I left Real Estate in 2008. In something of a huff, with the confident contempt that I’d never be back. Good riddance, we said to one another at the time.

I had done all the jobs in the industry, pretty much. The last one had me as a mortgage lender, and I was waiting out the time because we were planning on Ruby’s birth at the time, and the company I had had benefits. She was born, and I went into digital media for the past 10 years.

But I always felt that there was some unfinished business between Real Estate and I. An odd mix of revulsion and nostalgia. The “one that got away.”

The Substantial Downside

I fostered an honest contempt for many of the aspects of the industry. The NAR’s unseemly rent seeking behavior. The living caricatures that are Real Estate Agents.

The industry’s shameless, selfless studied and deliberate obtuseness that would make Upton Sinclair’s quote payoff:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

Yes, the NAR is sometimes daft. But they do have confidence. And that goes a long way.

Then there’s the lifestyle aspect. By their own choice, Real Estate Agents are constantly “half working” zombies. The bottom line: they don’t generate enough business so they have to tolerate the insufferable. And that creates some type soul-crushing PTSD-eque kind of hollowed out vibe that they all share.

Them: always kind of working, but never really concentrating. A twitchy vibe where you feel like they are looking right through you. A lockstep but slow slide into human cliché always got to me. I did it, too. The erosion of integrity got to me. The industry in general is concerned with itself. Them’s the odds.

When you read the NAR’s code of Ethics, when you see what’s enforced at local boards, you learn that the majority of the work is an agreement to keep issues and problems in-house. Cooperation & Compensation. They brook no interference and they will get after you if…

“REALTORS® shall not knowingly or recklessly make false or misleading statements about other real estate professionals, their businesses, or their business practices. “

The brush, friends, is broad. Half the conversations I’ve here locally have been with Realtors just aghast at a top performing team’s advertising and how it highlights some of this stuff.

Then there’s the matter of Lawrence Yun, the economist who has all the credibility of Michael Cohen.

It was a daily battle to do right by and for my clients. The industry was either indifferent, or there were a coterie of self-aggrandizing ‘only honest’ agents. These were the ones that were midlevel producers, quietly shooting rocks at ther betters. Meanwhile, the board spends more clock time on “Realtor’s Duties to other Realtors,” than their duties to their public. Complaints and hearings centered around entering errant data into the MLS, advertising violations and procuring cause. Never would the public have pull.

The bottom line: Real Estate Agents generally make their own work. And they spend an outsized portion of their energy tut-tut-tutting the inferior ethics of their competition, or something. It’s a strange world.

The Significant Upside

And yet.

I say all this and I still want in. Selling houses is the biggest game in town when it comes to consumer marketing.

I’ve always identified with sellers. And I’ve felt like the purest form of the art was selling houses, stocks or cars. I’ve done stocks (albeit in a fairly limited way). These things represent the big American Dreams, ingrained in our culture from the Hamilton to the Homestead Act to the Capra Oevure to the GI Bill and more. Under all is the land, yano? And land ownership made America America.

I did well (if inconsistently in terms of effort and production) during my time as an agent, and there’s always been a tug towards the industry…a nostalgia.

When we were young and innocent…

There’s a low cost of service and you can make a significant impact at a key time in someone’s life. Most practitioners of anything are average or below, so by being great, you help the world.

You can also do it better and when you do it better, you can reap the rewards.

The income is good, the schedule flexible is good, the job is simple, helping buyers and sellers make good decisions is a good thing to do.

The Boundaries.

To start and to protect myself against the downside I’ll have to set up some boundaries. There are parts of any business I don’t love. And that’s normal, predictable, and part of the gig. But to protect myself from the bad parts of this one I’ll be deliberate about boundaries.

So I’ll go back. With the stuff that I learned at Simplifilm about delivery, production and client service.

After a 6 week “startup time.” I’ll cap my total hours at 35/week. This is enough. I’ll be around to make dinner, I’ll be around and present for my kids. Realtors spend time on drama, there’s an addiction to the potential use of time that makes them half-work all the time. I have to inoculate myself against that unfortunate trap

1. I won’t feel scarcity and have to “always be selling.” I will talk about stories of families, but I won’t be in “realtor” mode when at family gatherings. I’m always appalled by the too eager-to-talk-real estate types.
2. I’ll get in the best shape of my life during this journey. Can’t be a cliché. Gotta eat right.
3. I’ll be available to my kids daily. I’ll be around to support their endeavors both artistically and academically. I’ll will do more than my share of the housework, and I’ll put my best energy into building a family structure and keeping our family organized and on point.
4. I’ll continue to have a curriculum for personal growth and I’ll develop and continue to develop a life practice.
5. I’ll leave energy for writing and for my own consultancy. I’ll work some type of split schedule there.
6. There will be some rules around this, a series of Maxims that I’ll live by, operate by and use.
7. I’ll spend a weekend each month away out of town and away from Real Estate. I’ll have some vacation scheduled each quarter.

There may be other things that I need to do – like having a second phone that goes away, or other similar things to help enforce boundaries. I’ll need to manage the expectations of my children. I set it up so that they are fairly self-sustaining in the morning. My wife is the best person ever and can’t be any easier to get along with.

