AWARE - A Business in a Book. Lucille Orr
that I would be employed with his firm for at least another 3 to 4 years. No wonder he was shocked when only three months after this conversation I was telling him I was leaving to start my own business. I always warn businessmen not to underestimate the power of a woman, especially when she’s focussed on a goal!
My Higher Purpose for Women
On the very last page of my book “How to Ask for What You Want and GET IT!” I wrote;
When you find your Higher Purpose in life, you’ll be living your own vision for life and you’ll be continually increasing your mind power, which in turn will energize your body. You’ll be at peace with yourself and the world, there’ll be no struggling and your heart will be full of love because you’ll be giving, and it’s always more rewarding than receiving. But to reach your Higher Purpose you have to first learn to ask for what you want in your life and get it, before you can teach others how to find what they want in theirs!
I knew when I wrote that book that it would inspire women who weren’t already operating their own business, to start one. And for women to earn good money, I needed to help them invest and make more money. I had a passion to see women independently wealthy so they could support their children, especially if their partner in life had let them down, and they found themselves alone, having to rear their children and provide for them. It was these thoughts and the thousands of telephone calls I received from the women who read my book that drove me on to find a business that I could share with the women who wanted to invest in real estate and work in the industry. Property is the investment I’ve always trusted throughout my life, and it has never let me down.
My Receptionist Came with the Front Desk
I was so lucky to gain the support of one of my vendors. I’d just sold his office and he wasn’t sure what to do with all the office furniture or his mother who worked for him. So I suggested he store the furniture in my office, let me use the reception desk and employ his mother.
So this is how I managed to save money and set up my office on a limited budget. I’ve always said, If you do good things in life, you gain your rewards and they don’t always come in the form of money. Barbara was such a wonderful help to me, answering the telephones, receiving visitors and together we set up a whole new Rental and Buying Search service for international students, interstate clients, country clients and locals - people who were busy and didn’t have the time to shop, to find the right properties to rent or buy, themselves.
Servicing Clients’ Needs
It’s important to write a business plan and know where you intend to go, but I also like my new businesses to evolve. By this I mean I like to create services that match people’s needs. If I get asked often enough for something, I introduce the new service to make sure I can supply what my clients need. The location of your business has a lot to do with this. In our case, being in the heart of Adelaide’s central business district (CBD) we were in the perfect location to help visitors to our city. The country folk soon heard about our service and locals, too busy to spend the time looking for themselves began using our Rental and Buyer Search services.
Creating a prototype in business is fun and very rewarding. AWARE Properties quickly gained an excellent reputation for providing services not available at other real estate offices. It’s been a continual process of developing new services and doing things differently, that has given us so much referable business and saved us thousands of dollars in unnecessary advertising.
AWARE Properties’ major income will always come from the sale of homes, flats, townhouses, commercial buildings, vacant land, new developments and businesses. The Rental and Buyer Search Service we provide is Goodwill, we don’t make a huge profit on this service but business comes back to us because we care.
Marketing AWARE
My intention was to create a unique real estate business that would appeal to women and this is why I called the business AWARE. I’ve always created my own publicity and marketing campaigns and I know the power of burning one word into the mind of the consumer. I chose the word AWARE because I knew it would be easily remembered and it started with an “A” which would put us at the top of the list when using our company name at the beginning of small two-line advertisements in the newspapers. Interestingly our two-line advertisements in the press have become our trademark and were initially read by more women than men and it was the women who rang out of curiosity asking us what AWARE meant. When I told the women that AWARE was short for Australian Women And Real Estate they were thrilled. Women do things differently and this is why women like to deal with other women in business. I’ve always been able to communicate better with female accountants, solicitors and doctors as they explain important facts to me in a way that I understand. Some of the male solicitors and accountants I’ve used in the past made me feel dumb. I didn’t understand what they were trying to tell me. But for some reason I never have to ask my female professionals to repeat what they are saying or explain anything to me a second time.
Communication needs to be simple. I try to put my feet in the shoes of my clients when explaining a situation and maybe this is why I get so much ‘word of mouth’ referral business!
Why Real Estate?
I love this industry because I have the freedom to choose the hours I work and have no ceiling on my income.
Chapter Two
Searching for the Best Business
The right business came to me when I stopped searching.
Life has a strange way of deciding your fate for you. Even the best plans don’t always work out the way we expect. In 1994, when I went to Sydney to assist the NSW Government with its ‘Women in Business’ mentor programme I wanted to travel around Australia and overseas as a speaker promoting my book “How to Ask for What You Want and GET IT!”
It started off well and I visited all the capital cities of Australia to launch the book and spoke to large women’s conferences in Malaysia, Japan and two cities in USA, but when my son Steven joined me in Sydney and I became a single mother of a 12-year-old, all my plans of becoming an international speaker had to stop.
Steven had been happy in Adelaide with his friends, family and his father, but suddenly his whole world was turned upside down when he was put on a flight to Sydney at 6 am on a cold October morning in 1994. Financially and emotionally it was a difficult time for us both, especially when he was never to hear from his father again. I felt so guilty for many years about the loss my son had to suffer because of my decision to leave my husband.
I’d had to refinance my properties in Adelaide prior to leaving Sydney to pay off all my credit card debt. Steve and I had to live on credit for much of the time, as many of my jobs in NSW were voluntary.
When I got back to Adelaide, because of refinancing, I had to face even higher mortgage repayments on my six properties. Some had been freehold when I left my husband and moved to Sydney. Never mind, I was pleased I hadn’t sold any of them and could refinance them, to make a new start back home.
What I didn’t know at the time was that it wouldn’t matter how hard I worked in the next 18 months while I was studying for my real estate license. I would earn a very low income. There was barely enough money to feed Steve and myself and pay one mortgage. So until I started my own business I paid most of the mortgages, insurances, repairs, council rates, strata management fees and all other costs associated with my investment properties with my credit cards. Once again my credit card debt was back to $40,000.
While this sounds terrible and I know most people would never be able to live the way I did for so many years, today it’s all been worth it. If I’d taken a friend’s advice back in the sixties I could have had my own real estate company and gained my license by just working in the industry. At that time, experience gained in a real estate office was enough to qualify you to gain your own license. You didn’t have to study first and gain an academic qualification before you could apply for a license. I’d operated my own businesses for over 30 years and never before had to study and gain a