Ashley Leigh Team
Gainesville, VA
What marketing advice would you give to someone at $100,000 who wants to get to $200,000 and more? What single quality has made you more successful than others? Perseverance. It is a no fail mentality; work until you make it happen. You can’t just take a breath when you are building it, you have to continue to go full-tilt until you realize your vision. Live and pursue your vision with constant and never ending passion. What lessons did you learn from your family, friends, previous jobs, and life experiences that helped you most to succeed in your career? I learned work ethic from my parents – work hard and good things will happen. From college and McDonalds I learned ‘work smart.’ Work hard does not yield maximum potential. I work about 30 hours per week. I peaked at 55 hours per week with no vacation and working while sick; I worked seven days a week. I cut my hours when I realized I could leverage my time through others. In 2005 it was 388 for $183 million and the year before was 401 for $167 million. The average price is about $475,000.
At some point you need to carefully and hold your marketing accountable and continue to test and look at return. When something is working, it does not mean it is the best dollar spent. There may be a better option for the dollar. It could be that there is cheaper way to produce the same dollar of revenue or it could be that you are better off not spending that particular dollar at all and sticking it into your personal account so that you have something saved over time.
Did you make any big mistakes that you want to warn others about?
Do not worry about what others are saying. The biggest mistake is that you cannot start leveraging yourself too soon. I was probably a year or two behind myself in bringing people aboard and giving up sales to work on more systems. Had I started the team concept earlier, I would have prevented myself from reaching near “burn-out”.
What would you have done differently if you could begin your career again to speed the process of getting to your current level of business?
I would have started growing the team sooner and quicker both on the admin side and on the agent side.
This is just a sampling of the interview. We covered topics such as Marketing tips, growing your business, listings and more.