So You Wanna Be An Appraiser

Summary: This episode addresses the apprentice and how they typically go about trying to find a mentor. Blaine gives some points of advice for how to go about finding a mentor and adding some value to their business. If you'd like to listen to the podcast version of this post, just click on this sentence...

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This topic comes up in my office on a weekly basis so I wanted to have a chat with all of you about it because I have found that if I am experiencing or noticing something, likely everybody else is too. 
  
The topic is trainees or, said another way, the topic is mentorship. Depending on the position you’re viewing it from, either as a mentor or as a trainee or a wanna be trainee. As I wrote this episode, I imagined it as if it was a letter from a father to a son, a mother to a daughter, or a mentor to apprentice on the most important things to focus on in life. It’s more specific than that, of course, and my hope for this episode is that all of the players in these relationships can gain some value from the discussion which means appraisers who are currently mentoring and training somebody, those who are thinking of bringing on a trainee, those who are currently apprentices under somebody else’s tutelage, and those who are on the search for somebody to train them. 
  
I am going to do a separate podcast specifically for those who currently are, or are thinking of becoming a mentor and bringing on somebody into their business to train because this topic is an important one. After all, its how we all got into the appraisal business, its how every appraiser out there today got into the appraisal business, and its how every new appraiser being birthed this year or next is being introduced into the appraisal world and how every appraiser after us is likely to be introduced into the appraisal industry, unless something changes with the requirements whereby an apprenticeship is no longer needed, which could happen in the future. 
  
Being a mentor is a huge responsibility, it takes a lot of time, energy, resources, and patience and often for little reward. There can, of course, be lots of benefits in doing so but we all know, of course, that many appraisers, myself included, were once trained by somebody that we’re no longer associated with and trainees often make the mistake of saying flat out, “I need somebody to train me so that I can go out on my own someday”. This, of course, steers many would be mentors away from wanting to train anybody because they believe, and maybe rightly so, that they’re training their future competition.  
  
I’ll talk in that future podcast about mentorship and how this doesn’t have to be the case, but I get it. I understand that sentiment. That is true, by the way, in almost every industry where somebody learns a skill or trade from the mentor and eventually decides they can do it better, faster, cheaper, earn more money, be more independent, or whatever causes the apprentice to venture off into the world, hang their shingle and get into business. Michael Gerber, author of the E-myth, calls this their entrepreneurial seizure. That moment when somebody says, “hey, I’m really good at this thing that I do, I bet I’ll be really good at running a business doing that thing that I’m really good at”, only to find out that running a business is, in almost every case, vastly different than just doing the thing. And that is no different in the appraiser world, as almost all of my appraiser colleagues can attest to. Whether you’re running a business of multiple appraisers, a brick and mortar office with staff and equipment, or a single person home office, working for somebody is different than having somebody work for you. 
  
Lest I digress too far into the whole other episode I’m doing on being an appraiser mentor, lets get right into todays topic, which is basically a conglomeration of all of the conversations I have had over the past 18 years with those seeking an apprenticeship with me, my company, or any of the appraisers in my office over that same period. I kinda wish I would have kept all of the resumes, emails, and voicemail inquiries we’ve received over the past 18 years of people seeking to become an appraiser. If, for no other reason than to be able to count them and then see where they are today. I’d love to know how many there were. What I can tell you is that, like everything in life and our businesses, there have been ebbs and flows of these resumes and phone calls depending on what the market is doing at the time. 
  
The interesting thing, and the motivation for today’s episode in fact, is that, regardless of the number, and I know it’s in the hundreds over that 18 year period, they have all been more or less the same in one glaring regard: they’ve all come to us with a hand out and not an offer.  
  
What I mean is that they have all come in the way of a mailed resume, some with a follow up phone call or email, some not, some with just a phone call or email, and some with a stop into the office. However they chose to seek out the opportunity, not one that I can remember in 18 years has ever come to me and said, “Blaine, I’d love to talk with you about how I can make your business better”, or “ Blaine, I’d really appreciate an opportunity to chat with you about what I think I can bring to your business”, or “Blaine, I know you’re a busy man, and if you’d give me just 15 minutes I’d like to tell you how I think I can enhance your life, work, business, income, time off, ease your workload, make you more profitable, help your business grow, add more time to your day, etc.”  
  
