I was sitting on a toilet lid in a walkup in The Annex having my makeup retouched after lunch when my friend, Toronto makeup artist Melanie Sleep, looked at me sideways. 

“You haven’t touched your latte,” she noted, referencing the pumpkin spice growing tepid on the cluttered vanity. “You didn’t drink yesterday’s, either.” 

Mel needed me to finish my latte so she could touch up my lipstick. We were filming a reveal for HGTV’s hit TV show For Rent. I was the host of the show: the real estate and design expert who “offers plenty of support and tips to take the ‘ouch’ out of home rental and redesign”. 

It was the opportunity of a lifetime! The chance my colleagues in real estate would give their left arm for. And here I was, squandering it. 

Lots on the table

I was two years into filming and barely had a website. What was there barely mentioned the show. Yes, I understood the opportunity I had. I was receiving upwards of 10 requests a day from people frustrated with their rental search or desperate for design advice. People trusted me. They felt like they knew me. They had real problems and they were from EVERYWHERE! 

There was no such thing as a well-organized system for renters or landlords, and agents weren’t being paid properly in some areas, or at all in others. While I couldn’t fly to Chicago to help Marion find a great loft in the city’s South Side for half a month’s rent, I could build a team of rental agents and designers.

We could bring it national. International. We could show these renters how to become homeowners by giving themselves a “phantom mortgage” – a term I coined for an episode where the renters were saving up to buy. (I encouraged them to put aside the difference between the cost to own and their rental fee, to build a down payment quickly.) 

Opportunity cost

The opportunity was immense. And I had done nothing about it. 

It’s not like I’d been sitting on my laurels in the two years since production began. I had gotten married, had a baby and hired a nanny so I could get back to filming, all while carrying on my career as a real estate agent and acting broker of record for my father’s 500 agent Re/Max office. I was far from bored. 

Yet, I wasn’t monetizing my BIG opportunity. 

I was showing up to dirty, lived-in rental apartments (known in film terms as “set”), having my makeup done and rocking it being an HGTV host while the nanny was caring for my sweet Sebastian. Rushing home to try to catch some moments with him at the end of the day.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So, back to sitting on the toilet. Mel’s usually silky shadow brush feels like sandpaper on my skin, as I remember gagging on my toothbrush that morning. That’s when Mel and I make eye contact, our eyes bulge at one another and she says it:

“I think you’re pregnant.”

I didn’t need a baby. I had a baby. 

A perfectly sweet little guy with eyes so wide and eyebrows so often lifted that he appeared shocked by this whole big world. I loved being his mama. Seeing my husband’s heart melt for our son. 

Another baby was totally in the vision. Just not yet.

We were taking the show on the road in just a few months. I hadn’t built my team of rental agents and designers. I had no lead capture on my website. I hadn’t monetized my big opportunity!

Sure enough, Mel was right. Baby #2 was due in January. Three tests confirmed. 

The crossroads

Then I got a call from Deb, Cher’s personal assistant. The Cher.  As in, the one with Sonny. Cher had seen the show. She liked me. Cher LIKED me! She trusted me. She wanted me to decorate her boyfriend’s Las Vegas condominium. Ho.ly cow.

So, at this moment, imposter syndrome set in. You see, I was a fraud. While I love design and fancy myself a self-taught designer, the show provided a behind-the-scenes real life designer. Heck, I didn’t even find the rentals! In my defense, it wouldn’t have been possible to seek out new rentals while filming, showing people places and designing their spaces. There are so many people behind the scenes making TV shows look simple.

The same week, a real estate brokerage became available for sale – a really well-positioned one. I had grown up in the real estate brokerage business. I had experience mentoring agents’ growth. I knew the language of the business and had witnessed how a brokerage can fund the purchase of commercial properties, and build true wealth. It was so tempting…

You know what they say: Opportunities come to those who seek them out.

Only, I hadn’t sought them out. They landed on my lap. LUCKY, right?!

The thing was, there were altogether too many of them.

A leap of faith

I said no to Cher. I was breastfeeding and pregnant. I was committed to filming two seasons of For Rent. I truly could not squeeze in a run to Vegas to imposter-design Cher’s boy-toy’s condominium. 

I said no to buying the real estate brokerage (a decision I would later regret).

I said yes to baby #2. (Oliver is 11, and he’s some kind of wonderful.)

