We all know that there are clients who will cost us – either in the short or long runs – more than they’re worth in terms of value to us. What steps do you take to account for potentially needy/troublesome clients? Do you factor that into a price you charge? Do you refuse to take them? Do you take them on a contingency basis, meaning that they must do XYZ before you will be hired by them?

I’ve recently turned away several clients who I knew could pay me, but who I suspected would be too much trouble in the long run. I think one of the benefits of running your own business is that you get to decide who you want to interact with.

I’m trying to develop a graceful way to reject clients, since I don’t want to damage my reputation. And the sometimes the kind of people I reject are the kind of people who, if they had a mind to do it, could damage my reputation.

Today I am obliged to eat my words — and I’m damn glad I don’t wear a hat!

I had email this afternoon from a vistor to our Phoenix MLS search site, FreePhoenixMLSSearch.com. Writing to me from Florida, he had found a property on our site that he wanted to purchase. To his credit, the home is very aggressively priced to its competition, as well as being listed for several thousand dollars less than the lowest recent comparable sale. In other words, very far from being wrong about this offer, he is right on the money. Plus which, he’s an investor, so he’s not going to have to explain to his spouse that he bought her a mail-order homestead.

But still…

But: Still: Thanks to DocuSign, we had everything done 53 minutes later. I had Phoenix handyman Mark Deermer meet me at the property so we could take a look at it — this after the contracts were already executed — but there was no key in the lockbox so we weren’t able to go inside. But we have ten days from acceptance to look for red flags, so there’s no risk in the work we’ve done so far.

But still…

Took me by surprise, but it’s been utterly painless till now. We may end up killing the deal yet, but, if not, we’ll close in 30 days or fewer.

So: Glenn Kelman: My hat — the one I don’t wear and won’t have to eat — is off to you. It’s a whole new world of real estate.

Dear David Gibbons: Around here we dance on bridges.
I rejoice that you are seeking splendor!
Someday, please teach us all to Diski Dance on a bridge!

This question began to bug me about 18 months ago as I was headin’ towards the return of my firm to our local San Diego market. I’m gonna be a lister for the most part — can’t help it, it’s in my DNA. My dad always said it was one of the ways to keep my ManCard. Actually, those who know me assume I won’t be showing houses, as my son will be representing buyers who can’t get started in investment property, but can own as cheaply as they can rent — another post altogether. I’m more than happy for him to be on the road.

As I was sayin’, in January of 2009 I was wondering how effective these sites really are when the Firestones kissed the pavement. The answers most agents finally gave me were exactly what I’d expected — they use them to get listings. Potential sellers are impressed like Little Leaguers at their first big league game when they see that Larry Lister from TopProducer Real Estate will be putting their home on 3,058 different sites — and by Saturday to boot. Boy, does that guy know how to market, or what?!

Um, I opt for ‘what’. This declaration of implied marketing savvy, also implies the agent is a techie of the first degree. Geez, does he leap tall buildings in a single bound too?

Wanting to find out for myself, I did a little experiment with the first local listing I’d taken in about six years. No sign — no fancy stand-alone websites — no Craig’s List ads — nothin’ except the good old MLS.

Oh, and doin’ things right in the first place.

Doin’ things right? I shameless copy Greg’s listing to-do list and claim it as my own. Clients think I’m innovative when in reality I’m BawldJapan. I have added an original twist, at least original for me. We bring in an interior designer who has the kind of experience most any 10 designers out there won’t have between ‘em.

Here’s what she ordered done on the property in question.

Best curb appeal in the neighborhood — check — already true when we got there. Quick redesign/remodel of both bathrooms. Shorten an interior wall here, modify a patio cover there, drywall the garage, and for kicks ‘n giggles, re-floored and/or re-carpeted the whole place. Oh, and painted everything not moving inside. Staged it pretty well, but not like we will in the future.

Results? Hit the MLS late Friday afternoon, opened escrow Wednesday morning. Took awhile since there was some give ‘n take between offer and acceptance. Again, no sign, nothin’ online, just MLS.

Back to my massively unscientific, Amateur Night at the Bijou, poll.

When pressed, every single agent, without exception, admitted that using all the various zombie-like listing sites was a marketing move used to convince sellers to list. And the congregation responds with a resounding — DUH! Having your listing on 1,001 sites is what may be gettin’ you traction during your listing presentation, but I’ve yet to find anyone who honestly believes they’ve produced (meaningful) squat in the sales of their listings.

It’s the 21st century version of the Open House — poster child for agents playin’ Hide the Pea with their sellers. It’s even in many of their presentations. “Yes Mr. and Mrs. Seller, we’ll put your listing on special websites all over the world. And…and…we’ll, um…we’ll hold really bitchen Open Houses too — Yeah, that’s the ticket. (Apologies to Greg & the rest who love them. To each his own.)

Meanwhile, their neighbors are impressed within an inch of their lives by how hard that nice real estate agent has been working. They hold Open Houses, and they have all sorts of stuff they do online. Aren’t they just the best of all 27 worlds?!!

NOTE: I’m not talkin’ about the stand-alone websites for listings. I’d just like the time to get one of ‘em up before the damn property goes into escrow.

Look, will I have open houses for the vacant rental homes/condos/townhomes I list in San Diego? Yeah, probably. I’ll recruit some starving agent who’ll be grateful for the opportunity to snag a buyer or three. I’ll tell my sellers exactly what I’m doin’ — showin’ other income property owners in the area how hard we work for them. Usually, when I’ve confessed this to a seller/client they laugh their butts off. I tell ‘em it’s intra-industry charity work. (That was bad, right?) Then they always ask the question.

“How many listings have you sold using open houses?”

“I’m positive of one, though there may have been one other.”

The TakeAway

When was the last time you shopped for a used car? Why did you buy that one? It was priced right. It looked fantastic — easily better than the others. It performed as advertised. All things considered, it was the best one you’d seen, hands down — so you bought it. Betcha you didn’t hafta be sold much if at all. Right?

The local MLS or some agent’s site with an IDX is all ya need out there. OK, Realtor.com comes with the MLS, right? Cool.

You’re a professional. List properties to sell, and stop listing properties to market.

Been around for awhile? Here’s your 60 second ‘listing presentation’ — “Mr. & Mrs. Seller, here’s a list of properties we’ve sold in the last six months. Here are the seller’s contact info.” I’ve often done that by phone, then immediately emailed them the contact info, promising to call them the next day. Just as often they’d call me first.

Do I have this whole 1,001 listing websites thing wrong? Am I the one who can’t find the pea?

One year the herd wanders toward the seacoast. You encamp a short walk away from a trading post built by a sea-faring civilization.

For the first time in their lives, your tribesmen discover a way of life different from their own. The traders live indoors, sleeping on beds! Their diet consists of more than meat and foraged nuts. They eat grain, fruit and fish, flavoring their water with delectable nectars.

Wealth is not shared. Villagers trade with each other to get what they need — and each family owns its own land! Disputes are resolved by reasoned conciliation, not by fiat. Even so, each family seems to own more weapons than your whole tribe combined.

Anyone can introduce a new tool, technique or idea at any time — upending the whole civilization if it comes to that — and not only is this not forbidden, it is avidly sought!

This is horrifying to you as High Priest, but your horror is nothing compared to the apoplexy of the Chieftain. As he watches tribesmen disappearing into the village one by one, he turns to you for a solution.

Now you understand the story of Cain and Abel.

Cain made a sacrifice of grain, Abel of meat, and the meat — the wealth of the herders — was pleasing to the god of the tribe. Why does Cain slay Abel in the story? To scare the tribesmen back into the herd.

The Greeks found a better way to live, spreading it with capitalistic abandon. Those who abhorred the Greek way of life crafted their mythologies to portray Hellenism as evil.

Would you like to change the world, forever, for the good, one mind at a time? Here’s how:

If you live in Cain’s world, stop pretending to live in Abel’s.

If your life depends on capitalism, private property and free trade, stop pretending to admire collectivism. If you thrive by continuous innovation, stop enshrining tradition. If you govern your behavior by reason and conciliation, stop praising vengeance and retribution. If you want to live free from coercion by other people, stop pushing other people around by force.

You know your way of life is better. Dare to share that secret with the victims of Abel. You are wrong to let Abel’s High Priests make you feel guilty about your wealth, but you are also wrong to hoard this civilization — this incomparable gift from Cain — to yourself. Innocents the world over are starving — in terror, in squalor — because you don’t have the courage to say that Abel was evil and Cain was good.

Make that one small change in your life, and the rest will come of its own…

December 6, 2006

Reasons to be cheerful: Defying the specter of ugly fates.

