As Rob has disclosed before, MRIS has been a client of 7DS Associates for some time now.  We have done and continue to work on a number of business projects for them.  One of the assignments is to fill-in as an interim capacity while MRIS searches for a Chief Marketing Officer.    

7DS does not discuss client matters in public.  Confidentiality is one of our core values at 7DS Associates, along with Competence (we give it our best) and Loyalty (we don’t take on clients where conflict of interest may arise).  We don’t even disclose who our clients are unless (a) they give us permission, (b) they disclose the relationship first, or (c) other ethical considerations mandate that we disclose the relationship.

We hope that clears up any mystery. 

Now back to your regular programming...

"Last week I was at Bradley Inman's Real Estate Connect NYC, a show and tell on news and technical innovations in the real estate industry. It's been an industry mainstay since 1996, when Inman, a former real estate journalist turned Internet entrepreneur, launched his online real estate news service with a story detailing a scandal at the National Association of Realtors. The fact that Inman foresaw the promise of the Internet in 1996 is an indication of what you find at his conventions: from tech toys and tools to ARM agents. All in all, it's not a bad place to take the pulse of the nation's top realtors. Here's are five highlights from this year's show:...."

Read "What I Learned At Real Estate Connect" in its entirety on HousingWatch.com.

Look forward to hearing thoughts and opinions on this topic!

Originally posted on HousingWatch.com in News Category.

Prior to joining 7DS, I'd heard about NPS, but didn't have an in-depth understanding of its operating model. Upon hearing more about it, I was intrigued and immediately started my own NPS Research Project. What I discovered, in a nut shell, is that it's an extremely powerful, yet simplistic system.

Unfortunately, many industries aren't tapping into NPS, including the real estate world. There's an immense amount of information out there, so that's not the issue. It's currently being used by hundreds of companies worldwide, including GE, Apple and Verizon Wireless, so it's not due to a lack of proven success or credibility. So, based on a few recent conversations, I think the challenge is people just aren't sure what NPS is, how it directly correlates to an increase clients satisfaction, why it makes sense for RE professionals, etc.  

So, let's start with the basics.... 

What is NetPromoter Score®? 

NPS was first developed by Fred Reichheld, the founder of Bain & Company’s loyalty practice group and author of The Ultimate Question, the book in which he discuses NPS and its direct connection to growth and long-term profitability. The core question used in NPS is “Would you recommend me to a friend?". It's a surprisingly straightforward, yet deceptively authoritative, tool for measuring customer loyalty to a brand, a company, a product, or a service. 

NPS is clear-cut. It doesn't involve lengthy questionnaires that most individuals won't take the time to read, let alone answer. It asks one single question (although several additional questions are welcome): “How likely are you to recommend XYZ to a friend or colleague?” where XYZ is a company, product, or service. The responses are collected on a 0-10 scale where 0 is “Extremely Unlikely” and 10 is “Extremely Likely”. Someone giving a score of 9-10 is considered a Promoter, score of 7-8 is considered Neutral (or Fence Sitter), and score of 0-6 is considered a Detractor. The score is computed simply by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. The graphic above provides a clear illustration.

Here's a quick example:

• You survey 1,000 past clients with one question, “How likely are you to recommend our agents to your friends?” 
• 250 answer 9 or 10 (Promoters); 600 answer 7 or 8 (Neutral); and 150 answer from 0-6 (Detractors) 
• Your NPS is 25% – 15% = 10%. This is not, by the way, a good score. You will likely want to find out why your NPS is so low and start looking at ways to improve your customer service experience.

Category characteristics:

• Promoters (Give you a 9-10) These are the loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying from you and working with you. They'll passionately refer you to others and fuel your growth.
• Passives (Give you a 7-8) These folks are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers. Their score isn't calculated as they are unlikely to tout your product or service to others. 
• Detractors (Give you a score of 0-6) This is the group of unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede your growth in a viral manner...quickly. 

Why Would NPS Be an Asset to Me and My Business?  

The whole point of NPS is to gauge customer loyalty by matching the survey responses to the specific client and then to their unique behavior and experience with your product or service, i.e. repeat purchase and referral patterns over time. A little bit more about The Metric That Links to Growth.  

In real estate, customer loyalty and viral marketing are essential components of the business. Given the utter simplicity of NPS, it's an ideal solution for most real estate companies, since a good number of agents, teams and brokerages lack the kind of marketing departments, discipline, and budgets to conduct truly scientific customer loyalty studies.

