<p>Real estate business plans range from very basic to very complex. In this course, we will expose you to three types of business plans. If you're just starting out in the real estate business, it's best to keep it pretty simple. You need to first get your feet wet and learn about the business. Once you get a good feel for the real estate business, are proficient at utilizing the systems, tools, and resources we provide, and have a year or so of experience, you will be in a better position to fine-tune and expand your plan. That does NOT mean, however, that you don't need a plan from day one. You do need direction. If you don't, it's like hopping into your car and not knowing where you want to go.</p>

<p>Follow Up Boss, or FUB, is our chosen Customer Relationship Management, a.k.a. CRM, solution. FUB and Ylopo pair up to provide a unique, powerful, and very technologically advanced arrangement for both lead generation and management of the leads. Prior to taking this joint system on, we used kvCORE as a one size fits all system for both lead generation and contact management. When EXP adopted kvCORE, our marketing costs increased tremendously, as pay-per-click bids went up because of the increased competition for leads. As it turned out, it was a very good thing. There is just no comparison to the Ylopo/FUB joint combination.</p>

<p>The following is a series of videos with accompanying worksheets designed to get you thinking like a successful entrepreneur. While it is not about real estate specifically, it is about how to run your own business, which is what you're doing. I highly recommend you spend the time to go through this exercise. Putting the principles you learn here into your practice can make the difference between success or failure to meet your goals.</p>

<p>The office supplies you with your own business account with Google Workspace. The purpose of this course is to help you become familiar with the tools and resources you have available to you, in the hopes that you will utilize those that you find can help you in your business. The icons will simply take you to the explanation page that Google has prepared for each feature they provide.</p>

<p><strong>Keeping Current Matters, or KCM, is simply amazing. They are the best of the best at what they do. They are so good that we decided to pay for a subscription to it for each of our team members. It's easy to learn, so dive, learn all it has to offer, and become proficient at utilizing it to its fullest extent.</strong></p>

<p>We're hoping you are not overwhelmed at this point. Yes, that was a lot of information to go through in a relatively short period of time. A lot of brokers, if not most, aren't exposed to as many business building tools, resources, ideas, instructions, etc., in their entire career. Your head is probably swimming.</p>

<p><strong>SEASONED BROKERS NOTE! If you are a seasoned broker and have already taken most, if not all, of the NWMLS courses, I suggest that you skim through this course and mark things as complete if you are comfortable that you don't need a refresher. Otherwise, do look at anything that you may not be 100% sure about. </strong></p> <p>The NWMLS and Follow Up Boss are the two resources you will utilize the most. While you pay for your membership in the NWMLS, the company provides Follow Up Boss and many other tools and resources to help you become as successful as you want to be. We want you to have the best of the best and everything the very top producers have. However, it's up to you to know how to use them to reach the goals you set for yourself.</p>

<p>In this lesson, we're going to describe three different practice scenarios out of hundreds you may come across during your career. The purpose is to get you used to both the mechanics of writing purchase agreements and the thought process of deciding how to structure both the language and the forms found in the agreements. We will lay out the scenario for you and then you will write up a purchase agreement for your clients. Pretend the property is available. For each scenario, we will lay out the terms including names, marital status, address, phone number, and the terms of the offer.</p>

<p>At this point in your training, you've gone through a lot! You've learned why the majority of brokers don't last in this business. You've taken courses from the NWMLS to learn about the tools and resources available to you. You've also learned about the importance of developing your Sphere of Influence. While you may or may not have purchased and sold homes before, we took you through the Understanding the Buying and Selling processes. We introduced you to things to watch out for in Title & Escrow. You learned the importance of developing a business plan. After that, you studied the tools and resources your new team provides for you. These included Google Workspace, Keeping Current Matters, Follow Up Boss, Ylopo, and Skyslope. After all that, we taught you about transaction task plans, prospecting, cultivating, and converting leads, and finally how to actually prepare purchase and sale agreements.</p>

<p>We will go more in-depth on prospecting, cultivating, and conveting leads in other continuing education courses. This course is meant to give you an introduction and overall understanding of these processes. We will specifically cover the subjects of where leads come from and the general methods used by top producers to cultivate and convert the leads they bring in.</p>

<p>For decades, we used individual-divided notebooks to house the dozens of documents in various categories that pile up during a transaction. When a transaction closed, we would break down the notebook of documents and store them in individual folders arranged in ten ream copy paper boxes. It worked just fine, and there was really no reason to change it other than taking up a lot of storage space and being a little difficult to find a particular transaction among stacked boxes in the storage shed. Then things changed which forced us to look for a different solution.</p>

<p>While you probably learned a lot about Title and Escrow in your pre-license courses, when selling homes there are two things I advise. One is to watch and read the components of this course. The other is to contact a title rep from one of the local title companies and ask them to take you through reading a preliminary title and pointing out the issues that come up.</p>

<p>Until you have several dozens of transactions under your belt, you will be constantly worrying about whether you're missing something that you're supposed to be doing. It can be quite stressful when you're dealing with transactions as complex and monetarily into the hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars. You don't want to make a mistake that could cost your client to either lose the transaction or spend a lot of money unnecessarily. And then there's the worry about lawsuits. When someone sues during or after a transaction, EVERYBODY is drug into the suit. You really don't want to go there, believe me.</p>

<p>During the course of your career, you will be asked hundreds, if not thousands of questions by your clients. Even though you have a real estate license, and maybe even own your own home and/or have been involved in numerous home purchases, there may be areas behind the scenes that you aren't aware of. Regardless of your homeownership history, we ask that you go through the videos on how to buy a home.</p>

<p>You will find that a large percentage of real estate brokers don't work in their clients' best interests. Some of this is from a lack of training and experience. They simply don't know any better. Much of it, however, is from not wanting to put in the time, effort, and, mostly, expense to do the best job possible. A lot of brokers simply put the home in the MLS and call it good.</p>

<p>The real estate business attracts a lot of people, mainly because of two aspects... Independence and Income. However, only a very small fraction of those starting in the business last very long. There are lots of reasons for this high level of failure. Some of them are unrealistic expectations, a lack of a strong work ethic, and a lack of training and guidance. While it is true that you can make a lot of money selling real estate, it takes several years of hard work and the willingness to follow a proven path that we here at WEBREALTY will guide you down if you're willing and able to embrace it. </p>

<p>Writing transactions, in a way, is similar to processing the transactions in that it's fairly easy to make a mistake that could cost your client money and possibly instigate a lawsuit. The Washinton State Licensing department requires that for your first two years, your transactions must be reviewed by the designated or managing broker within the firm. HOWEVER, I find it odd that the transactions must be reviewed AFTER the transaction has been ratified. By that time, it's too late to catch and change mistakes or other aspects of the offer which could be detrimental to the client and/or broker, managing broker, designated broker, and the company. If possible, where time permits, we prefer to review your transactions PRIOR to them being sent to the cooperating broker.</p>

<p>The Future Of Digital Marketing Technology - Ylopo is the lead generation and nurturing side of our complete marketing and contact management system. Follow Up Boss is the CRM side. Together the combination is unbeatable, providing us with a platform unmatched by even what the mega-companies of the industry are touting. We used to use kvCORE, which is what EXP subscribes to. That doesn't hold a candle to the Ylopo/FUB solution.</p>

<p>For developing your business, we start with <strong>WORKING YOUR SPHERE OF INFLUENCE</strong>. I can’t emphasize enough how this should become, by far, the largest source of your business. You want to get to the point where clients are coming to you, not the other way around. You should make working on your sphere a mandatory thing you do, every workday. You should be constantly adding to and nurturing these people.</p>