Are You A Mercenary or a MIssionary

Friends, if you won five million dollars tomorrow, would you still be an appraiser next week? Would you still take the orders that come into your email on the regular? Would you still maintain the clients you've built up over the years? Or would you finish up the work in your queue and quietly disappear?

No judgment, by the way. I'd expect most of you to say, 'yes! You're damn right I'd disappear, Blaine!'

The reason I ask the question is because of what I've learned coaching hundreds of appraisers over the past decade: your honest answer to that question explains almost everything about why your business, and maybe your life, feels the way it does. It explains your fees. It explains which direction you're building. It explains maybe why you're burned out. It explains why you're working harder but not feeling like you're building anything.

Because the difference between appraisers who are building real businesses and appraisers who are running efficient jobs comes down to one thing: whether they're operating with a mercenary mindset or a missionary mindset. And most of you have no idea which one you're actually in.

Are you a mercenary or are you a missionary? This concept comes mainly from the startup world. Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator and famous investor, wrote about this topic years ago and in a few different ways. When I first read it, I thought about big companies and didn't think it really applied to small businesses and certainly not appraisers. But it stuck with me and, over time, I realized that I was completely wrong.

It applies to appraisers possibly more than it applies to most industries. Because here's the thing: the appraisal industry is already commoditized. AMCs exist. High-volume work exists. You can fill your schedule with transactional appraisals and make really decent money without ever having to think strategically.

You get licensed, you get on some lists, you start getting some orders, and then you start to call yourself a businessperson. This is the path for the vast majority of appraisers and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. If I was speaking to a group of newly licensed appraisers and giving them advice, I would tell them to do exactly this. It's honest work, it pays the bills, and it's how the system functions.

The bigger question, however, isn't whether you do mercenary work. The bigger, more important question is whether that's all you're building. Let me explain the difference in mindset.

THE MERCENARY MINDSET

A mercenary is someone whose primary operating system is: "How do I extract maximum value from this with the least amount of effort?"

The mercenary mindset asks:

• "How much can I make from this opportunity?"

• "How much effort does this require relative to the payout?"

• "How do I optimize my time for maximum income?"

• "What's the shortest path to cash?"

Again, I'm not saying this to judge. A mercenary mindset isn't evil; it's merely an operating system. There are businesses I've been in and opportunities that have come across my desk where I employed a purely mercenary mindset and set of questions.Every job, business, and opportunity does not have to be handled or viewed from a missionary viewpoint. Some things are purely mercenary decisions that have consequences that are important to understand.

When you operate from a mercenary mindset, you're in constant extraction mode. You do the work, you get paid, you move to the next job. Wash, rinse, repeat. You're solving for: "How do I keep this engine running and where is the next extraction?"

This is fine if you've accepted that you're running a job. You show up, you do the work, you get paid, you go home. You're not trying to build something that outlasts you. You're not trying to build something that scales without you. You're not trying to build something worth selling, and you’re not trying to build something that feeds your soul or gives your effort meaning.

You're just...working. You're trading your time, effort, skills, and life energy for money. Plain and simple.

The problem is that most appraisers don't think they're mercenaries. They think they're missionaries building a real business and saving the world, but their actual operating system is mercenary and that creates a gap. That gap is where commoditization and burnout come from.

On the other side of the spectrum is the missionary. A missionary is someone whose primary operating system is always asking: "What am I actually building here and who am I building it for?"

The missionary mindset asks:

• "What impact am I trying to have?"

• "What's the bigger thing I'm committed to?"

• "How do I scale this? How do I make it work without me?"

• "What am I building that's worth building?"

• "How far out into the future can I see this impacting other people?"

To be clear, a missionary can take mercenary work; appraisals for AMCs, high-volume orders, clients with no face and no name, whatever, but they're not just extracting, they're also building something else. The missionary is building something with intention, something with direction, and something with purpose.

Maybe that's a non-lender division of their business. Maybe it's a coaching practice or a training program. Maybe it's a systems-based operation that could run without them. Maybe it's reputation and authority in a specific niche. And maybe it's something completely different and separate from the appraisal business that is being funded by the appraisal practice.

It doesn't matter what it is. What matters is that there's something bigger than the extraction. Here's the key distinction: A mercenary just does appraisals. A missionary uses appraisals to build something.

It's not about morality or judgement. It's about sustainability from a business standpoint, and also from a motivation, inspiration, and life purpose standpoint. It's about whether you hit a ceiling or whether you keep growing. It's about whether you're building a job or building a business.

