for my company.
This businessman is a great networker and as soon as I mentioned I was looking for a woman with a real estate license, he gave me the telephone number of Jill Luscombe. I couldn’t wait to meet her, so instead of ringing her, I drove straight to her office after our meeting finished. Jill’s business was in an adjoining suburb. She was wonderful, everything I had been searching for in a business manager. She owned six businesses, one of which was a property development company with her husband.
“Let’s get on with it!” was her immediate response when I told her my story. She picked up the telephone and rang her accountant. Early the next morning the wheels were in motion, her accountant Craig came to his office at 8 am to meet Jill and me. He gave me a few jobs, which included collecting government forms, completing them and returning them to him for processing. Then I had to get a police clearance organized. That took a few weeks. Nothing happens quickly enough when you’re ready to start.
The process of starting your own real estate company with a licensed manager can still take some months to organize, mainly because of government red tape. But eventually we had it. My company, AWARE Properties Pty. Ltd. would finally open. It was late in May 2002 when the license came through. It took just over a month setting up my office and visiting clients before I officially started AWARE Properties on the 1st July. My ex boss was very upset. He didn’t want to lose me because he’d been enjoying a very lucrative income from my property sales.
I’d offered him the chance to become my company’s licensed manager (so I could be paid as a company and not an employee as I was losing too much money in PAYE tax), but when I suggested it he thought I was crazy.
“Lucille, why would I want to become your company’s licensed manager when I have my own real estate company? Why don’t you wait, I want to retire soon, you can buy my business,” was his response.
Goodwill for Business
I didn’t want to pay goodwill for his business, especially as he and I never agreed on anything. I believe goodwill walks out of the business with the previous owner. I love the challenge of starting my own business from scratch. I had so many plans and couldn’t wait to start my own real estate company.
I remember telling him, “I’m attending the Diploma of Business Management - Real Estate course at the Mawson Institute of TAFE, four nights every week, two days a week and sometimes on Saturdays, so it won’t be long and I’ll have the four year part-time course completed. I plan to have my real estate license in nine months. So I’ll have my own business whether you support me or not!”
“It will take you years doing it part time, four maybe five years. When I got my license I took a whole year off work and studied full time, and it wasn’t anywhere near as much study in those days.” He said smiling to himself. He looked so confident that I would be employed with his firm for at least another 3 to 4 years. No wonder he was shocked when only three months after this conversation I was telling him I was leaving to start my own business. I always warn businessmen not to underestimate the power of a woman, especially when she’s focussed on a goal!
My Higher Purpose for Women
On the very last page of my book “How to Ask for What You Want and GET IT!” I wrote;
When you find your Higher Purpose in life, you’ll be living your own vision for life and you’ll be continually increasing your mind power, which in turn will energize your body. You’ll be at peace with yourself and the world, there’ll be no struggling and your heart will be full of love because you’ll be giving, and it’s always more rewarding than receiving. But to reach your Higher Purpose you have to first learn to ask for what you want in your life and get it, before you can teach others how to find what they want in theirs!
I knew when I wrote that book that it would inspire women who weren’t already operating their own business, to start one. And for women to earn good money, I needed to help them invest and make more money. I had a passion to see women independently wealthy so they could support their children, especially if their partner in life had let them down, and they found themselves alone, having to rear their children and provide for them. It was these thoughts and the thousands of telephone calls I received from the women who read my book that drove me on to find a business that I could share with the women who wanted to invest in real estate and work in the industry. Property is the investment I’ve always trusted throughout my life, and it has never let me down.
My Receptionist Came with the Front Desk
I was so lucky to gain the support of one of my vendors. I’d just sold his office and he wasn’t sure what to do with all the office furniture or his mother who worked for him. So I suggested he store the furniture in my office, let me use the reception desk and employ his mother.
So this is how I managed to save money and set up my office on a limited budget. I’ve always said, If you do good things in life, you gain your rewards and they don’t always come in the form of money. Barbara was such a wonderful help to me, answering the telephones, receiving visitors and together we set up a whole new Rental and Buying Search service for international students, interstate clients, country clients and locals - people who were busy and didn’t have the time to shop, to find the right properties to rent or buy, themselves.
Servicing Clients’ Needs
It’s important to write a business plan and know where you intend to go, but I also like my new businesses to evolve. By this I mean I like to create services that match people’s needs. If I get asked often enough for something, I introduce the new service to make sure I can supply what my clients need. The location of your business has a lot to do with this. In our case, being in the heart of Adelaide’s central business district (CBD) we were in the perfect location to help visitors to our city. The country folk soon heard about our service and locals, too busy to spend the time looking for themselves began using our Rental and Buyer Search services.
Creating a prototype in business is fun and very rewarding. AWARE Properties quickly gained an excellent reputation for providing services not available at other real estate offices. It’s been a continual process of developing new services and doing things differently, that has given us so much referable business and saved us thousands of dollars in unnecessary advertising.
AWARE Properties’ major income will always come from the sale of homes, flats, townhouses, commercial buildings, vacant land, new developments and businesses. The Rental and Buyer Search Service we provide is Goodwill, we don’t make a huge profit on this service but business comes back to us because we care.
Marketing AWARE
My intention was to create a unique real estate business that would appeal to women and this is why I called the business AWARE. I’ve always created my own publicity and marketing campaigns and I know the power of burning one word into the mind of the consumer. I chose the word AWARE because I knew it would be easily remembered and it started with an “A” which would put us at the top of the list when using our company name at the beginning of small two-line advertisements in the newspapers. Interestingly our two-line advertisements in the press have become our trademark and were initially read by more women than men and it was the women who rang out of curiosity asking us what AWARE meant. When I told the women that AWARE was short for Australian Women And Real Estate they were thrilled. Women do things differently and this is why women like to deal with other women in business. I’ve always been able to communicate better with female accountants, solicitors and doctors as they explain important facts to me in a way that I understand. Some of the male solicitors and accountants I’ve used in the past made me feel dumb. I didn’t understand what they were trying to tell me. But for
