“I don’t know”

and

“No”

Why are these so difficult?

In real estate, or any service-based business for that matter, we feel like we should be all-knowing. The ultimate source of information. “The Man”. The go-to guy. As such, it isn’t easy to say, “I don’t know.”

After all, aren’t you being paid to know?

Well sure. But let’s face it, no one knows everything. Oh, you may know a lot about real estate (or whatever). You may have incalculable hours of experience in the trenches. You may think you’ve seen everything and can fix anything and know it all.

But you don’t.

Check your ego at the door and realize that you don’t know everything. You can’t know everything. No one does and if they claim they do, they’re either lying or so full of themselves no one would want to work with them anyway.

It is OK to say, “I don’t know.” In fact, it is far (FAR) better to say that then spew some half-baked answer and either hope it is right or that your client won’t know any better.

Want to lose trust you’ve built with your client in an instant? Answer a question they you don’t really know and see what happens when they find out you fumbled your way through it.

And they will find out, sooner or later.

*POOF* there goes that trust. And there goes that client (and their friends, family and acquaintances too).

You will be much better served if you are up front and honest and just say, “I don’t know.”

And follow that up immediately with, “But I’ll find out.”

And do that — find out and follow up.

99% of the humans out there will respect you for that. As for the 1% that don’t, oh well. Part ways. They don’t want you representing them and you don’t need the headache.

Telling a client “No” isn’t easy either. It is pretty much engrained in us to be “yes men” (and I use “men” not to be sexist. It’s an all-encompassing term and being politically correct and saying “yes people” just sounds silly). Human nature being what it is, we tend to want to be positive in our relationships with clients, and saying no is not generally a very positive thing.

But you need to be telling clients the pure, unadulterated truth. Yes isn’t always the answer. Don’t just tell people what they want to hear, tell them what they need to hear.

Why are they so powerful?

Honesty.

Therein lies the power of admitting you don’t know something, and being able to say no.

While a client might not like being told no, or having to wait for an answer, ultimately they will appreciate your honesty.

Honesty is highly valued in our society. Just take a look at other words and traits typically associated with honesty: truth, ethical, thoughtful, caring, sincere, loyal, integrity.

Those are not bad words and traits to be known by…

Honesty antonyms? How about fraud, lying, cheating, deceit, artificial.

No, I’m not saying that if you never say “no” or “I don’t know” that you are a cheating and deceitful fraud. Similarly, just uttering these two phrases doesn’t ensure you a place next to Mother Teresa in the Honesty Hall of Fame.

In my life experience though (for what that’s worth) I’ve found many people that can not seem to ever say, “I don’t know” or tell someone “no” — especially when it comes to a client relationship where those utterances could well mean the loss of that client. They are not easy things to say.

But sometimes they are the right things to say.

And by saying these things you might just find you cement a positive perception of yourself in your clients eye, and wind up actually increasing your business.

Have the courage to say No. Have the courage to face the Truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.
~ W. Clement Stone

Photo Credit: Your’s truly, on the streets of San Francisco

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• What I learned from National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)
• November is National Novel Writing Month. Taking the plunge.

Originally posted on Phoenix Real Estate Guy. If you are reading this anywhere but inside your RSS feed reader, the site you are on is guilty of stealing content.

I posted this on Facebook earlier today and figured it pretty much summed things up, so why not just repeat it here…

What am I thankful for?

More than I can list here…

I have an amazing wife, two wonderful children, and family and friends that I dearly love who love me back unconditionally.

I work with a group of the best real estate agents on the planet.

I live in the greatest country mankind has ever seen.

Really, there is nothing more I could ask for.

Well, a University of Texas beat down of Texas A&M today would be outstanding, but other than that…

Thank you all for being who you are, and enjoy this Thanksgiving Day, and every other day.

About all I can add to that is I am thankful for YOU, oh avid reader. Without you, there wouldn’t be much point in maintaining this little corner of the Internet.

Photo Credit: martha_chapa95 on Flickr. CC Licensed.

• Happy Thanksgiving from Phoenix Real Estate Guy!
• Gratitude…
• New Year’s Eve in Phoenix. Ringing in 2012!
• Merry Christmas! (Or Happy Holidays?)
• Veterans Day 2011

Originally posted on Phoenix Real Estate Guy. If you are reading this anywhere but inside your RSS feed reader, the site you are on is guilty of stealing content.

