January 3, 2023
Truly Winning in Real Estate:
A Roadmap for Achieving Balance & Success in Your Real Estate Career
Lorraine Jordan and Donna Beach
Aviva Publishing (2021)
ISBN: 978-1-63618-131-8
New Book Offers Real Estate Business and Life Balance Success Tips
Truly Winning in Real Estate: A Roadmap for Achieving Balance & Success in Your Real Estate Career is an inspiring and practical look at how to build a real estate career while still maintaining balance in your personal life. The authors, Lorraine Jordan and Donna Beach, have more than fifty years of combined experience in real estate. Between them, they have sold thousands of homes and they both own investment properties, so they understand the various sides of the business. Now they wish to share their secrets and hard-earned knowledge with others, from seasoned real estate professionals to those just starting out in the business.
Donna and Lorraine begin with some fundamental questions that they admit they failed to answer fully for themselves when they started out in their real estate careers. Knowing the answers to these questions constitutes the critical planning needed to create a solid foundation for your career. Those questions are:
- Why did I get into real estate?
- What does success look like to me?
- What do I want to achieve?
- How will I structure all this work around my life?
The answers boil down to knowing your purpose. Is it to supplement a spouse’s income, save money for your children’s college, or provide a complete income for yourself? Once you know these answers, you can determine what kind of real estate professional you wish to be without overextending yourself or failing to aim high enough.
The next most important aspect of selling real estate is to learn to communicate clearly with clients. Selling and buying a house all hinges on good communication. You need to be clear on what your clients want, but you also have to be honest with them, informing them about the realities of the market and what to expect. Lorraine and Donna warn that buying and selling a house can be very stressful, so by communicating clearly, you can protect yourself and your clients from “the rollercoaster of real estate emotions.”
Effective communication includes staying in touch with your clients. Donna and Lorraine offer advice on how to maintain your database and connect with the people in it. They also discuss how to maintain work and life balance by knowing when it’s time to create personal boundaries or hire someone to assist you. Hiring someone also requires determining who will do what. While it is okay to delegate certain tasks, you never want to delegate calling and connecting with the people in your database.
Donna and Lorraine walk the reader through the process of hiring and building a real estate team. You may start out by hiring administrative help, and then over time, a showing assistant, buyer’s agent, and listing specialist. They also caution not to hire too quickly and explain how to find the right people for your team. You want to set SMART goals for yourself and your business, and to find the right hires who will be aligned with and help you achieve those goals. You may even decide to hire a coach who will help you determine what your goals are and how to achieve them, but Donna and Lorraine warn that you must be committed to taking action and not just assume your coach will do the hard work for you.
The book contains a lot of more detailed advice there isn’t space to cover here. However, each chapter of Truly Winning in Real Estate is short, inspiring, and easy-to-read. The authors share personal stories of their experiences as well as give practical advice. Exercises are provided throughout the book to help the reader focus on what they want out of their real estate career and create a plan for achieving it. The exercises focus on such topics as determining how many hours per week you will work and what your hourly rate will be to help you figure out your finances, when you need help, when to team up with other people, how to find time to go on vacation, and how to prepare to retire and pass on your business to your successor.
Best of all, Lorraine and Donna are full of positive energy that will leave the reader believing they can also truly win in real estate. The authors are honest, saying it will take grit and determination to succeed, but they also believe it’s never too late to start in real estate, and their long and successful careers are a testament to the wonderful and profitable experience it can be. Ultimately, when you win in real estate, it becomes a win-win for you, your clients, your team members, and your family—and that is truly winning.
For more information about Truly Winning in Real Estate and Lorraine Jordan and Donna Beach, visit Amazon.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and award-winning author of Narrow Lives and The Best Place