You see, it’s the age old dilemma that almost every corporation everywhere deals with, except maybe factories only needing bodies to fill stations and watch units roll off the assembly lines, it’s the dilemma of the overall cost to bring a new hire on, the time and resource cost to train them, the potential loss in productivity, the potential loss in revenue during that time, the potential for mistakes, the potential for lawsuits, the potential for a negative change in corporate or office culture, and the unknowns that come with every new person being interviewed and ultimately hired for a position within a company. Small companies, of course, feel theses effects much deeper than large corporations might because every little change has amplified effects on smaller companies. Large companies also tend to have larger budgets with which to absorb all of those loaded costs that come with everybody new hire. 
  
What is not different between large and small companies, however, is the assumption that whomever they decide to bring into the company, is the best person for that particular position in that the person they bring on will bring something the company has not had before. Maybe, in some cases, the company is looking to fill the shoes of somebody who has left or moved up in the corporation, but almost every good company and industry is looking for a candidate who will add some value to the company. How they do that depends on the job they’ve been hired to do, the widgets that particular company makes or sells, or the service the company provides, and the opportunities to add value in each of those environments. 
  
With an appraisal business, the opportunities are almost endless in the ways somebody could bring or add value and we’re going to talk about some of them in this episode so hopefully you’ve got your talking pad, as Zig Ziglar always called it, your legal pad or some kind of note taking device to write some of these down. Not that I think what I have to say is so noteworthy that by not taking notes you won’t remember these, but you won’t. The reality is that our brains are intricately linked to our bodies in such a way that when you engage in the physical act of note taking, specifically just writing, you’re actively taking zwhat’s entering your ears, in this case, and ushering it in to the physical world by writing it down. This does several things: one, it cements it in a different portion of your brain than just hearing something does, two, it activates something in your immediate surroundings that makes it more likely for positive change to occur, in essence, it literally changes the vibrations in the air around you activating all sorts of things that wouldn’t have been activated otherwise, and three, by actually writing something down, you activate what I call, ‘the law of the onion’.  
  
If you'd like to learn what the Law of the Onion is, just go here and sign up for the private podcast where I explain in detail what the law of the onion is and how you can use it to your benefit.

So now that we have the reasons why to take notes out of the way, lets get back to our chat about trainees and new hires. When we left off I was just getting to the point that every new hire in a company is expected to do certain things. They’re expected to do the job descriptions that come with that particular position, but they’re also expected, on some level, to bring some kind of added value to the position, even if its never spoken. The added value may simply be a smiling face and good attitude around the office. It may also be finding new and more efficient ways to do some tasks. Whatever it is, no good company would ever turn away an employee’s added value. In fact, some of the greatest business stories are those of your average employee or worker who had an idea or took something of little value and turned it into something of tremendous value.  
  
So what does this all have to do with trainees? It has everything to do with trainees and those seeking to get into the appraisal and appraiser business because every good appraiser could likely use somebody bringing some additional value. The problem is often that those already in the business tend to see things through jaded tired eyes, and those not yet in the business see things through the eyes they have from previous work experiences or through the eyes of somebody who taught their licensing class or maybe somebody they know in the business.  
  
Either way, often times there is no meeting of the minds when it comes to these two groups because the existing appraisers, the ones holding the golden key to getting into the business , the gatekeepers, if you will, want nothing to do with somebody who just wants to steal the mentor’s time, get enough hours to break free, potentially steal the mentor’s clientele, and become competition in their market. There are a host of other issues that lead existing appraisers to not wanting to train somebody else, but I’ll talk about some of those in the bonus content and also in the episode on how to be a good mentor.  
  
This episode is primarily for those trying to break into the appraisal business. I’m going to give you a few ideas about how to go about it the right way. In doing so, I am hoping to also peel away a layer or two from some of the existing appraisers listening to get them thinking about the process a little differently. The good thing is that nobody is making you become a mentor so if you’re dead set on never doing it, its ok, you never have to. But for some of you, you’ve considered it  but simply haven’t figured out the best way to make it work for you and your business. For those of you thinking about getting into the business or might already be licensed and looking for a mentor, sharpen your pencil and start writing. 
  
