Instant Interviews_ 101 Ways to Get the Best Job of Your Life - Jeffrey G. Allen [103]
Welcome to the club.
Greet the greeter with, “Sam I am!”
Do 73: Generating Instant Revenues and Interviews
Can it be? Making money while instantly interviewing? If everything happens for a reason, this is it!
Become an office-area measurer.
How I Got the Idea
My roommate in college was a real estate agent. He and his brother used to pick a residential area, knock on a door, and offer to appraise the homeowner’s house for free.
They’d walk in like the Blues Brothers. Then they’d whip out a tape measure and start writing down the square footage. The homeowner would follow them into rooms, closets, and bathrooms watching and wondering as they wrote down numbers.
They’d then sit down, appraise the house, and get the listing.
I always remembered the impact of that. You can see why we were roommates!
Then when I was an HR manager, I was asked to look for a new site since our lease was up. In doing this, I discovered we were grossly overpaying for our space.
The reason? The square footage was overstated and nobody ever questioned it. The measurements were from another lease and we were only subleasing part of the space.
Then we started checking the listings for commercial and office buildings. We discovered that square footage was inflated on the listings over a third of the time!
How I Did It
I needed to take a leave of absence to study, and it was harder on an empty stomach.
So I bought a tape measure from the hardware store bargain bin, asked a real estate agent friend to show me how to do the measuring, and became an instant “lease payment lowerer.”
I hardly had enough for stamps—let alone enough for a mass-mailing campaign. So I just drove around to industrial and retail areas and wrote down the names of businesses on the buildings along with their addresses.
Next I stopped at the office buildings, walked in, and wrote down the names of the tenants and suite numbers for that address.
When I got home, I opened the phone book (pre-Internet) and wrote down the numbers of the businesses. Then I drove over to the chamber of commerce and asked for the free directory of members.
That became the direct mail list I used to send a flyer to a few hundred businesses. It read something like:
ARE YOU PAYING TOO MUCH RENT? WOULD YOU LIKE TO PAY LESS WITHOUT MOVING OR LOSING ANY SPACE?
WHAT ABOUT GETTING CASH FOR RENT YOU OVERPAID?
CALL TODAY!
I photocopied them at work, with the permission of my boss. He gave me envelopes too. I just needed one more thing—a short letter agreement for the tenants to sign. That night I was in my law school library preparing it. Photocopies courtesy of my employer.
The deal was I’d survey the premises for free. If the lease square footage was more than the actual square footage, the owner would pay me half of the refund. Future savings were theirs. No cost, no obligation, no advice. Just a quick meter reading. They instantly signed my simple one-page agreement.
I appeared like a genie (Do 1). I surveyed the premises all right! Spoke to anyone I wanted. It was quite the instant interview experience!
Predictably, a third of the premises were smaller than the leases stated. The landlords fell all over themselves to make the refunds. “Instant” was an understatement. Today, the phrase is “All over it.”
I made valuable business contacts in the community and ate valuable food.
But I turned down dozens of job offers from grateful tenants.
You Can Do It Too
This little business turns you into an electromagnet. Offerors are attracted to your magnetic field.
You immediately attract businesspeople who have large facilities, with many offerors in them. You drive by their businesses every day and just need to get inside to instant on them.
Writing the Agreement Letter
The letter format is more signable and just as enforceable as a legalistic document (Do 44). It all depends on what message