been the true underpinning of all the growth I’ve experienced,” Jesse says. “It is about communication, bonding, and creating real relationships versus just looking at the transactional piece.”
The bond between the two men remains so unbreakable that Jesse James will be standing at the podium as the master of ceremonies at Jesse’s upcoming wedding to his business and life partner, Teesh Ottesen.
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The results of that relational philosophy speak volumes. After establishing REMAX Property Group, Jesse was recognised at the national REMAX annual awards, taking home the coveted award for Business Growth for an Individual Sales Associate.
His team has strategically capitalised on massive regional migration patterns. Industry data shows that 80 per cent of buyer inquiry in the Gympie region originates directly from the Sunshine Coast. “When we opened the business up here, the median price was four-seventy, which was identical to where another coastal market was when I first started out,” he says. “It is literally watching history repeat itself.”
Despite his rapid rise and expanding footprint, Jesse remains intensely humble. His relentless work ethic stems from a childhood spent in Westwood, a tiny township southwest of Rockhampton, where financial hardship forged his early ambition. As soon as he was making an income from bull riding, he moved out early to soften the blow on his parents, coming home to hand over money. He was completely driven for financial freedom.
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Applying the Mental Conditioning
To handle the high-stakes environment of business ownership, Jesse relies on the exact same mental conditioning he used to survive mounting savage bulls. Ever since he was 17, he has studied self-image psychology, drawing heavily on Dr Maxwell Maltz’s classic book, Psycho-Cybernetics, to maintain composure under immense pressure.
Growing this organisation has been one of the toughest things we’ve ever endured, and I would even say this is as tough as riding bulls in terms of the pressure and the mental rehearsal required to stay conscious and balanced. “If you are off your game in either arena, you get chewed up and spat out, but we stay completely detached emotionally from the outcome by obsessing over our daily process,” he says.
For the average agent, the daily grind of prospecting and following up with leads can feel endless. The psychological resilience developed in the rodeo arena allows Jesse to push through the slow periods without losing focus. Instead of fixating on the lack of immediate results, he applies the same mental toughness he used to stay on a bucking animal for those key seconds. This approach turns what many see as a frustrating cycle of rejection into a predictable series of tasks that must be completed, regardless of the emotional weight of the outcome.