In the next post, I'll share a few case studies and more information about how real estate professionals could directly benefit from using NPS.

In the meantime, these two books are excellent reads for anyone interested in learning more about the process and psychology involved with Net Promoter Score: The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth (where it all began) and Answering the Ultimate Question: How Net Promoter Can Transform Your Business (the methodology behind answering the question).

[NOTE: NetPromoter Score® and NPS® are both registered trademarks of Satmetrix, Bain & Co., and Fred Reichheld.] 

Jeff was asked to explain how 7DS helps its clients. And, of course, he precised this with a clarity that brings complex real estate consultancy into easy to understand concepts.

Inman Connect NYC 2010 - "Outside the Sessions" with Jeff Corbett from David Carroll on Vimeo.

First things first, a sincere thanks to Drew Meyers and Mike Price for allowing 7DS the opportunity to host the Carnival of Real Estate, edition #172.

We received scores of exceptional submissions, and it was a challenge to narrow them down. We were supposed to select five but we chose 7...it just seemed appropriate considering we are the hosts :)

We've also included an "Honorable Mention" section, if the post was indeed worth mentioning.  Many thank you's to everyone who participated! 

And, without further ado...the winners are (in no particular order):  

Using Warren Buffett’s Principles to Invest in Real Estate  An educational post from Maclennan Investment Group Blog outlining how Warren Buffet has reached great heights in real estate investment. Insightful excerpts from letters and books..  

FHA Rulebook Changes : Higher Fees, Bigger Downpayments, And More Mortgage Insurance   This post from Dan Green (The Mortgage Reports) breaks down recent FHA changes to a granular level, explaining how these changes ultimately affect all those involved in the home buying process.

Surprise! Government Report on Negative Equity Gets it Wrong  You can't always rely on the newspaper and television for the facts. Altos Research outlines the reality of negative equity and its impact on consumers, mortgage professionals and real estate agents alike, with timely and detailed data. 

Image Problem: Real Estate  "Raising the Bar" - a recurrent theme that has been buzzing over the past months. This post by Diane Guercio  does an excellent job in outlining food for thought, possible solution and the challenges that remain. 

"Outside the Sessions" Inman Recap with Video  The team at SoftRealty did an phenomenal job in assembling this video post that includes live footage from Inman Connect NYC. If you weren't able to attend or want to see what you've missed, this post is for you. 

Outside.In Hyperlocal Search  Creating content is a common challenge for bloggers in the real estate industry and hyperlocal search has been the buzz over the past year.

SentriLock – An Example In How To Monitor Social Commentary In the world of immediate communication, lack of preparation can result in negative repercussions. This post by PowerSites illustrates a classic example of a crisis and why being one step ahead of the conversation is do or die. 

Honorable Mentions: 

Real Estate – FAQ Education  
What Are Commercial Real Estate Properties? Know your property types!- Commercial Bloggers

What is a Short Sale? At witty, well rounded explanation by- The Phoenix Real Estate Guy

Real Estate Pricing
Housing Prices Still Down: Predicting Home Price Trends Are we experiencing a false bottom in home prices? The Smarter Wallet  

Think You’ll Never Pay Full Price in this Market? Value vs. Price advice that applies to any market by The Housechick- Kelley Koehler

Marketing – Social Media
Facebook, Viral Marketing and Real Estate Stephen Fells talks about giving your marketing some virility!- PowerSites

10 Things That Need to Start or Stop in 2010 Stephen pokes fun at the not so obvious- PowerSites

Mortgage 
New FHA Rules! How Does this Effect Portland? Hyper-Local Mortgage content- Oregon Mortgage Blog

A Broad Rant About Guru Real Estate Investing Courses Bad advice gone worse.  Caveat Emptor!-  Life as Real Estate Investors

Imprudent Use of Leverage:  A Contrarian Opinion Zig when others Zag- The BiggerPockets Blog  

Real Estate Investment
The Emergence of the Post-Crisis International Real Estate Investor Interesting take on new international real estate best case investing practices.-  International Real Estate in Central America

How to Find the Money to Buy a Rental Property First Rental Property 

Real Esate - Miscellaneous
How to Break Free from Your Escrow Account Sound personal economic advice for the financially disciplined.- My Dollar Plan

Seattle House Hunting for New Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll Rolling out the Red Carpet for their new pro football coach.- Zillow Blog

5 Tips to Sell Any Home Fast Wisebread

Bad Score, Bad Score - What You Gonna Do? Sound personal credit insight.- Life Style Denver

Real Estate Humor- All by Stephen Fells at Powersites
Is There A Need To Identify Yourself As A Realtor After You Have Died?  

