View From the Office Window

Crazy busy and a little crazy

It has been a busy couple of weeks for me which is why you have not seen me so much on agent Genius. Business has picked up in a huge way and less than two weeks ago I moved to Saint Paul Home Realty.

It was an easy move. I own everything associated with my business.  All I had to do was change some logos.  My phone numbers, email address and web sites all remain the same.

I changed my logos and it changed my life

I changed my logos a few hours after my license was transferred. After that things really changed for me. I feel energized again and I love my job more than ever.  I am not even sure why that is but I feel like everything has changed.  For the first time in a long time I am excited about today and about the future for the first time in a couple of years.

Our office is downtown, less than a mile from my home office.  The photo in this post was taken from the window.  I didn’t move my office because there is no reason to, but it will be nice to have an office close by when I need it and I like it.  It is in an old brick building right in the center of where I work.

Small is the new Big

The company is a small boutique firm; in fact it grew by 33% the day I joined.  We have all of the technology the big companies have, and in my case I have it all in my home.

It is all very cost effective too. I don’t have to pay for anything I am not using and that has cut my expenses. Some of the expenses that I was paying on my own have been picked up by the brokerage.

Real estate is local and so am I

The message I sent to my clients was that real estate is local and so are we.  Since a great percentage of my clients are neighbors they thought it was wonderful that I made the move.  They know that I love St. Paul and that is where I like to work, and when you get right down to it where I belong.

Small business – portable business

A few years ago I started the process of making my business portable and of owning all of it. It can be moved any where is the greatest of ease.  It can expand or contract and move in any direction as the economic and market conditions dictate. It is lean, mean and very nimble. I had planned on starting my own brokerage but only because I thought I had to.   I would rather be an associate broker and focus on building my real estate business than on building a brokerage.

Take the gloves off

Business is hard

For most of us the real estate business isn’t easy these days.  We find the clients or they find us but not all of out listings will sell and not every buyer will result in a closed sale.  I don’t have a problem admitting that my numbers are down.  I know I am a good agent and I know why my numbers are down.

I know too many good agents who are beating themselves up when the economy is beating us up.  Agents are dropping out becasue they can’t pay their bills.  Only the strong will survive.

Adjust

Feeling like a failure isn’t going to help. Beating yourself up because the bank rejected your third offer on a foreclosure is counter productive.  Pretending that life is business as usual isn’t a sound plan either.  We all need to adapt.  In my case I have had to cut some business and household expenses because my income went down.

Listen

Last year I did beat myself up.  I blamed myself for everything that went wrong. If every deal I started last year had closed I would have had the best year ever. It didn’t work out that way. This year I have been listening to other agents from my own market and around the country and I have been talking too.

It has changed my perspective and I don’t feel like beating myself up any more. For me the talking about my own experiences has been harder than the listening part.  As a sales person I have been taught to say that yes business is tough but I am doing just fine.

Talk

Don’t isolate yourself.  Reach out to others in the industry.  Listen to them and tell them not to beat themselves up.  Put the gloves in the closet.

Family Farm

Story telling is an art

People love to tell stories and they love hearing them.  A good story can impart wisdom and some times teach a lesson. Before the written word was invented the story teller was an important member of the tribe. He or she was responsible for collecting tribal history and wisdom and passing it along to the next generation.

Photos tell stories

I like to tell stories with my photos. Right now the biggest story in my life has to do with my job and the foreclosed properties in my area.  Especially the vacant historic homes around town and the vacant store fronts.  They all tell a story.  They are not about buildings they are about people. The people that lived in the homes matter and so do the business owners.

They are not telling their own stories so I am documenting the real estate market, and the economy with my camera.  It has been challenging and at times exhausting.  I can’t look at a vacant home with a child’s toy in it and a basket ball hoop on the garage without feeling something.  I both admire and pity people who can remain detached.

There are happy stories too.

I recently saw a home that has been vacant for two years.  It has a fresh coat of pain on it now and curtains in the windows.  There were green paper shamrocks on one of the windows, and a dog in the yard.

A photo contest and a chance to tell a story.

Inman News is having a photo contest. (see complete rules on the Inman site)    Daniel Rothamel and I are two of the judges.  They are offering a prize, a $200 dollar Amazon.com gift certificate.  The deadline for entering is March 31st.

I like the idea of nation wide documentation of the real estate market.  Telling the stories both happy and sad with photographs. What is happening now in the economy and the housing market is a historic event that will be remembered for generations to come. our grand children may one day read about it in history books.

Start shooting and sharing

If you have a camera and are not afraid to use it, enter the contest and participate in the group on Flickr.  Invite your neighbors and friends to do the same so we can share the stories.

Unplug

Disconnecting

A few days ago  I did something that I have not done in many months.  I disconnected.  What I mean by that is I stopped checking email, looking at twitter, answering the phone and going through my feed reader to read the latest news on the internet. I even managed to leave the house without my cell phone.  Once I got past the brief panic attack I found it liberating.

With all the technology at our disposal it if easy to stay connected to clients, friends and the world all day, every day.  Being connected is nice, in my case it means I am never lonely. There is always someone calling, writing, sending text messages, instant messages or trying to reach me through Skype. It seems to take forever just to get through the email that came in overnight when I start work each morning.

When communication becomes noise

Most of the communication has some value, but disconnecting off also has value.  It gives me time to think and to process the huge amounts of information I sift through each day.  We are bombarded with information from multiple sources.  Some days it is like trying to listen to a radio that is picking up multiple channels at the same time.  There are bits and pieces of information or music but nothing is really coherent, it becomes noise that needs to be filtered out so I can think.