As I started off this episode saying, I haven’t had one resume, phone call, or email from a trainee candidate in 18 years offering anything unique, creative, or value added to my business by way of their apprenticeship. When I was with my first company, we had a huge stack of resumes and they came in every single week. With my second company, I’d say we received several per month, and my current business receives a couple per month on average. I think this is probably a statement about the industry as a whole since we’ve seen some decline in our numbers, but its also a statement on the lack of opportunity, both for the trainee and for the mentor. Those of us who do train and have trained many in the past know the benefits and opportunities, but we also know the costs of doing so. It’s also a statement about the complete lack of creativity and opportunity creation on both sides of that fence, the mentor and the potential trainee. 
  
As somebody looking to get into the appraisal business, whether you’re just looking, already licensed, seeking a mentor, maybe had one and it didn’t work out, or whatever stage in the process you may be, if you are still out there calling around or sending out resumes that say, “I’d make a great worker, I’m looking to get my hours, I need somebody to help me, seeking a mentor, etc.”, stop it now! Stop completely! Don’t send out one more resume, one more email, or make one more phone call. You need to stop, think, regroup, and revamp your message. I’m not talking about just revamping your words in some kind of semantic trickery to fool the potential mentor into bringing you on. No, I’m talking about rethinking this whole thing so that it doesn’t just benefit you! 
  
You see, this whole idea of the mentor and apprentice goes back thousands of years. The mentor handpicked the apprentice with a specific goal in mind. But the goal wasn’t self centered to benefit only the mentor, one of the goals of the mentor was to build up the protégé in their image with the hopes that, someday, the protégé may succeed, or even exceed, the mentor. The mentor chose carefully knowing that the individual was of good moral character, suited in some way for the task they were being trained for, and, most importantly, the protégé would bring some added value to the mentor to help the mentor develop more fully as an individual, as a teacher, as a business person, and with that came a sense of loyalty that exceeded the business relationship.  
  
If you’ve listened to any of the previous episodes where I talk about my experience living in the Aikido and zen school, you’ll know that I speak from some experience, not only because I was mentored by somebody else in the appraisal business, but also because I was that protégé. I highly value the mentor protégé relationship and am a big proponent of it for our industry if its carried out the right way. When it comes to the apprentice, or trainee as we call them, the relationship is often set right from the beginning by the mentor as one of boss and newbie employee, or grunt, who’s going to carry out all the tasks the mentor doesn’t necessarily like or want to do, and the student/employee learns in the process. I’m not necessarily knocking this type of training. I think its good for the apprentice to have to struggle and hustle like we did when we were in training, and that often means doing the stuff others don’t like doing. It likely means taking some of the orders the mentor doesn’t want to, or wouldn’t typically take, and just generally doing some of the things the mentor doesn’t want to do.  
  
Before we get into the tactical and practical advice for future trainees, let me caveat all of this with the disclaimer that, of course, none of this is guaranteed to get you anything at all from anybody. But it is absolutely guaranteed that if you approach a potential mentor with the typical requests that we tend to see, if they are seeking some additional help in their office, they may utilize you for their purposes and to achieve their own goals but you’ll be used in a way that they see fit for their business and their goals with only a passing nod to the fact that you might be gaining some work hours. However, the relationship will begin on the wrong foot right from the get go (this is a message for the mentors too!).  
  
If the mentor knows you just want them for the training and the hours, you become a tool to be used in their business as they see fit. If you’ve simply asked for somebody to train you because you need hours, and the mentor is unwise enough to do it based on their own selfish desires to do more appraisal work, take on some new clients, or whatever the reasons may be, resentment will be the primary motivating factor at play on both sides of the relationship. You want your hours and are willing to suffer for a pre-determined period of time knowing that there is light at the end of the tunnel when you reach your minimum number of required hours.