Celebrity Realtor and A Real Estate Version of “I’m Just a Gigolo” 

So, How Do We Fight Back? 

It's All in a Name. 

Would you like to host a Carnival of Real Estate or and/or submit articles to future Carnivals?  Click here to learn how...

Carnival of Real Estate…brings together the best of the best – passion, expertise and knowledge from real estate bloggers across the globe. Often referred to as the potluck of the real estate blogging world, individuals bring a special “dish” to the table and compete to be recognized as the best of the best!

7DS Associates is pleased to announce that we’ll be hosting this round of Carnival! With Inman recently wrapping up, the buzz of RPR, Google news, the timing couldn’t be better. There’s a lot to “talk” about… 

If you are interested in participating, please submit your post by Sunday, January 24 to jcorbett@7dsassociates or submit via Twitter by tweeting a link and tagging it with the hashtag #CoRE). We will be reviewing submissions as they come in and will announce the winners next week, so, stay tuned! 

If you didn't have the opportunity to read it when it was originally posted in 2006, hop over to the Active Rain link. The 146 comments covered an extensive range of opinions - further illustrating the internal war that exists within the mortgage world......

YSP’s have gradually made their way into the American homeowners conscious, rising from relative obscurity. While this is progress, their use in relation to their intent is still misunderstood, manipulated, and maligned. Although more consumers are now aware that YSP’s are cash rebates Lenders pay for a borrower to accept a higher interest rate than they qualify for…this hasn’t stopped Brokers and Bankers from misusing them as a tool to subjectively and unjustly enrich themselves.

Definition.
Even well educated broker/bankers can’t properly define YSP’s intended purpose per RESPA letter law. As explained in the RESPA Policy Statement, yield spread premiums should be proposed “as a valuable option that permits home buyers to pay some or all of the up front settlement costs over the life of the mortgage through a higher interest rate.”

In reality, YSP’s are shrouded within the complex structure of real estate settlement procedures to principally allow mortgage brokers and bankers the ability to impose higher prices on borrowers for their direct benefit. 

Disclosure.
Many broker/bankers will disclose YSP’s in a range of fashions, which may appear to protect the borrower, but appearances are deceiving. A prevailing practice among brokers is to enter a range of 0% to 5%, which leaves the broker with complete freedom of action, while providing the borrower with no usable information.

Other brokers won’t disclose YSP’s until closing, misleading borrowers to believe that the suddenly apparent dollar amount on the HUD-1 ‘is a fee paid by the Lender to the broker/banker for ‘delivering the borrower’. Under this explanation, payment of Yield Spread Premiums would run afoul of the first step of HUD’s test of whether YSP’s could be considered illegal kickbacks or rebates.

If the dollar value of YSP’s that end up in the broker/bankers pocket exceeds a fair value for services baseline, the transaction violates HUD’s test. What is this baseline amount? I don’t know…$3000, $5000, $10,000+ ? How could one justify $5000 in additional undisclosed compensation?

Charging broker compensation fees up-front and via improperly disclosed YSP can be viewed as a violation of TILA.

Depth.
85-90% of all mortgage transactions contain YSP’s.

In almost all cases, they are never presented as an option, according to true definition.

They represent the largest source of compensation for mortgage brokers.

An overwhelming majority of borrowers do not need YSP’s to pay up-front settlement costs but are never offered otherwise.

‘This abusive form of price discrimination substantially increases the overall costs to borrowers, imposing a “hidden tax” on home ownership. Unfortunately, individuals who are less educated and less sophisticated about financial matters end up overpaying the most. The misuse of yield spread premiums affects prime borrowers, FHA borrowers, VA borrowers’**…all the way down the line. Even for those with the best credit, yield spread premiums can cost many thousands of dollars in increased financing costs.

The oft-maligned broker segment of the mortgage origination industry bears the brunt of these facts, while bankers can maneuver with perceived impunity, since they ‘are not required’ to disclose YSP. It would be interesting to see bankers held to black letter law and operate under more transparent conditions…rather it would be interesting to see how quickly they changed their business practices. Many in the industry don’t believe it’s anyone’s business what they make via YSP incentives. Their definition states otherwise. YSP’s belong to the borrower, not the 3^rd party service provider. 

