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You are replying to this message: | | Posted by Dorothy/MI on 6/13/05 8:57am
*** THEY TOO were once a "NEWBIE" *** These are words that we all have heard time and time again. Brenda posted this answer to a similar thread and mine follows hers:
From Brenda: Don't give up on your dream of having a business, but use your smarts to find a business that you know something about. IMHO, you came too late with too little to this one. Cut your losses and move on.
I. I had a call from a woman who first called notaries in her area (DFW, Texas) for all the answers. They gave her some solid direction by telling her to start reading this board and to do internet research. Finally gave her a really straight answer "I am not the best one to ask, you are my competition." Then, they quit taking her calls because they realized she was not a self-starter and had this sense of entitlement that they should take half an hour from their work and focus on her needs. One of them told her to read my website and she found me and called. I told her the same about the others she had called and gave her all the info I give any "newbie" I have never heard of which is basically my contribution to message #33325, plus info on my inspection work which is in my newsletter blog and also in this board as well.
She read it and wrote back asking me questions that were already answered in the sources I gave her. I wrote her back and told her that it had taken me nearly two years to rise to the top of my heap without any direction except by taking an inventory of what I knew, therefore, that she should go back and read the info I had given her plus to expect the same (or longer) learning curve.
II. I know a notary in another state who has started a totally unrelated business. She's doing her research on her new business and working night and day to get her business of the ground. She has studied, built a viable business plan, and even waited hours for an opportunity at the gates to visit key persons of a foreign embassy in her quest to start her business. That's the kind of determination you need to start a new business.
You don't get answers handed to you IF you are serious. If you want to get rich quick, find a wealthy relative and cozy up to them.
By the way, the total number of competitive businesses she has asked to mentor her or to train her is zero.
III. Stop treating this like learning how to knit, cross stitch or run a hobby club. This is a business.
If you are in business, it implies you already know something about how to do the job.
If you are a newbie without experience or tight connections into mortgage, legal, title or real estate transactions...seriously...you have been scammed by your own laziness and unwillingness to crunch numbers, do research, develop a business plan and to establish a marketing plan.
Find something to do which you have a "bent" for. If you don't have some kind of background leading you into this business...wake up, folks. The refi boom is over. You will get nothing but the dregs and scraps of jobs that probably won't pay you.
AGAIN, I am not being a dream-stomper, or a negative person: Don't give up on your dream of having a business, but use your smarts to find a business that you know something about.
You came too late with too little to this one. Cut your losses and move on.
IV. Here is an example of what you are doing:
I have never done windshield repair or state auto inspections. I see there is a lot of business here in town for that. I don't have a place to do this type of work. However, I hear the business is good. Today I think I will go around and ask the successful businesses if I can find out where I should locate my business for the best possible success...I want to find out how much they charge so I can be a little bit cheaper. I want them to tell me what business licenses I need, what regulations I need to learn, what state licenses I need. (If they gave me answers to these questions, WHY would I believe them???)
Oh yeah, and suppose they have a forum where these things are discussed online. I am too busy to read through their chatter...there's too much bull to wade through...surely they can just tell me exactly what I want to know, when I want to know it while I take notes. All the answers are there on that forum but it's too time consuming, you see. I am busy with other things. I want it given to me in a direct line at my convenience.
From Dorothy: If you are thinking about applying with a title company to do loan signings and you have not successful completed at LEAST 50 signings (100 is my recommendation) do yourself the biggest favor you could do and don't submit an application to these venues. Title companies are entirely UNFORGIVING if you make a mistake and if in conversation with them you don't sound like you know what you're talking about you will NEVER get work from them. There is a reason why we all have to learn to crawl before we walk and learn to walk before we can run. There are NO SHORTCUTS!!! Get much, much more knowledge and experience before you even attempt to get work from a title company. This is not that we don't want the competition, but that we don't want an unknowledgeble person literally ruining the business as a whole. Are you aware that there are several states that only attorneys can do closing in and we don't want this to spread to others because someone was looking for quick, easy money and really screwed something up, it got to court and then got the attention of the bar association and the states legislature and they decided to "protect" the public. Any of us who have been doing this profession (and it is a real profession and a real business) for any length of time whether we are doing it full time or as a dedicated part timer realizes this. Newbies come on this board and accuse us of being selfish all the time. It is not that, there are many on this board who will be glad to share information with anyone, but first you have to do your part and obtain as much information as you can on your own (that's the only true way any of us have of learning). Hugh, is one example (there are many others, of course) of someone who is extremely generous with his legal knowledge and shares it all the time. Just because you don't like the language it is couched in does not invalidate the knowledge itself!
This will probably stir up a hornet's nest from people reading this board who feel they have a sense of entitlement to be given "all" the answers and should only be spoken to with the kindest words and in the gentlest way so they can "feel" good. Remember back to our school days and the teachers we gained the most from were not always the most pleasant, the most fun, but the ones who were the real task masters and made us apply ourselves. The knowledge we acquired in thos classes stuck with us forever.
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