A few years ago I spent my professional life in what I thought was a comfort zone. This consisted of dressing in the standard “business casual” attire, commuting to work; tethering my head to a VOIP console inside a cubicle and retreading the same path back home at the end of an unfulfilled day. The unpredicted “great recession” brought an end to that dream as the software start-up venture where I worked lost customers and forced them to lay off many of us. Having gone through a corporate downsizing some years before, I had had enough. I was ready for something new. The thought of becoming an entrepreneur had always been a dream and there was no better time than now to grasp it. I knew I wanted low start up cost, low overhead, a large customer base and I also wanted to work from home or where ever I happened to be connected at the time. After much research, interviewing, calculating and recalculating I decided on a home based affiliate consulting service. Because of online home based business, I make a bit of residual income from it. But, my testimony is not the focus of this writing. The focus is what I learned from my own experience and through other people’s lives that is: WORKING FROM HOME IS AWESOME! Working on an online home based business allows me to enjoy working in the comfort of my own home. I wouldn’t be bother getting another job just to earn extra income. This would certainly help anyone who wishes to pursue a much better life.Prior to the 1990′s the phrase “Work At Home Business” invoked images of writers and accountants with stacks of 5″ ¼ floppies and 3.5″ disks. Home based artisans and craftsmen built samples and scaled-down models to amaze the potential clients. These demos of products and services and many others were hand delivered or sent via “express mail.” Then along came the high-speed networks, the World Wide Web and email. The evolution of this technology during the first decade of this millennium to where we are now has redefined the “Work at Home” and “Home Based Business” paradigm. Wireless technology is even reshaping this model as we speak. A “Work Anywhere” empowerment is available to anyone suited for this type of work environment. Down-sizing by large corporations, on a global scale, are forcing a new “breed” of workforce. “Necessity is the mother of invention” and I think we are seeing this invention/evolution take place before our very eyes. I read just today on one of the leading job-search forums that “2012 will be the year of the Personal Brand.” We’re seeing individuals marketing their skills, their ideas and their experience as products themselves. Programmers, copywriters, project analyst, designers and thousands of others are on the working end of their connection, where ever that may be, collaborating with whoever may need them.Working an online home based business, I believe has become a viable alternative for so many people. Making money is a definitely certain goal that most people are keeping achieving for. The amounts vary from business to business, though. But saving money on work wardrobe, business lunches, commuting costs, and headaches are the basics that most describe as my reasons for choosing the alternative. Having personal satisfaction, more quality family relationships, and fulfilled dreams are truly the benefits I and you can get out of this.

To be a top commercial real estate property manager you need to have solid market knowledge but you also need a comprehensive set of personal skills to match the needs of the property and the clients that you work for.

Many managers will graduate from ‘residential’ property, and move into ‘commercial’ property as part of growing and expanding their career. Whilst the idea is good, there are many factors and issues involved in changing property type. Commercial property is very different and much more complex than residential property; the knowledge base required of a person providing management services is far more extensive.

I do not want to scare you away from commercial property management as a career; but I do want you to respect the skills and knowledge that you will need in the role. The fee for managing a commercial property is substantial, but with that comes the requirement for personal skill and property control on the part of the manager and the agency.

In talking about this, I am not at this time specifically bringing into the discussion retail property. Retail shopping centre management is even more complex than commercial management. The fees in retail property are for this reason generally higher than that which applies to managing commercial property.

Here are some other main skills required of the property manager in performing their daily and weekly duties.

Negotiation skills will always feature as part of the job specification. Negotiations will be diverse across many different situations including property leasing, contracts and negotiations, maintenance contractor’s, tenants, solicitors, accountants, and landlords. The commercial property manager needs to have professional skills and suitable training when it comes to these diverse negotiation requirements.

Leasing situations will arise continually from the managed properties. The larger the portfolio, the more frequent the leasing requirement. In my opinion the property manager should be well skilled in leasing structures and or leasing negotiations. In this way they can help the landlords that they act for as part of selecting a new tenants for the managed investment property.

Lease documentation will vary greatly from property to property. This then says that the property manager needs to understand the differences in leases, how to bring them about, and how to interpret them. Rent reviews, rental structures, maintenance, option terms, refurbishment requirements, and tenant covenants are all unique situations that require specialist review with each and every lease in a managed portfolio. Critical dates will arise from every lease document as part of the management process. Many an inexperienced property manager has overlooked critical dates in the leases only to find that the landlords position has weakened considerably as a direct result.

Income and expenditure analysis will occur throughout the financial year for a managed property. The income needs to be optimized, and the expenditure needs to be suitably controlled. The difference between the two is the net income and that will have a direct impact on the value of the property for the landlord. It is the property managers duty to ensure that the best outcome is achieved given the prevailing market conditions.

Tenant communications should be well maintained throughout the year. When tenants are overlooked or ignored by the property manager, relationships soon sour, hence this exposes the property to unstable rental and or vacancy factors. Keep in contact with all tenants on a regular basis. Record all communications in writing so that the necessary evidence is available if any lease situation becomes the subject of a dispute.

Landlord reporting and controls will be unique to the particular landlord. Whilst most agencies have some form of income and expenditure controls and specific reporting processes, it is up to the property manager to interpret the reports and provide the necessary recommendations. Every monthly report produced for the managed property should be carefully checked as part of the month end process.

Maintenance controls will involve essential services and maintenance contractors. The age of the property will have some impact on the strategies behind repairs and maintenance. The complexity of the property and the tenancy mix will also have impact on the maintenance activity. Every lease should allow for the permitted use relating to the tenancy. Maintenance may be part of that process and certain maintenance costs may be applied to the tenant or the landlord depending on the particular lease situations. I go back to the point that each lease needs to be fully understood by the property manager.
Property performance is achieved through a fine balance of all of the above issues. That is why special skills and knowledge are part of the job specification for a commercial property manager.

One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.

However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.

Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.

But why?

In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!

So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)

The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.

Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.

Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.

By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.

You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.