Making Your Brokerage Practice More Efficient with an Assistant

A few weeks ago, Allen Buchanan, an experienced broker at Lee & Associates was telling me that he was in the process of hiring an assistant to help him with his real estate practice. Someone he could train as a real estate broker and share the great wisdom he has accumulated over the last few decades. He apparently found the perfect guinea pig; his son-in-law.  Sheeesh.  What a perfect way to create family disharmony; by barking orders to your daughter’s husband. All kidding aside, could there be anything better than helping your children and their spouses follow in your footsteps but do a far better job than you?

Sadly, I haven’t been a great leader of law clerks and attorneys and the only thing that I could think of that I would be less capable at is training my own children to work for me. Nevertheless and without any hesitation whatsoever, I started dispensing my sage advice to Allen, born from my many failures over the years.

It then struck me that CRE Radio was the perfect platform to help Allen get the most out of this experience while at the same time keeping family harmony. Instead of just me doing the talking, why not invite my listeners to help out and give some of their advice on the radio. A great radio show and help a friend.

Rather than our usual format, we are going to treat this show as a problem solving forum where the listeners become the heavy participants and become more the speakers than the listeners.

Among other things, we will discuss:

• How to best prepare for a new trainee or intern?
• Should you train for the short term and long term?
• Best training practices?
• How soon should interns join organizations such as Boma and CCIM?
• How much should interns be paid and how effective is the bonus or commission system;
• How to best involve interns in social media and when?