Watch:Kendra Wilkinson Tearfully Admits to “Struggle” in Real Estate Career After Client Fires Her
Kendra Wilkinson is facing roadblocks in her new career path.
Six years after the former Playboy model earned her real estate license, she’s candidly detailing the ups and downs in her new venture, sharing an emotional moment after a client abruptly fired her
“When a client fires you…after all the work you put in,” Wilkinson wrote on Instagram Stories July 26 alongside a photo crying in her car. “Ya. I’m struggling today guys.”
“I know that we’re living in a world of struggle right now. I know that, but it’s hard right now,” she said through tears in a subsequent Instagram Stories note. “I feel like I’m doing everything right in my life. I’m raising my kids. I’m putting them first. I’m doing everything good.”
“I’m a good person,” she added, “and it’s just such a struggle right now finding people to work with me, getting fired, people being rude and mean—it’s taking a toll.”
But Wilkinson—mom to kids Hank, 16, and Alijah, 12, with ex-husband Hank Baskett—refused to be kicked down for long. Hours later, she shared how kind words from her followers inspired her to push forward
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“Hey guys, I want to thank you so much for the prayers and the well wishes and the thoughts and everything and all the positive messages I’m getting,” she shared in a separate Stories post. “Today was a rough one, but I put in some eye drops, put on my face, and I’m ready to take on a new day.”
“Got to get back up, right?” she continued. “I do have to brush my hair, but it’s time to fight a new one and live and enjoy and be grateful for the things I do have. I love you guys. Thank you.”
The 41-year-old earned her real estate license in June 2020 and chronicled the early aughts of her newfound career on the docuseries Kendra Sells Hollywood, which aired for two seasons between 2021 and 2023 on Discovery+
Photo by Jerritt Clark/Getty Images for Empire
Since then, she’s been open about the trials and tribulations of breaking into the luxury real estate industry
“I don’t know what’s in the air right now but wow,” she wrote on Instagram June 6. “I don’t feel good. I have to smile like everything is ok when it just isn’t.”
“Being a woman sometimes surrounded by men is scary,” she added, “feels like there’s no room for me a lot of the time even when I do my part of the job. It’s not enough.”
Though Wilkinson shared she sought out a career in real estate to support her family following her 2019 divorce from Baskett, the reality TV star was candid about her uncertainty with continuing on in the profession.
“I’m grateful for everything and so excited to be apart of this real estate world every day but can’t help but feel tired and lost at this moment,” she explained. “I hope I can shake this off and dive right back into it and rise beyond the disappointments I’m having.”
But Wilkinson isn’t the only star to ditch showbiz for a new venture away from the spotlight. Keep reading for more stars who have done the same…
“I am an RN, I work in PEDs home health care,” Kate detailed in an August 2025 TikTok. “I work with one family currently. The patients already know my name and some things about me so before I come into their home, they know who I am. And I imagine they already know me.”
What she knows, though, is that helping others is quite fulfilling.
“It’s actually been a really rewarding and fun job,” Kate continued. “To come in and relieve a family of their medically challenged child so that they can spend time with their other kids and do other things.”
Noting her friend worked at a coffee shop in the Valley, the actress shared in her 2015 memoir Wildflower that she had to find something closer to their rental because she didn’t have a driver’s license.
“It was the start of the 1990s, and coffeehouses were where everyone hung out,” she detailed of working at L.A. hot spot the Living Room. “People poured out on to the street every night.” Unfortunately, she continued, “I wasn’t great at my job. I wasn’t really great at anything. I had only done two things: acted and had wild life experiences.”
She served up the tea on one tense experience in her book.
“I could tell my boss, who had hired me on the novel idea of having a washed-up former child actor behind the counter, was patient with all my learning curves, but was also irritated with me,” she wrote, revealing how he walked in while she was doing the dishes “and said, very sharply and exasperatedly, ‘Don’t use the abrasive side of the brush! All the pastry cases are getting scratched and foggy, and you can’t see what’s inside!'”
When Stranger Things’ Noah Schnapp isn’t battling supernatural beings in the Upside Down, he spends his time saving others in another way. In a 2022 interview with Flaunt magazine, the actor revealed he had a part time job as a lifeguard at his local pool during the summer.
“It’s kind of a ‘just for fun thing,'” he explained. “I’ve kind of grown up with a normal life and normal friends and stuff outside of Stranger Things, so it’s kind of kept me grounded.”
“Simultaneously when things started to slow down in acting in my early 20s, another opportunity presented itself for me with a company that I started working with at age 25,” von Detten shared in a rare interview with E! in 2021. “And I’ve been with that company ever since. It’s a sales position with a company working in finance. I’ve grown into a management position and it’s worked out really well.”
“Its true Im workin@ Superstar Salon as a makeup artist & more Im proud 2 b workin & helpin pay bills,” Blonsky wrote on X (formerly Twitter) in 2011. “BUT ill NEVER loose sight of my dreams.”
Lizzie McGuire heartthrob Clayton Snyder chose not to pursue a career in acting after the Disney Channel series ended. Why? He wanted to focus on water polo, later playing for California’s Pepperdine University.
“Frankly, when the show wrapped up, I was kind of thankful,” Snyder admitted to E! News in 2022. “I was like, ‘Okay, phew, going into high school, new chapter, that’s done. We’re going to see what this is going to be like.'”
Snyder now works in real estate in Los Angeles, though his past as a child star does occasionally come up.
“I would really like it to be you want to work with me because I’m really good at what I do and if it’s a nice piece of trivia that I’m ‘that guy’ then that’s wonderful,” he said. “We’ve had plenty of clients of where halfway through showing them homes they’re like, ‘My wife and I just found out who you are and we can’t believe it!’ But that makes me feel good because I know that’s not why they’re working with me.”
President Barack Obama nominated Korsmo as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation in 2011.
Peter Ostrum made his acting debut as Charlie Bucket in 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which would ultimately be his only onscreen role. After graduating from Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in 1984, Ostrum went on to become a veterinarian.
“A very good friend of mine (@maiarawalsh ) pointed out to me that today is #worldhealthday . It is also the day I went from a volunteer, then a student nurse, and now an RN resident,” Stone shared on Instagram in 2020. “I just hope to live up to all of the amazing healthcare providers on the front lines now as I get ready to join them.”
After playing Chunk in the classic ’80s movie The Goonies, Jeff Cohen quit acting to become an attorney, working as an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles.
Cates went on to open Blue Tree, a gift boutique on New York City’s Madison Avenue, in 2005.
