1992 – 1998 Growing Years
Have you ever read the book “the E-Myth” by Michael Gerber? I suggest reading it. E-Myth stands for the “Entrepreneurial Myth”. Basically, most entrepreneuers just create a job for themselves instead of a busienss. By 1992, I think I was living the “E-Myth”. In 1992, the reality of having a young family caused me to rethink running my own brokerage. I was tired of running the office and all the minutia associated with that. I just wanted to sell and market real estate. At that time, RE/MAX was the company that stated “you could be in business for yourself without being in business by yourself”. That sounded good to me. I took a couple of my agents with me and joined a RE/MAX office in a totally new area of St. Louis, west St. Louis County.
The RE/MAX office was full of top producers. I was relatively unknown to most of them, since I had worked in North St. Louis County. When I arrived there, I began to do what I had always done, prospect. My tag line was “The Hard Working Nice Guy”. I used a contact management system to help me stay in touch with my prospects. I received some ridicule from a few agents saying my tactics would not work. But after being named the top agent in the office for several years, all that talk stopped. Funny thing… after a couple of more years of success, these same agents were asking me for advice.
With RE/MAX, I was responsible for all my expenses, and that included what and how I advertised. Having run my own office, I was acutely aware of advertising expenses and how they affected the bottom line. I had wasted plenty of money on in effective advertising, like grocery carts and such. I expected my advertising to work, to actually get me leads. It seemed so obvious to me: the purpose of my advertising efforts was to generate new business. What I found was that the most effective advertising was targeted direct response advertising.
Rainmaking and generating new business became a passion with me. I was constantly looking for the most effective ways to stand out from the competition. I used custom signage, direct mail, telemarketing, color brochures, door knocking and more. I was on a mission to get business and it was working. I was also taking notice of a new phenomenon: the Internet.
What I learned:
- Trust in your instinct – Stick with your beliefs.
- Be unique – don’t be like everyone else.
- Be humble – Don’t get too full of yourself.
- Create and work a plan of action – be consistent and persistent.
- Target your market – Direct response marketing works.