Cassidy gave me a tongue-lashing about holding back in an actual fight. She then had me show her everything Fritz had taught me. Cassidy was a sponge when it came to learning stuff like this. She would stop me when she thought I did something wrong and have Fritz show her.
◊◊◊
My uncle, grandmother, Caryn, and Greg’s family were all at our house for dinner. My grandma was vocally admiring the second clock, and Dad was trying not to mutter too obviously. I caught my family up on my trip to LA as we ate. Then I remembered my AP classes. I was sure if Tami or Alan were involved, Mom would know.
“I picked up my class schedule today, and I was signed up for a bunch of AP classes. Do you know how that happened?”
“Yes, your dad and I changed your schedule,” Mom said.
“You did what?” I asked in my teen angst voice.
“We talked to Bo Harrington at your Elite 11 camp. He suggested that if you could handle it, we should sign you up for AP classes because they would count towards college credits. They would also eliminate some of the entry-level classes you would need to take. He reasoned that college football would require much more of your time, and if you needed to lessen your load, it was better to do it in college,” Dad said.
“But why did you sign me up for so many of them?” I asked.
“Because we know you can handle them,” Mom said.
I put my hand over my face and massaged my temples to stave off the oncoming headache. Here I’d assumed it was Alan and Tami. They’d always pushed me to work hard in school. I believe they sometimes thought I really was a ‘stupid boy.’
I decided not to fight it. Mom was right, in that I could handle it. I would’ve liked to have been consulted about it, though.
After we were done eating, Caryn wanted to talk to us. I wondered why Greg and Angie joined the group while Dad watched the kids.
“Your mom and I looked at office space today,” Caryn said. “We got to talking, and I told her what one of my business professors said. He always encouraged us to increase the bottom line with multiple streams of income. How he explained it was to consider your core business and see where there were opportunities to offer other goods or services that complement it.
“Let’s consider your mom’s business, real estate,” Caryn said and wrote it in the center of a sheet of paper. “In a real estate transaction, there are many services you need to make the transaction work. The first are the initial inspections. The two main ones are the home inspection and the termite or wood-destroying organism inspection.”
She wrote those two on the side.
“Then there’s the mortgage, survey, appraisal, and title company.”
Caryn also wrote those down.
“Each one of these is a potential income stream. There are also opportunities before the sale happens. Your mom pointed out that curb appeal is crucial, so we could add lawn service and repairs as two more lines of business. The home may also need to be decluttered, painted, and staged. Then there’s the marketing that involves video, photos, websites, social media, and print.”
She also wrote down all these.
“Within real estate, there are specialties. The skills to be a good buyer’s agent are not necessarily the same as those for a listing agent, and their needs are different. For example, the listing agent is concerned with staging; the buyer’s agent, not so much. And there is yet a different skill set required for working with investors and commercial clients, each of which has their own needs. Finally, there are rentals. Those are a completely different animal with unique opportunities.
“A realtor is expected to know a little about all of these, but no one could master them all. I can’t see us getting involved in all these. In fact, some would be a serious conflict of interest, like having our appraiser do work for your mortgage company.”
“Caryn’s right. We might go to jail for that one,” Mom said.
“No, I’m not interested in jail time,” I said. “I also am a little leery that we could do all this.”
“I don’t think that’s the point,” Uncle John said. “Caryn has just pointed out how over time you could grow your business. It’s sort of like what we did when we merged the hay farm with my cattle.”
“Yes. John is exactly right,” Caryn said. “I wanted to talk to you about this because if you plan to grow your business to include other services and specialties, we need to consider different office space. For example, we found a nice large home on Main Street that’s next to the downtown area. The downstairs would be perfect for the real estate company, and I could have my office on the second floor. But if we elect to add more agents to handle different parts of the business, or a title company, we’d need more space. Your mom found a strip mall that would be perfect for growing into,” Caryn said.
“We could rent out the extra space to other businesses until we needed it,” Mom said.
