Swimming with Asian Sharks - Business Secrets from the Pacific Rim

Be Clear with Your Expectations

I arrived back in Toronto on June 15. In Toronto I found my mom helping me clean the apartment. It was the first wave of cleaning. I’d come back to find that it was still a mess, so I had to spend most of my nights cleaning the entire thing.

Originally I had a rule that my bedroom was off limits and because of this I gave a large discount on the rent. Later I slackened the rule and allowed him to live in my room as well, where he created an ungodly mess, leaving crumbs everywhere; it’s unbelievable how messy someone can be.

The lesson here is to be clear upfront about the expectations of cleanliness.   I had assumed that Mr. TownSend would leave the place as he had found it.  I should have made this as clear as a bell.

I resolved to return to Toronto and clean the slate; I wanted to rid myself completely of this thing called PrintOnlineNow. I set a meeting to inform my partners I would be resigning from the company. Asia had changed me.  I no longer felt that North America was where I would earn my fortunes.

I started packing my things for storage and prepared my condo to be rented out; I needed to do this all before I headed back.  I decided to put it up for rent myself, and managed to do in a few weeks, saving myself the commission of one month’s rent.

As for managing the unit while I was away, I had one of my sisters take over the task.  We agreed on a hundred dollars a month just to answer calls from the tenant if there were any issues. She also agreed to pay for repairs if they happened, as long as I paid her back. For the whole year it was rented out, she never received a single call.  This is one advantage of owning a new condo unit.

Often there are tasks you can do yourself and save a significant amount of money.  In my case, I saved one month’s rent, and was able to give a benefit to my sister by letting her do the management for a fee.