I’m a very fortunate man. Happy Father’s Day everyone!  Read More →

If I told you I was selling restaurant franchises at a million dollars a pop, plus an annual royalty percentage, would you take me up on that offer? If you answered yes, call me immediately as I got so much crap to sell you. But if you’re most people, you’d need a wee bit more information to make that kind of a decision. I would have to get a bit more specific about the restaurant concept, the business model, competitive advantage etc etc. Even so, ideas alone might not suffice for you to part with that cool millie. Ray Kroc Story While working as a salesman for... 

These thoughts have been percolating in my brain for a long time, but it wasn’t until I had a Twitter conversation with Rain City Guide’s Ardell Della Loggia (a must follow, by the way) that I decided it was time to crystallize them into written words. Setting the table This post on AgentGenius a few weeks ago stirred things up, when AG contributor Ben Goheen argued that the answers to some difficult questions (emphasis mine) would move the real estate industry into a more transparent direction: • How much do you actually net for selling my house? • Do you get... 

Ever since Richard Barton whipped out his Zestimates, the word on the street has been that Realtors are following in the footsteps of their travel agent cousins on the way to the dinosaur cemetery. In order to survive – we are being told – we better start proving we’re worth every penny we receive in compensation for our work, every waking moment. One main line of thinking seems to be that those who spend the most money in achieving the end result have somehow earned it more. Another contends that we need to “dollarize our services” – much... 

The feeling is all too familiar to us entrepreneur types. The debilitating paralysis that grips our business soul and temporarily evaporates every ounce of our self confidence. If you have ever owned a business, there has been a time when you invested all your creative energy on closing that deal or getting that client and failed. You’ve surely had one of those days when you walked into your office with your confident chest out ready to convert all those prospects into loyal clients and got hung up on. Or built a solid pipeline only to watch it turn into Chernobyl in... 

When the news broke out yesterday, that Steve Jobs (co-founder of Apple) was taking a leave of absence due to complications with cancer, the blogosphere (and Twittersphere) went into a frenzy. From straight reporting of the breaking story to dump-apple-stock urges to “you’re an idiot if you sell” articles. Regardless of which side of that argument you support, I think everyone will agree that Steve Jobs is Apple’s Justin Timberlake in that he “brought its sexy back“. Many would argue that other companies like LG or HP make products that are... 

Flirting It came to us on a stuffy autumn afternoon after viewing a foreclosure property. I had just gotten off the phone with one of our investor clients and the news was not good. After presenting him with what I though was an offer he could not refuse he proved I was no Don Corleone. Reason: Money tied up in other projects. On the way home, I was fuming like a chimney in a Dickens novel. Then, the “aha” moment rocked my world. “There had to be someone out there that would love to jump on a deal of that caliber, if they only knew about it.” –... 

Most people can see some social value in Twitter as soon as they really start to use it properly. You get to have meaningful conversations with interesting people, read articles that other tweeps have found interesting, keep abreast of the issues that are debated there every day and even have Blip Wars with 1980s songs. But if that’s all there is to Twitter, most people would ditch using it in about 2 days. Professionals don’t have that kind of time to kill. Oh, but there is so much more. Today I wanted to show you how you could book your own courtside seat in your... 

In real estate, there’s an age old axiom: Always Be Closing! Generations upon generations of agents have been trained to orient their mental compass – and therefore their actions – towards that closing North. Even, arguably the best book on residential real estate, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, makes a similar point when Gary Keller talks about the need to focus on “dollar producing activities”. All else is a waste of time. If it doesn’t make dollars then it doesn’t make sense. Show me the money. Skip forward to a room full of ... 

I’ll be the first to admit that in the beginning I was a Twitter superskeptic. On the surface it appeared to be a useless platform, a massive generator of unimportant noise and a timehog.  Now, I was no complete stranger to social media: I had been using Facebook (among other sites) for the longest time because the concept of building social relationships with the purpose of generating conversations, clients, referrals and overall brand positioning made sense to me. But, Twitter seemed like YASNS (yet another social networking site) … until Real Estate Barcamp Houston...