Teacher Prep

I can't stress enough how done I am with October. It has been one heck of a crazy month. Fortunately, my new real estate school boss has also had a crazy month and did not notice I haven't been around to talk about me teaching. That's a good thing, because up until this week, I had done nothing with my new certification. Plus, I didn't think starting a relationship with my new employer giving her a month of my baggage would be a sign of beginning on the right foot. So, I took the ultra-mature route and ignored the entire situation, hoping she didn't call.

This week, life, blessedly calmed down and I had a chance to kind of figure out what I want to teach. I think I want to start by teaching agency. It is a subject near and dear to my heart, and I truly feel if more agents paid attention to this particular topic, we would be raising the bar for our industry.

Tuesday, I sat in on an agency class. The teacher was boring and actually got the information partially wrong. Not wanting to be that student, I just took my notes and started working on my own outline, instead of raising my hand and correcting her. Ok, maybe I did that once or twice. But I swear I was tactful.

I was so relieved I was taking another agency class on Wednesday, to wash that horrid Tuesday class out of my brain. That is, until I sat down and had the worst class I have ever had Wednesday afternoon.

In the middle of class, after she said a few appalling snippets, I whipped out my phone and looked up the instructor. She had been an agent for less than two years. I didn't even know you could get a real estate instructor's license with less than two year's experience! The class was so bad, I was tempted to walk out and kiss the $20 I spent good-bye, but in the end, I stayed. I learned a lot about how not to teach a class. Trust me, I took notes.

Incidentally, I didn't have to raise my hand and tactfully correct Wednesday's teacher. There were about seven other people in the class doing it for me.

Marty and I are taking an agency class next week taught by my friend Kaye. I know it will be a good class. The reason I am taking so many is to get material together, because it appears I need to create my own curriculum.

The class I am creating for is how to set client expectations with a client consultation. Essentially, what the public needs to know to hire an agent. And more to the point, how an agent needs to act so the client's expectations are properly set.

 As a real estate professional, our jobs isn't really about showing pretty homes. And if the general public understood that, perhaps our industry would have a better reputation. There is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes. I have had clients say to me I didn't earn my commission. Well, that means I did my job. They didn't know what was going when they weren't looking. Nor did they know how much drama they may have caused.

But the truth is, agents aren't respected. It is our own doing. I have actually lost clients because I wanted to sit down and have a consultation with them first. All they wanted to do was gain access to a home and decide if it was right for them. It didn't matter that they wanted to spend a third of a million and truly needed to know what their rights and legal obligations were. Other agents were willing to just waltz in and do it the clients' way, no matter what the legal ramifications were.

Pardon me for saying so, but this must stop. As an industry, if we want to be taken seriously, agents need to act the part. So, that's the class I am working on.