Hi, Everybody, Cheryl Knowlton, coming at you with this week’s safety tip.
OK, as you probably know by now, I am a huge, huge advocate of the National Association of Realtors amazing course, Safety Matters. In that phenomenal manual on page 2, chapter one, is all about: Is real estate a high-risk business?
What would you say, if I asked you that question? What do you think? Is real estate a high-risk business?
Which occupation has the higher risk: real estate or mining?
I pulled from page 2 of this book. Which of the following occupations do you think has the highest rate of on-the-job fatalities? Mining or Real estate? Would it surprise you to learn that more real estate agents lose their lives than miners?
The most recent statistical compilation from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics states that 64 real estate professionals met with fatal injuries while on the job as compare with 28 miners. Here is the really scary part. 16 of those real estate agents that met with fatalities while on the job were homicides. That is an alarming statistic. It behooves us a real estate professional to create whole new set of habits related to awareness of the dangers that are all around us.
Why is real estate so risky? One of those is that in order for us to create the appearance of success, we often want to show off the trappings of success. This means that we drive beautiful cars, usually late-model cars. We dress nicely. We actually shower, do our hair, brush our teeth—hopefully, more often than not. Sometimes we wear expensive jewelry.
I’m guilty of that—not because I’m trying to show off my trappings of success. If you’ve seen some of my other posts, you know tat my Mickey Mouse diamond bracelet has tremendous sentimental value to me, even though it’s not worth thousands of dollars. It’s not a Rolex. But it looks beautiful. That’s some of the reason I love it.
Need to find balance
Where is that balance between trying to look like a professional and becoming the target of a crime? In this amazing manual we learn that many robberies, many crimes that start out as robberies—actually turn into homicides or something worse than a robbery.
What do we need to do to protect ourselves so that we can not be victims of a crime? I strongly encourage you to reach out to me and answer that question. I love to hear your suggestions in the comments. I would love for you to share this post, so we can get the comments from real estate professionals and create a working list of things we can all do to keep each other safe.
It’s absolutely essential we adopt the attitude—not in my backyard. Not as it relates to a Home Depot or a new condo complex, but not in my backyard—no other real estate professional is ever going to be killed on the job on our watch.
That is my tip for the day. I hope you use it. I hope you implement it to experience explosive growth and safety in your business.