By unplugging I was able to think again.   For many months I have noticed that as soon as I get into the shower I start coming up with ideas of things to do and solutions to problems. It is almost magical the way it works.

Giving it a rest

Unplugging has some value.  The world does not come to an end if I don’t answer a phone call or message right away. I plan on unplugging one day a week every week. My business obligations will not allow me to pick a day and do it the same day each week but I should be able to disconnect once a week.  I worry that if I don’t disconnect I will forget how to think, imagine and create.

Try it sometime.

Top secret

I  recently agreed to give a four hour presentation as part of a technology day that is being put on by our local association of Realtors.  When I met with the event coordinator to get the course approved for continuing education she asked a question that I have been asked before.

Why would I teach direct competitors how to create blogs, market properties on the internet and use social media?  Aren’t you worried that by helping them you will lose business?

The Play book

I am not worried at all.  Since 2006 I have been showing other agents how to start a blog and strategies for getting traffic and winning business from it.  To date my blog remains on the first page of the major search engines and continues to bring me buyers and sellers.

There are no secrets in my business.  Except for my web presence I operate from the same play book that many agents use.  There are books and classes on how to run a real estate business.  There are seminars and webinars and DVD’s.  How to run a successful real estate business is not a secret.

Running a business is about systems and following them.  I can give my playbook to other agents but most of them either won’t implement it or if they do they won’t stick with it.

Even if they did I don’t believe that they would be taking business away from me. I check each week and 100’s of homes are listed and sold. There may not be enough business for all of the agents in my market but we all know that 20% of the agents do 80% of the business.  There is more than enough business for the 20%.

There are no secrets

There are agents in my market who will not share their secrets with other agents because they don’t want to help the competition.  The mind set doesn’t make sense to me.  My database of contacts has been built over a period of many years.

Most agents would consider their database to be an important business asset.  It is a business asset but I suspect that at least half of the people in my database know another Realtor well.  Any agent can call these people or mail to them or run into them at an open house. Yet most of the people in my database will be my clients when they are ready to buy or sell.

I am competitive

Using a blog to generate business is not a new idea and I am not the only agent who is having success with it.  How I do it can be replicated by anyone yet the majority of agents who have blogs don’t get as much business from them as I get from mine and many do not stick with it long enough to get any results at all.

I am competitive.  I suspect that if someone else were to take my place in the search engines I would work very hard to figure out how to beat them.  The process would take my skills to a new level.  As it is the competition keeps me on my toes.  There are a couple of bloggers out there who are nipping at my heals.  . . and have been for a couple of years.

Full service

I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be a full service Realtor. It doesn’t seem to mean the same thing to all agents so I thought I would outline what it means to me.

Buyer pulls up to a listing and I meet them there.  The first thing I do is get my tire gauge out and check their tires for air pressure.  Then I open the hood and check the fluid levels.

When my clients ride with me it is in my limo driven by Charles. They sit in the back and I serve them drinks from the mini bar.  Not mojitos because I work in Minnesota but I do make a wicked snow shoe grog.

Maid Service

For my sellers, the folks who are paying the commission I need to go one step further. When I do open houses I arrive three hours early so I can wash all the windows, vacuum the carpets, dust and maybe do a few loads of laundry is they are behind on it.

During the warmers months I mow their lawns, weed the garden, water and fertilize.  The level of service I give my clients sets me apart from the competition.

With each home I list I go in late in the day, turn down the beds and leave chocolate under each pillow.  I of course make sure that no one in the home is allergic to chocolate and am prepared to leave mints or bubble gun if they are.

None of my competitors do any of these things yet they are still in business.  Honestly I am baffled.  They only give their client’s real estate services and nothing more.

Service

When it comes to the idea of full service I think most of it is about meeting or exceeding our client’s expectations. I see agents who provide services that no one expects from an agent.  The services are not really a good use of the agent’s time, and are sometimes out side the agent’s area of expertise and what their E & O carrier will pay for if they mess up.

One example that comes to mind is the agents who painted an entire basement because it needed painting and the sellers wouldn’t do it.  I guess if it was that important and I had to I would pay a painter to do the job.  To be honest I get kind of parental with my clients. I would have them do it and tell them that as long as they do as I say no one will get hurt.

I am a Realtor, not a painter darn it!  I have never had a client who expected me to paint anything but I suppose if I offered they would let me paint and do other chores around their homes too.  They would probably let me give them legal advice, financial advice and do a little estate planning too.

When it comes to full service, where do you draw the line?

Victorian

Writing every day is a challenge

It isn’t easy to crank out a blog post every day and there are times when we all struggle to find content.  Most of the 1500 or so posts on my local real estate blog come from my every day experiences but that isn’t enough.

Over the years I have assembled a small collection of books for my blog. They are a great source of blog posts.  I don’t copy articles from the books I use them for ideas and for information.

One of the books is for tourists and it has a lot of information about local content.  Another book has history and historic landmarks.  I have a book that is a guide to the best restaurants and another that is just about street names and the stories behind them.  There is a book about local public art that I plant to buy soon.

Why Books?

In most cases the information that I find in the books is not available online.  They are packed with information and photos about specific topics.

When I don’t have a clue what to write about I grab the book with information about a local attraction and I go out and take some photos and write a post. I have lived in the same town most of my life but I don’t always know what someone else might find interesting.

Books about your area can be found on Amazon.com or in a book store.  Look for local books or go to the travel section and find the books they write for tourists.  Start a series on some topic related to one of the books and write about it once a week.

Local real estate blogs can’t be just about real estate, the housing market and numbers if they are they don’t get much traffic. Variety keeps them coming back.