Business Education and Training

Job interviews can be stressful at times. But being well prepared
in advance before a job interview can alleviate some of those stresses. Here
are a few job interview tips you should keep in mind.

One of the worst things to happen is to be late for an interview.
So give yourself sufficient time to reach the place. I would recommend to reach
the job interview venue at least 15 minutes early.

Another important job interview tips is to be yourself. Speak
clearly with confidence when the interviewer is asking you a question. Do not
shy away from making eye contact with the interviewer when he/she is asking a
questions and when you are answering.

Click here for other job interview tips you should note when going
for a job interview.

Hi Coach,

Question: We are spot builder here in NJ, meaning we purchase single lots or dividable lots in established neighborhoods.

My question is with the time it takes to put a real estate development deal together how can we cover salaries and overhead without depleting all our cash?

Answer In simple terms you should look at the salaries and overheads as your investment in the real estate development deal and pay yourself back as soon as the development goes ahead.

In my courses I teach you how to pay yourself throughout the development period, as well as recover your costs for putting the deal together. I didn’t develop buildings worth over $1.2 Billion dollars without paying myself over 35 years.

This is why the study of my material saves your hide and not only puts your development scheme on the correct footing, but also tightens up on your whole approach to the development business (see www.realestatedevelopmentcoach.com )

I have many friends who are builders and as you can imagine there is a fair amount of ribald comments between us and yet we are like hand in glove in the development relationship.

But can I tell you the “essential difference” between my buider friends and myself … “We Think Differently.”

Builders are precise people. Give them a site; give them a plan and the money and they will build you a house.

All those actions are real and tangible and that kind of activity appeals to a certain kind of mind.

A developer is a market oriented individual and only exists to satisfy a market demand, no matter what the market looks like.

The developer is not an expert in any particular skill, but does know a fair amount about a lot of things and in particular how they all blend together … in what order … and the outcome to expect at every stage.

Now a developer may well have a building background, so that makes h/er “expert” in building. But when he/she is trained as a developer h/er job is to remove him/herself from the detail aspect of construction and become the general manager of the whole development.

One of the things you must do is put a dollar value on your personal time. There is only so much time we should be prepared to work each week and have a decent life. If that is true and it is, then it behoves us to get the best return for our personal work.

Just take these figures as a guide and not specific. In six months lets say you could build four houses as a builder. That will produce 4 times “$x” profit. In the same six months a developer could put a development deal together for 40 condos or 60 townhouses. Whose time is more profitable?

So that is why a builder who gets into development must get out of direct management of the building process - hand it over to another person and concentrate on the more profitable developer role.

Of course being a builder, it is not easy leaving the job you know backwards - hand your business over to an employee or partner and let them do the job, You Can Always Do BETTER; eh?.

Life was not supposed to be easy; but there’s the challenge. Growth does not take place until you stop being the ‘worker’ and become the ‘manager.’

Hope this helps you.

Colm Dillon

Developer - Author - Coach

Question: I have been extremely interested in real estate, and more specifically Real Estate Development.

I am currently 21 years old and own my own house (will be a year in August). Is it possible for me to get started in this career path at my age and with little expertise?

Answer: My quick answer is that age is not really relevant in the development industry.

The distinguishing feature however is knowledge. As age does not prevent you from acquiring knowledge, I urge you to take this ‘knowledge route’ as the first stage of your development career.

I have an old saying that goes, “anybody can spend money” … in development, the trick is “getting it all back plus a bit more for profit.”

It is the knowledge that covers the second part of that saying. By now you have found that there is very little knowledge available on the Internet that you can actually use to create a development in a professional manner, except for my e-course.

I was amazed to find that this is the situation having regard to the fact that the development industry on a worldwide basis is truly massive.

I have come to the conclusion that professional developer is like myself, are more interested in creating developments to be bothered with writing e-courses for people.

I seem to be out of step in this regard and set about sharing my knowledge approximately four years ago in 2003. This work has now spread to 106 countries including every state in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland.

So at your age and with a property already purchased, I urge you to spend your time acquiring the knowledge before you start getting into real estate development.

I say this because once you have bought a property for development and you understand what you are doing, you will see that the project has a momentum of its own, which of course is driven by the borrowings from a bank.

I hope these few comments have helped you.

Colm Dillon

RealEstate DevelopmentCoach.com

Real Estate Development has a massive economic impact and benefit on western society, as well as being the driver of the construction industry, yet development training and education ranks low on the agenda of most major universities.

It’s difficult to work out why this is so. Maybe there is a nexus between the professional development class who work for major development companies and the “school of hard knocks” developer who learns from his/her mistakes and the two groups don’t meet on common ground to advance the cause of development education.

It is a fact that a professional developer can make more money from developing a simple ten townhouse project that he/she could out of 10 years of writing development books, e-books, courses or all three. So how to entice the professional developer to cross the divide and pass on their “How to Do It” knowledge.

One person who has made this leap, the only one in fact, is Colm Dillon. He is a professional developer with over $1.2 Billion worth of developments completed and discovered that from libraries to the internet, real estate development education material was almost non existant.

Since then he has written three training courses covering residential development of townhouses and apartments; commercial development for office developments and land subdivision for the creation of residential and industrial subdivision estates that can be access through his web site www.realestatedevelopmentcoach.com

Colm Dillon has also conducted workshops, usually over two days, throughout Australia and the United States to personally train individuals who want to master the real estate development business.