Meet Nicole DeSantis, a real-estate agent by day and Atlanta Falcons cheerleader by night

• Nicole DeSantis is both an Atlanta Falcons cheerleader and a real-estate agent.
• She spends her days showing houses and her evenings rehearsing for NFL games.
• DeSantis' days usually last 16 hours, and she films content for her TikTok too.

Nicole DeSantis is an NFL cheerleader for the Atlanta Falcons.

DeSantis, 24, has been dancing since she was 2 years old, as she told Insider. 

She danced competitively through her teen years, and she was on the dance team at the University of South Carolina, where she performed at different sporting events.

When she graduated in 2020, she knew she wanted to continue dancing, so she decided to try out for a professional sports team's cheerleading squad. 

"Whether it was NBA or NFL, I knew I wanted to try out for a team," she said. DeSantis ended up auditioning for the Atlanta Falcons, and when they offered her a spot, she relocated to the city.

Two weeks after she moved to Atlanta, DeSantis started working at Century 21, where she is still a realtor today. 

DeSantis' two jobs keep her busy, especially on Tuesdays and Thursdays when she has cheerleading practice after work. She walked Insider through what a day in her life usually looks like. 

DeSantis told Insider she usually wakes up at 5 a.m.

"I have a lot to do during the day," DeSantis said of her early wake-up call.

She said she typically starts her day at the gym, even on days she has practice. 

After going to the gym, DeSantis gets herself ready, packing her clothes for practice and her meals for the rest of the day.

"Meal prep is a really big thing for me," she said, adding that she typically packs lunch and dinner for herself every day. "I pack my bags for practice and everything I need for the whole day because I usually don't come home until like 10 p.m."

DeSantis also doesn't drink coffee, so she's usually operating only off of her own energy. 

By 8:30 a.m., she's out the door. 

She attends a practice session at work every morning.

"We have a morning practice session every day at my brokerage," DeSantis told Insider. "It's for newer agents, more experienced agents, anyone that wants to go."

The practice sessions usually last about 30 minutes, boosting DeSantis' selling skills.

Then, she spends the rest of her morning cold-calling potential clients or going to networking events. 

DeSantis reserves her afternoons for showing houses and working with existing clients.

DeSantis spends a lot of her day in Atlanta traffic.

Because she has to show houses in different parts of town, DeSantis finds herself driving all over Atlanta on a daily basis. 

"You have no idea the amount of miles that I put on my car," she told Insider. "I don't really tie myself down to one area of Atlanta just because it's so big." 

Her office is also nowhere near Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where the Falcons play, so it can take her over an hour to get to practice after a full day of work.

DeSantis likes the variety that being a realtor offers her.

There's a lot that DeSantis likes about being a realtor, but one of her favorite parts of the job is the face-to-face interaction with clients. 

"Getting to go out of the office and interact with people is a fun part of my day," DeSantis said. 

She also said that the important role home buying plays in people's lives excites her, too. 

"Don't get me wrong, there are days where I need to chill," she went on to say. "But I'm literally helping someone with the biggest decision or the biggest thing that they'll ever purchase in their life."

Her biweekly cheerleading practices last two and a half hours.

DeSantis leaves her office at 5 p.m., and practice starts at 6:30. She has time to eat quickly and change before it's time to start cheering.

Once practice starts, she's busy until it ends at 9 p.m.

"My coaches are really good about using every minute of time wisely," DeSantis said. "We're not just chilling in there."

Practice varies from week to week depending on what the team needs to focus on, but it usually follows the same schedule. 

"In the season, we come in, we have a meeting for 10 minutes, just going over updates and stuff like that, and then we stretch and warm up for like 15 minutes," DeSantis said. "We learn a new dance on Tuesday, and then we'll clean it on Thursday, and then we'll perform on Sunday. It's less than a week of actually knowing a dance."

"At the end, we'll run through all of the dances that we're supposed to know and keep up with, so it's kind of like a test every practice," she added.

By the time DeSantis is done with cheer practice, she's been awake for 16 hours, but she still spends some time chatting with her friends before heading home and going to sleep. 

"I shower and then I try to read," she said of her nighttime routine. "I'm not really a big reader, but I've been trying to force myself to read, and then I pass out, and I do it all over again."

DeSantis also said practice is typically the highlight of her day, both because she loves to dance and because of her relationship with her teammates.

"Those are my best friends here," she said. "I don't have any family here, so they're kind of my family."

As if her schedule isn't busy enough, DeSantis also films content for her TikTok throughout her days.

DeSantis has over 319,000 TikTok followers, regularly amassing millions of views on her posts.

She shares a variety of content on her page, from behind-the-scenes videos of the cheerleading squad to get-ready-with-me videos to shopping hauls. 

She told Insider she works filming into her schedule, intentionally recording on her busiest days because she thinks they will be the most interesting to her followers.

"One of the ones I most recently posted, I knew I was gonna work out and then I had a closing that day and some showings and then I have practice and I was like, 'Oh, that'll be a good day to record,'" DeSantis told Insider. 

DeSantis' schedule may sound hectic to some, but she told Insider that she thrives on it.

DeSantis said her schedule now isn't all that different from how her days were when she danced competitively in her youth, so it's familiar to her. Plus, she thinks of her current life phase as something she won't be able to do forever. 

"It's just me here doing my own thing," she said. "I don't have kids. I'm not married. I don't even have a pet, so it's just me doing me."

"I'm only 24, and I know that at this point in my life, I can do this right now because eventually once I have kids and get married, I'm not gonna be able to fit all this in," she added.

DeSantis also said she genuinely enjoys all of her work, which keeps her motivated.

"Dance has always been my passion, so that'll never feel like work to me ever, and it's a good stress reliever," she said. "And then real estate became a passion because I used to work at a desk job, and now it's just such a big difference. It's fun interacting with people, and it's so rewarding too."

DeSantis said her love for the Falcons organization makes a difference, and she's "grateful" to work with them.

"They are a family business and that is exactly what they do — treat every single person like family," she said. "The organization, especially my coaches, really care about the cheerleaders and our well-being."

You can see more footage of DeSantis' life on her TikTok.

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