FROM SURVIVAL TO SIGNIFICANCE

Most appraisers will spend their entire careers stuck in a cycle of being overworked and underpaid, not because they aren’t skilled, but because they refuse to think and act like real business owners. If you’re still grinding out reports just to ‘stay busy,’ let me be blunt: you don’t own a business, you own a job. And worse… that job owns you. Today, we’re exposing the 4 phases of business growth—and why most appraisers never make it past ‘just getting by.’ Let’s talk about how to break free.

Let’s be honest with each other, you don’t listen to this podcast to be coddled and told that everything is going to be ok. If you’ve listened to more than, say, 5 episodes of this show you know that I speak from a place of wanting you to succeed in whatever it is that brings you happiness, joy, peace, financial prosperity, and allows you to lead the life you believe you’re here to lead. For some of you, heck, maybe for many of you, that is NOT in the appraisal profession.

If you’re not happy with what you do; if you find yourself screaming at your social media feed because Fannie and Freddie, or the powers that be, are doing something even stupider than they did last year; or you wake up in the middle of the night soaked in cold sweats because you don’t know where your next order is coming from, my recommendation is to get out while you still have some life left inside of you.

I don’t say that because that means more business for me (although I do love it when those who can’t compete move on! After all, that’s one of the main reasons to run a great business!), I say it because I know that life is short. It might seem long if you think about it with your logical brain and realize that living to 85 years old means you’ve survived more than 31,000 days on this planet. That sounds like a lot, but I can tell you as a 54-year-old, it absolutely flies by! And the reality is that none of us is guaranteed a good 85 years on this earth. Some of us may live that long, or longer, while we can all probably name a few people from our circles that are gone already long before they even reached the age you are now.

Life is short, my friends, and if you’re going to spend your vital life energy doing something, for goodness’ sake, do it because it gives your life some joy and meaning, not just a few dollars. I’m saying that as somebody who has confessed many times on this show that I don’t have any particular passion for appraising real estate. I just happen to be good at it, I like the way I’ve been able to build my companies around it, I know how to make really good money at it, and I love being able to show others how to do that as well. To be clear, this profession has also provided me with the ability to grow into other businesses and streams of income, which is one of the reasons I continue to do it.

What I want to share with you in this episode are the 4 phases that every business and every business owner can go through when building a business. No, I didn’t say 4 phases that every business goes through, I said 4 phases that every business and business owner CAN go through. I’ll go a step further and say that I think one of the reasons so many appraisers get stuck in one or two of these phases is precisely because that don’t understand these 4 phases.

This may be controversial for some of you, but I believe every business should be striving for the highest level or phase when they set out to build a business but, because they don’t know what phase 3 or phase 4 would mean for them, they get stuck in phases 1 and 2.

So, what are the 4 phases? They are:

1. The Survival phase, or what I call ‘The Hustler’s Trap’.
2. The Stability phase, or the ‘Freelancer’s Plateau’.
3. The Success phase, or the ‘Comfort Crisis’
4. The Significance phase, or what I call ‘The Legacy Builder’.

Let’s start with phase 1, the survival phase.

Phase 1: Survival (The Hustler’s Trap)

You don’t own a business; you own a job—a job that owns you back.

Core Characteristics:

• You trade time for money but may still struggle to pay bills.
• You're taking low-fee, high-effort work because you “need the money.”
• You say “yes” to way too much, stretching yourself thin.
• Systems are non-existent—your business runs on chaos and willpower.
• You don’t have a team, or if you do, they’re underperforming because you haven’t built the structure to lead them.
• Every decision is reactive, based on what’s urgent, not what’s important.

 In phase one, the hustler’s trap, quite simply you’re trading your time for dollars. You work an hour and somebody or something pays you for that hour. It looks different than working for a boss because the money you get paid comes from the fees you are accepting on an appraisal order, but, if you don’t put forth an hour of your labor, you don’t get paid.

So, not only are you constantly listening and watching for new opportunities to bid with the masses for low fee work, you are trying to figure out how to do that, get the work, complete the work, get paid, and also remaining vigilant about getting more of that work. It’s a vicious cycle that many appraisers never escape from. Every decision being made at this level is reactive and based on what is urgent, not necessarily what is best for you and the success of the business.

They get stuck in the fear of turning down bad work lest they never receive another bidding opportunity from people who couldn’t care any less whether you existed or not. They’re stuck thinking that more effort is the answer when the truth is that what they really need is more clarity around who their ideal client really is and a far better strategy for growth. I have no issue with people starting out taking crappy work as long as they have a strategy for quickly moving beyond it.

