Most real estate practitioners are small business people.
You might be an individual sales person or a broker affiliated with an office and operating as an independent contractor.
Or you might have your own brokerage firm, perhaps a paid person or two, with sales people working with you as independent contractors and.
In our $14 trillion economy, you are considered a small business person.
In order to thrive, you must also be an entrepreneur, which is to say you are someone who is willing to assume the risk for the sake of making a profit.
As a small business person, you most likely wear many hats.
You must not only be successful in real estate but also have some knowledge of human resources, technology, accounting and myriad of other disciplines.
When necessary, you must be willing to make the copies, clean the office and run to the bank to make the deposit.
Remember, those two paid staffers mentioned in the preceding paragraph take vacations, call in sick, and quit (sometimes without notice).
You are surely the boss but also the employee.
The buck not only stops with you but probably begins there too.
Many people who started their careers in large companies and then transition into their own small businesses never quite get the hang of it.
They may never get used to having no one to type their letters, to get that file or to open the mail.
And, then there is the social component of working.
In a small enterprise, the talk around the water cooler may be nonexistent because there is no one else there or no water cooler.
You may have gone from a corner office with a mahogany credenza to the spare bedroom in your house.
Now, that takes some adjustment! But, perhaps the most challenging adjustment is the constant need for self-discipline.
You must become used to being alone and on your own.
There is no one watching whether you are working or not.
If you are not a self starter, then this is definitely not for you.
Self-motivation is what keeps you on track.
After all these years, I still feel guilty if I am not working at least 45 hours a week and accomplishing everything on my daily electronic "to do" list.
When you become a small business person, the things you took for granted in the corporate world become time-consuming distractions.
Retirement funds and 401K's now are your worry to set up and fund.
For years, you thought you knew about the crisis in health care in the United States.
But, the shape that crisis took in those days revolved around the amount of your co-pay for medical care (which you always thought was too high!).
Now the problem for you may be obtaining an affordable health care plan that provides adequate coverage, and that assumes you can even find a plan willing to cover you and your family.
What happens to if you become disabled and cannot work?Unfortunately, not paying attention to those more administrative and operational challenges, which in a larger company will most surely be handled by a benefit specialist, can spell disaster for your small business.
Most small businesses fail.
I'll tackle why they fail and how you can avoid those potential pitfalls in my next article.
You might be an individual sales person or a broker affiliated with an office and operating as an independent contractor.
Or you might have your own brokerage firm, perhaps a paid person or two, with sales people working with you as independent contractors and.
In our $14 trillion economy, you are considered a small business person.
In order to thrive, you must also be an entrepreneur, which is to say you are someone who is willing to assume the risk for the sake of making a profit.
As a small business person, you most likely wear many hats.
You must not only be successful in real estate but also have some knowledge of human resources, technology, accounting and myriad of other disciplines.
When necessary, you must be willing to make the copies, clean the office and run to the bank to make the deposit.
Remember, those two paid staffers mentioned in the preceding paragraph take vacations, call in sick, and quit (sometimes without notice).
You are surely the boss but also the employee.
The buck not only stops with you but probably begins there too.
Many people who started their careers in large companies and then transition into their own small businesses never quite get the hang of it.
They may never get used to having no one to type their letters, to get that file or to open the mail.
And, then there is the social component of working.
In a small enterprise, the talk around the water cooler may be nonexistent because there is no one else there or no water cooler.
You may have gone from a corner office with a mahogany credenza to the spare bedroom in your house.
Now, that takes some adjustment! But, perhaps the most challenging adjustment is the constant need for self-discipline.
You must become used to being alone and on your own.
There is no one watching whether you are working or not.
If you are not a self starter, then this is definitely not for you.
Self-motivation is what keeps you on track.
After all these years, I still feel guilty if I am not working at least 45 hours a week and accomplishing everything on my daily electronic "to do" list.
When you become a small business person, the things you took for granted in the corporate world become time-consuming distractions.
Retirement funds and 401K's now are your worry to set up and fund.
For years, you thought you knew about the crisis in health care in the United States.
But, the shape that crisis took in those days revolved around the amount of your co-pay for medical care (which you always thought was too high!).
Now the problem for you may be obtaining an affordable health care plan that provides adequate coverage, and that assumes you can even find a plan willing to cover you and your family.
What happens to if you become disabled and cannot work?Unfortunately, not paying attention to those more administrative and operational challenges, which in a larger company will most surely be handled by a benefit specialist, can spell disaster for your small business.
Most small businesses fail.
I'll tackle why they fail and how you can avoid those potential pitfalls in my next article.
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