I entered real estate in October 1989 after 16 years of owning retail electronic stores, so dealing with the public was nothing new to me. In fact I knew I was an entrepreneur at 7 since my older siblings would have me sell their candy for them to win school contest. Going door to door became second nature. Since we were in a foreclosure oriented market still I knew that open houses were the key and I did them at least 2 times a week for the first two years. I was broker when I started so I would get to the Murrah Building at around 3:00 pm on Thursday, park in front, and stay their until 7:00 AM the next morning to be one of the first to book a HUD open house. Many people joined me in that so when you are broke pride is something you can't afford. By using my well hone sales skills and never letting up I closed 43 HUD homes in my first year. Everything seemed downhill from there and I still have one person still in business who did the same and we do look back fondly, but always tinged with sadness knowing the people who died in the horrific bombing in Oklahoma City. I still wish I had the ability to flirt with Tris Nix and to joke with many others.
I have had many mentors that I have mentioned recently. Certainly Pat Zaby and Howard Britton come to mind and still make a difference in what they taught me. The person in the picture with Charlene and I is Alex Charfen of The Charfen Institute in Austin. Alex trained over 40,000 agents in short sales and then segued into classes and courses on entrepreneurship. I mention Alex because his LEAD program put synergy and congruence into our business as well as out lives. The switch to short sales after 2008 kept us going until my investment business came roaring back. But the business practices we had became coherent with LEAD. The result is profits are up, volume up, more free time, and well, more happiness. Happiness was never one of our primary goals but all the above changes can help create it.
Today, most of my business comes from speaking at seminars. I spoke in Tel Aviv in July and I will be making my third trip to San Francisco to speak on September 9th. Video has been the second business builder, but I want to build the business bigger but not for me since I have maybe 5 more years of doing what I do. I want to build it for others to take over and prosper so my next goal is to learn to pod-cast. I have been a guest on other pod-cast and business has resulted from it but I though pod-cast was yesterday's marketing but it is not. After that maybe Facebook Live but certainly Facebook Ads. I am currently reading marketing literature from Click Funnels and doing other studies but the older you get the more important it is to having intense learning experiences. Business is great and so is life but as my Mom showed me in her 90's, learning something new and changing is the best of all possible worlds.
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