23 days into this madness, here is what the NaNoWriMo web site says about my little endeavor…

Well howdy doody, we just crossed the 50,000 word mark! Let there be dancing in the streets, a celebration, maybe even some sleep. No more staying up until odd hours of the night, pounding away on the MacBook in pursuit of the daily minimum requirement of 1,667 words. No more wondering what the hell was I thinking. No more questioning my ability to write a novel…

Hold on there Sparky, not so fast.

Technically speaking, the novel isn’t finished yet. The story needs another 10 – 20K words to wrap up in some semblance of order. And make no mistake, what was written in this effort is SO not a final version. It barely qualifies as a rough draft. (UPDATE 11/29: Novel is complete, just under 65,000 words.)

It’s mostly crap. Oh, there are some spots where I would sit back and think, “Damn, that was pretty freaking good!” There are countless passages however where the prevailing thought was more like, “Well, that was shit. It reads like something a fifth grader would write.” And I’m sure when I go back and read through it there will be significant portions where I think, “What the hell?”

The point of NaNoWriMo is not to produce a manuscript that agents and publishing houses will be salivating over. There will be no advance, no book tour, no throngs of raving fans clamoring for an autograph on the title page. This process is not meant to discover the next Faulkner, Hemingway, King or Grisham. The point of all this insanity is to throw caution to the wind, to crank out page after page, day after day, in an effort to help the aspiring novelist realize that maybe, just maybe they really can write a novel.

Going into this, I had zero conception of how much work would be involved. When I wrote the article published here on TPREG that I was taking the challenge, I wasn’t worried about hitting the word count. After all, I’ve got 1.2 million words (roughly) written on this blog, how hard could 50K be?

Trust me, it’s hard.

It requires a long-term commitment to writing that I personally have never done before. The longest single piece of writing I’ve ever completed was my Senior thesis for undergraduate school that was 42 printed pages. To print this novel would take about 310 pieces of paper.

In a blog post there is no plot, no character development, no exposition or back story, little if any dialog. Writing a novel involves all that, and more. I tend to write blog posts in a “stream of consciousness” style. I don’t really plan out a blog post; I just write. That style worked for about the first 15,000 words of the novel. After that, it became readily apparent that I needed at least some formal structure, notes or an outline as I began to get hopelessly lost in the plot. I seemed to have a habit of spinning off subplots and characters, that while sometimes entertaining, could easily wander off into the ether, never to be seen or heard from again. Yesterday (or was it the day before?) I found one such subplot that hadn’t been any further developed since Day 3 of the effort. And I needed that scene and subplot to be more developed and those characters to come back into the story for the grand finale.

Enter Scrivener. Scrivener is writing software that combines a slew of nifty features into a word processor that allows one to write notes, save research data, shuffle text and ideas about. It, as they say, “puts everything you need for structuring, writing and editing long documents at your fingertips”.

And it saved my ass in this challenge. I’m still exploring the software and all it has to offer, but I know it is powerful stuff.

Things NaNoWriMo taught me

• Writing a novel is not easy. I have new-found respect for anyone that even attempts to tell a story in writing.
• I love to write.
• Sometimes I write well.
• Sometimes I write incredibly poorly.
• Good writing is hard.
• Attempting to write 50,000 words in 30 days is insane.
• But it certainly helps develop a habit.
• Having a plan is important.
• Scrivener is kick-ass software for developing that plan.
• The novel writing process is completely different from writing short, stand-alone pieces such as you read on this blog.
• I love writing character development.
• I don’t particularly care for writing dialogue.
• Killing people characters can be fun.
• Unless you’ve become emotionally attached to them.
• You can become emotionally attached to a literary character.
• I would quit my job in real estate tomorrow if I could make a living writing.

No, you can’t read the novel. Yet.

Throughout this challenge, I have received a ton of support from friends and family. Thank you, all of you. Particularly my wife, who never, not one time, complained that I was spending too many late hours pounding away at a novel that in all likelihood will never see the light of day. That woman is a dream come true.

Several people have said they can’t wait to read the book.

