Read through this whole thing if you really want to join me. I’m not quite your typical property agent. 11 years ago, when I was in the Naval Diving Unit for NS, I had enrolled in SIM for Marketing. I paid $699 to join a course as a real estate agent. At that time, there was no official governance agency nor were there any exams. And for the first 6 months, I made 0 income (more on this in Ep 6!).
First-off, the real estate industry is a very diverse industry. There is no one standard way that you learn or grow. You have self-employed, you have courses, you have a manager who can choose to teach you or not. Now, there’s mentoring and company activities. And you will never know who/which of these people will teach you well or teach you based on your working style.
For example, divorce cases. No one teaches you how to handle house in divorce cases! For me, my mentor offered me to shadow him for 50% of the commission. This is definitely OK because you’re paying ‘school fees’.
This means you really have to learn as much as you can on your own. No one will teach you for free.
6-7 years later, I started doing recruitment. My team, at its largest, had about 40 people. They wanted me to help them make it – be their mentor. This is fine, but as I’ve elaborated in many other episodes, having the innate drive yourself is really extremely important. You must want to succeed and be willing to put in whatever it takes – including being patient – to succeed as a real estate agent. And no one can do that for you but yourself.
Of my 40 recruits, many lacked this. I had to prompt them, “Eh you do work already? Have you learned this yet?” The person should be coming to me. “Aaron, I want to learn how to do divorce cases.” “Aaron, how do I handle this aspect of the case?”
Another thing is these new recruits like to work together with their friends. They want to go together to make the sale. But, you cannot rely on other people. If they delay, or they cancel, and you must wait for someone to come with you – how are you going to earn your money?
Mentoring, for me, became more like baby-sitting. I was engaging them to build their drive rather than as a coaching role and teaching actual skills.
So I started to streamline my team more. I would just meet recruits for a dinner or a catch-up, and then they would ask me more about their current work rather than I push them to go and find work. I much prefer this. So, if you want to join me, sure. But! Come with your own innate drive. I teach in an active format where I teach you how the industry works, but you must take your own initiative to figure out what is your working style, your way of prospecting, what niche you want and really go out and get what you want yourself.
So yes, join me! But I won’t be your boss or babysitter – I’m your teacher. 😊