Developers - what was your route to becoming a developer?

I started as a market analyst at a brand name brokerage shop, got my license to become a broker, and then through my interactions with owners I realized I wanted to be on the ownership side of the business. I specifically remember a room of us in a broker event in a new building all wearing suits and some guy shows up in a Bentley wearing a t-shirt and jeans. He owned the place, he didn’t just cold call hoping to fill it like all of us nerds. For 24 year old me or whatever, it was transformative. 
 

I moved cities and got a job with a family office in asset management but they needed a favor leasing a student asset up after firing their property manager. If they didn’t get the building full by the time school opened in August, they were fucked, and I had leasing experience even though it was in office. I leased the building and oversaw some much needed rehab work (it had both roof leaks and a rat infestation that you could smell in the lobby) but when I asked when my job would start properly, I was told that I was such a good property manager that they wanted to keep me there. I immediately applied to grad school. 
 

Before grad school, I did a month as a superintendent on a Holiday Inn renovation (got the job on Craigslist with zero construction experience) for a company that was hilariously shady and ended up getting sued into oblivion years later, but then I got a pre-grad school internship with a company that renovated Section 8 housing to market rate rentals, which was very helpful. Great group of guys. 
 

My MRED program was somewhat light on actual learning, but it was brilliant for networking. I got a name brand development internship in a much larger city in the summer between year 1 and year 2 and I used that to network even more and turned it into a full time job with a smaller company where one of the principals used to work with my boss at my internship. 
 

I then worked there for a good while, going from development associate to development manager to development VP until I quit, moved across the country, and joined a guy 15 years my senior to start a company. 
 

5 states and 10 or so titles over a 13 year or so period, and I doubt I’m doing now what I’ll be doing the day before I retire. There are infinitely easier ways to go about all of this, trust me, but it worked out in the end.