Don’t be afraid to invest in quality — it’s the future of your business

Key Takeaways

• It will take serious investments of time and capital to build your business.
• Reinvesting in your business and using quality services are cornerstones of building a successful real estate career.
• Investing in quality means better offers for your clients and, ultimately, fewer hours invested to reach that goal.

When I took classes to get my real estate license, the instructor had us do a great exercise.

He had us budget expenses for the time (a few months at least) during which we would start up our business and have no income. He had us budget for all the things we thought we would need to start up and keep our business going until we closed a sale. He asked us to share our number.

One person had written $3,500, another only $800. Most had figured a couple of grand.

When it got to me, I paused and then told the instructor I thought I had done the assignment wrong. My number was $21,000. It’s not that I needed a lot of money to live off of. I was just thinking about all the investments I wanted to make in my business — websites, marketing campaigns, signs, office fees, fixing my car, etc.

You don’t need as large of a budget as I had; in fact, you can make it work bare bones. But do expect that it will take you time to develop a thriving business.

People now congratulate me on having a successful career. Part of the reason I’ve found success is that from the beginning I treated it as a business. I invested a lot more than most agents invest into their business to reach that success. I was making less money initially because I was reinvesting at a high level, and I still do that because ultimately I’m playing a long game.

Reinvesting in your real estate business feels like gambling in the sense that you’re trying to make an educated guess where it’s going to give you the best return on investment.

That’s why you go to a listing and see agents who are taking photos themselves with their phones, and those photos turn out awful. Part of the reason is that they’re nervous about investing their money in a professional photographer, because they don’t know if they’re ever going to get that money back.

The agent who does hire the professional photographer is making a calculated investment in hopes that it will all work out. What I’ve learned is that I’m not only going to invest, I’m going to double down. I’m going for the trifecta because I want to increase the odds that I’m actually going to get that listing to sell, or increase the odds that I’m going to get the home sold faster.

That, in turn, means better offers for my client and, ultimately, fewer hours invested to reach that goal.