The mortgage industry as a whole is a baseball toss away from moving to an overall transparent policy platform, via legislation, technology, or both. My $.02 says technology starts it and the legislators play pile on. At the end of the day, to not disclose has been rendered deceptive and predatory…words that have a clearly deleterious effect on doing business, whether they are legally reprimanded or not. If you think about it…to speak out against transparency in this marketplace is not the type of opinion consumers or legislators will come to appreciate.

The opening salvos have begun. There will be momentous battles with new weapons and strategies, but like most wars, no one comes out the clear winner, but the landscape will be changed forever.

Read the initial post and comment thread on Active Rain.  

Originally posted on Active Rain on November 9, 2006 by Jeff Corbett. 

Some things would be different, that’s for sure:

1. There would be no prices on the menu.
2. The exact same coffee drink sold out of the same location on the same day would be sold at different prices to different people.
3. Employees would be trained and encouraged to maximize the gross profit on every cup of coffee sold by setting the price as high as possible for each customer.
4. Employees would be incentivised to push the coffee that made them the most money, even if they knew the customer was allergic to it, enforcing a strict no refund policy.
5. Coffees advertised as decaf would, in fact, pack more punch than a triple espresso.

How long do you think it would take the coffee giant to fall? Not long.

Now, flip it around: What do you think would happen if mortgage brokers ran their business like Starbucks? They’d have a line running out the door, too.

But alas, this isn’t the case. Instead, you have the Mortgage Cartel circling the wagons to protect their right to earn money the way they always have—taking it by farce.

Todd Carpenter of Lenderama and Loan Bark! posted an interesting piece on YSPand APR, making the argument that a borrower should focus on what they’re paying, rather than what the broker is making. Easier said than done.

I can appreciate his position that it’s nobody’s business what the broker actually makes, provided the borrower’s getting a “good deal.” However, defining a “good deal” is a highly subjective affair. It goes well beyond comparing the APR’s of 3 or 4 quotes and depends very much on who’s doing the evaluation. A borrower may have gotten the best deal of those presented, but wound up paying much more than they could have. Not just a few dollars more, mind you—but tens of thousands more.

Attempting to compare mortgage deals using percentage based methods is flawed. Brokers should put out a ‘menu’ of prices. Why?

• Rate Shopping/Quoting is a crap shoot. The problem here is even the best quote with the lowest APR out of the five brokers you’re shopping guarantees you nothing but the best deal between five brokers—all of which are looking at you as their next meal ticket.
• APR is directly tied to loan amount. Think about it: Where $5,000 in fees may be a significant increase between the underlying interest rate and the APR on a $150,000 loan, the same increase may seem trivial on a loan amount of $500,000. The point is, the difference in APR may appear negligible to a borrower on higher loan amounts, while the actual financial downside can be huge.
• Annual Percentage Rate. APR may be an easy way to compare the same deal from multiple brokers during the estimate stage, but unfortunately, by the time you make it from the initial disclosure to closing, that can change dramatically—and by then, it’s usually too late. Also, consumers tend to compare the APR to the interest rate they were quoted, if the APR is not much higher than the interest rate, consumers may mistakenly take this as the sign of a resonable deal.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, The XBroker is a staunch advocate of the 100% transparent mortgage transaction. This means truthfully disclosing every bit of YSP—down to the individual program, volume, and other bonuses offered by the lender.

My message rubs most Brokers the wrong way because they see me screwing with their earning potential. To them I say, if YSP is intended to be used to pay for closing costs—which is its expressed purpose—then they why does it keep turning up in the brokers pocket?

Originally posted on The XBroker on October 11, 2006 in Mortgage News.

82% of respondents (admittedly a small and biased sample) said they either do very little print advertising or none at all.  They don’t see the value.

We figured as much.

But one of the reasons why we did this is that we think brokers and agents who might be sitting on the fence about whether to continue that spend with the local newspaper or not have a few simple tools they can use to get a sense of what the ROI from print advertising might be.

Best of all, the tools are free.  Consider these tips our Christmas present to you.

Print Advertising and the Problem of Metrics

One of the issues with print advertising in particular – whether we’re talking about newspapers, magazines, or flyers you mail out – is that the metrics are very difficult to get.

