Appraisers' Free Forum

Income potential is always higher in sales than in operations. Always.

The key word is "potential." I made more money selling insurance than I do appraising... but, I worked 80+ hours a week.

We're not living up to anywhere near our potential.

I'm basically lazy and just like to have fun. Working never made me a lot of money anyway, and I don't believe it builds character.

Mako wrote:I'm basically lazy and just like to have fun. Working never made me a lot of money anyway, and I don't believe it builds character.

Where's that "exit stage right" emoticon?

Snaglepus - "Exit stage right" (we're dating ourselves).

I don't consider what I do work, but I make FAR MORE than I ever did appraising.

I use what I learned appraising to make money, but when I was appraising I never made as much money as I do now.

My Dear Ole Pappy use to tell me, "work hard & be honest & you'll go far." He was wrong

There's a new ingredient to that recipe...it's "work smart."

Mako wrote:We're not living up to anywhere near our potential.

I'm basically lazy and just like to have fun. Working never made me a lot of money anyway, and I don't believe it builds character.

I'm with you, Mako. Okay, I'm still working at a quarter to twelve, but that's so I can take the next three weeks off and be lazy. I turn down more jobs than I take; my competition loves me because I send them so much business. (Exit, stage right!)

I was also raised with the "Work hard, be honest, keep your nose to the grindstone and you will go far" mentality ... and I have worked it ... and worked it ... and worked it ... and all I have gotten is tired and farther behind ... I am not sure when things changed ... but what I want to know is WHY things changed ...

I see people on welfare driving nicer cards than mine ... I see people who can't speak English, who live in hovels with 15 other people, but driver bigger and nicer vehicles than mine ... I see other people who can't speak English, living in fine, big houses and driving nice cars and sending their kids to private schools .... and they are home at 3:00 in the afternoon ... I work until after midnight, 6 days a week ... remodeling houses in the daylight and writing up appraisals at night and I am STILL in the hole trying to dig out .... so when and WHY did working hard and being honest become a hinderance to being successful??

DB wrote: .... so when and WHY did working hard and being honest become a hinderance to being successful??

I can't give you an exact history, but I can sure tell you why. It is because we have lost our fundamentals... what it means to be an American. Everyone wants secutity... and votes for that instead of their conscience. I believe it was Cicero who said "What the people want is bread and circuses." We are the new Romans. Now, almost everyone gets a government check, but worse than that, no one will invest without a handout. All the cities and Chambers of Commerce play the same game. "It's time to get Ronald McDonald off the dole."

Someone once said that the problem with a democracy is that the people will eventually vote to help themselves to the national treasury.

I believe that was Alexis De Toquerville (sp?) who said something along the lines of: "American democracy will only endure until politicians discover that they can buy people's votes with their own money." The quote is not exactly right and I don't have time to look it up right now, but you get the jist of it.

Now that I re-read my post...I shouldn't have said, 'basically I'm lazy.'

In fact I'm not lazy...I just hate and refuse to toil for peanuts. We've worked & studied very hard to get to where we're at.

It's just that I don't feel hard work & honesty alone is the path to wealth in today's society. Hard work & honesty at pauper's wages doesn't build character...it builds resentment.

db wrote:"...I am not sure when things changed ... but what I want to know is WHY things changed...

Our society changes constantly, but I saw things shifting for the worse during the late '70's - early '80's. Many employers--especially larger ones--no longer saw their employees as "their most valuable asset." They took another look at the 4 agents of production & began cutting labor costs. Around this same time period terms like "corporate raider, hostile takeover, liquidation, leveraged buyout & disposable asset" started popping up in our vocabulary.

It's all fine with me though, cause if it wasn't for these ingrates...I would never have started thinking outside the box. I'd probably have been satisfied with my lot in life.