Cold Hard Truth: Learning From Dragons Den’s Kevin O’Leary On Business, Money And Life Part 16

October 17, 2011

However, if you answered mostly Always True or Quite True to most of these questions then I don’t believe entrepreneurship is right for you.  If you are already in real estate sales then you’ve probably haven’t made much money doing it.  Understand that I’m not trying to discourage you from succeeding.  I’m just asking you to be brutally honest with yourself and ask yourself if real estate sales is truly your calling.  You are likely to find better ways for you to be successful that will make you happier too.  Then again, re-grouping yourself, taking some time to learn about the business, and pressing on may be all you need to take your business to the next level.

“If a company wants to buy yours, sell it, because their optimism often exceeds yours.  That means they’re willing to pay more than what the company’s worth.” – from Cold Hard Truth

Venture capitalists and angel investors always have an exit strategy with any deal they do.  They put their money in a venture and then it goes to work for them.  When the time is right they take their money out so (if there’s any left) so that their money can be more effective elsewhere.  Most real estate professionals have no exit strategy at all for their business.  Consequently, they make the mistake of making their branding a reflection of themselves rather than their farm area.  Their branding is so much about them personally that it makes it difficult (if not impossible) to extricate themselves from it and get someone interested in buying that brand.

This is especially true for e-commerce based real estate businesses.  For instance, if your name is John Smith and you register johnsmith.com and use it for your website’s domain it has far less value than if you registered some variation of the domain <your farm area’s name>.com.  Sure, your site might achieve page 1 Google ranking for your farm area, but what are the chances that someone else named John Smith will come along and want to buy you out for top dollar?  Slim and none.

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Tags: angel, capital, den, Dragon, investor, shark, startup, tank, venture