My clients should get more out of me than they are–but selling is the fun part.  Meeting people, getting deals in the door.   I care about the standards I uphold, but really, it’s a thrill to be able to take a project in and know it’ll get done.   I wish I knew it’d be done perfectly, and not by me.  That’s the next step.

It’s the case though–that the toughness of the times and the fact that I’m still punch drunk from paying Uncle…that I’ve got enough scarcity-mentality in me I’m not willing to give up the significant cut in revenue it takes to grow.   As an economist, this decision should be easy.  My output is sales.  That’s where I’ve got a competitive advantage.  My thick skin, can do attitude and General Pattonesque ethos makes me take those hills.  Even in this economy I’ll take in work.   I need to get it through basecamp so I can honor my commitments.

I think the thing that I need to keep to is this: anything that’s NOT marketing or writing, I don’t do.  That means WP setup, that means DNS issues, that means even project management.  I want to sell more widgets, not acquire the skills I need as a coder.

I had a goal to hire a project manager by EOY.  I didn’t and it doesn’t appear that I’m going to be able to.  But what I can do is delegate more, and get stuff off of my plate…so I can honorably put more on my plate.

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I set goals–sell x units, do y in volume.  But I never felt it.  The big ‘so what’ was always behind that.  I couldn’t make myself give a crap about any of it.  Sell another commodity house here in CMH?  Sure.  Happy to serve.  No, really.

I got jazzed about the marketing: doing something that generated leads.  And I had a tsunami of leads.  But I saw myself as a (just) six figure guy, and that’s what I did.  Oh, I sustained a bunch more in ’05, but we all did.  I had the gig from 01 to March of this year.

If I felt I had enough listing appointments, I’d flake out on people, cancelling them.   I only wanted so much work, and I didn’t realize that.  Since I was great at generating leads, I could always pick from the easiest and nicest people to work with.

Each quarter, there I was, netting out what I needed as a Realtor, letting leads and deals rot on the vine.  When leads are abundant, I didn’t value them.  (Hey, kids, they are still abundant).  Rather than work with an asshole it was, “Here, here’s your listing back, sign this mutual release, and I’m out of there.”   I didn’t care, couldn’t care, and still don’t see the anxious need to produce the nothing that makes up a lot of the Real Estate Practice.

Still.  Still there are good reasons to love the business.  The reason I still orbit it is this:  if someone is willing to take a 100% commission job, they value freedom over security.  That must be nurtured, period.  That spark is sacred, and part of the best within the American spirit.  If you can do your job better for them,

Life went on.   I would then pretend I loved the business after being geeked by a MFO event or something like it.  And in lieu of creating what I wanted to (leads), I got stuck as a practitioner.   And I would set goals I couldn’t care about each year.

60 houses.
$350k average price
$550 GCI.
$350k net.
1000 hours prospected.
Etc.

Yawn.  Possible?   Sure.  But money doesn’t lead, it follows.  You don’t start with an income and then build a life around it.   To maintain it, I had to ingest so much poison I almost became that guy.   And I didn’t have the right ethos then to really get after it.  I didn’t have acute needs, till the IRS gave me the Rodney King treatment, I was coasting, if that.   I didn’t love what I was doing.  And that’s a way to waste your life.

Not saying you can’t.   Not saying it’s not possible, but I ratcheted it all down to mere numbers.  Numbers do matter, but only when you’re chasing something that also drives you.   Right now, i’m driven to write, driven to lose weight, driven to help people get efficient, and I’m driven to get out of debt.   I’m carrying a net worth of roughly -$65,000 that I want GONE.  Money comes easily enough for me.  I don’t need to make that the end all/be all.   I want to make Right Right now into a practice of some sort.  A couple people asked what my BIG DAMN GOALS were:

