Beyond the Listing

A residential sales internship across apartments and houses, working with a client base that was roughly 40% domestic and 60% international. I presented properties, ran viewings, and tailored every consultation to the buyer in front of me, not the listing sheet.

Buyers rarely say what's actually stopping them on the first walkthrough. Reading past the stated objection to the real one, and adjusting the conversation instead of the pitch, produced an 80% placement success rate across the client base I worked with.

None of that is really about the property. People decide with their emotions long before they decide with logic, and the ones who actually sign are the ones who get to feel the decision was theirs, not mine. My job was never to convince someone, it was to get them to convince themselves.

Turning Partner Research Into a Business Decision

A Demand Generation internship built toward one final project: evaluating the consulting partners supporting AWS's Middle Eastern client base, more than twenty partner accounts, and turning that research into a recommendation senior leadership could act on.

Beyond the research itself, I was selected as Bar Raiser for the final project and built AWS PartyRock, an AI tool that gave the team a faster, clearer read on partner engagement than the process it replaced. I left with two AWS professional certifications, including the AI Practitioner certification, which I completed in two weeks, and a habit that stuck: don't present information, present a decision.

Property Is Never Just the Transaction

As a legal assistant working on real estate and inheritance disputes, I drafted case briefings that required careful review of the facts, precise documentation, identification of procedural gaps, and clear organisation of complex information.

Although each matter centred on property, the work showed me that these cases were rarely only about the asset itself. Behind the legal facts were family relationships, competing interests, and decisions shaped by far more than ownership alone. Understanding that context was essential to presenting each case clearly and accurately.

Earning Access, Not Chasing It

I wrote and independently published my own eBook on attraction, self-presentation, and behavioural patterns. What interested me most was not dating itself, but the psychology behind decision-making: how people signal value, build trust, over-invest, hesitate, and commit.

That same curiosity shapes how I think about real estate. Property decisions are rarely purely rational, they are influenced by perception, emotion, timing, and trust. Writing the eBook taught me to pay attention to those invisible drivers, the things people feel before they can always explain them.

One idea carries across both: find the pain, earn the sale. Understand what is really driving the decision, then respond to that.

It sold 140 copies at €25 each, entirely through my own audience, the same audience I built through my YouTube channel on human psychology and self-concept, where my best video reached 8.4K views.

A purchase confirmation, buyer details redacted, and an excerpt from the guide.

The same thinking, published to my YouTube channel, and its best-performing video.

What They Say Isn't Always What They Mean

Before a viewing, I try to understand how the buyer is making the decision, not just what they say they want.

Before I show a single feature, I want to know three things: what they've already seen, what stopped them from saying yes before, and what would make them walk away again. Those answers give me a clearer sense of their priorities, their non-negotiables, and the comparisons they are already carrying into the room.

Because "too expensive," "too small," or "not quite right" is often only the surface. Underneath it might be timing, uncertainty, comparison with another property, or simply the fear of making the wrong decision.

That means I can present with more intention. I know which features matter, which ones are noise, and when a property simply is not the right fit.

For me, good sales is not about saying more. It is about knowing what is worth saying.

The better the questions, the sharper the sale.

Before the Camera Was a Job, It Was a Habit.

My first modeling work was in Vienna: formal, editorial shoots in evening wear, the kind of work that teaches you to hold a pose and an expression at the same time. It's where I first learned that the camera notices everything, hesitation included.

Years later in Madrid, the work got more editorial and more collaborative: full productions with stylists, lighting teams, and creative direction, building a look and a mood, not just a photo.

What stayed the same across both cities: presence reads. Whether it's a fitting room or a boardroom, people can tell when you're actually there.

Vienna.

Madrid.

Trained to Feel It, Not Just Say It.

I completed two rounds of online Method acting training, Method 101 in March and Character Development in April, built around the technique most associated with Lee Strasberg: working from real emotional memory instead of performing an emotion from the outside.

It's not so different from what I already understood from years of dance competition and modeling: an audience can feel the difference between a performance you're doing and one you're actually inside of.

Between the camera work, the training, and years of being watched and judged, on a dance floor, in a fitting room, on a stage, the next step is simply doing it on someone else's set.

March Method 101 cohort, online.

The Spotlight Is My Comfort Zone.

Before any of this, I competed professionally in Latin and ballroom dancing, years of walking onto a floor to be judged live, in real time, no retakes and no edits. That's where I first learned to perform under pressure and recover instantly when something doesn't go to plan.

That same instinct built a social media platform from zero to 8.2 million views in under three months, with 98.7% of that reach coming from people who had never followed me before. And it took me onto the stage at IE University's public speaking competition, in front of a room full of strangers.

What ties it together is how I think about being watched: I don't try to be unbothered by it, I use it. Nerves are just energy without a job yet. Give it a job, hit your mark, land the line, hold the pose, and it turns into presence instead of panic.

"A closed mouth will never be fed."What I live by

That's exactly what makes a strong live TV host: hosting live, especially on a red carpet, asks for that same mix, think on your feet, hold your composure on camera, and make a stranger feel at ease in the thirty seconds you have with them. It's the same room-reading instinct that got me through a competition floor, just with a microphone instead of a dance partner.

Competing in Latin and ballroom dance.

Rebecca Spielmann

Away from the stage and the camera, here's the rest of it: I grew up in Vienna, finished a dual bachelor's degree in Law and International Relations in Madrid, and now I am in New York, making my dreams become reality.

I speak four languages: German, Russian, and English fluently, and Spanish at a conversational level.

Three books changed how I think more than almost anything else: The 48 Laws of Power, Becoming Supernatural, and Atomic Habits. Different subjects, same throughline: understanding what actually drives behavior, then acting on it deliberately instead of by accident.

Competing in Latin and ballroom dance.

Three books that changed how I think: The 48 Laws of Power, Becoming Supernatural, and Atomic Habits.

It's Not Just a Skill. It's a Curiosity.

Psychology isn't something I picked up for work, it's something I've been genuinely fascinated by for as long as I can remember: why people say one thing and mean another, why they hesitate, why confidence reads as trustworthy even when it shouldn't. I ended up writing an entire eBook exploring exactly that.

It shows up in my everyday life more than almost anything else I do. I notice it in a first conversation with a stranger, in how a room shifts when someone walks in differently than they usually do, in the split second before someone decides to trust you or not. It's less a tool I switch on and more just how I see things.

That curiosity is the throughline behind everything else here: the dancing, the speaking, the modeling, the acting training. All of it comes back to paying attention to people and figuring out what's actually going on underneath what they're saying.