• Part 0: The ground we stand upon is firm and the lever of the human mind grows ever stronger.
• Part 0.5: Sleeping giants can’t sleep forever.
• Part 1: Things rarely change as quickly or as dramatically as we expect them to.
• Part 1.5: Who cares about the tunnel? All I can see is the light…
• Part 2: If we are wise, and if we are lucky, we won’t “meet the new boss” because there won’t be any bosses.
• Part 2.5: It’s raining soup and all you can do is piss and moan that Big Mother hasn’t given you a free bowl.
• Part 2.9: Marksmanship is a perfectible praxis.
• Part 2.9.5: Carrying a concealed firearm is the first step to reclaiming responsibility for your own self-defense.
• Part 3.0.0: While it may be implausible that western civilization could collapse, this much seems certain: You will not be prepared for what happens next.
• Part 3.0.1: You are ungovernable: Other people have power over you only because you have surrendered your own sovereign authority to them — and they can’t stop you from taking it back.
• Part 3.0.2: What has it cost us to have been so wrong for so long about selflessness and self-adoration?
• Part 3.0.3: When you resolve never to let other people dominate you, you come to be indomitable.
• Part 3.1: The song of the self.
• Part 3.1.1: Psalm.
• Part 3.1.2: Redemption is egoism in action, so do the world a favor and catch your self doing something right.
• Part 3.1.3: Praising Cain: Change the world forever by learning to love your life the way you actually live it.
• Part 3.2: Yuppie love: The egoist’s guide to mastering the art of frolicking naked with the one you love.
  

Anybody who followed his World Cup trip to South Africa saw the glow on his face, in his Facebook pictures, and the longing in his heart, on his Facebook status updates.  Social media are interesting platforms.  They have the power to bring you much closer to people you’ve met or allow you to learn more about those you’ve yet to meet.   I “met” David on Active Rain, was drawn to the Zillow brand because of him (and Drew Meyers), and am grateful to him for supporting  the inaugural real estate social media marketing conference.

I’ve battled with, yelled at, drank beer with, collaborated with, and tried to support David Gibbons for a number of reasons but, in the end, it’s all about mentschkeit.  David G from Zillow is the type of guy you want on your team….and you want to play on his team, too.

I”m not going to cry about his departure because between  Skype and Facebook, Seattle is not much farther than Jo-Berg.  My goal today is to remind you of the single most important lesson we learned, from David G:  What Would David Gibbons Do?

The WWDGD lesson is to represent yourself  positively online and always sell your brand.  The trick is in the delivery.  David G. never skulked and pounced, like a sleazy corporate pitchman.  David G. was always part of the conversation, offering ideas, debating, and developing best practices.  If there was ever a spokesman for the ” RE.net“, Davig G would be that guy.  Why?  He lives in our world.

So I’ll just say “Hamba Kahle” to David G.  I’d say I’ll miss him but I doubt I’ll notice he’s moved.

By taking advantage of the multi user capability and tweaking a themes template files to allow for very little customization, you can build, test, deliver, (and tweak for improvement) sites that do a nice job of converting visitors to incubatable leads.

Some early Retechulous stabs at this wp 3.0 mulitsite squeeze page concept include:

• PropertyBuzzer.Com
• 247Property.Info
• FixerUpperLoan.Info

and… the site I’ve been wanting to build for years (I even bought the domain once, let it expire, then waited for it to come back available)…..

GreenErections.Com!

…An eco friendly squeeze page for real estate pros that sure to delight, offend, and most importantly differentiate!

Anyway, full disclosure. I’m letting folks fire these sites up for free as a bit of a retechulous lead generation ploy… so if you’re interested in grabbing one for yourself, there’s a form that’ll let you start the process within the eco friendly real estate squeeze page (anchor text) blog post I just fired up on the subject.

Very interested to hear whether Anyone else out there is having similar fun with WP 3.0?

• You are a sovereign soul. Your purposive behavior is exclusively controlled by your self.

• You cannot be governed. Other people cannot control your behavior, nor you theirs.
• To the extent that other people — your religion, the government, your family or friends — might seem to control you, this is a consequence of your own freely-tendered consent, your own explicit, freely-chosen, on-going cooperation.
• Because other people’s seeming control over you originates in your own sovereignty, you can recover your freedom at any time you want, simply by withdrawing your consent.
• If you have surrendered any of your sovereignty in the past, your life will be better — for you — once you have regained full control over yourself.

If you have made the mental effort to recover your sovereignty in full, your life will already be better. This is a profoundly important reason to be cheerful, wouldn’t you say?

In other essays, I take up the mental, physical and moral benefits of a full commitment to self-adoration, but this is simple enough to see in summary: If you devote your life to doing everything you can think of to make your life better, more perfect — more perfectly, more abundantly rich in every kind splendor — your life will be immeasurably improved.

Now reflect that we’re talking about what might happen if the shit really does hit the fan. If the government of the United States does not collapse under its own vast weight, so much the better. But even if it does, your own unique life will still be better than it might have been had you not made this change, won’t it?

There is no downside to self-love. You’ve been poisoned on the idea, for your whole life, by people who know they cannot rule free minds. But just by daring to let your mind run free, by daring to be the uniquely beautiful specimen of humanity you have been all along, your life will be everything you’ve always known it could be.

Yes, the world outside your mind can be better or worse — perhaps truly awful. But once you have broken all those chains that bind you, your own life can be everything you can make of it, and you will be better-equipped to deal with any challenges you might face from thugs, priests, politicians, pushy relatives and snoopy neighbors. I am not minimizing how bad things might get, but once you resolve to maximize your own in-born and cultivated capabilities, your own life will come to be progressively better, even if your external circumstance get progressively worse.

There’s more. If you learn to live the way I am talking about, you will be impossible to push around. Thugs of all flavors live and die by your fear of what they might do to you. If you learn to love your self more than anything else on earth, you will be indomitable — as a matter of practical reality, not as some comic book fantasy.

Do you see why? When the thug says, “Do it or die!” he doesn’t want you dead. He wants you to do his bidding. If you respond, “Go ahead and kill me, asshole!” you’ve taken away his — imaginary — power over you. He might kill you, anyway, but he will not have achieved his objective. And you will not have soiled your self by groveling before a brute.

That might seem like a poor strategy, when the game is being played one-on-one. But suppose everyone around you shares our ideas about the supreme value of self-adoration? Now you have an entire community of people who would rather die than be slaves, and, in consequence none of them can be enslaved — and all of them are constantly on watch for opportunities to kill the thug. This is how free people stay free — by understanding that human sovereignty should never be traded for any other value.

[To be continued in Part 3.0.4.]

Reasons to be cheerful: Defying the specter of ugly fates.

• Part 0: The ground we stand upon is firm and the lever of the human mind grows ever stronger.
• Part 0.5: Sleeping giants can’t sleep forever.
• Part 1: Things rarely change as quickly or as dramatically as we expect them to.
• Part 1.5: Who cares about the tunnel? All I can see is the light…
• Part 2: If we are wise, and if we are lucky, we won’t “meet the new boss” because there won’t be any bosses.
• Part 2.5: It’s raining soup and all you can do is piss and moan that Big Mother hasn’t given you a free bowl.
• Part 2.9: Marksmanship is a perfectible praxis.
• Part 2.9.5: Carrying a concealed firearm is the first step to reclaiming responsibility for your own self-defense.
• Part 3.0.0: While it may be implausible that western civilization could collapse, this much seems certain: You will not be prepared for what happens next.
• Part 3.0.1: You are ungovernable: Other people have power over you only because you have surrendered your own sovereign authority to them — and they can’t stop you from taking it back.
• Part 3.0.2: What has it cost us to have been so wrong for so long about selflessness and self-adoration?
• Part 3.0.3: When you resolve never to let other people dominate you, you come to be indomitable.
• Part 3.1: The song of the self.
• Part 3.1.1: Psalm.
• Part 3.1.2: Redemption is egoism in action, so do the world a favor and catch your self doing something right.
• Part 3.1.3: Praising Cain: Change the world forever by learning to love your life the way you actually live it.
• Part 3.2: Yuppie love: The egoist’s guide to mastering the art of frolicking naked with the one you love.
  

I know a bit more techie stuff these days, but not much more. So there you have it — I’m a legit, card-carryin’ TechTard.

OK — Let’s start with SEO, if only so we can leave it first.

I use key words in my posts mostly cuz I need to in order to make the damn thing readable, not for juice. Check out my page rank, then tell me, cuz I don’t have a clue what it is, nor do I give a damn. Most decent bloggers readin’ this draw traffic orders of magnitude more than I do. They also, most of ‘em, get more comments on their average post than I do in 10.

Please tell me how much money real estate bloggers earn per comment, I’m curious. How much more do they earn with 10,000 readers a month compared to the guy who doesn’t average 1,000? 10 X more? Go ahead, make my day, say yes. What a buncha hooey. Does SEO work to generate more ‘traffic’? No doubt. When driving, don’t we avoid traffic? Those extra cars don’t get us to where we’re going any faster, do they? No — they’re just traffic muddling up our commute. They don’t care where we’re goin’ or how fast we get there. Next, we’ll hear from experts who deny they drive anything but ‘quality’ traffic your way.

Yeah, and Barry Bonds never juiced.

IMHO, real estate blogs are a success for one reason: The bloggers clearly know what they’re writing about. Regardless of how much of a crowd Barnes & Noble creates on a given Saturday in a given store, if most of what’s on their shelves is junk, they lose. Anyone wanna challenge that? ‘Updates’? Those, for the most part, are used by agent sites sporting an IDX, duh. More traffic = more users searching for homes = more convertible leads. Again, not exactly E=mc², right? SEO is often, not always, a con used by tech types who know that most folks simply don’t understand what leads to, well, business.

