Results are in - no office

The overwhelming response to yesterday's post was no store-front office. A lot of emails I got did indeed convince me that over-all it would be a waste of money.

Store-front expenses would be at least $4,000 a month and that would be for a small location including phones, utilities and a secretary.

I'm not sure how many people who walk in - probably few to zero. So if there's little to no walk in traffic then the only benefit of having store-front space would be setting appointments for clients to come in and meet with me. I think those results would be lacking.

If I just want to be around other agents for some atmosphere the best move would be office sharing. The problem with sharing expenses with other agents is being stuck with all the bills if they decided to pull the plug and go back to working from home.

My problem with sitting in my home office all day is about to be solved in the spring by attending local events - which is another gamble but one that I'm ready to take.

I really haven't met any agents who have consistently done trade shows, fairs, and other local events. I know when I was with UGA we did a large trade show at the Baltimore Convention Center and I had a 4 hour shift - got many leads.

I did a health fair sponsored by a local hospital - held in a fire station from 10am to 2pm and maybe a few hundred people where there. I wrote 7 apps spread out over the next month.

I think that fact that those apps were spread out psyched me into thinking that it wasn't effective. Especially since at that time there were no online apps and deals took from between 2 and 3 weeks to underwrite.

So from the day of the health fair to the day the last deal was approved was over 2 months. Also, these events are only as effective as you are. I don't see sitting in a chair behind a table and letting people grab the brochures and giveaways as effective. In fact, that method could result in zero business.

I think the method that works is standing in front of the table and at least handing flyers out to everyone that comes by and engaging the people who are interested.

An obvious down-side to these events is they're mainly on weekends and things like fairs and festivals run all day/all night. So either me or someone else would have to man the table or booth for possibly 12 hours.