With websites, you have a variety of traffic measurements you can look at: unique visitors, time on site, etc.  With more sophisticated analytics, you can see where your visitors click, how many searches are done on the website, which properties get looked at, and what the conversion rate for the site is.  With blast email campaigns, you can look at open rates.  With paid search campaigns via Google AdWords and the like, you can get fairly detailed reporting on click-throughs and so on.

With print, you might get the overall circulation number, but other than that… it’s sort of a crapshoot.  Maybe you get a phone call from some consumer who says she saw your ad in the paper.  Maybe.  A part of you thinks there might be some value to getting your name and logo in the newspapers for the sake of visibility and branding, but you just don’t know.

Well, here are a couple of tips that we here at 7DS think you should try.  The nice thing is, this advice is free, and so are the tools you would use.

Google Voice

Google Voice is a pretty interesting little tool that Google acquired when it bought GrandCentral, a web-telephony company back in 2007.  While it is still in beta and is available only by invitation, you can sign up to be invited to Google Voice.  Most everyone who requests an invite appears to get one eventually, but your mileage may vary.

When you sign up for Google Voice, you are provided a new phone number, a “Google Phone Number” that is tied to your Google Account.  There are a lot of cool benefits to having Google Voice, and this video does a pretty good job of explaining them:

For our purposes, however, just having the Google Number is good enough.  Have it forward to your various existing phone numbers, so that you can answer any calls that come in.

Now, put that Google Number and only that Google Number on all of your print advertising, from newspaper ads to property flyers.  Why?  Let me show you:

Google Voice tracks every incoming call, voicemail, and SMS messages to the Google Number.  Notice the area circled in red: what the above screen tells me is that I have had 76 incoming calls to my Google Number since I started using it. 

If you put this Google Number and only this Google Number on your print advertising, when someone calls you from a print ad, Google Voice will track every incoming call.  But every phone call will also ring through to whatever phones you have linked to the Google Number as well, so you can speak to them if you’d like or have them leave you a voicemail.

It isn’t foolproof or perfect, since someone could see your print ad, search for your name, and find our regular phone number that way.  But it’s better than nothing, and you could get a decent sense of how many inbound phone calls you are generating from your print advertising in general.

If you really want to get ambitious, you can setup a separate Google Account for each print campaign or print channel.  Then request a Google Voice number for each Google Account.  And then use a different Google Voice on a per-ad or per-channel basis.  So for example, you might setup toprealtor123@gmail.com for your Newspaper Ads; toprealtor456@gmail.com for your Print Flyers; and toprealtor789@gmail.com for your radio ads, then assign your various Google Numbers to each channel. 

If you stay on top of this, you might find that your Newspaper Ads generated 125 inbound phone calls, while your Print Flyers generated 22, and your local radio spots generated 200 inbound phone calls.  (Note: it goes without saying that you should use a separate email address for each channel if you want to provide an email address.) 

Wouldn’t that information be useful in deciding whether you want to continue offline advertising, or at least what the value of that offline advertising might be?  It isn’t a perfect metric, so you have to use your judgment – after all, a newspaper ad that generated zero inbound calls might still be effectively branding you or your company in your local market.  But using Google Voice can help establish some metrics where none existed before.

Google Analytics

The second suggestion is pretty much the parallel of the first one: create a separate website, with a different URL, for all of your print ads.  Again, if you’re ambitious, you can create as many websites as you have channels you want to track.

Then add each URL to your Google Analytics, making sure that you generate the right tracking code for each one.

Now, the important step is to include in all of these “print tracking websites” a robots.txt file that prevents search engines from indexing your site.  This is a simple tutorial, but other ways of doing this is also on the web.  The reason why you’d want to do this is to limit all visitors as much as possible to those who may have seen the URL in a print ad or on a flyer.  If these “print tracking sites” don’t appear on any search engine anywhere, it is far more likely that anyone coming to them is doing so from one of your offline ads.

Since maintaining multiple websites can be a pain, you can either setup a automatic redirect (although this requires a fair amount of technical competence, so ask your web designer if you don’t have the programming skills) or just setup the “print tracking website” as a gateway page to your main website and have visitors click through to your main site.

Again, the purpose is to track any website visits that are traceable to print advertising you may be doing, without interfering overmuch with the user experience of browsing your content, searching for listings or contacting you.