The Plan For Production

I did some of my usual spreadsheets to figure this out and tinker with it. It requires diligent execution. It requires 35 hours of focus each week. To earn a robust and happy living, I don’t really need to have a LOT of leads, views or anything, but I need a few deep connections and people that “get” me. My actual tribe.

I’d say that 150 views over 6-8 months in a local area is REALLY good, and say, 500 subscribers is top end (for this business). I’d want to have a list of say 3500+/- in a CRM where I was actively promoting things and sharing expertise. Once the CRM has “enough” names, we’ll have enough to market and remarket to.

1. I’ll roll with this from a media first perspective. On camera every day. I’ll do this job from a media first perspective so that I’m recording and demonstrating expertise.
2. Leveraged lead gen is key here. I have to use FB/Insta to make this work and have media that I can reuse down the chain.
   • Cost per lead needs to be ~$250 or so. A lead isn’t just a ‘meh’ inquiry.
   • I’ll focus on High Hanging Fruit, instead of the Zillow/Realtor.Com crap that everyone’s fighting for. Long-term relationships.
3. I’ll do this with an operating plan. My income should gross about $420k/year and to net about $300k/year. This is just over $30k a month, or 3.7 homes sold monthly in the part of this market I want to be in.
   • (Object here is 45 homes per year, average price $355k, average commission ~2.65% or ~$9407.)
     • Object is to do 40% listings / 60% buyers first year. The 25 buyers will take 25 hours to deliver per buyer with good systems. ~625 per hour.
     • 44 homes a year:
       • Q1: 6 homes.
       • Q2: 12
       • Q3: 13
       • Q4: 12
     • “Wasted” buyers will be ~300 hours year. I.e. buyers that fall out. I’ll measure this and be gracious about it without feeling anything. The measurement will test my skills/assumptions.
     • 60 hour cap on buyer hours.
     • 17 Listings will take 17 hours to deliver per listing = 289 hours.
     • Object is to be at or around 15% to acquire business (ad spend + video production). $4500 initial investment and a “kitty” based on income.
     • 15% to provide services to them (pictures, gas, gifts, ads, vendors, brokerage services)
     • No substantial admin/assistant. Gotta do my own paperwork and rely on good title companies. Build a process using our tools.
     • This (ultimately) will be split 20 hours with or serving clients / 15 in lead gen. When I don’t have clients…I’ll spend the time on active lead gen.

Skills & Inputs Needed

Lead Sources:

First, I’m going to use the Platform system. We had a rocky start, but I like the ethos that they are striving for. I get that it’s aspirational and there’s a very wide gap between where they are and what they say. All visionary companies have one.

This will have me running some Facebook ads and building out landing pages to work with them.

Expertise

I’ll have to acquire some skill I don’t have. A quick list:

• Market knowledge. To be gained by doing the neighborhood preview videos and a disciplined MLS study and export. This will include pricing and local preferences.
• Paperwork Knowledge & Fluency I’ll have to get fluent again with the paperwork and disclosures needed. I’ll be doing those quickly and as efficiently as possible.
• Listing Presentation I’ll do a listing presentation that’s about them and their goals. A lot of the listing presentations are bad. I’ll base this on The Perfect Webinar
• Buyer Brokering This is the part that’s fun, and we’ll have to work with this in a congruent way.
• Pricing I’ll look at as many homes as possible, and I’ll look to price homes appropriately and as professionally as possible.
• Diplomacy Most agents are high-strung nitwits. In order for this to work I’ll have to suffer fools more wisely than I do today. I have an aversion to dealing with the “type” of poor communicator that fills the rank and files at your local brokerage.

First Projects:

To get this rolling we’ll need to have some projects done. None of these should take much longer than a day or so to build out, if I don’t dawdle.

1. Create a branding and content calendar.
2. Create standards for each video and blog post, and a way to assemble them quickly.
3. Create landing pages.
4. Create all advertisements that I mean to use & follow up sequences.
5. Create a Listing Presentation.
6. Create Buyer’s Presentation.
7. Create a place for iterated processes that may be changed. (Maybe WorkFlowy)

So enough talking. 1900 words of it. Time to get this done in the context of the Life of Rigor that I want.

There’s unfinished business here. I mean to settle up.

(Really cool poster by Joey Roth)

Most people don’t hustle. Sturgeon’s Law and all that. The big blue ocean is too big and scary for them, and they seek the familiar. I’ve been that guy way way more than I’d like to admit.

Like me, most people think they hustle. It’s comforting to think that we’re in the top 1% of hustlers. Whatever that means. It’s nice to believe that we are working effectively on our own hustle.

But it’s mostly not true. We’ve bought into the myth of “hustle” as performance art.

Here are the main ways it happens:

Fake Hustle: Some of us fake the hustle, posting inspirational quotes from Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or Walt Disney or someone else like that. They have to talk about every. Little. Thing. They. Do. As if that’s going making progress.

