If you know me, you know that I am now in my fourth year of selling Real Estate. I have blogged about my experiences in this crazy career since having found Active Rain way back in 2007. I have shared challenges. I have shared discoveries and I have shared high and low points.
You probably have noticed that I haven't been around much lately. It isn't because I don't like my fellow Active Rainers or AR, but rather because I burned myself out pretty good. Yep, I flat out burned out to the point that I had nothing left to say.
Let me tell you how I managed to burn myself out of blogging...and almost out of Real Estate.
My first mistake was a classic. I just did too much all the time without any downtime. You've heard a million times to pace yourself. And I've heard it too. But in a super hot Real Estate market (which is what I stumbled into in 2007 in Oklahoma), it is easy to go, go, go. You think to yourself, "I've got clients! I've got buyers! My phone in ringing! Look at me gooooooo!" And for people who are wired like me, the ride is fun for a while. But then you run out of gas and when I hit empty, I don't just slowly slow down. I stop. Add to the busyness a heavy dose of daily blogging and commenting and working the system and eventually I was just done.
My second mistake was an oversight. Once the money started flowing, I didn't hold out enough to pay the tax man. When we figured out we were behind on the taxes and how much, we were shocked. Of course, we didn't have an accountant when I first began and really had no good idea how much to hold out for not only Uncle Sam, but for other things like marketing, expenses, retirement, etc. When we finally saw how much we were going to "get" to pay the government, it was a shock. And it was depressing too. And it all happened right at about the same time I was hitting burn out. Needless to say, I got depressed for a bit. Blog today? Blah! Forget it! Answer the phone? "Uh...do I really have to?" Yeah. It was that bad.
I made other mistakes as well, but those were the two biggies that took me down. Today, I am in what I call "recovery mode." I don't blog very often because I still am recovering. I just don't have much to say. And that kind of makes me sad because I really do love to blog. But it just isn't there yet. This blog, for example, took me three weeks of thinking about what I want to say before I could write one single word. Talk about writers block!
I have an accountant now. It just weirds me out to think that I'm in a place where I need/have an accountant. But I do. And thanks to him, we're now holding out enough from every closing to pay our taxes quarterly. No more getting behind for us! And, thanks to him, we ammended a bad tax return someone else did and recaptured several thousands of dollars. And thanks to the fact that we saved instead of spending everything we earned, we have now reduced our tax burden down to where we can see light at the end of the tunnel! I think we'll have it all paid off by summer! Yay for us!
If you're new to Real Estate, please consider the advice I'm about to give very carefully. Even in today's recovering market, pace yourself! Take your day off every week. Don't worry if you don't get every single phone call answered right when the phone rings. And be sure to save back to pay your taxes! Remember, self employed folks pay the highest taxes in America. We hold 25% of every closing to cover taxes now. 25%! Why in the world isn't the NAR fighting to get our taxes lowered in Washington??? And finally, remember to get plugged into Active Rain. But don't be an overblogger like I was.
Even chocolate can get old if you eat it everyday! (And I love chocolate!)
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