Walk Like a Giant, Sell Like a Madman

7.3. Expanding Your Business with Systems

Several years ago, a friend of mine from Philadelphia named Allan Domb urged me to open my own mortgage company. Allan is the top condominium salesman in the world. He works exclusively in a marketplace of about a dozen high-rise condo buildings, a market of some 5,500 units with a 0 percent annual turnover. Allan controls more than an 80 percent share of this market, and his income runs well into six figures. So I listened when he told me, "Ralph, if you don't open a mortgage company, I'll come over there and open it up for you!"

Allan had learned that providing mortgages for homebuyers is a natural outgrowth of a Realtor's job. We're always referring our costumers to banks and other mortgage lenders. Why not provide the mortgages ourselves and capture that revenue stream? It was an excellent and very lucrative suggestion, and I quickly acted on it.

However, I found that you can't just open a mortgage company on the back of an envelope. You need to plan for it, hire the right people, train them to run it, and oversee the operation. You need those assistants and technologies that I talked about earlier. In other words, you need to write a solid business plan and then set up a system so your operation runs as smoothly and with as little intervention on your part as possible.

By taking a systems-based or modular approach, you can expand your business by adding new pieces rather than having to rebuild the entire business from the ground up. ...