When you are always saying ‘yes’ to that kind of work for those kinds of fees, you are inadvertently saying ‘no’ to anything better. And, when you are in this survival phase, you lack any power over your pricing because the clients dictate your value for you. You can scream all you wish that you’re worth more than what you’re being paid, but when you are playing in the most crowded and commoditized level of the game, you have zero control over pricing. The only real control you have is over your decisions to accept that work and continue playing that game or move to the next level.

How do you get out of the survival phase and move into stability? Three primary actions:

1. Ruthless prioritization and relationship surgery: cut 30-50% of the lowest value and lowest priority tasks and clients that are robbing you of your time and life.
2. Hire a remote assistant and start offloading all of the lowest value tasks.
3. Shift your mindset from technician to CEO.

The next phase or level of business is what we call the ‘Stability phase’, or what I refer to as the ‘freelancer’s plateau’. This is the level where you start to feel a little more comfortable with where you are, but it’s also one of the levels where I use the saying, ‘you’re losing so slowly you actually think you’re winning’.

Phase 2: Stability (The Freelancer’s Plateau)

You’re comfortable, but comfort is a slow death.

Core Characteristics:

• Bills are paid, and stress is lower, but you’re still stuck in operations.
• You take “good” work, but not great work.
• Your income is capped because you’re still doing too much yourself.
• You’ve maybe developed some basic systems but still lack scalability—if you step away, revenue stops.
• Hiring, if done at all, is sporadic and reactive instead of strategic.

The stability level is obviously better than just surviving, but it’s the second most dangerous place to be if you have any interest whatsoever in growing into the success and significance phases. I say it’s dangerous because it’s like a warm, comfortable form of quicksand. You get in it, you think you’re all good now that you’re out of the survival phase, but now you’re stuck in the ‘technician’s arrogance’ mode. This is where nobody else can do it as well as you can. Nobody is as smart as you, nobody is as experienced as you, and nobody knows how it should be done like you do.

In this phase, there is still a fear of delegation, not only because you don’t think anyone can do it quite like you can, but you also see is just as an added expense instead of an investment in your growth out of stability and into success.

The other main characteristic of the stability phase that keeps appraisers stuck, and often slowly sinking, is a very real lack of differentiation between themselves and everyone else in the market. I know, I know, you think you’re different because you wear red shirts, and they all wear blue or black shirts. You think your different because you’re smarter and better looking. You think you’re different because you took a class from the Appraisal Institute and now you have some extra letters after your name on this outdated form of cardboard advertising called a ‘business card’.

I hate to be the one to break the news to you, friends, but you’re likely not as differentiated and unique as you’d like to think you are. And, to take it a step further, I’d be willing to bet that far fewer people know you exist in your market than you think. Even if you are doing some of the things I’ve been recommending you do for the past 10 years, if you’re not doing it all the time, you’re not as well-known as you think.

 How do you move out of the stability phase and into success?

1. Productize your service—standardize high-margin, repeatable products and services to a market of people who are willing to pay. (hint: non-lender appraisal services)
2. Fire yourself from low-value work. Create a hiring plan and delegate ruthlessly.
3. Build a brand moat. Why should premium clients choose you? (Hint: It’s not price.)
4. Leverage your marketing and brand assets —Google ads, email sequences, private Facebook groups, downloadable reports, active referral systems and partners.
5. Shift focus from transactions to transformation. Sell results, not time. (mindset shift)

 If you can make it through the stability phase and into the much more predictable, enjoyable, and profitable success phase, you can finally and legitimately say that you have a business and not a job. You own the business; the business no longer owns you.

Phase 3: Success (The Comfort Crisis)

Core Characteristics:

• Revenue is high, profit is strong, and systems run the business.
• You attract your ideal clients and reject the misaligned ones.
• Team operates independently, freeing you from daily operations.
• Business runs with KPIs, dashboards, and clarity in decision-making.
• You have pricing power—clients pay what you demand, not what they dictate.
• You’re comfortable where you are. 

You’ve made it! You’ve arrived at a level in business that the vast majority of small business owners will never reach: success! Most business owners in general, and the vast majority of appraisers, for sure, oscillate between survival, stability, and success. The oscillations are usually market and economy driven, with a little bit of lack of vision, lack of real systems, and a lack of understanding of physics.

What I mean by that is, when we study the natural world, we find that nothing ever remains the same. Everything is always in a state of moving between birth, growth, maturity decline, and death. Since business is created by humans and perpetuated by humans, it too follows a natural order or birth, growth, maturity, decline and death (death can simply mean death of business model because of the birth of a different model).