A Blog’s Value

How much are our blogs worth? I dunno. But, there are all kinds of ‘experts’ who’ll tell us. Let’s use an investment technique — capitalization of the net operating income. What’s the ‘expense’ of blogging? Our time, a small monthly payment or two? A double digit ‘cap rate’ is much admired by the real estate investment community. Let’s use a 15% cap rate.

If a blogger averaged roughly $300,000 a year from their blogging efforts the last several years, does that make the blog worth $2,000,000? It sure as hell should. If you hax $2Million to invest in a great, safe, neighborhood, and would get $300,000 annually, wouldn’t you seriously consider buyin’ it? Oh hell yes.

Put that ad on Craig’s list if ya wanna hear some hilarious one-line putdowns. I only include blog valuation here, as the amounts paid for blogs have been pennies, relatively speaking. Millions my ass.

Agent websites with IDX searches…

Show of hands — How many reading this post have IDXs that produce a sale a month consistently, month in and month out. Don’t be shy.

Do they work? Here’s an example of the golden side of the coin.

The leader of my ‘team’ in a state in which I’ve done much business, just went out on his own this year. He’s kickin’ ass and takin’ names. He already has a dozen agents. He has an IDX on his website. He knows how to use it. His conversion rate in terms of dollars is astounding to me. Even with all the time-suck he’s had to deal with in this start-up, he’s managed to put $ix figures of income into escrow in the first month or so — himself — all via his IDX.

Here’s the majority side of the coin.

Grab a thousand agent websites at random, all over the country. Ask them how much biz their IDX has provided them in the last 24 months. It’s my guesstimate 95% of them will say less than six, which is less than one a quarter. And that’s assuming they’re tellin’ us the truth. Agents don’t lie about their production, do they?

(Cue the commenters generating wicked high volume from their IDX sites.)

Save your breath, as I know most of you are for real. But you’re 5% of the crowd — at best, IMHO. The rest are suckin’ the big green weenie.

I bring up IDXs for a completely selfish reason. (Hat tip: Greg on the selfish angle.) For the first time since the last quarter of 2003, I’m now able to look for business in my own backyard. You can’t begin to appreciate what that means to me, as few if any of you have been doing literally 100% of your real estate brokerage business outside of your local market. People think I make a lotta money, and I do. But let’s be seriously, nakedly honest here – for every dollar I’ve made around the country the last seven years, I’ve lost 2-5 bucks not being able to work here in San Diego.

I’ve now added an IDX to my firm’s site, as prices have made it possible to at least list small income properties for sale/exchange. I still won’t sell SD props to investors, as I value my nightly eight hours and have a conscience. I will, however, put first time buyers into low priced stuff, including local 2-4 unit properties if they can’t afford/qualify to invest outa town. And no, it won’t be me drivin’ folks around town, but I’ve got that covered.

Soon, that site will not only have blog posts added to it, but will attract investors wanting to list their income properties with my firm. There might (must be?) a real estate website/blog/IDX that consistently produces listings, but I’ve not seen it. What I mean by that, is a site where the primary function is to generate listings — not buyers. According to the experts with whom I’ve broached this subject, that’s been a pretty hard nut for them to crack.

I’m gonna do my best.

OldSchool VS 2.76949 — or whatever we’re up to now…

Don’t know about you, but I’m sick to death of the forever ‘just around the corner’ online revolution in real estate brokerage. None who espouse that line sport blue eyes, cuz they’re so fulla crap they’ve turned brown — IMHO.

Stop typing your inane comment about dinosaurs, puttin’ words in my mouth I never said. I believe online sales/marketing works, and for some, wildly well. But I tire of the crickets’ chorus inevitably following my challenge to the tech crowd to show me a large firm of say, 40 agents or more, with more than one agent in the top 10 producers who generate 100% of the business through their online efforts — sans referrals. The OldSchoolers are still crushin’ ‘em all over the country. (Lord, is it selfish of me to love writing that sentence, over and over?)

And yes, I believe there’ll come a day when we’ll look around and see most of our business coming from online efforts. That day hasn’t come, and it doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. Toward that end, I’m tickled pink at the prospect of doing local business again. Why? Primarily cuz my projections show a high probability of at least doubling annual income, and a reasonable likelihood of quintupling it. In other words, I’m gonna be my own guinea pig, as much of my local business (not nearly all) will come from OldSchool techniques. Hell, I even ordered letterhead and cards.

By the way, being a consistent sort, I called ‘The Guy’ to run my blog and company website. I could study what he does for a year and not know what he’s forgotten. He’s already given me a couple ideas I wouldn’t have dreamed of myself. Yeah, I know, big surprise. At year’s end, sooner if circumstances permit, I’ll be sharing my experience both in returning to San Diego and the success — or not — of my approach to business generation.

Would love to hear your thoughts, advice, correction, or admonishment on any of the above. Have a good one.

This is a premise I believe can be defended in reason to infinite precision: Everything squalid on the face of the earth, for all of human history, is the consequence of selflessness, of the deliberate, conscious, completely voluntary renunciation of the self by a person who has self-induced the belief that some objective he seeks can only be attained by an act of self-destruction.

But that argument is just the corollary of this one: Everything we know of splendor, within our own minds and in the world around us, is an artifact not just of selfishness but of the most profound and most profoundly-beautiful self-love. If there is any normal state for human beings — normal as a matter of ontology, not statistics — this is it: To be so much in love with the things you make with the time of your life and the effort of your mind and your body that you cannot bear for those things to be less than perfect.

Think of that: Whether you’re looking at a skyscraper or listening to a symphony or simply teaching a child to read, the source of the splendor you experience is self-adoration and nothing else — not just your own delight at being alive, or the child’s, but also the architect’s, the composer’s, the author’s and all of the people who worked on those creations. And then consider that it is self-love — the self-love that leads you to seek the best values you can obtain for yourself and for your family — that every dogma you have ever heard of, religious or political, denounces to the depths of every imaginary hell.

This is not a conspiracy theory. It’s all too real. The people in this world who would dominate and enslave you have only one way of achieving that objective: By conning you into cheating yourself not just of your self and of your sovereignty, but of everything you might have known of splendor in your life. It might seem poetic to say that they rob you of everything and leave you with nothing, but this is false. In fact, they rob you of everything you might have been in your life, and every splendor you might have known, and then deliver to you a life of infinite squalor instead.

How rich might you be, if you had devoted your life to making everything you could of your time, instead of feeling guilty about every self-loving thought you have ever had?

How deep might your love for your spouse be — how enthralling might your love-life together be — if you had concentrated on making your marriage perfect, instead of worrying that seeking your own happiness might be a betrayal of your beliefs?

How much more completely could you be a parent to your children and a worthy companion to your friends, if you had been willing, for all the years of your life, to put your own values first in your life, not the goals dictated to you by your doctrine?

How much more might you have achieved, had you been willing, for all your life, to live up to your self, to be that hero of your own life that you imagined in such loving detail when first you abstracted the idea your self?

I’m not trying to take anything from you. But I am trying to point out how much has already been taken from you by other people’s attempts to dominate you — and by your own attempts to dominate them.

I like to talk about the cost of government this way: If we say that the first great betrayal of American freedom came about with the 1789 Constitution, then we can make an effort to calculate the cost-to-date of this hellhound we have unleashed on ourselves.

So we start with the idea that every action of government occasions some loss of wealth. Taxes, obviously, take wealth from the productive, deploying it toward unproductive ends. Regulation increases costs without increasing the economic value of the regulated good. Tariffs, duties and fees all raise prices. Labor laws increase costs and decrease productivity. Deficit spending impairs the credit markets. In short, there is nothing that government does that does not result in a drag on the economy.

Now consider that each one of those costs carries with it a corresponding opportunity cost in the marketplace: If my money has been stolen by taxation, I cannot invest it in pursuit of profit. So the drag occasioned by government is actually doubled: Introducing force into the market not only destroys wealth at first-hand, it also destroys the opportunity the producer of that that wealth had to put it to further use, and thus to produce even more wealth.

It gets worse. Each one of those opportunity costs has an interest value, going forward. And since we can expect successive profits to be reinvested, the fact is that each one of those opportunity costs has a compound interest value.

So here is an interesting question: What is the compound interest value of all of the government we have afflicted ourselves with in the United States since 1789? What might we have achieved with that wealth, had we not wasted it on the vain pretense that people’s behavior can be governed from the outside?

Now let’s take that all one giant step further: If we acknowledge that every human being who has ever lived has inhibited his or her self to greater and lesser degrees in response to attempts by other people to govern our behavior — how much have we lost?

What is the compound interest value of all of that lost human potential? How much incredible wealth are we still throwing away, every day? How much richer could we all be, if some of us were to decide to stop pretending that other people can be governed from the outside?

How much better could your own life be, if you stopped worrying about what other people have the power to do to you, and what you have the power to do to them, and instead devoted your whole mind to making your own life better in every way you can think of?

[To be continued in Part 3.0.3.]

Reasons to be cheerful: Defying the specter of ugly fates.

