How and Why to Run Your Business from Your Rooftop Pool Deck
For me, lifestyle design is a huge part of the real estate game…..and it is the centerpiece of the entrepreneurial game. When we formed Maverick Investor Group in 2007, we were focused from Day 1 on building a business structure that facilitated our ability to design extraordinary lifestyles, maximize personal freedoms, and control the most precious resources we have—time and mobility.
We strategically reverse-engineered our business structure to support the values and lifestyle freedoms that were our top priority. I will share the principles on which we built our business, which not only afforded us these freedoms but simultaneously resulted in increased productivity. Feel free to swipe the concepts that are useful to you and deploy them in your own business.
Maverick Lifestyle Design Principles:
1) Live wherever you want: Remove geographic restrictions. I have been a full time real estate professional (licensed agent) since 2007 and have lived in Los Angeles, California since that date. However, I have never bought or sold or listed or referred a buyer to a property in the entire state of California (other than my primary residence). Maverick might move investment property in California some day, but the point is that the locations where we close properties have nothing to do with where we choose to live. My business partners and I all live in different states. Each of us chose our most desirable location based on our personal lifestyle preferences (After going to high school in Buffalo, NY, I reeeeally like palm trees and beaches :).
2) Establish a Virtual Office: Travel Whenever You Want. Because the cities we live in are purely a lifestyle choice, we are not geographically tied to those cities for business and thus we can move, change cities, or travel as frequently and for as long as we want. The virtual office facilitates remote work locations and is the foundation of establishing the freedom of mobility. It will also enable you to slash traditional office-related overhead expenses and increase profit margins. As long as we have our iPhones and laptops, we are good to go because our clients and the investment properties we work with are in all different cities, states and countries anyways. If I want to go home for the holidays and spend a month with my family, or bounce between New York, Chicago and Los Angeles because they are 3 of my favorite cities, or travel outside the US for 2 months and explore cool countries, I can do it all while continuing to run my real estate business because of the virtual office setup. Right now, I’m writing this blog post from Little Brown coffee shop on the upper east side of Manhattan….which has awesome espresso by the way!
3) Optimize Your Work Environment: Increase Productivity and Nix Your Commute. I live in a high rise loft building with a rooftop pool deck in downtown LA. When I am in town that is my home office where I work and meet with any clients that are local. There is a lot to be said for optimizing your work environment. Think of the difference in morale and productivity between being in an office cubicle or even a nice big office with a window vs. a rooftop pool deck overlooking LA. Plus, I don’t waste any time commuting. I can be up at 9:45am and in the office with my espresso by 10am. This doesn’t mean you need to live in a building with a rooftop pool deck or a compelling view. Sometimes I’ll drive to the beach and setup shop by the ocean or roll to Café Primo on the Sunset Strip when I want to work from an ‘LA scene’ coffee shop (anybody can do this no matter where you live). The point is that by creating the freedom to have a remote work location, you can enhance your work environment by choosing the ambiance that inspires YOU, thus increasing your enjoyment and productivity while reducing time wasted on commutes.
Those are some of the core principles. Here is how we designed our business model so that we could offer a high level of value to our clients, differentiate ourselves in the real estate industry, provide rock-star customer service and design our lifestyles in accordance with the principles above:
Reworking the Traditional Real Estate Brokerage Model, Maverick Style
Maverick Investor Group is a licensed real estate brokerage that serves real estate investor buyers exclusively and works with referring agents all over the US (and internationally) to serve their real estate investor buyer clients as well. Our unique value proposition is that we consistently deliver access to unlisted investment properties at prices and terms not available to the public in the most investor-advantaged markets in the US. These are all ‘turn-key’ investment properties with tenants and local property management already in place, so real estate investors can comfortably purchase out of state regardless of where they live. We also offer access to off-shore real estate buying opportunities in emerging international markets. We have built teams on the ground in every market where we operate that handle our real estate investor clients when they come into town. As of today, we have real estate investor clients in almost all 50 states and many foreign countries.
That is what our model looks like and that is how and why we built it. If you find any actionable content here, please let us know in the comments. Also, please include any additional lifestyle design tips you use in your business.
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