Standing Tall in Adversity

Even the most fortunate of us go through some tough times.  Sometimes it seems like you cannot win for losing.  Yet it is in those most challenging moments that we actually find out who we are.

My wife and I are very fortunate, but since my exit from Apple in 2004, I have worked far harder for less money than I ever have.  I feel no bitterness for having to work hard.  I actually feel great pride in my ability to work long hours.  I am proud deliver creative work that makes a positive contribution to the world.

My first career after college was that of cattleman selling purebred bulls and cattle to others raising cattle.  I long ago learned that your reputation was worth far more than any quick sale.  I have never tried to trick anyone into a sale.  I have always prided myself in walking away from potential business if the business would not be a good thing for both parties.

Over the years of selling farm equipment, computers, email services, ultra high speed networking, and real estate, I have seen no reason to change the way that I do business.

I try to help people achieve their needs.  If you have people's best interests at the forefront of your mind, then you really do not have to worry about having enough business.  People will find you eventually even in tough times like today's real estate downturn.

We recently had clients who commented that I was unlike any real estate agent they had ever worked with in their lives.  They were surprised that I did not try to pressure them to buy a particular property.  They were very pleased that I tried to present all their options objectively and without bias.

That is the way I operate, but there are plenty of others who treat people just like I do.

I sometimes feel sad that people distrust sales people.  When I am trying to buy something, there is nothing that I would rather have than a really good sales person who knows their product inside and out.

The last four years have been very tough for real estate agents.  Even the well established agents have felt the pressure.  I have found that getting a real estate career going during a down period in an area where you know few people is almost an impossible challenge.  However, I have never let the near impossibility of it stop me from trying or from doing an outstanding job.

I have managed a few real estate sales in each of first few years, but I also supplemented my income by writing a blog for a real estate company.  I had to be very careful to not draw clients to me personally.  The pay that I received was about what I needed to cover my real estate expenses.

This summer the company made the decision to discontinue the blog.  It was an immediate loss of income to us, and a fatal shot for my real estate career.  However, I made the decision to buckle down and work even harder.

I had been working extremely hard to deliver Internet traffic to the company.  I had links from all of my many websites flowing to my company.  When they gave up on my blog, I pulled all the links and focused them on delivering traffic to me.

Three months after seeing the blog cut, I am getting more leads than I ever got when I was writing the blog for the company.  I have resurrected the blog on my own site, and I finally feel like I am on the way to building some momentum in real estate.  Unfortunately real estate is still a career where financial success looks to be too far away.

So perhaps the fatal blow has turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me.  I could have moaned and complained,  but I just refused to let the bad news pull me down.  I have worked harder than ever, and the web results that I am seeing have convinced me that I have talents which can make be successful once again.

With that in mind I will wind down my real estate career within the next year.  It is the right move for me.  It will take time, but I will get to that next success.

I think it was Dennis Waitley, a famous motivational speaker, who once said, "Bad news is opportunity riding a dangerous wind."

I have taken the position that I am responsible for my own success or failure.  It will be my efforts that lift us back to success.

It helps to be living in a wonderful place like the Southern Outer Banks where the weather and the people make life much more enjoyable than it would be in a big city.  I can draw strength from my natural surroundings and the people around me.

A bad day never seems as bad after a boat ride on the river or a walk on the beach.

Firmly believing that who you are is much more important than what you are or how much stuff you have will pave our road to success.

Apathy is not a solution

I was talking to another Realtor the other day about a potential new way to advertise for clients. She indicated that she had little or no enthusiasm for any new tactics.

It occurred to me that apathy is rarely a successful solution. Allowing yourself to become someone who watches while things happen instead of being someone who tries to control the future by being proactive is just not an option for me.

I have found that either working to be a success or planning to get out of what you are doing are really the only options ever available. You cannot just sit and let things happen to you and expect those things to be good.

I have been in tough positions a number of times in my working career. Hiding under the desk has never worked.

Understanding the things that you can change in a tough environment is one of the most important first steps to building a plan to get out of your challenging spot.

You should focus on what you can do to be ready to be successful. If you position yourself to take advantage of the next opportunity for success, you will be in a lots better position than if you spend your time complaining and doing nothing.

Right now real estate is in a terrible tailspin. While we have more buyers looking than we have had in a while, most of those buyers are very finicky and often looking for deals that just do not exist.

I have decided that now is the time to build my brand and to own the content about the areas where I sell real estate.

When serious buyers take the places of the ones we are seeing now, I should be successful. It means that I work harder than some colleagues.

That's is okay with me. I would rather be ready for success than sitting and hoping that things might change.

In the meantime, I will enjoy life here on the Crystal Coast spending as much time on the water as possible thinking about what I can to do to position myself for success.

Waiting for failure is not any more of an option than trying the same things which are not working over and over.

As far as I am concerned a Perfect Beach Day can spur the imagination and lead to success.

Riding the right wave to success

Watching ocean waves is a favorite activity of mine. Getting a picture of just the right color wave is a challenge that I love.

Getting the right picture to post is far more important to me than staying on top of the latest trends or gossip in the entertainment industry.

Our society is moving so fast that it is hard to keep up on even things that interest me. I finally got to the point that I realized that there are lots of things which I can live without understanding. I am not embarrassed that I could care less what Brittany Spears is doing today or that Madonna is not in the news.

I want to focus on what I know and where I can be successful while enjoying what I do. That removes a lot of fluff from my life.

I know that there are lots of television shows which can be downloaded, but I will remain a bystander since I have a hard time finding ones worth watching much less downloading.

There are the extreme sports fans who like jumping off a mountainside and buzzing roadways in the Alps. That is fine with me, just do not expect me to chip in on the medical bills. I really do not care how hard it is drive a truck in Alaska or work in a kitchen with a maniac.

I am also not interested in endless complaining about how poorly the new administration in the United States is doing. They inherited the mess, it will take a while to fix. No one is smart enough to be able to tell if this stuff is going to work yet. That is the end of the brain discussion for me except that rooting for a President to fail is about as low as it gets.

One of the best lessons that I ever learned was to spend more time listening and learning than telling others how to do their jobs. If the job is never going to be yours, you might as well see how well your advice works in your own life.

I can still remember the time when during one of Apple's many reorganizations, I ended up being moved from years of managing a team calling on higher education institutions and selling directly to calling on businesses and selling through resellers.

It was not a move I wanted. I had two choices, become a whiner or figure out how to do the job to the best of my ability.

I knew how to manage people, and I knew how to be a good reseller since I had been one twelve years earlier before I came to Apple.

After the move, I spent a lot of time out in the field with the existing reps, listening to them and their resellers. Mostly I found an incredible amount of arrogance among the reps. Some of the system engineers were even worse. One even gave a new sales rep bad directions to an account so he would look incompetent when taking me there.

Being successful was an option that most of them felt required too much hard work. Complaining about everything was easier. In a year's time the only person out of nearly twenty that I had inherited was my area associate. I had found new people who were willing to work, to listen, to learn, and to be successful.

We put together a series of mini-MacWorld seminar events and delivered them in nineteen cities across the Southeast. We partnered with resellers instead of complaining about them. The resellers loved what we did. The customers were beyond enthusiastic.

We brought value to the equation, and in spite of what the former experts said, we ended up being successful.

We were one of the top regions in the country the next year. Sometimes success just takes fresh faces with new ideas and the willingness to work hard. It did not happen over night, and a lot armchair experts told us we would fail.

We believed in what we were doing and kept going even when the hours were long, and there were lots of people pulling for us to fail.

I think I will keep doing what I know works even now when the times are tough.

You can ride the right wave to success