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Foreward

Australian Women And Real Estate (AWARE) is a book of business opportunities. Its author Lucille Orr is a very successful businesswoman who has spent her life educating, motivating and mentoring women in business.

Lucille helps women understand the process of starting a small business from scratch and to this end she has written and published many books that included the stories of other successful businesswomen in The Net Result series and her own books How to Ask for What You Want and GET IT! and Networking Games

– Making Profitable Connections.

In “AWARE” she shares her personal experience of going back to school at 55 years of age to gain her real estate license and then building her own successful property business.

Of all the small businesses Lucille has owned and operated (over 20), she has never enjoyed a business more than the one she owns right now. Her company AWARE Properties Pty. Ltd. has a uniquely different approach to real estate. It has been designed to assist the needs of women and their families with new and innovative services.

Lucille believes she has no competition, because she created an original concept, a way of working compatibly and not competitively with other real estate agents Australia wide. Her win/win formula has even the male diehards in the industry praising her and using AWARE Properties to find buyers and tenants for their vendors and landlords.

AWARE Properties assists sellers, buyers, tenants, investors, landlords, property developers and business operators. But Lucille’s main aim is to encourage more women to open their own real estate offices. She has created an opportunity for those who would like a mentor, to join the Australian Women And Real Estate Network and work from the comfort of their own homes with all the support and advice they need to own their own property business.

In 1970 Lucille had owned and operated the Key Punch Centre for two years when I asked her if I could leave school and come to work for her. I knew Lucille was operating a winning business because she knew when she was in the right place at the right time and this time I recognized it as well.

I’m 13 years her junior and I know her better than anyone, because when I was only 11 my mother left my father and my big sister Lucille became our mentor.

She bought a delicatessen and the three of us worked very hard in that deli. At the same time Lucille worked for IBM as a consultant to its clients and came back to work in the deli every evening after her busy days.

I attended a high school within walking distance of the delicatessen so I was able to work at the shop during the lunch rush. It was a tough time for the three of us, but we had the satisfaction of earning our own income and becoming independent. It was a great feeling. My mother and I had been so unhappy at home with my father. I have told Lucille many times that she saved our lives.

Eventually Lucille sold the deli and from the proceeds of the sale Lucille and Mother bought a two bedroom unit so Mother and me could be comfortable and secure. Lucille concentrated on expanding her computer business. She taught me every facet of her business and by the age of 29, Lucille had over 100 permanent staff (all women because they could type) working for her in three states. She trained data entry and word processing operators, managed three large data processing bureaus and placed trained and experienced operators into the workplace in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.

Lucille has an incredible energy and enthusiasm for life. This life force seems to be replenished every time she works with women, improving their lives and business opportunities.

I watched Lucille in the seventies build a substantial computer business, then through the eighties and nineties when she opened and managed 19 branches of her Australian Executive Women’s Network across the country. She created and managed the national Telecom Australian Executive Woman of the Year award for nine years. Today, the award created by Lucille is known as the prestigious Telstra Business Women’s Award.

Lucille senses what women want, long before the women know themselves. She believes women need to invest in property. Many women earning very high incomes, sometimes more than their male partners, have been reluctant to invest in property. The main reason is that they don’t understand how to select, purchase and manage a property portfolio. Lucille is now educating women by selecting the right properties, buying and managing the properties for them.

In her usual way, she stopped everything she was doing in 2000 to study, gain her real estate license and create the AWARE Properties business. Now more than a decade on she is a mentor to women (and men) who invest in property and work in the real estate industry.

Don’t be afraid to ask Lucille for what you want because she’ll show you how to get it! She has helped thousands of Australian women start their own successful small businesses in various fields through her workshops, books, consulting services and network of mentors across Australia.

Julie Micarone