• Part 0: The ground we stand upon is firm and the lever of the human mind grows ever stronger.
• Part 0.5: Sleeping giants can’t sleep forever.
• Part 1: Things rarely change as quickly or as dramatically as we expect them to.
• Part 1.5: Who cares about the tunnel? All I can see is the light…
• Part 2: If we are wise, and if we are lucky, we won’t “meet the new boss” because there won’t be any bosses.
• Part 2.5: It’s raining soup and all you can do is piss and moan that Big Mother hasn’t given you a free bowl.
• Part 2.9: Marksmanship is a perfectible praxis.
• Part 2.9.5: Carrying a concealed firearm is the first step to reclaiming responsibility for your own self-defense.
• Part 3.0.0: While it may be implausible that western civilization could collapse, this much seems certain: You will not be prepared for what happens next.
• Part 3.0.1: You are ungovernable: Other people have power over you only because you have surrendered your own sovereign authority to them — and they can’t stop you from taking it back.
• Part 3.0.2: What has it cost us to have been so wrong for so long about selflessness and self-adoration?
• Part 3.0.3: When you resolve never to let other people dominate you, you come to be indomitable.
• Part 3.1: The song of the self.
• Part 3.1.1: Psalm.
• Part 3.1.2: Redemption is egoism in action, so do the world a favor and catch your self doing something right.
• Part 3.1.3: Praising Cain: Change the world forever by learning to love your life the way you actually live it.
• Part 3.2: Yuppie love: The egoist’s guide to mastering the art of frolicking naked with the one you love.
  

All of human history, ultimately, is an attempt to contravene and negate and obviate this simple fact, and it is for this reason that every human civilization — so far — must be rated a failure. Some have been better than others, of course, and I sing the praises of the Greeks not just for what they did in the Hellas of old, but for what they are still doing all over the world. The Greek idea — each man has the right and power to own and control his own life and property — undergirds the best approaches we have seen — so far — to truly human civilizations.

And the United States — for a while — was the best-ever expression of that Greek ideal, the freest civilization ever yet seen on the earth. But like the polities of the Greeks before us, American society carried within it the seeds of its own destruction and the horrors visited upon you every day in the news are those seeds bearing their full fruit at last.

Here is the problem, for the government of the United States and for any would-be governor of human behavior: There is nothing I can do to cause or prevent your purposive actions. I can threaten you or beat you or tax you or imprison you or kill you, but I cannot cause you to do anything I want you to do, nor can I prevent you from doing anything I want for you not to do. You are a moral free agent as a manifestation of your nature as a human being, and there is nothing I can do to contravene or negate or obviate your sovereign freedom.

But wait. Isn’t it true, as Rousseau had it, that “man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains”? Indeed it is. So how do we resolve the conundrum? Humans cannot be enslaved, and yet everywhere we look, humans are slaves — most of them bound by terms much worse than those we suffer under.

Emerson gives us the answer: “We forge the chains that bind us.” Human beings cannot be enslaved against their will. In the case of bondage slavery, your choice might come down to work or die, but you still have a choice. In modern America, your self-initiated betrayal of your own inviolable sovereignty is much easier to take: Just pay your taxes and affect to obey thousands upon thousands of idiotic laws, and you won’t be sent to prison. Doesn’t seem like much of a price to pay, does it?

I can’t speak for you, but that price is much too high for me. And the course of recent events argues that more and more people are waking up to the idea that they don’t want government, at least, controlling so much of their lives.

But the war on your sovereignty did not start with government. Dig into any religion and you’ll find a profound hatred for your life, for your self and for its autonomy. As with governments, some religions are worse, in this respect, than others, but what every religion seeks is your voluntary submission of your own inviolable sovereignty — your free will — to the object of worship. You are called upon to deny your own mind and to accept apocrypha, divination and received doctrine as substitutes for reason. And you are called upon to denounce and renounce your life as you actually live it in praise and reverence for attested virtues that would result in your immediate demise, should you try to live as you are commanded by your faith to live. This is the political power religions have held over innocent people forever: If you accept the doctrine, you must condemn your own life. To stay alive, you must commit sins by your own standards, and yet the only life you yourself regard as being worthy of your love, honor, devotion, adoration — the only life you can worship unashamedly — is the one that allegedly commences after you are dead.

Governments have always envied the near-perfect power religions have over faithful people, but they came up with their own secret sauce in the form of altruism. People use that word to mean behaving kindly or charitably, but, at the same time, everyone understands its true meaning: Selflessness. In this respect, altruism is the exact opposite of egoism. Considered as ontology, selflessness is impossible, of course. To be alive as a human being is to be a self, this before anything else. It is not possible to remain alive while behaving — even as a matter of pretense — as if you have no self. And that’s the source of altruism’s power: You cannot live a life of virtue, by the moral standard you have set for yourself, and so you come to be self-imprisoned by your own failure to live up to your ideals.

In either of these cases — and in thousands of other variations on this theme — it is your own mind you must renounce, denounce and enslave, this as the price of your own on-going survival. An ordinary thug threatens only your body and your property. You might comply, for now, but there is always the chance that you will rebel. But the high priests of religion and of the welfare state have nothing to fear from the truly faithful. Once you’ve adopted a doctrine that insists that you yourself are fundamentally evil — this for committing the crime of remaining alive, even though, by your own moral convictions, you can only be truly good by engaging in behavior that would result in your death — once the price of your on-going life is your own damnation of that life — then you are well and truly enslaved, and by your own hand.

Here’s the good news about every cult of self-annihilation: There’s always an escape hatch. Only the very pious feel themselves obliged to ruin their lives in pursuit of a self-induced religious ecstasy. Normal people can toss some cash into the offering plate and express a ritualized regret for their latest sins. And only the very guilt-ridden actually give up the lives they might have had in pursuit of a life in the service of others. Normal people manage to get along by writing checks and expressing politically-correct sentiments at politically-correct moments.

But here’s the bad news about every cult of self-annihilation: The more you fail to live up to the doctrine you profess to believe in, the more do the purveyors of that doctrine have power over you. You forged the chains that bind you, and however loosely you think you might bear those chains, you are still enslaved.

But here’s the best news of all about every victim of every cult of self-annihilation: The chains you bear are yours to break, whenever you want to. Not easily, I will avow, and I am not entreating you to abandon any belief you cherish. But if you want to be free, all you have to do is say “No” and your chains will be broken. Other people have power over you only to the extent that you yourself have conceded that power to them. Withdraw your consent and other people will be forevermore powerless over you.

A thug can push your body in the same way he can push a barrel or a mannequin. If he is strong enough, or if he has confederates, he can bind your limbs or gag or blindfold you. He can tie you to a tree or lock you in a cage. But without your consent, without your explicit, freely-chosen, on-going cooperation, no thug, no priest, no politician can ever cause you to take any purposive action.

Anything a thug can do to you without your cooperation, he could do just as easily and just as productively with your corpse or with a mannequin. The only thing that thug actually wants — the only thing your church and your government actually want — is the one thing than none of them can ever have: To control your behavior.

Only you control your behavior, only your self controls your behavior, only within the silence and solitude of your mind, which no other person can ever enter or even experience at first hand, and which no other person can ever take control of by any sort of direct manipulation. You are a sovereign soul, completely ungovernable by anyone or anything but your self.

This is why the thugs and the priests and the politicians have to hustle you into surrendering your sovereignty to them — because that’s the only way they can have it, as a gift from you. A gift, very probably, that you didn’t even know you were extending to them, and which you might have an urge to snatch back.

[To be continued in Part 3.0.2.]

Reasons to be cheerful: Defying the specter of ugly fates.

• Part 0: The ground we stand upon is firm and the lever of the human mind grows ever stronger.
• Part 0.5: Sleeping giants can’t sleep forever.
• Part 1: Things rarely change as quickly or as dramatically as we expect them to.
• Part 1.5: Who cares about the tunnel? All I can see is the light…
• Part 2: If we are wise, and if we are lucky, we won’t “meet the new boss” because there won’t be any bosses.
• Part 2.5: It’s raining soup and all you can do is piss and moan that Big Mother hasn’t given you a free bowl.
• Part 2.9: Marksmanship is a perfectible praxis.
• Part 2.9.5: Carrying a concealed firearm is the first step to reclaiming responsibility for your own self-defense.
• Part 3.0.0: While it may be implausible that western civilization could collapse, this much seems certain: You will not be prepared for what happens next.
• Part 3.0.1: You are ungovernable: Other people have power over you only because you have surrendered your own sovereign authority to them — and they can’t stop you from taking it back.
• Part 3.0.2: What has it cost us to have been so wrong for so long about selflessness and self-adoration?
• Part 3.0.3: When you resolve never to let other people dominate you, you come to be indomitable.
• Part 3.1: The song of the self.
• Part 3.1.1: Psalm.
• Part 3.1.2: Redemption is egoism in action, so do the world a favor and catch your self doing something right.
• Part 3.1.3: Praising Cain: Change the world forever by learning to love your life the way you actually live it.
• Part 3.2: Yuppie love: The egoist’s guide to mastering the art of frolicking naked with the one you love.
  

…in Oregon, where the state teachers union declared last year that resisting another full-time virtual charter company, the Baltimore-based Connections Academy, would be its top priority

Not educating student,s but resisting change.

Greece is broke. So is England, and so is most of the rest of Europe.

California is broke, Illinois is broke, and, if you count unfunded pension liabilities, not only are all the rest of the states, counties and cities broke, so are all of the surlier labor unions.