Grinders Still more “grind”. They do a ton of activity and a lot of effort. Little in the way of results. This is folks that do things in a way that’s always been done. The wear themselves out doing things that have no impact. It’s hard work but it’s not the correct work that actually matters. A salesperson that writes long and elabroate blog posts but never chooses to prospect. These are the people that eat SnackWells and spend hours on the elliptical trainer but never understand why they can’t use weight.

Victims Joey Roth’s classic image calls ‘em martyrs, but I like to call ‘em victims. These people are folks that “work so hard but nobody appreciates them.” We all are wont to believe that we, alone, are noble. That our profession has required a ton of sacrifice and dedication, and nobody appreciates us. That we’ve given up some more lucrative career easily available to us.

The Expert Burnouts There’s a class of people who have been in the industry a long time. Limited success. These folks can talk a good game, and “know” the industry, but the best fruits of their professions passed them by. But they are always waiting to give unsolicited advice to people entering the industry. They know better. And sometimes, they are right.

The Logo Collectors These are people that once did some project tangentially associated with a big prestigious brand, or person. They are too good for wherever they find themselves now because it doesn’t compare to their past glory. They give a limited effort because they are “above” this one, or it won’t work at this “small” scale. But they always talk about their past glories and spend a lot of energy ensuring we know that they once worked for Nike.

All of it’s performance art. We’re interested in appearing like we are hustling to relieve us of the obligation to our talent and the obligation to doing the hard work that’s needed to sail into the great unknown.

One of the things about opening up a business is that you need to find your way to what you want to do.

In my case, I’ve missed out on being a practitioner of sales for a few years. Thinking back, it’s been over three years since I’ve really sold with the idea that maximizing revenue and numbers is a good thing.

That has put me in an “out of practice” situation. Add that to the fact that the sales industry changes itself completely every half-decade and I feel somehow “out of shape” in a way that I don’t think I have ever been. So I’m taking steps to change that.

Our biggest problem at Simplifilm was getting jobs out the door. Sales doesn’t cure all in that situation.

I’ve felt that way lately. In the advisory business, I’m at a remove from direct contact with my clients and my customer’s clients. That’s fine to a point, but there’s something appealing about being a practitioner. It’s the director who still acts as DP on set. You respect that guy.

Being a practitioner is appealing because it brings me back to an authentic place. To get punched in the mouth again, to learn what works right now. To connect.

For me to have gotten away from it for as long as I have was an error. Day by day it was defensible, but over the long haul, not as much.

So I’ll get back into practice in the next few weeks.

The setup I’m going to go for:

• A business where I spend my time selling and marketing.
• An advisory /consultancy that’s on the side.

This will mean that I may take the rest of the year to build the former up so I can turn my attention to the latter. I’m OK with that.

Dear Microsoft:

Listen, I am rooting for you. I love me a good comeback story, and it seems that you are dialed in right now.

And I’m glad.

But, look, you’ve got to respect me a little bit more.

I have two of your products: Office 360 and Xbox One.

And they both annoy me in exactly the same way.

I don’t play the Xbox one very often at all. I use Office360 as infrequently as possible.

When I open either, they both want to update. I don’t need the latest version.

I need to use the software.

I remember last year when I bought my Xbox. I couldn’t play Forza for like 6 hours because it needed a system update of some sort. Then it had to download Forza. This was after I signed in and jumped through all of your hoops.

I opened my Xbox the other day to play Rayman with my kids. I was logged out because I had to change my password.

Before I could log back in I was required to grab a giant update. No games would play. All of my downloaded games required a new update, probably the Xbox360 emulator or something.

What a drag, man.

So I let it do its thing in the background.

Whenever I open Microsoft Word, I know that it’s gonna want to update and bounce the dock. It’ll interrupt me and ask to close. It’s fine that you want to update, just do it in the background. I gave you permission to check automatically.

Here’s what I want:

1. Don’t punish me for using your software occasionally. Let me work for a while and then ask to update tonight, tomorrow, in an hour. I get that you need to.
2. If you MUST update (say once a quarter, max) for real reasons, do that behind my back. Make it so it’s hard not to bypass that.
3. When I buy a product, no barriers to using it. I was a first time Xbox person, just wanted to race cars with my kids. Hooked up the Xbox at 6pm on a Friday night, and it took 4 hours to let me in is bogus. Respect my money. Let me play, then update. Who wants to wait to use something?
4. Update in the background, like Chrome does. I think Chrome sets the bar for updating, doing it, seemingly while the software is running. Be like them.
5. During updates on a Mac inherit the devices norms. Don’t bounce the dock, and make a show out of it. Just do your thing and be done. Go through the App store if you can.

That’s it. You have other issues (your Xbox One UX seems to inherit the worst mistakes of Windows 7 and an iPod Classic). But this one? This respect thing?

Well, it’s got me concerned. Maybe it doesn’t matter and we all just accept that 20% of the experience will be antagonistic. I’m not likely to get Office 360 again. I won’t if i can help it. I know that when Red Dead Redemption II comes out that I will need to plan on having it update for 4 hours before I can play.  So I’ll be annoyed at you between now and then for the time you’re planning on wasting.