This doesn’t mean you’ve arrived anywhere because, of course, many lenders won’t even look your way if you haven’t had 3 to 5 years of experience at a certain license level. Nevertheless, you plod and plan for this day with delight as you keep your nose to the grindstone and plug away at your goal. The mentor uses you as he or she sees fit for their business, maybe thinking you’ll be around forever. Nevertheless, it starts out as almost adversarial from the beginning. There’s a saying that those without goals will always be used by those who have them. This goes for both the trainee and the mentor alike. 
  
Now, I understand this isn’t always the way it goes, but there is definitely a stereotype in this regard and I’ve been studying it for almost 15 years now. The stories abound and the numbers bear it out. The vast majority of appraisers are 1 to 3 person offices. How did they get that way? By following the path that almost all take which is the path to perceived independence via the independent appraiser route. After all, isn’t it one of the main selling points for people to get into this business? Next to the income potential, it’s the potential to work from home, work in your underwear, be independent, etc.  
  
Before you make any request whatsoever of a potential mentor in your market, sit down and write out all of the skills and abilities you have. Write out all of your past work experience and list out all of the things you learned along the way in those past jobs or life experiences. This is all for you, by the way. None of this exercise is for the eyes of the mentor. What we’re trying to build with this exercise is an inventory. An inventory of skills, experiences, views, and abilities that you can leverage for the benefit of the mentor. We’re changing the way we look at this whole concept from one of seeking to get your card punched and your log signed by the mentor so that you can take off your pants and work in your underwear, to one of seeking all the ways you can bring something that adds value to the mentor’s business that they almost cant refuse your offer.  
  
What I’m suggesting is a huge concept my friends! It’s so huge that it may just change the way you look at absolutely everything. In fact, one of my goals as a teacher and content creator is to do just that: change your views on things so that your world opens up and you get some results. Let me warn you, this concept is not a tactic. It is a mindset. The tactics we come up with usher forth from the mindset, not the other way around. What we’re talking about is giving more than you ever expect to gain in return. As you build this skills and abilities inventory of your past life experiences, you should be thinking about how each one of those things that you write down could lead to a benefit for your future mentor. Up to now, you likely looked at your resume as a way to impress. Everybody does and its somewhat off putting to entrepreneurs like myself because we typically don’t care much about your impressive background of jobs you no longer have.  
  
What an entrepreneur cares about is value. They care about making money. They care about getting shit done, gaining new clients, taking care of the ones they have, becoming more efficient, creating new things, watching things and people grow, and just generally making things happen. Whatever value proposition you bring to an entrepreneur better enhance or add to that basic list. The word entrepreneur is a French word that comes from the verb ‘to do something’ (entreprendre) or ‘to undertake’ something. What many entrepreneurs have in the way of motivation and hustle, they often lack in other areas like marketing, managing, communicating, accounting, sales, or some other area where they may be deficient. Where an entrepreneur is deficient in some area, there is big opportunity to help them shore up that aspect of their business.  
  
Of course, not every entrepreneur is open to having their weaknesses pointed out, and many of them aren’t self aware enough to even know they’re lacking in some area. However, the main point of all of this is that A. Independent appraisers are, at some level, entrepreneurs. They don’t like working for somebody else and have ventured out on their own to do something, to undertake something, and B. they almost all need help in some area of their business. Your job as a potential new recruit is to interview the potential mentor to figure out where that need exists and then offer a creative way to solve the problem.  
  
Let’s talk practical in an appraiser’s business. Many appraisers do primarily lender work. This is work for banks, mortgage companies, credit unions, AMCs (appraisal management companies), and anybody providing financing some type of loan. While this type of work can be good, it can also be fickle, revision heavy, demanding, and ultra time sensitive, not to mention price sensitive. Many appraisers seek to do what is simply called non-lender work. Non-lender work consists of legal work like dissolution of marriage (divorce) appraisals, Estate and date of death appraisals, financial planning appraisals, in house portfolio type work, realtor work like pre-listing appraisals, tax and assessment appraisals, etc.

However, many appraisers have almost no idea how to go after this type of business. Either because they’ve never had it and haven’t made the contacts, or because maybe they’re scared to try something different from what they’ve been doing. Whatever the reason, helping an appraiser not only get new business, but build a whole other segment to their business is a huge offer for an appraiser.  
  
