7 Tips to Real Estate Agent's Success: Tip #1 First and Foremost YOU are a Business

Real estate agents work for a broker, but are independent, commissioned sales people. This means that you are a small business and must run your practice as a business. Again, remember you are a small business owner.

Within the training curriculum in becoming a real estate agent, the training focuses on the knowledge about laws and policies with very little addressing that the real estate agent is an independent business owner. Since agents must work with a broker, this relationship suggests that only the broker is the business owner. Yet, the real estate agent is a paid independent contractor or a sole proprietor.

Changing this belief is where each real estate agent must begin if she or he truly wants to have a successful real estate practice. And to change this belief is not simple because of the very reasons why the person decided to join this profession. After all, real estate is considered to be an almost turnkey business with the added benefit of not having to manage all that business stuff. With incredible income potential, this profession, as reflected through the over 2 million registered real estate agents, continues to attract new agents.

Since many individuals enter this career profession with the assumption that the broker is the business owner, they fail to begin planning their business simultaneously as they are learning the business of real estate. These assumptions may include that the broker will handle all administrative actions such as communications, provide all marketing materials and will pay for those additional business expenses such as office space, taxes, etc.

What a new or even existing agent can do is to construct an affirmation or what I call a positive belief statement that simply states: I am a business owner who operates a successful real estate practice that is growing each year. This simple statement helps to reprogram the brain and replace the existing belief that the broker is the business owner with a new belief that the real estate agent is the business owner.