{"id":10583,"date":"2009-12-17T21:45:12","date_gmt":"2009-12-18T04:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=10583"},"modified":"2009-12-17T21:45:12","modified_gmt":"2009-12-18T04:45:12","slug":"next-year-were-going-to-splurge-maybe-starting-with-the-twenty-first-thousand-dollars-for-the-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/10583\/next-year-were-going-to-splurge-maybe-starting-with-the-twenty-first-thousand-dollars-for-the-month\/","title":{"rendered":"Next year we’re going to splurge — maybe — starting with the twenty-first thousand dollars for the month"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s my favorite Christmas card this year:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I helped Stephen and Suzanne Kranick buy that house in the weeks before Thanksgiving. I think it’s cool that they love it so much that they made it the star of their holiday card.<\/p>\n

I put two houses into escrow today. I’ve done that before, but Cathleen and I are both packing transactions into January at a nice pace. I’m still holding out hopes for one more all-cash deal in December, but the calendar is turning on me day-by-day.<\/p>\n

But here’s the thing: The pace we’re on right now puts us at $20,000 gross commission income a month for 2010. I’m sure that sounds like a lot of money to anyone who is not in the real estate business, but it ain’t. But our marketing costs are where they’ve always been — very low — so we’re right on the cusp of proving the claim I’ve been making here for coming on four years: It is possible to do this job without spending fifty cents on the dollar for client acquisition and without feeding a vast cadre of useless eaters.<\/p>\n

It’s plausible to me that we could be at $40,000 a month by the third quarter, and from there it’s not a huge jump to seven figures, GCI, per annum.<\/p>\n

But: Meanwhile: We are cheap bastards. We never hesitate to spend whatever it takes on mission critical tools, and that will always be the case. But we have been very tight on every discretionary expenditure for a long, long time. And as much as business has sucked over the past four years, it is being tight that has gotten us through the worst of it. A lot of Realtors didn’t make it, as we all know.<\/p>\n

So: Cathy just had her birthday, and from me she got a 2 gigabyte memory upgrade for her iMac. So romantic…<\/p>\n

But, even so, we can foresee that we are going to have a little money for luxuries in the coming year, and the question plaguing me has been how to manage that kind of spending without going crazy on the upside, as it were.<\/p>\n

Here’s Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s my favorite Christmas card this year: I helped Stephen and Suzanne Kranick buy that house in the weeks before Thanksgiving. I think it’s cool that they love it so much that they made it the star of their holiday card. I put two houses into escrow today. I’ve done that before, but Cathleen and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24,212,29,6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egoism-in-action","category-flourishing","category-group-therapy","category-marketing","category-real-estate","no-featured-image"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1601,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1601\/seven-days-of-the-dog-old-bushmills-on-the-rocks\/","url_meta":{"origin":10583,"position":0},"title":"Seven Days of the Dog: Old Bushmills on the rocks . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"June 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Today's the day, the first day of the second year of BloodhoundBlog. We're at 1,473 posts (which tells you that Jeff Brown killed 127 posts in draft mode), with 9,144 comments. Right at this moment we have a Technorati authority of 526, with 4,443 links from other weblogs. Yahoo is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15288,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15288\/whats-your-marketing-plan-for-2012-set-a-bloodhounds-pace-this-friday-at-bloodhoundblog-unchained-in-anaheim\/","url_meta":{"origin":10583,"position":1},"title":"What’s your marketing plan for 2012? Set a Bloodhound’s pace this Friday at BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Anaheim.","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"We're having a Scenius this Friday in Anaheim, a BloodhoundBlog Unchained event that we're running, subversively, during the NAR Convention. We've done this before, but the NAR was a lot more powerful the last time. By now it just seems pathetic -- but we don't much care either way. We\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flourishing"","block_context":{"text":"Flourishing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/flourishing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.paypal.com\/en_US\/i\/scr\/pixel.gif?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2125,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2125\/running-with-the-hounds-and-picking-up-the-pace-introducing-geno-petro\/","url_meta":{"origin":10583,"position":2},"title":"Picking up the pace: Introducing Geno Petro","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 31, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Today we're adding another writer to our line-up, but we're also revealing the secret subterranean agenda of The Odysseus Medal competition. Every time I turn around, there is someone accusing me of underhanded methods. I was seeking to get rich at $6.17 a month as an Amazon Affiliate. The Odysseus\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10940,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/10940\/they-are-smarter-than-you-better-than-you-and-they-know-more-than-you\/","url_meta":{"origin":10583,"position":3},"title":"They are Smarter than you, Better than you and they Know More than you","author":"Scott Schang","date":"January 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm a mortgage guy.\u00a0 Mortgage guys (and gals) will often talk about how highly they regard and respect the professionalism and expertise of Real Estate Agents, and they paint thise adoration with a very broad brush. Real Estate Agents have a big 'ole brush as well as they sing the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Innovation"","block_context":{"text":"Innovation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/innovation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/inventing_the_wheel-220x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2794,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2794\/sean-purcell-a-mind-that-glows-a-passion-that-burns-a-wit-that-sparkles-a-life-that-pops\/","url_meta":{"origin":10583,"position":4},"title":"Sean Purcell: A mind that glows, a passion that burns, a wit that sparkles — a life that pops","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 18, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Another new hound in the pound today, Sean Purcell, whom you will recognize from our comment threads and from his weblog, A Life That POPs. He's on pace to become Jeff Brown's favorite hyper-local weblogger, and Sean has been working on BloodhoundBlog Unchained warm-up events with Brian Brady. It's time\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2993,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2993\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-will-be-postponed-this-week\/","url_meta":{"origin":10583,"position":5},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition will be postponed this week","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 20, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"We're busy with real estate stuff, and I'm grinding on all gears to push engenu out the door. Plus which, there were only 65 nominations, suggesting, perhaps, that the rest of the world has Teri's Spring fever. In the mean time, here's a blog post from Mark Steyn illustrating why\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10584,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10583\/revisions\/10584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}