If you talk to me for long enough you figure out I’m a language nerd. At parties, I whip out unwanted information about the great vowel shift of the fifteenth century. And even at fifty years old, I still get excited about new words. The new word I was introduced to on Undercover Billionaire by Elaine Culotti was tranche.
Tranche is similar to trauch. And, if you’ve watched The Big Short, you may have heard tranche in relation to a Jenga tower of bad mortgages. What makes this all very confusing is that both words are pronounced exactly the same.
Technically a trauch is one of a series of payments to be paid out over a specified time period, often subject to performance metrics and commonly used in venture capital to refer to the different fundraising rounds in an entrepreneurship start-up.
A tranche—according to Culotti—is simply multiple streams of income. So, in Undercover Billionaire, Culotti built five businesses into a single building: 1) a grocery, 2) a bar, 3) a coffee shop, 4) a deli, and 5) a hotel. The tranche-approach advantage is that if for a season one stream of income isn’t doing well, you have the other businesses to stand upon. The disadvantage, of course, is the same: if one business isn’t doing well, you have to lean into the other streams of income for support.
I love real estate, but the business for me is not yet predictable. Or maybe a better way to describe my experience is inconsistent income. When I began this blog series a few days ago, I flat out said my problem wasn’t a budget but my problem was income generation. I’ve since rented out my driveway. And I continue to teach.
But I’m thinking about these tranches. I’m also thinking about stacking.
I do a lot of door-knocking and unless I have an open house it is so inefficient and the only person who is happy is my doctor because I’m walking more. I’m tired, I’m exhausted, my feet hurt, I annoy the neighborhood dogs, and I’ve been yelled at. Follow-up is flipping hard. Door-knocking also reminds me of back in my pizza delivery days where we flyered neighborhoods with coupons.
I really always enjoyed delivering food. You were like a beacon of hope in the night, bringing joy to the stomachs and tastebuds of hundreds. And the pizza shop always had some kind of flyer on the box. UberEats would be one way of door-knocking, and to include that real estate flyer with each delivery. Additionally, I could partner with local businesses to distribute their promotional materials while delivering food.
Over the last two years a lot of Realtors have complimented me on this very web site. Who did your website? Um, me. Okay, it’s a template, but me. And a few have asked me to design or redesign their sites. I’ve said no over and over until I realized I could get someone else to do the work. I’m already sending emails to Realtors all the time and there’s no reason why I can’t add a let me build your website link at the bottom of those emails.
What else could I stack? Logo and sign design and printing cause I’m partnering with a print shop to do the work. I’m slowly building this marketing team. I could create writing workshops for real estate, e-books and guides.
We might talk about the bookstore idea I have….(um, later 😊)
The problem I have here of course is focus.
When you watch Culotti put together her grocery-bar-coffee-deli-hotel conglomerate chaos absolutely ensued. People who worked for her for free, or rather on sweat equity, got angry, stressed, lost, confused, and unsure sometimes what the next steps were.
One of the greatest books I’ve read has been The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. The book emphasizes focusing on that one critical activity that, when pursued relentlessly, can create a domino effect, leading to the achievement of your most significant goals. The book’s about narrowing your focus to excel in the one area that has the most impact.
But Culotti was all over the place. I’m all over the place.
If I consider the real estate career as the “one thing,” then all other activities like blogging, teaching, and even the bookstore idea need to be seen as extensions or tools that feed into and enhance my primary focus.
Blogging becomes a platform to build and nurture my client base, offering insights and stories from real estate experiences, and subtly promoting my services. Yes, you are reading an ad!
Teaching fosters connections, and builds a reputation as an expert in my field, and potentially adds an avenue to find clients or investors for my real estate business and/or bookstore.
The bookstore venture, while a standalone business, can also be a physical embodiment of my brand, a place where my real estate clients, blog readers, and students can converge, fostering a community that revolves around my real estate business.
I think that while on the surface, the mess of ideas in my head seems like a multi-faceted approach, all these activities are interconnected, each feeding into and supporting my “one thing,” which grows my real estate business to a point where it sustains all my other passions and ventures.
I think it’s about creating a symbiotic ecosystem where each element, while valuable on its own, comes together to support and elevate your primary focus, creating a cycle of growth and success.
Listen, I’m not sure if any of this post made sense. What are you thoughts?
Conversations Update:
5000 people in one week! What was I thinking?
My daily average number of genuine conversations has been about 15. That’s 105 people a week, that’s not anywhere near 5000. I was invited to the Media Makers Meetup, where I met a few new people, and I also attended the last Dover Chamber of Commerce Morning Mixer. There were about 11 people there and I scheduled a listing appointment! Which, if they sign, that puts me about half-way to my $12,000+ goal for September.
