Controlling Your Own Destiny

My real estate partner Doug Brown and I share similar backgrounds both having spent a number of years in corporate executive positions before entering the real estate profession. A postion with Goodyear Canada is what originally brought me to Collingwood in 1985. Following that I was retained by a company that was at the time the largest customer of Goodyear's Collingwood plant and I spent 5 years running their Canadian business unit in Barrie before being transferred to the U.S. as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. With these companies I had front-line responsibility in dealing with vehicle and heavy equipment manufacturers such as General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Mack, Kenworth and Peterbilt trucks, Caterpillar, John Deere, Ford New Holland and others. Other large maufactuers we dealt with were the likes of Dofasco and Stelco Steel, the latter of which just shut down their plants indefinitely. Each and everyone of these companies are currently struggling taking massive layoffs, idling or closing many of the very plants I have been in and some are close to entering bankruptcy protection. I can't help but think how difficult my job(s) would be these days if I was still working for my prior employers.
Self employment such as being in real estate sales is not easy either in good times or bad. Nonetheless it is very rewarding running what is effectively your own business. Planning, budgeting, developing an effective marketing strategy and most importantly gaining clients and and satisfying their real estate needs is to say-the-least very gratifying. Do I miss my corporate jobs? Yes. The steady salary, benefits, travel and other perks were all hard earned rewards that came with the territory and the business experience I acquired was second-to-none. Would I want to be working there now? Absolutely not! The pressure and stress of trying to sustain sales at a time when your customers are on-the-ropes would be no fun at all and I can't imagine how miserable it must be for some of those people to be heading off to their jobs these days. For all the alleged security one thinks exists in the corporate world, it no longer does and you only need to pick up the newspaper on any given day to see that. It's not the same work environment today that existed not so many years ago and frankly I'm glad to be out, controlling my own destiny as a self employed real estate broker.