The highs and lows of it all

I packed up baby #1 and filmed For Rent in Atlanta for six weeks in the middle of summer, while pregnant and breastfeeding and battling humidity, to provide our viewers the matte complexion and straight hair they love (mine is curly). 

We had so many wonderful viewers. 99 per cent of comments were positive and encouraging. 

But, there were the comments like, ”Oh, an Amazon woman from Canada!” I am 5’7”. On the tall end of average, but tall in heels. Two of our wonderful cameramen didn’t quite have the same vertical, so I was filmed from slightly below and therefore appeared quite tall in early episodes.

Later, we brought out the old apple box and lifted the cameramen so I looked my normal height. Nonetheless, the Amazon woman comment stung. Widescreen TVs at the time s t r e t c h e d images widthwise and added the proverbial 10 pounds. People paused me making awful faces and posted pics. Thanks!

Then, the weirdos showed up. A package arrived at the office for me one day. Fan mail! It was hemorrhoid cream. I mean, I had just had a baby and was pregnant again, so that’s handy, but very weird to receive from a fan! I let it go the first time. But I called the cops when the condoms arrived. Extra large, lubricated. Also handy, and also too late! We tracked down the sender and spoke to his parents who explained that “Jimmy likes to send ‘gifts’ to celebrities he likes”.  So, Jimmy’s figured out international mail, but not appropriate gifting. Anyway, Jimmy was harmless and we agreed to no more gifting, thank you.

Then there was the man with a foot fetish and a new shoe company who showed up with an offer of custom-made shoes. Apparently, my colleague Sandra Rinomato loved her pair, and he hoped if viewers saw us both in his shoes it would increase their popularity.

He always wanted to chit-chat. He didn’t just ask for my shoe size, he wanted pictures of my feet (nope!) He confessed he was a double foot amputee (nearly froze to death on a mountain) and told me I should try life without feet someday. And then he offered to help (insert Dexter imagery here). So, I told him I was notifying the police, getting a restraining order and if he ever contacted me again, I’d prosecute. 

All of this to say, what tiny bit of fame I had was turning out to be not so fun. I shut down my Facebook account. I screened calls. 

Where to go from here

I started to think about what I really wanted. Do I need fame? Do I want a product line at The Bay? Do I want to be the one to create an international platform for renters? Was it worth it?

I have a fear of not living up to my potential, so these questions were weighing heavily on my mind. 

As non-unionized talent, I was making about the same as one “end” of a property transaction per episode (houses averaged about $350,000 in Toronto at the time). Could I do another season and still be the mother of two I want to be?  

I had already pinched the production timeline as hard as I could after my first son was born, pulling some “dead time” out of my daily on-set hours. But I still wasn’t getting the time I wanted with my wee man. Production comes in bits and spurts. HGTV would order 13 or 26 episodes at a time, creating three to five months of intense work around their timeline, not around the real estate market.

So, we’d work intensely for a few months. Then wait. (Sometimes, I’d have a baby.) Then, I’d do the voice-over while the wonderful female producers held my babies. We’d wait again for months while the show was edited. Once aired, we’d wait on bated breath to see if they’d order more episodes.

In all, we made 65 episodes of For Rent over two-and-a-half years. I was pregnant for 39 of them. The production company treated me like gold. I had my 15 minutes of fame. 

A twist of fate

And when, in the spring of 2012, the show was not renewed, I was sad. And relieved. And, I felt like a failure. I cried into both my little boys’ downy baby hair. And I went to story time at the library.

Other moms said they watched me in the middle of the night while they breastfed. I’d tell them, “Thank you for inviting me into your living room. Know that I see you.” (And sometimes they didn’t get the “moms get other moms” metaphor and were creeped out.)

A decade later, I observe with pride my three kids all lined up along the breakfast bar (I have a seven-year-old daughter who will show us all how it’s done one day!) They have normal kid worries and normal kid successes. They have a present mom, not a famous mom. A mom who goes over the top to make them feel special on their birthdays and at Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong – hosting For Rent was truly an incredible life experience. To this day, thanks to my HGTV run, I am NOT camera shy, I have very little stage fright and I’ve learned to use video to build trust (strangers feel they know me).

So, at the end of the day, while I am so blessed to have had the experience of being an HGTV host, I would choose that normal mom for them every damn day.

I can go to Canadian Tire and pick up a Jillian Harris Canvas product and think, “You go, girl!”

It just ain’t the life for me.