So, here's what I want you to be honest about: Are you operating from a mercenary mindset or a missionary mindset? And more importantly: Is that what you actually want?

Because here's what I see in my coaching practice: Most appraisers wake up one day and realize they're not building anything; they're just working. They're doing a couple hundred appraisals a year, they're making decent money, yet they feel empty. They wake up one day and ask, 'what's this all for?'

Friends, if there's no bigger thing, you’re a mercenary. Nothing wrong with that if you have no desire to do anything other than extract resources and trade time for money. I've met many good people like this and there is nothing wrong with it, unless you're the one doing that and it feels empty. This is not me judging you, this is me simply making you aware that there are different paths with different potential outcomes.

Let me give you some evidence of what operating like a mercenary looks like.

1.You're stuck in the same place financially.

I've had many a coaching student who’ve been appraising for 10+ years making between $120K and $150K a year. This is nothing to scoff at, depending on where in the country you live, what your living expenses are, and what kind of life you envision for yourself. By almost every standard, this is a very decent living, especially once you overlay the happiness index which says that there is not a commensurate amount of happiness that follows after reaching a certain threshold of income, usually around the $100,000 mark.

Nevertheless, they've been making this same amount of money for the last five years. They aren’t growing, but they aren’t declining either. They aren’t scaling and basically just maintaining, which is usually why they’ve come to me. They've run into the 'mercenary wall'.

In almost every case where somebody comes to me in that state, one of the big revelations is that they’ve been in mercenary mode, and they don’t know how to get past it.

Now, compare that to another student who's also making $120K. But she's building a systems-based operation, she's got a team member doing some appraisals, she's developing a non-lender client base, she's moving toward a business model that doesn't depend on her doing a couple hundred appraisals personally and only trading her time for dollars. She's also using her income from the appraisal business to build an additional stream of income in an area that she extracts something better than just money; she derives immense personal satisfaction.

Same relative income. Completely different trajectory.

2.You get tired, but you don't know why.

Mercenary operating sounds like this: "I did 400 appraisals this year and that's a lot of work for one dude, Blaine." It definitely can be, but the work itself isn't the problem. The problem is that there's no bigger reason for it. You did 400 appraisals and you're exactly where you were last year, just more tired and burned out. You hit a revenue or personal income ceiling, so you add more appraisals to the load. But more appraisals don't fix the root cause of the ceiling, it just exhausts you faster.

A missionary approach sounds different: "I did 300 appraisals this year. I also built a training program, I developed relationships with non-lender clients, I'm building some intellectual property assets, I hired someone to handle the administrative work and I'm moving toward a business that doesn't depend on me doing this volume forever."

Same person, similar work; different operating system, different outcome, different longevity index.

3.You don't know what you're actually optimizing for.

Here's a question I often ask coaching students: "How are you measuring success in your appraisal business?" Most mercenary-minded appraisers say something like: "How much I make" or "How many appraisals I do" or "What our average turnaround time is."

Those are extraction metrics. They're measuring extraction, which isn’t all bad, it's just a very narrow and limited way to look at your business. There's a time and a place for extraction metrics, and then there's a time and place for missionary metrics.

A missionary-minded appraiser measures something different. They measure, "Am I moving toward a business model where I'm not doing this volume myself forever?" or "Am I building something I could sell?" or "Are my systems getting better?" or "Is the work becoming more automated and scalable?" or "Am I enjoying this process or just trading my life for dollars?".

Most of those are building metrics and questions and they lead to fundamentally different decisions.

4.Your business doesn't exist without you.

Friends, we talk a about this one all the time because it’s a valid litmus test.

If every single order that comes in requires your personal attention, your personal signature, and your personal expertise; you've built a job, not a business. You're mercenary operating. Which, again, is fine. Some people are okay with that. But you have to know that's what you're doing. You can't say you're building a business while doing something that's structurally just a job.

A mercenary asks: "how much can I extract and for how long?", a missionary mindset asks: "How do I eventually step out of this work?" Not because you want to retire tomorrow. But because you want to build something that outlasts you and scales without you. The questions and the mindset change what you do today.

So, here's what I want you to ask yourself:

Are you just doing appraisals, or are you building something through appraisals?

Be honest with yourself, friends. If the answer is "I'm just doing appraisals," that's fine. That's a valid choice, but you have to own it. Don't tell yourself you're building a business when you're running a job.

