Real Estate Business is a broad term. If you have searched this term in Google, you are either in a Real Estate Business, want one, or want to get out of one for various reasons. Growing up when I was young, I never thought that I would own a Real Estate Business or any business for that matter. Something changed inside me, and that’s what I wanted to do. Maybe it was because I saw there was a decent amount of money to be made, and that’s what I was after.
As a bright-eyed, 18-year-old, I was offered a job in Real Estate Sales from my client, whom I was training at the time as his personal trainer. He offered me even a base salary that was more than I was earning, so I thought, “What the hell, why not give it a crack?” This was the start of my addiction to Real Estate and a learning journey I am still going through today, but differently.
If you are structured, disciplined, and likeable, you can hardly get it wrong. At an early age, I found that you can literally print your own money. Well, that’s what it felt like when you outearn your parents so soon in life. Some people will say it is not all about the money! Money buys freedom, which is ultimately what we all want in a financial sense and our personal life. So, as an agent at this point, I thought, “How can I find more of myself and turn this into a Real Estate Business?”
So, that is what I set out to do, but it was not easy. It took me until I was 24 to take the leap, and go through it alone in a Real Estate Business. I found that it was a lot harder than I thought, and now, all of a sudden, more responsibility. Owning a real estate business drowned me with so many other things that I had never thought about when I was just happily listing and selling houses. What am I trying to say? Well, give it some hard thought because running a business is a skill of its own. Ten years later, at 34, I can say it is not for the faint-hearted but well worth the challenge.
Do you want to own a real estate business? What are the reasons why
If you want to own any business, and you are great at doing the technical work, in my opinion, you will struggle to grow the business. You will find a way to revolve the business around you and not find anyone who does the work as good as you. That will keep you right in the thick of it. You must be clear why you are getting into the business. What do you want to get out of it? What are you doing it for?
There are no right or wrong answers. It is up to you, as it is your life.
- Do you want to earn money whilst you are traveling?
- Do you want to buy a mansion by the beach?
- Do you want to spend more time with your family?
- Do you want to simply prove yourself that you can?
You must think about this because if you just get started without keeping the goal in mind, you run the risk of working towards getting yourself a full-time job. I must say that these are big lessons I have had to learn, and also to not be a workaholic for the sake of working. Being a relationship game, the biggest challenge you will face for a Real Estate Business is that everyone in the first instance will want you, whether it be to sell their home or manage their investment.
How do you get yourself out of the centre of your Real Estate Business?
This can be very tricky, and the answer is really simple. You must be okay with things getting done at 80% of the quality of how you would do them. This could be your stumbling block, as it was mine. However, as I am writing this article, I am sitting with a beer in my hand after scuba diving all morning. The last thing that’s in my mind is what is happening at work, and that is for a big reason.
You must let go, but I am not saying just walk out and hope your business runs without you, as that is crazy. You need to make it run the way you want and according to your standards. The only way you can do that is to standardise it. You must get everything out of your brain and onto paper. It must then be developed into a way where people can follow it. If any human in the world cannot follow it, I think you may have overcomplicated it. Make it easy to follow.
When it comes to real estate, it is not that hard. The only thing you cannot process is the relationship side. You just need a good recruitment process to only hire salespeople and property managers who build long-lasting relationships. It is really not that difficult. Once you have started to develop your systems, you really have a real estate business that is serving you with what you built it for in the first place.
Here comes the fun part—adding scale to your real estate business.
If you are still following at this point, I have highlighted here that you must know what your goal is with your business. It is to be able to get out of the way of growth by systemising it the way you want so that it can run without you. Once this product is built and the operations around delivery, all you have to do is add more.
Add more. By that, I mean you need more of everything. However, none is more important than more leads—more leads for your salespeople to list and sell, and more investment properties for you to manage. If you get more of these, then you will need more of that. By that, I mean people to support it.
So how do you get more leads into a real estate business? Well, that is a big question. I will touch on it here in brief and future articles in depth.
- Start on your SEO strategy from day one, as it is the path to FREE leads
- Make sure your website stands out, as every business is an online business.
- Build a messenger list of contacts you can chat to at any time using Facebook ads.
- Stimulate referrals from your current contacts
- Use Google display ads to stay top of mind by remarketing
These things may sound a bit foreign to you. As a business owner in 2021, you need to know these things and become great at them or find someone who is. There are some parts of the business I still do because I actually enjoy it. I can tell you that is not doing the work of the technicians, who are the people on the ground. I like doing the parts that feed the beast and make it bigger!
That is the point of this article, which is if you want to run the business, the focus should be on the things that will get you to your goal and do not get sucked into doing the work. Get better at business, and it will get better.
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