Social Security is broke, as is the metamorphosing medical scam to be known, soon enough, as no-healthcare-for-you!

The United States government is broke, of course, limping along, for now, on funds borrowed against the promise of future confiscatory currency inflation, future crippling taxation — or both.

Socialism is a Ponzi scheme, and, before you know it, you run out of suckers to milk. Sooner or later, welfare-state socialism has to collapse. As I’ve argued, I don’t think that time is now. Despite our talent, as a species, for forecasting apocalyptic, pandemic doom, in reality the sky hardly ever falls more than once or twice a day.

Moreover, even though we are enmired in a deep recession — and even though our puerile president is making that recession much worse with every boneheaded error at his command — even so, it is very likely that we are out-producing welfare-state socialism in the long run. That might stick in your craw, but it remains that — even despite the drag on the economy caused by taxes, regulation, deficit spending and waste — the trajectory of the standard of living of every American — and virtually everyone on earth — is steadily upward.

But, but, but! Government is impoverishing us! I saw it on the big-screen HD-TV in the bedroom, and also on the even-bigger-screen HD-TV in the living room, and, just to be sure, I followed-up on the high-speed internet connection on my 27″ quad-core iMac! Don’t try to tell me the world’s not going to hell in a hand-basket! I’ve got the best hardware and software in the world to tell me how terrible my life is!

That much is funny to me, but, even so, these circumstances can’t last forever. At some point the parasites will overwhelm the host, and, when that happens, the shit-hammer will come crashing down on all of us — virtuous or vicious, wise or foolish, ready or not.

And no matter how virtuous we might be, no matter how wise, it seems probable to me that most of us will be unprepared for life in a world where government has collapsed. We’ve seen this happen in other places, generally very poor places, but few of us have ever lived through a state of chaos.

So what happens? Looting and shooting, at first, with the amount of that kind of behavior being a reflection of how well-armed and how well-prepared owners of stuff attractive to looters turn out to be. Ordinary people will pull into their shells with a pronounced vigor, making lists and inventories and peeking out windows to see if there are any looters around.

The inventory will not be inspiriting, very probably. You may be lucky enough to have two weeks’ worth of meals on hand — less if the electrical power has failed. Still worse, if the water supply has failed, you may have next to nothing to drink in your home. And no matter how confident you feel about your ability to defend your home from marauders, I’m betting you have fewer than two hundred rounds of ammunition to your name — or is it zero rounds, and zero firearms, as well?

So you have no food, no water and no firepower. The nicer name for your status is prisoner-of-war. The not-so-nice name? Corpse.

But here’s some good news: If you are healthy, and if there is food enough to keep you healthy, you might just get to live. There will be a need for people to clean up all of those corpses, after all.

Thousands of corpses, maybe millions. Welfare-state socialism rewards thoughtless people for being thoughtless — for being stupid and lazy and completely incompetent to provide for their own survival. As bare as your own larder might seem, the victims of the welfare-state will have it much worse. They will die in droves, by the thousands, as soon as Big Mother’s massive teats dry up.

It gets worse. No water, no sewage treatment, no reliable supply-line for food — and corpse after corpse in one house after the next. In a circumstance like that, you have to expect some nasty epidemics. Too bad there is no pharmaceutical resupply chain. Too bad your doctor is afraid to open his door — assuming he’s still alive.

If you get very lucky, the people who will have formed a gang big enough to make you their prisoner-of-war will be imbued with the Spirit of Seventy Six — the idea that all men are created equal and have the right to live in freedom. If you’re that lucky, your time living under martial law might be fairly brief, and life could return to something like normal within just a few years.

What if you’re not so lucky? Whether your overlords are socialists or theocrats or just thugs, your true name will either be slave or corpse. The freedom you grew up with — the freedom you have always taken for granted — will be gone. For years? For centuries? Forever? Gone from your life, at least, for all the future you can see — all the future you can bear to look at.

Now here’s an interesting question:

Doesn’t that seem like a fate worth avoiding?

Please keep in mind that I don’t think this is going to happen. It could, but I’m betting my money — and your life! — on happier fates.

But stipulate that it could happen — everything I’ve described and things still worse. Your children haven’t been stolen from you, conscripted into genocidal armies. Your daughters haven’t been raped and gutted. You haven’t had to choose between starving to death or eating the rotting flesh of one of those thousands of corpses you see everywhere. You haven’t been invited either to guard a deathcamp or to perish there instead. All of these things have happened — and recently — and there is no basis for arguing that they can’t happen here.

But if you want to avoid the collapse of civilization, what’s the one thing that could swing the balance?

[To be continued in Part 3.0.1.]

Reasons to be cheerful: Defying the specter of ugly fates.

• Part 0: The ground we stand upon is firm and the lever of the human mind grows ever stronger.
• Part 0.5: Sleeping giants can’t sleep forever.
• Part 1: Things rarely change as quickly or as dramatically as we expect them to.
• Part 1.5: Who cares about the tunnel? All I can see is the light…
• Part 2: If we are wise, and if we are lucky, we won’t “meet the new boss” because there won’t be any bosses.
• Part 2.5: It’s raining soup and all you can do is piss and moan that Big Mother hasn’t given you a free bowl.
• Part 2.9: Marksmanship is a perfectible praxis.
• Part 2.9.5: Carrying a concealed firearm is the first step to reclaiming responsibility for your own self-defense.
• Part 3.0.0: While it may be implausible that western civilization could collapse, this much seems certain: You will not be prepared for what happens next.
• Part 3.0.1: You are ungovernable: Other people have power over you only because you have surrendered your own sovereign authority to them — and they can’t stop you from taking it back.
• Part 3.0.2: What has it cost us to have been so wrong for so long about selflessness and self-adoration?
• Part 3.0.3: When you resolve never to let other people dominate you, you come to be indomitable.
• Part 3.1: The song of the self.
• Part 3.1.1: Psalm.
• Part 3.1.2: Redemption is egoism in action, so do the world a favor and catch your self doing something right.
• Part 3.1.3: Praising Cain: Change the world forever by learning to love your life the way you actually live it.
• Part 3.2: Yuppie love: The egoist’s guide to mastering the art of frolicking naked with the one you love.
  

President Menendez was elected by a sweeping margin when he ran against former Senator Mel Martinez in the first ever race-neutral Presidential election.  Former President Obama signed the Neutrality in Elections Act of 2013 and it was agreed that Presidential elections would be held with a specific race/ethnicity as the qualifying factor, every eight years, so as to offer opportunity to all Americans.  We  The G.O.P originally nominated George P. Bush but his ambiguous ethnicity disqualified him for this particular election; he’ll have his chance in 16 years.

Crazy?  One commenter thought I might have gone a bit too far:

For me, a typical day at the beach would mainly involve long discussions with Brian on solving the world’s problems (ask us sometime… we’ve got the whole thing whittled down to a small pamphlet) and occasionally testing the sandy hardness of the ocean floor by falling off my boogie board.  (This is all done purposefully and as part of my larger interest in oceanography.  I could ride a wave on a boogie board if I wanted to…)  Sometimes, just to spice things up, I see how long I can hold in my gut without passing out in front of an attractive, bikini-clad woman.  They usually do a surprisingly good job of pretending to not even notice me, but we’re so close to Hollywood I assume most of them are just acting…  Anyway, that’s a typical day at the beach for me.  But not yesterday.  Yesterday I was distracted by a gigantic hole.  Yes, a hole… in the sand.  Like I said: not your typical day at the beach.

My two boys and Brian’s daughter spent a good chunk of their morning – when they weren’t out on boogie boards catching waves and staying upright, as if that’s the only way to ride one of those things – digging a hole.  I know, that probably doesn’t sound like much fun, but you have to trust me: catching waves on a boogie board can be fun.  In any case, they dug themselves a pretty good hole.  It was big and deep and had a nice groove cut toward the ocean.  Once the tide came in, they’d have themselves a nice little hot tub just made for three.  (I actually overheard one of them… okay, it was one of my boys, say something about turning it into a jacuzzi.  I’m not sure how they planned on creating bubbles, but I figure what I don’t know won’t hurt me.)

Sure enough, as the tide came in all their hard work started to pay off.  At first there was only a little water, but it was obvious that before long they’d have a first rate hot tub.  It was about this time I began to notice other boys and girls approach; as time passed more and more came until we had a regular Hole in the Beach Gang.  They thought this was the neatest thing they’d ever seen and soon began to splash in the hole too.  It didn’t occur to any of them to ask if they could play in the slowly filling “hot tub.”  I guess they figured holes were just something that appeared at the beach without any work; kind of a no-cost benefit they were all entitled to play in and enjoy.  Pretty soon, my boys and Brian’s daughter came over to us and pointed out that they weren’t getting to play in the hot tub they’d created because there were “all these kids in there who didn’t even help build it!”  I have to say I was shocked, shocked to learn my kids possessed a sense of ownership over this hole.  Why?  Because they got there early?  Because they worked long and hard on it?  Is that any kind of a justification for not sharing it with kids who were busy playing video games all morning and only stumbled into the hole on their way to the ice cream stand?  Being a philosopher, I sat down to formulate a deeply moving response to our children’s dilemma.  Brian on the other hand, ever the pragmatist, just looked at them  and said: “Life’s tough. Wear a helment,” and sent them off to clear jelly fish so he could enter the water for a bit.