And if the answer is "I'm building something," then the next question is: What is it? What's the bigger thing? Because if you can't articulate it, it doesn't truly exist yet.

Here's what I want you to understand: the operating system determines the ceiling.

Not your market, not the economy, not your skill level. Your operating system.

A mercenary operating system: "extract as much as possible from appraisals", has a hard ceiling. That ceiling is usually somewhere between, say, $150K and $300K depending on your market. Because you can only do so many appraisals. And eventually, adding more appraisals doesn't add more money, it just adds more exhaustion.

You hit that ceiling and you're stuck. You can't grow beyond it without changing the operating system and you can’t go below it lest you give up the lifestyle you've likely built around it and because of it.

A missionary operating system says, "let's build something bigger through appraisals", and it doesn't have the same ceiling. The ceiling is different because you're not extracting; you're building, you're scaling and you're creating systems and leverage.

Let me walk you through how the mercenary ceiling works and we'll use easy math, so don’t get all caught up in the numbers.

You figure out: "I can do 200 appraisals a year." You figure out: "If I get $500 per appraisal, that's $100K revenue. After expenses, that's +/- $75K net." So, you optimize for volume. You try to get 200 appraisals. Maybe you're successful. Maybe you get to 220. Now you're making $110K gross.

But here's what happens: You're maxed out, inefficient, you don’t work on the business because you're busy working in the business and every additional appraisal above that mark just adds more exhaustion. To make more money, you have to do more appraisals. But more appraisals means more hours and more hours doesn't feel sustainable.

So, you hit a wall and you stay there. You might be ok with the numbers, but you also know there's some danger in all of it and that you could and should be doing more in less time. You might try to increase your fee from $500 to $550 or $600, but if your business is all AMC and lender based, that can be a tough proposition because you have less control and more competition.

Nevertheless, let's say you’re able to squeeze out an additional $50 by raising your fees. Great, now you're at $121K. But the mercenary mindset doesn't actually solve the problem, it just buys you a little more room and a little more time. But you're still in extraction and volume mode. The operating system hasn't changed.

Let's compare that to a missionary operating system.

You're doing 200 appraisals. But you're also:

• Building a non-lender division with premium fees

• Developing a small team to handle part of the work

• Creating systematized processes

• Building relationships and reputation in specific niches

• Laying the groundwork for a business that doesn't depend on you

• Building authority in a market that leads you to other opportunities

Your revenue might even go down in year one because you're investing in building something. But years two, three, and four the curve is different. You're not at a ceiling; you're scaling. Scaling doesn’t necessarily mean you’re building something bigger than what you can handle, by the way. Scaling means you're figuring out how to do more with less. Less time, fewer resources, less wear and tear on you and your energy.

Here's what most appraisers don't see: Mercenary operating has an invisible cost. Missionary operating has hidden benefits that the numbers often don’t show.

That cost of the mercenary mindset and operating system is: You never really build anything. You extract, you get paid, you move to the next order. But you never build systems, you never build authority, you never build leverage, and you never expand outside of that workflow loop of order acceptance, schedule it, inspect it, write it, sign it, send it, do it again.

So, you're trapped on a treadmill. You have to keep working at the same pace just to maintain your income and your sanity. The moment you stop working, the income stops. You can't sell the business, because who would buy it? You can't pass it on; nobody wants your worn-out treadmill. And you can't step back and let it run without you. This is 90%+ of appraiser, by the way.

On the other side of the spectrum, however, a missionary operating system builds different things. It builds systems, a strong reputation, and a team. It builds relationships. It builds leverage. It builds additional streams of income and the leverage that comes with all of that is worth something. A lot of something.

Friends, theirs is a mental cost to mercenary-only operating that simply doesn't get talked about enough. When you're just extracting, just doing appraisals and getting paid, there's no bigger reason for the work. It's just transactions and transactions are exhausting because there's no meaning to them.

I know there are a lot of people who say, "Blaine, I'm good with that! I don’t need meaning behind my work, I just need the money!". To which I would say, 'I get it!'. I've said many times on this show that I have no particular passion for appraisals, per se. There is nothing sexy or life changing about doing an appraisal on a 1500sf ranch in a development. But that's also where the misunderstanding comes in when it comes to the mercenary versus missionary mindset and operating system.

