How skilled are you as a real estate agent?
Do you take all your Continuing Education classes online? Do you go to live classes? What is your goal in taking the classes? Is it just to get the 30 hour requirement out of your hair? Or is it to learn something?
Would you go to a doctor to have a brain tumor removed who had only taken online classes for his continuing education? And the only classes he took were the ones that entertained him the most or he could get through in 1/10th of the time or he had someone else do for him? Or did he just take courses that helped him build a profitable business but nothing on taking care of the patient?
Real Estate Agents are ‘messing around’ with hundreds of thousands of dollars of other people’s money. Shouldn’t they have skills that help protect those buyers and sellers? Shouldn’t real estate agents be aware of the laws and regulations that affect the home buying and selling process? Shouldn’t they be thinking of the client and not just their bottom line?
Before we started our school in 2007, I was visiting with a friend who had a school and watched that person belt out a course in less than an hour with ‘copy and paste’ off the internet all while visiting with me. That experience is part of what pushed me into thinking about my own school.
We don’t ‘throw’ courses together.
Our latest course, Fraud, Forgery and Flights of Fancy, required a lot of research into case law and took almost 4 months. Many of our courses have required hours and hours of research including dialogue with others in the industry such as agents, lawyers, escrow, title, lenders, etc.
We have at least one of four goals built into every course:
- To help the agent stay out of trouble with the DOL and / or lawsuits
- To help the agent stay out of trouble with their clients
- To help the agent achieve more closings
- To help the agent get more business
In the book, Scalia Speaks, Christopher Scalia has this to say about his father, Antonin Scalia: “The point was to challenge listeners out of complacency, to inspire them not by affirming what they knew to be true, but by provoking them into reconsidering their preconceptions.”
So it is with our classes.
We want agents to leave the room understanding better what their role is in the buying and selling process. It isn’t just about making money; it’s about taking care of the client by being knowledgeable in the wider world of real estate.