I have spent much of my adult life looking at those who owned their own business and feeling a tinge of jealousy at what I perceived as their independence, their wealth and just the general freedom that seemed to emanate from them in their day to day lives. I have grown up a lot since I had those first musing dreams of success and I know now that my starry eyed idol-worship of them skipped a lot of steps along the path as I compared my life as an employee to theirs as a business owner.
Every Real Estate Agent I know entered the profession because they wanted some combination of the financial success, the freedom and the ability to be "on their own." Indeed, what finally motivated me to move from a relatively successful career in healthcare to Real Estate was the desire to work only for myself. Thankfully, a lot of what I learned as I ran non-profits in different parts of the country prepared me a little for this transition. Though you may or may not agree with me or have shared similar experiences, here are some notes from what I have learned.
1. You don't start out with a business, you start out being "self-employed."
The only real difference in the beginning between working for someone else and working for yourself is that you now have a boss who doesn't pay you a penny. No one, and I mean NO ONE starts out with a
business. We only start out with jobs. We have to build websites. We have to choose how to market ourselves. We have to learn about SEO and websites and blogs. We have to learn how to write contracts and what to say and not to say to potential clients. THIS. IS. A. JOB.
It's work! It's difficult and it is sometimes tedious. You have to get through the job part before you can get to having a business.
2. No matter what your background is, you have to do research.
When you are a new agent you have to figure out what sort of agent you want to be. I think this has a lot to do with the Brokerage you choose. We all have different desires and approaches and personality types. Try to figure out what you really want. If I only want to be self-employed, then I need a brokerage that sets me up with leads, that markets themselves and passes the leads along and I take them through houses to set them up to buy. If I want to be a business owner, then I need a brokerage that teaches me how to do that, that provides the tools but allows me to run it myself. Brokerages can not be all things to all agents - we have to choose. They come in different flavors and sizes and costs and some provide business cards and signs and others let you build your own. But in the end, it's about whether you want to be your own business owner or you want to be self-employed. They are very different things. The brokerages that cater to those types are different too. They are not better or worse, they are just different.
3. You are going to need some support.
No matter where you get it - home, other agents, church, friends - someone needs to be your cheerleader. When we work for someone else, we punch a clock and we get a paycheck. There is a definitive payoff for everything we do. When you are your own boss, that payoff is a lot less concrete and does not come in regular intervals. When you have had a regular old job for a long time, you need encouragement while your psyche adjusts to not having that instant gratification of earning a certain amount every day. It's a little scary. Having those people who give you an emotional boost is extremely important.
4. You absolutely must have concrete goals.
It's not enough to just say, "I don't want to work for someone else." Which, incidentally, was the first sentence I uttered when I decided to be an agent. It wasn't until I made a budget, measured out what it would take for me to live where I wanted to live, what was the cost, how much did I need to sell every month, how would that affect my life and how much volume in sales would that take - it wasn't until I made something that led to a concrete goal that I could measure myself against that I became my own boss. I now had something to look at to say to myself, "Your evaluation this month sucks. You need to get to work and get leads and make those leads clients." We have to have a real direction or we flail around and get nowhere or even worse, get distracted by every new little promise of leads and clients and soon have lost total focus. Pick something and WORK AT IT.
5. You have to have an open mind.
I was pretty sure I knew how to run my business. I have been CEO of companies that provided healthcare to millions of people with multi-million dollar budgets. Of course I could run my business.
Wrong.
This was totally different. Some of the precepts are the same. But all of the sudden there were no signposts. I no longer had a secretary or an IT department. No one was there to pick up the slack in the areas I didn't know about. I had to have an open mind to all of the other agents around me. Listen to them, learn from them and show up to trainings in my Brokerage, even if the topic felt boring or I thought I knew it. I needed to learn and develop new habits.
So how am I doing so far?
I am sure I still have more to learn. It's been about eight months since I started being an agent full time. I joined Keller Williams because I didn't want to be a brokerage's agent, I wanted to be my own agent. I wanted to build my own business and I wanted to have my own plans. As I reviewed brokerages I could see that although it is not perfect, KW wasn't going to tell me what kind of agent to be, it was going to give me a ton of educational resources and let me pick and choose.
I also joined KW because I really identified with their mission statement, their commitment to community and their desire to help others. Like I said, I have spent twenty years in non-profits whose goals were to help others, to make a difference. I like that there is a part of KW that is all about that.
Two notes on that: I want to make money; money means I have options. I wouldn't want to join any brokerage that did not have some kind of focus on helping me succeed in making money. Without money, there can be no charity. And two, please do not read this and think I am suggesting that KW is the only brokerage that has community and charity as a focus - I know many other agents in different brokerages who are charitable and have a sense of community. This was just the path that worked for me.
And how much money am I making? I won't give you a dollar amount, I think that smacks of hubris a little and I am sure that for many of you what I am making would seem like a pittance compared to your sales numbers. What I will say is that I am meeting the goals I set. In two weeks I move into the place I want to live in. I am on track to have all of my 2013 expenses covered by August 31, which is my summer season goal. I am pretty proud of that. Your goals may not be that simple, but hey, I am new at this!
Do you want to ask me more questions? Feel free. I am happy to offer what little bit I know.
Do you have tips for me to think about? PLEASE go ahead and add them, I am certain I have more to learn and that there many many people who have a lot to teach.
But if you are thinking of being an agent or are new to being an agent, my advice; settle in, set some goals, make a plan, get to to work and pay attention to the agents around you. You can totally have your own business, but you have to build it.