Your mission doesn’t have to necessarily be about the technical work that you do. I know some people who are passionate about appraisals and scatter plots and all the technical work that goes into being an appraiser, and all I can say is, 'good for you man, you keep doing you!'. It doesn’t do anything special for me, it's simply a business.

You do the appraisal. You get paid. You do another appraisal. You get paid again. Where are you actually going? What are you actually building? That's the emptiness that leads to burnout, unless you have some greater mission.

A missionary mindset solves that differently. Even if you're doing the same appraisals, the meaning changes. You're not just extracting, you're building something. You're moving toward something, even if that something is outside of your appraisal business and it changes how you show up to the work.

For me, the mission became about education. The appraisal work was simply one of the channels and platforms that allowed me to shift the focus of our work to be less about the technical work of appraising and more around educating our market, our customers, our clients, and our people. That shift in mindset created a shift in how I viewed the work. That shift in how I viewed the work created a shift in how we went to market with our boring, extremely commoditized product. That shift in how we went to market created a shift in how I looked at all of the other opportunities in the world around me. And that one simple shift in mindset opened up a variety of business and income opportunities over the last decade.

So, here's the reality: You can keep operating as a pure mercenary. Many appraisers do and there's no shame in that. Many entrepreneurs operate as mercenaries and there is nothing wrong with it…until there is.

If you want something different, if you want to build something bigger, if you want to hit a higher ceiling, if you want the work to feel meaningful, then you need to introduce a missionary element to your life and business. With no real mission, something bigger that pulls you in a particular direction, everything is just a mechanical assembly line of tasks with no real meaning.

Now, let me be clear about what I mean by mission, because I think most people get this wrong. A mission is not a vision statement. A vision statement is some abstract future state, like: "We will be the leading provider of appraisal services in our market." I won't say that it's empty and meaningless because I believe in vision statements that evolve out of real missions, but most people create vision statements as empty platitudes they think the market cares about. They become more about marketing than actual vision.

A mission is also not your personal goals. Goals are things you maybe achieve, maybe don't, but then you're done. A mission is the bigger thing you're actually committed to. A mission is the answer to this question: What am I actually building, beyond just the extraction of money? And here's the thing: A mission only matters if it actually changes how you make decisions. If it doesn't change your behavior, it's not a mission, it's just marketing bullshit, and probably not even good marketing bullshit.

By the way, you don't have to choose between doing mercenary work and having a mission. It's not a binary choice. Most appraisers will do mercenary work. You'll fill orders from AMCs, you'll do high-volume appraisals, and you'll track your numbers because the numbers matter. All of that is fine. It's honest work and it pays the bills.

The more serious question, and the one I hope you all get from this episode is this: Is that ALL you're building, or is it the foundation for something bigger?

A mercenary-only appraiser says: "I'll do appraisals until I retire. That's my plan." A missionary-minded appraiser says: "I'll do appraisals, but I'm also building [non-lender division / team / authority / systems / something else]. That's my plan." The mission doesn’t have to be about being more moral or more noble than your nearest competitor either. Being a missionary simply means you're working on something bigger than the extraction of dollars from your effort. The mercenary work might be 80% of your revenue. That's fine. But the missionary 20% is what you're actually building toward.

So, here's the question to ponder over the next 30 days: What am I actually building? Not what do you do; not what appraisals you fill out. What are you actually building? If the answer is "I'm not sure" or "I'm just doing appraisals," then you're in mercenary-only mode. That's fine, but own it. If the answer is something specific, like: "I'm building a team," "I'm building authority in a niche," "I'm transitioning to non-lender work," "I'm building systems so I'm not the bottleneck", then you have a mission. And that mission is what makes you feel like you're building something, even when you're doing the same appraisals as everyone else. The mission is what transforms regular, mechanical work into something bigger.

Friends, you can be a pure mercenary. And if that's who you are, you'll probably make decent money and you'll eventually burn out or retire, which is a valid path. But if you want something different; if you want to feel like you're building something, if you want your work to have meaning beyond the volume, if you want to hit a higher ceiling both personally and professionally, then you need to introduce missionary thinking into your operation.

Here's what I know: a pure mercenary existence is exhausting. A missionary-minded operation is energizing. You might be doing the same work in both cases, but the mindset and operating systems are different, and those two things determine whether you're building or just maintaining.

What are you actually committed to building that's bigger than just the extraction of money? And does your current business model serve that commitment, or does it work against it? Answer that honestly, and you'll know what to do next.

Do more. Be more. Live more. Give more.