The E-Myth Real Estate Brokerage. Michael E. Gerber and Richard A. Rector. Prodigy Business Books. 187 pages. $24.95.
It’s real estate’s turn to sit on The E-Myth griddle. The subtitle says it all: “Why Most Real Estate Brokerage Firms Don’t Work and What To Do About It.”
A self-proclaimed “small business guru” named Michael E. Gerber started his series of books about legal practices and this is the eighth. All the same pattern, whether they be about optometrists, attorneys or architects: chapters on specific subjects with a commentary by Gerber and adjacent chapters by a prominent person in that particular field.
Who should read this? Really, anyone in the business, but especially the agent who has decided that the riches lie in running his or her own brokerage. It’s a “look before you leap” book.
Gerber’s pieces are pretty much nonspecific and the expert’s pieces are very specific to the particular subject. If you’re into self-help books, the overall messages are nothing new, but the format gives a new perspective.
Gerber is a small business consultant who lives in California. For this book on real estate, his co-author is Richard A. Rector, the Phoenix broker who owns Realty Executives.
E-Myth means “Entrepreneurian Myth,” which Gerber describes as “Most businesses fail to fulfill their potential because most people starting their own business are not entrepreneurs at all.”
He continues, “Most real estate brokers don’t own a true business—most own a job.” A person can be great at buying and selling, which might make a terrific agent, he says, but the lack of business sense will eventually lead to doom. When a 2007 comes, they don’t have a clue how to deal with it.
The overriding theme here is that while brokers — or anyone starting a business — need to be entrepreneurs, that’s secondary to knowing how a business works.
It’s easy reading. Chapters run no more than a dozen pages and are on the basics: planning, management, budgeting, pricing, hiring, dealing with clients, etc.
When Gerber writes about, say, time management, the words could (and probably do) fit in every one of his books. When Rector writes about time management, he’s very specific to real estate. (Incidentally, if your brokerage isn’t doing well, both say that time management is one of your biggest problems.)
Rector writes a chapter about his career and that’s as interesting as anything here. His father started in the family food business and moved into real estate sales. Frustrated with what Rector calls the business model that resulted “in the top people subsidizing the less productive ones,” he started Realty Executives with what Rector says was the first company with the 100 percent commission idea.
Rector joined the company after college. He and his wife eventually bought the brokerage and started franchising the concept.
He stresses the need for change, saying “What once was a new, revolutionary idea has now become a standard method of operation within the industry,” and adds that he’s ready to spring a new idea “with major advances in technology.”
Let’s consider Rector an expert.
Let’s also consider Gerber an expert, if for nothing else than he’s figured a new way to present old ideas and make money out of it.
Come to think of it, isn’t that what selling real estate is all about?
— Fred Seely