1. I will weigh in at 175# before March 1st 2009. My ultimate goal is 159#, but I won’t be thinking about that for a bit. I want to think about all the milestones I need to pass through first.  Friends, that’ll put the total weight loss at 97#.  That’s a gymnast.  I’ve already lost a bunch.  Only standard is to get to 175#.
2. Next E-book, f-therapy, does 10,000 units. I’m getting it started (this is the first time I’ve talked about it) at http://f–ktherapy.com  It’s a strident treatise about uncluttering your life, your mind, and ignoring the toxicity of our society.
3. I will get “subprime” published and collect an advance of $50,000 or more. Again, I’m already stacking the deck in my favor.  The quality of the writing & insight matters, but I’m making it such that I’ll get the most receptive audience possible.   I don’t know if it’s a meritocracy or not, but if it’s not, that benefits me as I like to win, and I’m competing to win right now.  I stack the deck with stuff that makes it hard to ignore me.  Just watch.
4. To be debt free in 500 days. I have my debt pegged at $65,000, most of it being the IRS’s suff.   It might be a little less, and I’ll tabulate it next weekend.   My budget/burn rate is something like $2500/month.   Gross THAT up for taxes, and I’m at an income need of $4,000.    365/500 =73%.   73% of $65,000  = ~47,450.   Gross THAT up by 30% for taxes = $62k.   Divide that by 12, and we’re at: 5200 month for debt retirement.   Add that to $4,000 and we have a need (without savings) of 9200/month.  This puts me at 108,000 for the year, a number I can hit in my sleep, doing this stuff.

That’s pretty much what matters.   I put a $$ on the advance because I want to have it taken reasonably seriously–I’m not necessarily going to just take the first person to write that check, I’m going to make it have the best chance at a real live widespread audience.   I know times is hard.   I don’t want to be in a ‘need the money,’ point in my life.  And I won’t be.

A lot of other things are ‘nice to do’ next year:  I wanna read about 100 books, 40 fiction/60 nonfiction.   I want to run a 3:30 marathon.   And to make $108k, I’ll need to divide my income somehow–ebooks aren’t a ‘guarantee’–I need to pursue the courses that I have taught, and the rest of the stuff that I regularly do.  I think that if I rely on the consulting gigs for the income and make everything else ‘fun,’ we’ll be juuuuuuuust fine.

I have to rewrite it fully (or therabouts, there are great scenes) by Feb 1, 2009, choose the best representation by 6/1/09…and catch lightning in a bottle.  I can do ll this stuff, things like this always happen quickly for me.  Someone next year will sell a breakout debut novel, lose a ton of weight, and do a kicking e-book.   Why not me?

Dashboard comes up tomorrow.

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This is something that I’m sure the novel folks at Offer Angel would approve of.

Uniform Pricing:

Why?

1. We are not opportunistic. We can maximize via float/lock, but we don’t want to do it.  People’s built in BS detectors will

2. We are not going to fall in love with one deal and make one deal super important to our survival, our month.

3. We want to be price competitive every time and offer a good value to our customers.

4. Realtors will figure it out.

Loan Pricing…

Minimum fee of $2,000 to us. Target average of 2950.  Looking to do 11/month.

Max fee does not exist. Must be approved if we go below

We will then charge 1.65% including processing. This is front /back yield.

So on a $150,000 deal, we would earn as a base: $2475 total to us. This assumes a purchase, and includes processing.

We will charge $475 processing going forward, but it counts towards total fee.

Modifiers:

If the customer gets docs to us at initial meeting–or the next day after a telephone consult–we shave off $200.00.

If it was referred by a referring Realtor, friend or family member, we’ll cut $200 from pricing.

If the deal is a refinance, we add .20 to our pricing setup (more labor)

If the deal is an FHA, we add 1.25 to our pricing. (bigger spreads)

If the deal is US Bank/chase, we add .5 to our pricing (more labor)

If the deal is EAI-II-III, we add .375 to our own yield.

NOO/Investors, we add 1% to our pricing, or we turn the deal down (this is the only MANDATORY add—we will price ourselves out of the investor market or make money on it—Full Doc only for investor residential.)

If the customer, or their realtor, is a jerk, add $500 in fee/pricing.  This is defined by not getting docs back or being an obstacle to the process.

We can float to within .25 either way, but we want to stick to our pricing scheme 80% of the time so we have a predictable business.

It may be hard to enforce the “Realtor Obstructionist” rule, but there are people that I don’t care to do business with, that make the entire transaction an unpleasant, stupid, white knuckled experience.  These jerks get what they get.

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