I stayed and watched “the hole” though.  I’d become intrigued and I’m glad I did because the most interesting thing happened.  The original three creators of the hole, once they realized they weren’t going to be able to enjoy what they’d built, wandered off to find new adventures.  (At least, I think that’s what they did.  Look, it’s a big crowded beach surrounded by pounding surf and occasional rip tides.  It’s not like I can keep an eye on them every minute…)  The others though, the ones who jumped with both feet into the hole they didn’t create, they stayed and they played and they made that hole their own.  But a very strange thing began to happen.  With each surge of ocean water came a large deposit of sand and the hole became less and less of a hole (and less fun) as it filled with water. 

Now here’s the really odd part: the kids all just looked at each other as it was happening.  They knew their hole was de-holing (don’t bother looking it up, I promise you it’s a word), but they didn’t know what to do about it.  The various shovels and buckets originally used to create the hole were all still there, lying on the outer edge, but no one thought to grab a shovel and contribute.  They just kept playing in less and less water, till one by one they began drifting away.  Maybe some found another magically appearing hole they could take as their own.  I imagined others discovering a blanket spread with hot dogs and chips… and helping themselves to the magic of a free lunch.  It wouldn’t surprise me if one or two went off in search of our three kids – the original builders of the hole – to complain about how it wasn’t built big enough and didn’t last long enough.  (I don’t know for sure where any of them went because that would have required me getting up out of my beach chair and I was, at that particular moment, testing another one of my scientific theories about compression of sand under extremely heavy loads.)

Toward the end of the day, my sons and Brian’s daughter came back around and looked at the hole, or rather: what was once a hole.  It was pretty filled in and the sides had crumbled under the weight of so many kids.  Their shovels and buckets were strewn about.  I asked if they were going to build another hole and they shook their heads no.  ”What’s the point?” my older son asked.  “Yeah,” my younger son chimed in, “if we do, we won’t get to play in it anyway.”  Brian’s daughter summed it up, saying: “I think our hole digging days are over.  We did all the work, but someone else got all the fun.”  Kids say the funniest things, don’t they?

As we broke down the tents and packed the tools and tried to carry as much sand back to my recently detailed car as possible, I remember thinking to myself: I sure hope these little guys enjoyed themselves today, despite what happened with their hole.  And I certainly hope they’re not assimilating this one-time episode into any sort of large-scale, world view.  Deep down I hope that by the time they become adults they can look back on this day and say: ”Life is no day at the beach.”  Just in case though… wear a helmet.

The Hole in the Beach Gang

The model I’ve used since late 1996 is so old it was in place in ancient Rome. It starts at the top with The Guy who then has as many assistants as needed, doing all the work that supports rather than generates company earnings. I’d never go as far as to say it beats the Team approach every time out, but there are some distinct advantages to my favored MO when compared tit or tat with the typical team.

My MO, as stated up top, is simple. I hire assistants as business volume dictates. The more the business, the more assistants. When I was able to work in my local market, San Diego, there were long stretches when I had three full timers — none of whom were paid salaries or by the hour. All were paid based on my production. See what I mean? Nothing new or ‘cutting edge’.

The Boss (Don’t ask who that is — must I explain marriage?) for years has resisted my somewhat awkward attempts to point her in this direction for one of her companies. It’s a retail bridal gown ‘n stuff kinda store. She’s a well known designer who’s also sold to other stores nationwide via her wholesale operation — she’s been doin’ this for over 20 years. Her store (Yes Stevie, there is a God) shares a wall with Hooters in the Mission Valley area of San Diego. It’s a measly 500 square feet.

Her MO was to hire salesladies to deal with customers. It was a constant pain in the ass, as most of ‘em couldn’t manage a one-man picnic if given a plan and a how-to video. I finally resorted to begging and pleading. Then one night not long ago she suddenly announced she was firing everyone, hiring a friend’s daughter to answer the phone etc., and becoming an appointment only store.

I was elated.

I won’t bore you with the details, but sales, which were already better than most on a per square foot basis, are now through the roof. She has so much business she turns down far more bridezillas than she used to. In fact, the other day a couple gals actually thanked her profusely for allowing them in the store without an appointment. Before long I’m confident she’ll need a second assistant to keep things organized, and deal with brides/bride’s maids/bride’s moms who’re being taken care of by the army of alteration ladies she employs.

This new MO was put in place the first of this month. She’s already made just under 80% of last quarter’s production. Her batting average has literally skyrocketed.

But, you quickly ask, “Why is that?”

Don’t over think it. The answer is so simple, even a Realtor can do it. (Hat tip — Russell Shaw) She’s the reason. Brides wanna work with The Gal. The store is now virtually printing money, and it was doin’ damn well before. But then, only about half the brides were able to work directly with her. The other half were shunted off to gals who could study what ‘Nicole’ does for a year and still not know everything she’s forgotten.

The same goes with real estate.

Back in 2002ish I was operating on all 12 cylinders, and had three very cool assistants who were flat awesome. One of them was an agent I was mentoring, but who wasn’t allowed to have their own clients. After a few months he was not only doin’ typical right-hand man stuff for me, but was puttin’ out 80% of the fires that come up from time to time in transactions. I only had to put out the potential forest fires, he did the rest. Imagine how much more time that gave me to do what made the big bucks.

There were literally a few times when, unavoidably, I had two conference rooms goin’ at once. But with three killer assistants doin’ most of the heavy lifting, I was able to shuttle back and forth, getting things done, adding the final touches. The clients very much appreciated how busy we were, and that The Guy was still the one takin’ care of them.

It’s at this point team leaders are dyin’ to interrupt in order to point out that their buyer-agents do extra deals from which he gains 40-60% of the pay. They’re right, no argument. Also, let’s acknowledge the difference between a house agent and an investment property guy. Whereas a client searchin’ for a home in which to live just wants a home, the investor, or even more important, a wannabe investor, doesn’t wanna be ‘shuffled off to Buffalo’ to some agent they’ve never heard of. “Hey, I thought I was gonna be workin’ with The Guy.”

I get it that home buyers are lookin’ for homes, not agents. But what about sellers? You’ve convinced them of your professional superiority, which is why they contacted you in the first place. Unless you’re Russell Shaw, whose team includes one, sometimes two listing specialists, sellers could easily become disenchanted cuz The Guy ‘assigned them’ to an underling. Russ, and those very few like him, are the exceptions proving the rule, in my opinion. Unlike most teams, they can point to a track record of sold listings that ends any, or at least most discussions.

Can you point to a few thousand sold listings? To a couple hundred in the last several months? Didn’t think so — which brings me back to the point — they wanna sell their property, and they want The Guy handling it — Period.

By ensuring you always have support staff doing 95% of what doesn’t generate income, you’re spending most of your time doing, well, what generates income. Duh.

All those follow-ups, all the day-to-day minutia you’re now takin’ care of, even with a team, simply goes away. I’ll admit this works best for a listing oriented agent. Frankly, we all know in our hearts a high school sophomore can be trained to be a buyer-agent in 3-6 weeks. It’s the listing agents who produce inventory, who add the real value as perceived by the public, not buyer-agents. Listing agents don’t need their counterparts to make a living — but try being a buyer-agent without listings. Can we please, Dear Lord in Heaven, not argue this Captain Obvious point?

So how’s my time spent?

The vast majority of the time, I’m doing one of the following.

1. Having an initial conversation with someone interested in what I have to offer — from whatever source they originated.

2. Talkin’ to an owner who needs to sell or exchange.

3. Causing a contract to be created for the purchase of property. And no, I don’t even do that myself.

4. List property for sale/exchange — something I’m just now doing again. Happy freakin’ days!

5. Create and discuss investment plans with new clients.

6. Speak to groups of house agents’ clients who are — or wanna be — investors, generating listings for the house agents — new investment clients for me.

7. Write posts for my blog and others’.

Finally, but not least important by any stretch, is the difference in gross and net income between the two models. For the most part, I’m doin’ as many, if not more sides than most smallish teams. Even when they out produce me in gross volume, my net almost always dwarfs theirs. My expenses don’t include paying commissioned agents. Most team leaders would gladly trade annual pre-tax income with those workin’ my model. They need more office space, more support staff, and all the rest. Me? Our office totals less than 500 square feet including the conference room. My marketing budget is surely about the same as a small team’s — but I simply don’t have many of their expenses to pay.

If a team leader’s group produces $12,000,000 in sides at 3%, they gross $360,000. Take out his marketing costs, office overhead, and buyer-agent commissions, and what’s left for him — maybe $200,000 or so?

The guy with the assistant(s) does the same volume, pays the same for marketing, but pays commissions to nobody. He’s gonna keep at least $300,000 pre-tax. Even if the team ‘out produces’ him, you’d still rather have his bank account at the end of the day. ‘Course at awards time the team leader gets to brag about his volume — a hollow victory if ever there was one.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

We weren’t even out that long… But don’t think for a minute that I envy you your snow.

You might be asking, what is a true communist real estate photographer like I mentioned in sentence one?  A communist real estate photographer is what I used to be; simply list a home explain why I’m “THE GUY” and then take some “communist real estate photos” with my $350 best buy camera and put em’ in the system.   Why is a $350 best buy camera SO COMMUNIST you might be asking?  Simply put, in this new world of real estate over the past five years, myself and many others who are still in the business having had to adapt.

