Instant Interviews: 101 Ways to Get the Best Job of Your Life

Chapter 73. Generating Instant Revenues and Interviews

Can it be? Making money while instantly interviewing? If everything happens for a reason, this is it!

Become an office-area measurer.

How I Got the Idea

My roommate in college was a real estate agent. He and his brother used to pick a residential area, knock on a door, and offer to appraise the homeowner's house for free.

They'd walk in like the Blues Brothers. Then they'd whip out a tape measure and start writing down the square footage. The homeowner would follow them into rooms, closets, and bathrooms watching and wondering as they wrote down numbers.

They'd then sit down, appraise the house, and get the listing.

I always remembered the impact of that. You can see why we were roommates!

Then when I was an HR manager, I was asked to look for a new site since our lease was up. In doing this, I discovered we were grossly overpaying for our space.

The reason? The square footage was overstated and nobody ever questioned it. The measurements were from another lease and we were only subleasing part of the space.

Then we started checking the listings for commercial and office buildings. We discovered that square footage was inflated on the listings over a third of the time!

How I Did It

I needed to take a leave of absence to study, and it was harder on an empty stomach.

So I bought a tape measure from the hardware store bargain bin, asked a real estate agent friend to show me how to do the measuring, and became an instant "lease payment lowerer." ...