For this post we’re going to have something a little different, to the tune of a Q&A session with one of my building labour subcontractors, Bob (yes, many people do indeed refer to him as “Bob the builder”). So anyway, Bob shadowed a property consultant for whom we complete a lot of building and design work for, this after he challenged the property consultant to spend a day doing what he thought was a much harder job than that of “running around and managing properties for clients, and stuff!”
Bob soon learned that there is a lot of hard work that goes into property consultancy, not to mention the insanely high levels of stress that come with knowing that you’re not just showing up and completing your own set work for a fixed paycheque.
Q: When the workday kicked-off, what is the one aspect about the job of a property consultant you found easiest to do?
A: Having the mandatory, full continental breakfast to “fuel up” for the day ahead, as suggested by Stella, whom I’d be shadowing for the rest of the day [laughs]. Seriously though, I had no idea what was in store for us as the day would unfold.
Q: Okay, so this suggests that all the tasks of the actual work were extremely challenging?
A: Oh yeah – even the simplest of tasks like jotting down some notes on a post-it note has to be done systemically, otherwise at the end of the day you find that you can’t go home quite yet because it’s taking you much longer to get around to completing tasks which would have gone much smoother had you been more organised earlier in the day. Try picking through a stack of 70 odd post-it notes while you’re on the phone with a client who wants to meet up in the next 10 minutes for example, to arrange a property viewing or to go over some figures as part of an urgent need to compile a report. And that’s just the organisation side of the administration…
Q: Okay, so what was the one big lesson you can say you learned out of your shadowing of a property consultant?
A: Let’s make it two things, because they both sort of tie in with each other, the first being that apart from some of the admin, no two tasks are ever the same, so there is no operating on autopilot here. The second thing is that if you complete a certain task, you have to make sure you do it well in consideration of its knock-on effect in the future. If you’re considering an HOA Management Service Glendale has on offer for example, as the logical choice for a group of properties you’re set to manage in that area, you have to make sure to make the right choice so that you won’t have to micro manage anything to do with that aspect in future.
Now, in no way is this meant to suggest that Bob’s contract work is any less important than mine as the design consultant and that of our property consultant colleague. All it is, is merely a report on how having walked a day in the shoes of a property consultant, one realises just how tough and demanding of a job it is.