Well, you can’t read the book. At least not in its current form. *I* haven’t read the book, but I strongly suspect it is basically unreadable. Even if you could manage to slog your way through it and not die from boredom or excruciating literary pain, I doubt it would make any sense. Again, NaNoWriMo is about quantity, not quality. There are gaping holes in the plot, unresolved conflicts, and who knows what other horrors lie in the narrative.

It need revision. A lot of revision. If I had to guess, I’d say at least half the novel needs to be deleted, never to be seen by the eyes of mankind. I’ll be attempting the feat of revision over the next couple of months. Only time will tell if I can eventually craft this pile of words into a page-turner worthy of publication. I suspect at some point I’ll self-publish it and see if I can’t make thirty bucks selling the Kindle version…

For God’s sake man, at least tell us what the novel is about!

OK, I’ll leave you with this much. Here is how I see the inside liner of the Next Great American Novel reading:

Devastated by a personal tragedy, aspiring author Connor Hampton needs to get his life back in order. On a long flight to Beijing, where he plans to conduct research for his next novel, Hampton meets the young and vibrant Katie Pritchard, a brilliant computer scientist. What he doesn’t realize is this is no random chance encounter. In a plan put in place years ago by former Eastern Block revolutionaries, Connor Hampton is about to enter into a dangerous world of international conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of the U.S. government. Tempted by new-found powers to directly influence and craft current events, Hampton must decide whether to work with the revolutionaries and change the future of the world, or join forces with a much darker force and use his abilities to gain untold wealth and fame.

If there are any literary agents out there that find that appealing, give me a shout…

Thanks NaNoWriMo, it’s been a blast. Most of the time.

• November is National Novel Writing Month. Taking the plunge.
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Originally posted on Phoenix Real Estate Guy. If you are reading this anywhere but inside your RSS feed reader, the site you are on is guilty of stealing content.

I do remember that it had a 1.02 MHz processor. That’s megahertz, not gigahertz, and had not one but two 5.25 inch floppy drives. I believe RAM was the standard for the time — 64K.

And I remember sitting there with Charlie thinking, “This is bad ass!” Then we fired up Zork, a text based adventure game, and I was enthralled.

A year or so later, first generation Macintosh’s were on almost everyone’s desks. After all I was working on the semiconductor line at Motorola that made the Macintosh microprocessors — very leading edge at the time, and we were proud of those chips. Running the plant with Mac’s made sense.

We even had a Mac Quadra at home for a few years. It was the kid’s first computer.

But Motorola phased out Macs and went to Intel boxes in the early 90′s, and shortly after the Thompson household switched over to PCs.

Until today. Many of my friends have been Apple fanboys for a long time, and I am regularly chided when I pull out my trusty PC laptop. Lord help me if/when I whine about lockups, outdated drivers, automatic Windows updates, whatever. All I’ve gotten for the past couple of years is an earful about how wonderful Macs are.

“Yeah, but are they worth 3x the cost?” was always my standard response.

“Yes. Try it, you’ll see. Once you go Mac you never go back!”

Problem is, I’m cheap frugal.

However, my son has his own business buying and reselling just about anything under the sun, but his primary focus is on electronics, phones and computers. When he heard me whining about how long it was taking to boot up my laptop, he broke out some of his inventory of MacBooks and started the sales pitch.

And the kid is a heck of a salesman. Once I got a MacBook in my hand, I was hooked. The damn thing just felt good. And the screen was crystal clear. And it had this really cool backlit keyboard. And I had to have one.

So I gave the wife the puppy dog eyes, reminded her it was my birthday and got my son to give me a ridiculously great price (he can help you too land a MacBook. Let me know if you’re ever interested.)

Now we sit, composing this post on a shiny, almost new 13″ MacBook Pro.

My first impressions?

It looks good. It feels good. It’s a hell of a piece of engineering. And it runs *great*.

Oh yeah, the user interface will take some getting used to. The control key doesn’t work like it did on my laptop. To be honest, I don’t even know why it’s on the keyboard. There’s no right click. Things are in different places.

But it’s intuitive. It makes sense.

I plugged in my external monitor, expecting to have to configure this or that. To need to download drivers. To go through a big hassle.

You know what? I plugged in the monitor.

And it just worked.

No configuring. No drivers. None of the non-sense that comes with a PC.

