Business Models
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Larry Harb:
All of this is very important, but the question is, what’s your primary business model? What do you do? Are you the estate auctioneer? Are you charity or benefits? Okay? Are you doing a consignment shop? You have a retail store. Do you provide written appraisals? Okay? Doesn’t matter what your business model is, at the end of the day, you do real estate auctions. You know, we find this so awful that so many of our auctioneers are now doing real estate. It’s obvious by what’s happening here today, that more and more auctioneers are getting into real estate. And why? We make more money. If you’re a commission sales person, at the end of the day, okay, and you sell higher tag items, higher priced items, you’re gonna make more money. Large equipment. Online auctions. We’ve heard a lot about online auctions and we’ll talk about those in a minute. I call these specialties—specialty items. Tobacco. We don’t see too many of those anymore, but livestock, coins, firearms. These are all specialty items. And then there’s people who buy stuff and sell it. Truth is, if you buy it and sell it, I don’t call you an auctioneer at all. I call you a liquidator. You’re just using the auction method of marketing to sell your items. And the reason I say that—I read some strange looks here—but the reason I say that is, is as an auctioneer, what is your primary function?
Male Speaker:
To sell.
Larry Harb:
To sell, but who are you selling for?
Male Speaker:
The consigner.
Larry Harb:
The consigner, the seller. You’re an agent for the seller, aren’t you? So, if you buy the item, you own the item, and you’re selling them, what are you now?
Male Speaker:
Your own agent.
Larry Harb:
You can’t be your own agent, so you’re the seller. Yeah, so now you’re not an auctioneer at all. You’re a liquidator using the auction method of marketing to sell. And why do I bring this up? Your insurance just changed people. That’s the part of that that you don’t get and understand. And I wanna make sure that you’re on track with, is your business model changed and when your business model changes, so does your insurance need to change. So, think about that, alright? Because every time you change your business model, you change your risk profile. And you change your risk and exposure. When you do that, I wanna make sure that you make a business decision as to what you’re doing. And that’s just that simple.