If you’ve been lucky or astute enough to make it to the success level in business, the biggest things keeping you stuck are likely complacency, lack of innovation, operational complexities, lack of leadership and growth of other leaders, and the expertise trap, which is wear your identity is so wrapped up in your expertise and position that you can’t see any potential pitfalls ahead and you just keep chugging forward.

Look, there’s a reality to all of this, friends, and it goes way beyond just making money. The reality is that every business should be built to sell, not just make money for the owner. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with building a business that prints off cash for you. What I am saying is that, if you get complacent and think that things will stay the same forever, you end up being blindsided by what appears to be some sudden shift.

Whether or not you sell your business to somebody else is not the point because you’re buying it every day with your time and life energy. The point is that it should be built to sell so that you’re always focused on improving the systems and processes, documenting your SOPs, removing yourself over time from the day to day so that the business doesn’t rely solely on you, increasing the viability and salability of it to an outside or inside party, and never falling in love with the business. Your business should be a vehicle to the next levels, not the thing you die for.

So, what’s the point of all this and what’s after success? It’s called the significance level or phase, and it should be what you’re all striving for. The defining characteristic of the significance phase is the exit strategy. There are other characteristics to this phase, which we’ll talk about, but let’s touch first on how to move from success to significance. 

If you have any interest in going to the highest level possible in your business, you’ll simply have to follow these principles: 

• Systematize growth. Turn your business into a repeatable, scalable machine.
• Refine leadership. Your team needs vision, autonomy, and accountability.
• Buy time through leverage. Equity partnerships, acquisitions, and automation.
• Redefine success. More money isn’t the only goal—impact and legacy is.
• Exit strategy thinking. Do you want to sell, scale, or step back?

In essence, to grow to the level of significance, you have to redefine what success means for you because, at the significance level, it’s not about you, it’s about everyone and everything else. Arrogance is one of the hallmarks of an appraisal business at the levels of survival and stability, and quite often even in the success phase as well. What that means, quite simply, is that it’s all about you; how good you are, how important you are, what your qualifications and experience are, how many advanced degrees and designations you have, your personality marketing, and your expertise. In business, we call this is ‘key man risk’.

Key man or key person risk is the risk to the company that one person holds in terms of expertise, market value, customer retention, decision making, and so on. If the value of the company is all locked up in one or two key people, the value of the company is suspect from an outsider’s point of view because, if that one or two key people are removed, leave, or die, there goes the business. 

To move the significance level, you have to address the ‘key person’ aspect of the business and build up other leaders. This can be the tough part for many appraisers because so much of their identity is wrapped up in that business.

If legacy is important to you at all, you need to be playing an infinite game, which is a game where there is no winning. The main goal of an infinite game is to keep playing the game. Simon Sinek wrote a great book on this very topic. At the significance level, wealth and impact transcend the business and the owner.

Phase 4: Significance (The Legacy Builder)

Core Characteristics:

• The business is a wealth-generating asset, not a job.
• Your income is decoupled from your time.
• You are recognized as an industry leader, authority, mentor, or investor.
• Your decisions are long-term, not quarterly.
• You focus is not on addition, but, instead on multiplication—mentorship, philanthropy, building ecosystems. 

Friends, let me be clear: I don’t really care what level you achieve in life and business. I’m not one of the sappy, lying motivational speakers who insincerely says, “I just want the best for you in life!” I don’t know you and it would be conceited of me to suggest I know what’s best for you. Some people love staying at the level they’re at and for all of their own reasons. Who am I to say what’s best for you and what you should or shouldn’t be doing with your life and business.

However, if you come to me and ask me for my opinion or advice, I would lay out for you these four levels of business to elicit from you answers to where you would like to be, why you want to be there, and how you plan to get there so as to help you get some clarity for your journey. That’s my role as a coach. At the end of the day, you’re going to do what you want to do anyway. If any of what we’ve talked about today inspires you, helped create some revelation for you, or gave you some insights into where and why you might be stuck, great! I’ve done my job as a podcaster.

If you need help moving through some of these levels because you just know you won’t or can’t do it on your own, just reach out. I’m always happy to help in whatever way I might be able to for you. Go to www.coachblaine.com and hit me up. If you want to try to do it somewhat on your own, but with the help of other like-minded appraisers on a journey through the four levels, that’s where the Increase Academy might help. Just go to www.CoachBlaine.com/freemonth and try it out completely free for 30 days and completely risk free.

Until I see you in the Increase Academy, maybe at our upcoming high-end business retreat, or our paths cross somewhere else, I’ll see you on the next episode. Until then, I’m out…