It. Just. Worked.

This multi-touch trackpad?

Bad ass.

Sadly, I’ll still be relegated to using Windows on occasion as there are some archaic real estate specific programs with no Mac options. (Yes, Parallels or Boot Camp is in the near future. Opinions on which is better?)

I am however, swiftly becoming a fan. Several times today I’d do something and sit there and think, “wow, that was cool.”

To paraphrase my friend Justin McHood, yes Mac’s cost more than PCs — just like BMWs cost more than Ford Fiestas. Sure the Fiesta will get you from Point A to Point B, but driving the BMW is a greater experience. You can shop at Nordstrom’s or Target. After all, you can buy a shirt in either store. Heck, you can even use Joe’s Generic Real Estate Brokerage, or Thompson’s Realty to help you buy or sell a home…  (hey, I had to work real estate in here somewhere…).

Sometimes life is about the experience. Driving the well engineered and finely tuned high-performance car, shopping (or buying real estate) where you get outstanding customer service, using a Mac and saying, “wow, that was cool” — all just make life more enjoyable.

And there ain’t nothing wrong with that…

If any of you Apple fanboys (fanpeople?) have any suggestions for “must have Mac stuff”, feel free to pony up a comment.

• Initial Thoughts on the Redfin Scouting Report

Originally posted on Phoenix Real Estate Guy. If you are reading this anywhere but inside your RSS feed reader, the site you are on is guilty of stealing content.

This article was originally published on December 28, 2006. While I’m off at a conference I thought I’d share a few of my old favorites. As hard as it is to fathom, this post actually generated a buyer client when a fellow Pepsi Vanilla lover made the now infamous call that began with, “Dude, I read your post about Vanilla Pepsi…” The rest, as they say, is history. And yes, the Pepsi Vanilla website linked in the article is still online, some 4.5 years after Pepsi stopped producing this product. They taunt me…

Woe is me. Pepsi Vanilla is no more.

Pepsi Vanilla, which I’ve fondly referred to as “The Nectar of the Gods,” has been discontinued.

I am deeply depressed.

It began to be hard to find in local grocery stores several weeks ago. But I could always find a 12 pack here and there. Occasionally I’d find a bottle in a corner store. Then 2 weeks ago it was gone. Nowhere to be found. No notice, no warning. No chance to stockpile. I didn’t even get to truly savor the last can (though I can tell you it was consumed sitting in the parking lot that’s also known as the Superstition Freeway. I remember it well. I only wish I had known then it would be my last chance to experience Nirvanna.)

I just called the Pepsi Consumer Hotline and a nice young lady named Teresa informed me that it has been discontinued due to poor sales. That certainly isn’t my fault, as I would often drink six or more a day.

Despite discontinuing production of this wonderful elixir, Pepsico still flaunts PepsiVanilla.com in my face!! I can download a Pepsi Vanilla wallpaper for my PC, but I can’t buy a can to drink?!? Does Pepsi understand what this is doing to me? Oh the humanity!

I ask my local readers to keep their eyes peeled for Pepsi Vanilla (Regular, NOT diet!). Should you locate any, BUY IT ALL. I will gladly reimburse you and pay a handsome finder’s fee as well.

At this moment, I can’t imagine life without Pepsi Vanilla. I know, I know, life will go on. Somehow.

Today is one of the saddest days of my life.

• Dear Flancer’s Cafe: I Hate You
• How Real Estate is Like a Cheeseburger…

Originally posted on Phoenix Real Estate Guy. If you are reading this anywhere but inside your RSS feed reader, the site you are on is guilty of stealing content.

I suspect all those words have been used to describe Lady Gaga at one point or another.

Someone reading this has to be thinking, “Lady Gaga? Really. You’re about to write a post about Lady Freaking Gaga? And tie that into life and real estate? This I have to see…”

OK, OK. Listen, anyone that knows me just a tiny little bit has to realize that I am not exactly the type of person that Lady Gaga typically attracts to her rapidly expanding fan base. Though I tend to migrate toward the “classic rock” and “singer/songwriter” genres most often, I do have pretty mixed and varied tastes in music. Much of what I listen to depends on what kind of mood I’m in.