One of the ways I’ve adapted is really quite simple; CHANGE.  I believe in THREE main capitalist scenario’s needed to sell a home.

1)      Exposure (advertising) only a greedy greed greed capitalist would invest advertising money to make money.

2)      Presentation (PHOTOGRAPHY & VIDEO) this is where I was a communist.  My PRESENTATION sucked.  Buyer’s looking at online couldn’t distinguish a Worthington Realty home from any other home.  Simply put, I was losing money for myself and clients alike.  I wasn’t totally doing my job.  SO I CHANGED.  I made a near $2,000 investment in real estate photography equipment to get me started.

I AM NO HARRY BISEL, as a matter of fact, if my photos could be half as good, I’ve succeeded.  I have noticed because my PRESENTATION has “professional like” quality photos, my SHOWING numbers have gone WAY UP, and in turn I have CLOSED more deals.

How do ya like that Greedy Greed Greed explanation?   I was your typical communist real estate photographer and didn’t even know it.

3)      In case you’re wondering what the final point is – “Value” If the home is properly priced it will sell.  (Which could mean, I still might be a communist for not over pricing a home like your typically capitalist (wink) I think you get the point.

In the end, a simple investment took me from communist to capitalist in the “Presentation sector” of the 3 main bullet points that sell a listing.

What are your thoughts?  What have you done to convert your presentation sector from communist to capitalist?  Here how I look at…why not just spiff up your presentation since you’ll sell MORE home, generate more referrals, and you’ll have happier sellers because their home will be getting more showings!  Call it the capitalist snow ball effect.

How are you going to take a portion of your own personal business and convert over to capitalism?

Who is Ashley Dupree and why do we care about her? Ashley is a budding songwriter and singer with a compelling story. She was cast into the limelight as Eliot Spitzer’s paramour; taking a few large a month for companionship. Now I don’t want to comment on the morality of prostitution; in 49 states, it’s illegal. Whether you’re an Emporer’s Club “provider” or a sex worker trolling Grand Central, the State of New York considers prostitution a crime. The allegations against Ashley have not been proven in a court of law and frankly, I don’t care if she did it or not. Why?

I said then that she could reinvent herself:

Memo to Ashley Alexandra Dupree: America is the land of “reinventing yourself”. Ask Sidney Biddle Barrows, Vanessa Williams, Donald Trump, or even Daryl Strawberry how forgiving the American public is. Americans crave drama, revere celebrity, and have a sense of justice about them.

Ashley followed the”fifteen minutes of fame” plan.  She moved to LA, posed for a centerfold, and stayed away from jail.  She moved back to Manhattan and is pondering a career in…real estate brokerage!

The Post’s sultry sex columnist has moved back to town from the West Coast and immediately decided to enroll in a real estate course at NYU. The course is required to apply for a New York broker’s license — but Dupre said she isn’t quite ready to become a full-time real estate dealmaker yet.

She told us, “I recently moved back to New York from Los Angeles. Since being home, I took and passed the accelerated Real Estate Salesperson Course at NYU.

Only in New York.   Her future colleagues seem to think she fits in quite well:

Sources told us Dupre fit in well at NYU and “made a ton of friends. She dressed very cute to class, hung out with students during lunch, and has been very into the course. She was one of the top students — often answering questions from the lecturers before they’d even finished speaking.”

A cute dresser, who “does” lunch, and writes an advice column?  She’s gonna be fabulous.

We show that obesity is an economically significant predictor of mortgage delinquencies at the county level. In practice, however, loan contracts do not incorporate easily verifiable health risk factors such as obesity. The discrepancy between theory and practice suggests the existence of substantial cross-subsidization and misallocation of funds in the loan market. The potential for business opportunities and policy implications warrants further investigation of our results with more detailed, albeit costly data.

This is pretty dumb, practically speaking, but it’s nice to see that the idea of pre-existing conditions might have a future, now that it’s been outlawed where it actually makes sense, in the health insurance business.

As an aside, our own Tom Vanderwell makes a cameo appearance in this “study.”

I’ve been working to flesh out SplendorQuest.com so that I might, sometime soon, move our more-ornately philosophical discussions there. Jim will be writing with me there, and possibly some other folks, as we go forward. My own plan is to use SplendorQuest to document everything I know about philosophy. There is a lot that I do that is original in the world of discourse — Jim can tell you better than I can what qualifies as being original — and I want to make sure I document what I’ve done in a thoroughgoing way before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

This post — our very first guest post — consists of Jim thanking me for challenging his preconceptions in an enduring way. At the time he’s taking about, I was beyond grateful that I could get anyone at all to listen to what I had to say, so my take is that the debt runs the other way. In any case, I am very proud to be able to show Jim off, both at BloodhoundBlog and at SplendorQuest.

With that, I give you Jim Klein:

[This was written for genuine Bloodhounds. Please check your chip!]

I always start simple. Then I try to stay there. This post is no exception. I even cut it in half, to keep it as simple as possible. The main question I seek to answer here is, “What is owing?”

You see, I owe Greg Swann. No, not for anything he sold me, nor because of anything he expects, let alone demands. He did do some software work back in the ’90s, but I paid for that. BTW his code is used to this day, making one part of our company’s website much better than any of our competitors’. And since that part is about the price, and since I offer (what once was!) a commoditized item, it means the whole website is better, from the customer’s POV. And in business, as is no secret here, there’s no other relevant POV.

Greg Swann has inspired me, as he’s inspired so many people, but lots of people inspire lots of other people. We don’t go around keeping track of who inspired us how much, and how much we ought to pay for each. So surely there’s no debt in that, right? Well, I guess it all depends on what you consider a debt.

And that’s the point…a debt is something you consider a debt. Never mind contracts and mortgages for a moment, for this is about owing. And this is about the fact of the matter. You cannot be in any volitional state, with or without others, save by your own…well, your own volition. This is not a comment on money debts or their resolution in cases of dispute; this is a comment on the existential state of owing.

Continue reading Jim’s post at SplendorQuest.com.

Cinderella was in a snit, and who could blame her? She was an orphan swarmed by a family of strangers, accidental intimates, pushy and intrusive and unwelcome. And the most distant stranger of all was the original Prince Charming, the man she had expected would always be beside her.

Physically distant, too, for he led the little brood, prancing on the balls of his feet, ostentatiously trying too hard, while Cinderella dragged her small feet at the rear, palpably punishing Prince Charming. Once he flounced back and tried to jolly her into joining them, into becoming one with them, but she blew him off with a furious shake of her head, horse-whipping him symbolically with her imperious, impetuous, long brown hair.

And something tells me it’s all happening at the zoo. I was sitting on a bench watching the Galapagos tortoises fornicate, a surprisingly delicate, amazingly time-consuming process. The post-modern delegation from the Brothers Grimm came trundling up the path, and they made a fine exhibit, too.

Only a fool would call them a family. They were a composite, an ungainly grafting of two diseased trees. If you keep your eyes open you can spot them all over, whisper-shouting through clenched teeth at the mall, squabbling over dinner at Denny’s, caucusing in sub-groups at gas stations and national parks. He’s responsible for his kids, if he has any, and she’s responsible for hers, and the children, ultimately, answer to no one. Very sad. Very stupid. Very common.

I didn’t pay them any mind, not then. If you’ve seen one tragedy, you’ve seen one too many. But I caught up with them again on the Zoo Train, a sea serpent’s idea of the ideal golf cart, designed for people who would rather sit than see the animals. And I didn’t go looking for trouble, neither; I was sitting peacefully, placidly, blessedly alone when they invaded me. I was waiting for the train ride to begin, and they tumbled into the row of benches ahead of mine, puncturing the quiet with random and raucous thrusts of sound.

The Wicked Stepmother was not the loudest of the bunch, not by half, but she was certainly the busiest. Picking at the Wicked Stepbrother’s clothes, lecturing the pouting Cinderella, brushing at the Wicked Stepsister’s hair, bossing Prince Charming around. She was a porcine excrescence on stubby legs, and her little round face was dominated by an expression that was both smug and profoundly stupid.

“Are we having fun yet!” she shrieked in a tone that mocked jocularity by being hostile. Her demand was directed at Cinderella, who glared in return.

The Wicked Stepbrother’s face was smeared in a technicolor history of his day’s devourings, chocolate and cotton candy and a slurpee and who knows what else. He was maybe five years old, and he wasn’t evil, just practicing for it. He was batting at Cinderella’s hand, trying to get at some small treasure she had clenched in her palm.

The Wicked Stepsister was impenetrably, imperviously, imperturbably wrapped up in the rapture of her own conversation. She yakked and she chattered, she blithered and blathered, and not one of the others paid her the smallest attention. In truth, her discourse was interesting, full of fact and insight, but her words seemed almost like a barrage — the best defense is a good offense.

The Wicked Stepmother jostled her with an elbow, temporarily interrupting her monologue. “Why don’t you tell your sister what you’ve been doing in school.” At the words “your sister” Cinderella blanched. Her face, until then haughty, went blank with rage. Very carefully, very decorously, she stood up, hopped down to the tarmac and climbed up into the bench beside me. As symbolic gestures go, it was nicely done.

