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Experience Continued

June 27, 2008

I started out as a real estate salesman with about as much preparation as I had when I built my first house. Again I was lucky because I had gotten my license with some other guys on a lark while I was still employed, then when I was fired, I failed into my real estate career. In those pre-Century 21 days, my broker was old school. When I asked him about his training program, he gave me a cold stare and gave me 3 months to bring in a commission or be fired.

Not knowing what else to do, I started knocking on doors in areas where there were a lot of “sold” signs and asked homeowners if they didn’t think it a good time to be selling before the market went down.

A surprising number of them said yes. I didn’t have any idea as to how to price these listings, so let the seller do it. Almost universally that priced them high, but the rising market saved me. They sold at or near the price at which they had been listed, and I met my broker’s goal.

In the process I at least discovered what I didn’t know, so began looking up retired successful brokers to find out their secrets. This cadre of crafty old style brokers were my first mentors. They didn’t know anything about houses, but knew everything about people, and how to work with them. The combination of these mentors and my willingness to try almost anything to keep commissions coming was the key to my earning a good living and later being able to open my own brokerage.

Posssibly the most valuable lesson learned was to choose my mentors carefully from among people with actual experience doing what I wanted to do. Today, I see thousands of hopeful aspirants taking copious notes and buying “home study courses” from so called experts who learned everything they teach from other teachers in much the same way that college professors do. Like college professors, their information is often outdated, and has no connection with actual field experience.

I think that the best way to become skilled in this business is to test knowledge gained from instruction, reading, and tapes by personally trying to put it to use. Perhaps a month studying followed by a month actually working the streets would be about right. That’s what I think, what do you think?

Written by admin · Filed Under Real Estate Articles 

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