A Crazy Month

October 23, 2007
Volume 2 Issue #4

How often in real estate do we say, What a crazy day, week, month? Well, my life after real estate has not changed that much. The past few weeks were filled with craziness that just called out saying there is a real estate message here.

First, we (my current wife of 28 years and also my business partner) had to prepare to be exhibitors at two conventions. No big deal, we'd been to conventions before. All of a sudden-PANIC. We figured out we were clueless on how to be exhibitors. We were doing something new.

What to do? Call in a mentor. With a call to our friend and veteran convention exhibitor, Joan Murphy, we had our checklist and some confidence. Time to get our feet wet and give it a try.

Wait- there is more. The first convention was the Illinois Association of Realtors. Small problem, almost no one knew who we were. Two long days produced too few clients. We didn't do a great job of showing the unique benefits of working with us.

Convention Two- The Coldwell Banker Expo- My 24 years as a manager for that company made for lots of friendly faces, lots of business and leads for the future. We were able to show the benefit to a much more receptive audience.

What did we learn?

1- Get help from someone who has experience (Mentors, managers, trainers)

2-Things get better with practice (Experience is a great teacher)

3- Even if you are good at what you do, it is hard work to convince people who dont know you to do usiness with    you. (Be prepared to show the benefits of working with you)

4- People who know you are a much easier source of business (Sphere of influence usually beats cold calling)

5- Prepare for the unexpected. (We ran out of everything in the second convention even candy!)

So, the second convention went great. We had been through one before so we knew what to do and say and people knew us and what kind of quality work we do. Life was good, except the company who hosted our main website and 30,000 other sites was down almost the whole next day. All I could imagine was the enthusiastic visitors going to our site and thinking what kind of idiot has a site I cant open?

New Lesson learned- have more than one way to reach you available. We have a second site, NextLevelWebsites.com, a custom site that never goes down, has many of the same samples of our sites as our main website but techno genius, Jeff, had decided not to include this second site on the cards and brochures. I thought why put more than one website address on our cards and brochures and confuse people?

After the website being down fiasco, we can only go on having learned a valuable lesson. At 6 AM the next morning, I walk down the hall to our World Headquarters, I check our main site and find that it is working and think Ill get an early start to try to restore the lost good will.

Hey, whats that smell? A quick look at the back of the computer just in time to see a flash and a puff of smoke. Oh no! Three days of unbacked up work up in smoke. Quick lesson, always back up important files.

I have a great computer repair guy who starts at ten AM. While I wait, I get my backup (but not backed up) computers running and am actually relatively calm. After all, what else could happen? 9:45 AM I load my computer in the car and off to see Mr. Cho. Before I can tell him my tale of woe, I put my computer tower on his counter. It promptly begins to fall. The computer tower falls right onto my hand smashing my finger, which instantly turns black and swells up, just like in the cartoons. Worse yet, it is one of the two fingers I type with. I am no longer calm.

The lesson-Im sure there was a lesson but I was in too much pain to come up with one at the time. Upon further reflection, the lesson was to keep a positive attitude. Later that day, Mr. Cho called to say it was only a bad power supply but all my data was safe and I was back in business with nothing lost other than some time and dexterity.

So, all of these lessons in one form or another will touch everyone in real estate sooner or later. Real estate and life in general have lots of similarities. As we move into planning season for next year, how you incorporate mentors, practice, client benefits, prospecting, interacting with your sphere of influence, updating your marketing materials, backing up your data and a positive mental attitude will impact future results in your real estate career.

Now if I could just learn to deal with my depression over the Cubs.

Tech Tip- Lately, more than ever, there are companies who send what look like bills for domain renewal. If you read emails closely, they are offers to transfer your domain name made to look like bills for renewal, usually at a price that is more than what you are paying. If you receive what looks like a bill, read it very carefully, if you are not sure if it is legitimate, I will be glad to take a look at it for you.