But I don’t think I have ever been in the mood to fire up the Lady Gaga. Dance/electronica/techno is WAY up my list of least favorite music genres. And I’ll be honest, I just can’t get past some of the over-the-top outfits Gaga wears. They’re distracting as hell and I prefer not to be distracted when I’m watching a performer.

But that’s just me. Your mileage may vary.

Yesterday my friend Bill Risser, also of varied and eclectic musical taste, asked me if I heard the Howard Stern interview of Lady Gaga and her subsequent live performance of The Edge of Glory on Stern’s show.

“Dude. Gaga? Seriously?” was my initial reaction. I vaguely recall watching Gaga’s performance of Edge of Glory on American Idol this season (yeah, I watch Idol. So shoot me). I could only vaguely recall her act because I only watched about 30 seconds before hitting fast forward on the DVR. Again, I couldn’t get past the… headdress.. she was sporting to take the performance even remotely serious.

But I trust Bill’s take on most things music, so today I found the video. Regardless of your opinion of Lady Gaga, take five minutes to watch this. Trust me, it’s worth it…

Wackiness aside, Gaga’s got talent. Loads of it. As Bill said on my Facebook post of this video, “In this age of auto-tuned, lip-synced, over produced crap, she is one very talented, powerful, emotional musician/singer/songwriter?…”

Indeed.

Where am I going with this?

Preconceived notions. I have them, you have them. We all have them. If you say you don’t, I think you’re lying – or at least fooling yourself. We’re human beings, and as such we are going to judge and make decisions and act based on the way people look. What they drive. How they dress. How much money they make. How they talk. Their intelligence level, their weight. For God’s sake, we judge people by what they say and how they act on Twitter. And dare I say a lot of people out there will hold preconceived notions about someone based solely on the color of their skin.

Hell, sometimes we even listen to other people’s preconceived notions and let them think for us. That’s crazy talk! But it’s true, isn’t it?

I did it with Lady Gaga. I’ve seen the pictures. I’ve read the news about her wearing a “meat dress” at the MTV Video Music Awards. I fast-forwarded through her performance on Idol.

In other words, I judged her based solely on what she wore, on how she appears to act. I wrote her off – just because I thought she was a freakazoid.

And she may well be a freak. I don’t know her. I know nothing about her private life, and that is none of my business anyway.

If she is a freak, she is a thoroughly talented freak. 

That is a fact that escaped me until this morning when I got over my preconceived notions and just listened.

No, I won’t be filling up my iPod with the Gaga catalog. Her general style just isn’t my thing. (Release a CD of solo stuff behind a piano and I’ll buy that..) I do respect her talent though.

So hear I sit, a full fifty years into this life and I still find these little “ah ha” moments. As I’ve been chewing on these thoughts of preconceived notions today it has me wondering some things. How much business do we lose due to our preconceived notions? How many potential friendships are slipping by without ever having been given a chance to develop? Ever gotten a call or email from a potential home buyer and thought to yourself, “this guy’s practically illiterate, they can’t buy a home”. Ever read something someone wrote or heard some remark and thought, “what an idiot. How does that person survive?”

Just a day or two ago I was having difficulties with a real estate broker working the other side of a transaction we are involved in. I spotted their “@aol.com” address and thought, “Great. They probably don’t read or answer email.” That’s a preconceived notion, and one that really serves no purpose. Best to just deal with the issue at hand and not be bothered with how a freaking email address may or may not affect the situation.

Yes, you are going to make judgments on people, places and things. Some of those will be snap judgments. Some need to be snap judgments. But sometimes it might just be prudent to not go into a situation with preconceived notions. Approach people and situations with a clean slate. Let their actions formulate what you are going to do not the way they look, what they drive, or which email service they use.

I can not sit here behind this keyboard and tell you to how to act, or to not judge people. It’s not my place to do that. What I can tell you is the next time I start to have a preconceived notion about someone I’m going to think about Lady Gaga. Not visualizing her dressed in slabs of beef, but about her sitting behind a piano and singing her ass off.

You never know what someone is capable of until you give them a fair chance.

Photo Credit: Michael_Spencer on Flickr. CC Licensed.

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Originally posted on Phoenix Real Estate Guy. If you are reading this anywhere but inside your RSS feed reader, the site you are on is guilty of stealing content.