This way, you can view Google Analytics Reports by URL and see how many visitors and visits a particular print campaign produced.  Then on your main website, you can look to see how many visitors were sent to your main site from your “print tracking” websites by looking under Traffic Sources >> Referring Sites.

Measure, Analyze, Decide

By using these simple tools, all of which are free, we believe that anyone can get a decent sense of how their offline marketing is or is not working for lead generation.  Circulate a flyer with the Google Number, a different email address than your main one, and a URL to the tracking website.  Then go see what the results were in terms of inbound calls, visitors, and email responses.

Those metrics can’t and won’t tell you anything about branding benefits, and they are far from perfect, but they can provide at least some insight into the effectiveness of your print and offline advertising.  The rest is up to you.  Analyze the results, then decide whether to continue, to terminate, or perhaps even to increase your spend.  At least you’ll be doing it with some data backing up your decision.

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to all!

The funnel was so big at the top, we just keep shoveling in clients and revenue poured out of the bottom.  No one stopped to consider WHY it all worked, it just did.   This was the refi and housing boom; rhyme and reason not required.  And in the profound words of one Shawn Carter, “I was a business, man more than a ‘businessman’.”   

So, after one particularly arduous day that involved a wooden flamingo I decided to try to become a ‘businessman’ and delved into the world of P&L’s, cash-flow statements, operational methodologies, marketing ROI’s, etc.  and was sickened to discover what I did:

My business was sucking sh*t through a straw. 

It was making money, but it could have been making it far more effectively than it was; the writing was on the wall, the huge consuming funnel at the top could not be sustained.  

We needed to change some things, and it was in the ‘Why’ that turned out to be far more important than the ‘How’.  Believe that.  The ‘Why’ caused me to reconsider our entire business model…and so we commenced on performing some ‘Business Diagnostics’ – an Audit of everything we did…most importantly ‘Why’ we did them and for who. 

How did we do it?  That was simple: eliminate unnecessary labor, reduce our office footprint and other overhead costs, shift expenses to higher yielding products and services, changed compensation schedules and revenue models, and implement systems and processes that mitigated the risks of error and omissions (ever wonder why there is insurance for such?) In other words, we leaned out where it was prudent to do so and committed more resources to better places.    

Why did we do it?  Ultimately for the consumer.  If not for the consumer, we were nothing…they pay the bills.  So, I took us on the journey of reinventing ourselves with a specific consumer in mind rather than what other misaligned institutions had taught us as the way to do business-to be everything to everybody.  Everybody equals nobody, so we niched ourselves to “the tech savvy, educated, thirsty for transparency” consumer and rebuilt the business around them. We redefined our strategy, adjusted our core capabilities to accommodate the strategy and bent our operations around both.  Marketing became an almost unspoken by-product of our new brands promise:  Transparent, smart and efficient. 

This was the origin of the Business Audit, something every business should endeavor upon every few years.  It's an immersive, difficult, unsettling yet revealing and cathartic voyage into ‘Why’ you are in business.  Upon completion, you, your business and your consumers will not be the same. 

Our results?  Cut staff from 35 to 5, did less business and increased everyone’s bottom line.  We began teaching instead of selling. Referrals became our primary source of leads, which converted to clients at unprecedentedly high rates and shut down all outbound marketing.  Our consumer was immensely satisfied because they received an experience consistent with what was promised.  We established value first and price became secondary.  Everyone’s objectives aligned nicely.  Life was good. 

This change was possible because we thoughtfully answered ‘Why’ we were in business and most importantly for who. Now I'm not saying that an Audit will mandate cutting 80% of staff or anything else that we personally decided to execute on...Audits are highly personal voyages that yield very unique results.  

There are a million pretty promises out there wrapped up as THE tool, service or killer app to take your business to the next level – CRM’s, Blogs/Social Media, IDX. None of them know anything about your true strengths and weaknesses.  None of them know who your consumer is or ought to be.  “Just Do It,” Nike’s famous motivational slogan, is a frivolous strategy to run with in today’s business landscape.  Don’t Just Do It, Do It with some, no, A LOT of thought. 

This whole real estate and mortgage paradigm shift is not over folks; it’s a movement that’s just getting started.  Time to get under the hood and discover ‘Why’ you are what you do…because once you know, really understand the ‘Why’…the ‘How’ is far easier. 

Put that shiny new thing down and cleanse your businesses soul…your world will be a better place because of it.