Now, you may be asking me, “Blaine, how the heck am I supposed to go get business for an appraiser when I’m not even an appraiser myself”? To which I’d say, every problem has the seeds of the solution built within it. Your job is not to figure out how to do it just yet, your job is to posit the potential problems you can offer solutions for OR come to the table not with a hand out but with a hand up. Your job at this point is to bring something to the appraiser that they don’t already have. It may actually be something they hadn’t even thought about until they met you! It may be something like doing free office work in exchange for training.

It may be offering to hit the streets and set up meetings with attorneys and financial planners for the appraiser to come in and give the business winning discussion. It might be offering to submit the appraisers info to all of the AMCs and banks the appraiser hasn’t had time to do themselves. It could be calling realtors and homeowners to offer home measuring services of desktop valuations. The ideas are almost endless when it comes to this exercise. The idea is to develop your own skills inventory first, then brainstorm what you think you have to offer. Then prospect for a meeting with an appraiser to interview THEM, not to have them interview you. I’m not suggesting that you act like the boss by interviewing them. I’m simply suggesting that you call and offer to bring them coffee or meet for lunch to pick their brain about their business. You can do it all under the guise of wanting to learn more about the business so that you can be the best appraisal student ever.

Don’t even ask if they’re accepting trainees at this point because, at this point, they probably aren’t! They aren’t because they haven’t met YOU yet! Once they meet you and have a discussion about all the things you look to bring to a prospective mentor’s business, you can simply end the meeting with a genuine, “hey, I want to thank you for taking time out of your busy day to enlighten me. If you know of any appraisers who could use additional business, an outside salesperson, a business builder, (or whatever it is that you’re offering), I’d certainly appreciate you passing my name and info along to them. Oh, and always pay for the coffee or meal!! 
  
I say this often, if you haven’t listened to prior episodes, please do because I talk about languaging, syntax, communication, and the importance of words and language in your daily life. This kind of language is the language of pros. This is not for the weak and it’s definitely not for those who are simply seeking to get their hours in and have somebody hand them business and money. This is one of the big problems in our industry. The type of thinking so prevalent in the industry is a selfish, ‘you cant tell me what to do’, attitude. Maybe it’s the result of being beat up for so many years, but it’s definitely damaging to our image.

What it has done, however, is create an opportunity for creative service minded appraisers who see themselves as true service providers and strategic partners with their clients. If you want to work with one of these kinds of appraisers, you’d better be the type of individual that can bring something to the table instead of asking for a handout.  
  
“Whoa, whoa!”, you say, “Blaine, nobody is asking for a handout!”. To which I say, if you’ve sent out a resume asking for somebody to mentor you, you are, in essence, asking for a handout. For their to be a fair value exchange, there has to be something of value offered FIRST from you with no expectation of return before you can ever ask for anything from anybody else. I don’t care that that’s how its done in the corporate world where resumes and college degrees matter more than hustle and ingenuity. In the world of the entrepreneur, creativity and value added are the words of the day. Bring your absolute best game to the park and you may just have a shot. Come with a request for the appraiser mentor to fill your coffers and sign your experience log, which is basically what a resume is, is a recipe for disappointment and failure. 

I’d like to give a special Real Value Podcast shoutout to my friend Jamie Owen over at Aspen Appraisal Services. Jamie has been very kind and extremely supportive to me and the Real Value Podcast. He always likes and comments on Instagram posts and he’s been very gracious to include the Real Value Podcast on his website on a special page called Appraisers making a difference. I am tremendously honored to be included on his site and also amongst a bunch of folks who have been making a difference in the realm of blogging, podcasting, and creating content much longer than I have, at least in the appraisal industry, such as Jonathan Miller’s Housing Notes, Ryan Lundquist’s Sacramento Appraisal Blog, Tom Horns Birmingham Appraisal Blog, Shannon Slater’s appraisal blog, Mark Skapinetz The Peoples Appraisal Blog, George Dell, Dustin Harris, Rachel Massey, Phil Crawford, and some others. If you aren’t familiar with some of these great contributors to our industry, you can, of course, google all of them, or you can just head over to Aspen Appraisal services.net and look for the page called "Appraisers Making a Difference".

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