Prince Charming’s chief skill seems to be looking the wrong way at all the right moments, but now he tried to intervene, however ham-handedly. “But — ” he started, then started over. “But aren’t you glad you’ve got a new sister and brother? You’ve got a whole new family! Isn’t that something!”

Of all the many flavors of dishonesty at Uncle Willie’s Palatial Emporium of Lies, hustling children with faked enthusiasm is easily the most repellent. By the sour expression on her face, I’d say Cinderella came to the same conclusion.

“Oh, come on, honey,” he wheedled, betraying his knowledge of the truth by pretending to deny it. “She didn’t mean anything by it. Would you rather she called you her stepsister?”

Ice burns when it’s cold enough and Prince Charming winced and looked away when he saw Cinderella’s icy glare.

The Wicked Stepmother couldn’t leave bad enough alone, though. She didn’t say anything, but she kept turning back and looking at Cinderella. Sometimes furtively, sometimes angrily, sometimes hurtfully. I had the idea she was trying things more or less at random. I also had the idea that the shame of being spurned was far more important to her than the reason for the spurning. To her credit, Cinderella ignored her entirely.

And to my credit, I said nothing — for a change. Instead, I waited for the Wicked Stepmother to look away for an instant, then I tapped Cinderella gently on her clenched fist. She looked up at me with pale blue eyes, sad and defiant and enormous. I shrugged and she opened her hand as though it were a treasure chest. In her palm was a tiny locket on a delicate gold chain. “He was trying to take it from me,” she said, pointing the Wicked Stepbrother.

“Is it from your mom?” I asked.

Her chin quivered and I thought she was about to bawl. Instead she said, “He gave it to me.” She gestured with her head at Prince Charming. He displayed his talent for looking the wrong way at the right moment.

And without being told, I knew the rest of the story. Cinderella was visiting her daddy’s new home. His new wife, who was not her mother. His new children, who were not her brother and sister. Not really his children, but she had no way of knowing that. A father’s relationship is to his children. A mother’s relationship is to her children. But a stepparent’s relationship is to his or her new spouse, and the relationship to the children is indirect and attenuated. That’s why the composite families shout and squabble and caucus, because they’re not really families. They can’t be. Everybody knows the stepparent is an after-market add-on, spare parts. And everybody pretends not to know. And everybody betrays the pretense, constantly undermining the stepparent’s false status by affecting to uphold it.

But Cinderella couldn’t know that. From her point of view, she was the spare parts. Her daddy had abandoned her — or so it must have seemed to her — and now he had replaced her and her mother with a brand new family, complete and ready-made. She had been robbed of her father and he had been robbed of his fatherhood and both of them were doomed by blindness and longing to race frantically after vain substitutes for the treasures that can never be replaced.

Very sad. Very stupid. Very common.

But everybody’s gotta take a side…

I said: “It’s hard to believe it’s so cool today when it was so hot just last week. Fall has fallen, resoundingly.”

She giggled, and that was good enough.

“I was swimming this time last week. I jumped in the water, and I got some up my nose. And just for an instant I was eight years old again. I had a pure and perfect memory of being a kid and getting water up my nose every time I went swimming. Does that ever happen to you?”

“I always get water in my nose. In my ears, too.”

“That’s not what I mean. Did you ever have a memory that’s as perfect as a dream? The other day I smelled a two-stroke engine, and it just about knocked me over.”

“What’s a two-stroke engine?”

I smiled. “I’m not going to explain internal combustion engines, not without a blackboard. A two-stroke engine is a simple little gas motor. You find ‘em on garden equipment and motor boats. That’s what was so weird about it, though. I smelled that motor and it took me back thirty years. I felt like I was standing on a dock launching a fishing boat with my grandfather. I could smell the motor and the water and the fish and the dirt and the nightcrawlers. I could hear geese a long way off and I could hear my grandpa whistling, and it was just like I was right there, all in a flash. Does that ever happen to you?”

The Wicked Stepbrother had turned around and he was watching me with rapt attention. His chin was planted on the back of his bench, and he wasn’t missing a word. His mother was straining to turn and straining not to turn and doing everything she could to interpose herself between Cinderella and me, everything except actually planting her fulsome fundament between us.

Cinderella scrunched her tiny little shoulders in a shrug and I said, “I can think of a hundred little things like that. Camping out or riding my bike on dirt roads or bouncing around in the back of a pick-up truck loaded with Halloween pumpkins or looking at a great big yellow moon and wondering why it was so big.”

“I know why it was so big,” announced the Wicked Stepsister, launching into an endless lecture about perspective and proportion.

I said: “The point is, my past isn’t gone, it’s all right here.” I rapped myself on the noggin and the Wicked Stepbrother laughed with a wicked delight. “The good part is, it’s all in there, pure and clean and perfect. The bad part is, I didn’t pick what’s there, it sort of picked me.”

“What’s that mean?” Cinderella asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know, precisely. When you live, you just live. You don’t think, ‘I must remember this, I must forget this.’ You just remember and forget, and you don’t have a lot to say about it. But you do have a little to say about it.”

“What?” she demanded. Who could resist a hook like that?

I shrugged again. “I’m too stupid for this job. I think you find what you’re looking for, so I guess the thing to do is look for things in your life that you hope someday to find in your memories. Does that make sense?”

“…Not really.”

“Well, something’s gonna go in there, and it’s gonna come back out, again and again, pure and clean and perfect. If you live for pain, if you treasure every little wound, if you pick at your scabs so they never, ever heal, that’s what you’re going to find in your memories. But if you live for happiness, for the joy and accomplishment you can find in life, then that’s what you’ll find in your memories.”

Cinderella said nothing, just looked thoughtful. The Wicked Stepmother looked like she was about to bust a valve.

“Do you know the word ‘wrest’? As in ‘wrestle’?”

Cinderella shrugged. The Wicked Stepsister said, “I do,” and launched into a dictionary definition.

I said, “To wrest something means to take it away by force, like you might wrest a weapon away from a bad guy. I want you to remember that word, because the most valuable thing I know is this: To live, to love your life, you have to wrest joy from pain.”

She whispered it: “Wrest joy from pain.”

“Wrest joy from pain. If you remember that much, you’ll remember this day forever.”

She said it again, louder. “Wrest joy from pain.”

The Wicked Stepmother glared at me, and I would have been delighted to know whatever it was she thought she might want to say to me. The simple truth is that I’m a subversive, and I do nothing to hide it. But not very many people know how I’m subversive. And who is going to get in the way of a man who’s talking a little girl back from the depths of misery? I’m sure the Wicked Stepmother wanted to, though, more from censorious impulses than understanding. Prince Charming was quietly delighted to have me solve his problems for him.

I said, “Do you know the story of Cinderella?”

“She got married to the prince!” said the Wicked Stepbrother. The train was moving, snaking along like a gaggle of Shriners on tricycles. It wasn’t safe to jump off and back on, so the little boy climbed over the bench and hopped down beside me, tucking himself under my arm. Prince Charming tried to haul him back over but he wrestled free then handily wielded the rusty scalpel of stepfather emasculation: “You’re not my daddy! You’re not the boss of me!”

I ignored all these events. “It’s just at the end of the story that she marries the prince. Here’s what really happened,” I confided.

It’s not the story, it’s the storyteller, and I have proof: The Wicked Stepsister closed her flapping yap and turned around to listen. The Wicked Stepmother was ostentatiously not listening with all her might. Prince Charming seemed to be grateful to be temporarily relieved of all the indefinite responsibilities of his tenuous non-position.

I said, “Cinderella was a little girl who lived with her mother and her father, and she was very happy. But then her mother died. She was sad for her mother, but she was happy that she still had her father. But then her father married a very wicked widow woman who had two very wicked daughters.”

“They were mean to her!” said the Wicked Stepbrother.

“They were mean to her,” I agreed, “but she still had her father, and she was happy when they could be alone together. But then her father died, and Cinderella was all alone. She was an orphan, but no one knew it. They thought she had her stepmother and her two stepsisters, but really she had no one left at all. She was all alone, but no one could see that. It didn’t matter that they were mean to her, that they made her do all the work. What mattered was that she had lost her whole family and no one knew it, no one could see the truth.”

To their credit, the Wicked Stepsister and the Wicked Stepbrother both had tears in their eyes. Cinderella’s eyes were glassy but defiant. I said, “Wrest joy from pain,” and she nodded.

The train was stopped by the baboon exhibit. I looked at my watch. “Gotta run, my lady. Empus-tay ugit-fay.”

She giggled. “What’s that mean?”

“It means time flies right over your head.”

Prince Charming turned and said, “Thank you.”

I smiled a sweet, subversive smile. “If you only knew…” I looked into Cinderella’s big blue eyes. I said, “Wrest joy from pain.”

She said, “I’ll remember,” and I knew she would.

The Wicked Stepmother felt compelled to reassert herself. “Say good-bye to the nice man,” she said in a sing-song, saccharine voice.

To her credit, Cinderella ignored her entirely.

I touched my fingertip to the end of her tiny nose, the only Fairy Godfather on call at the zoo. “Don’t fall for the first idiot who rubs your feet.”

She giggled, and that was good enough.