{"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":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,212,29,6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-egoism-in-action","7":"category-flourishing","8":"category-group-therapy","9":"category-marketing","10":"category-real-estate","12":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"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":0},"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":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":1},"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":15178,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15178\/greg-swanns-second-request-i-need-a-partner\/","url_meta":{"origin":10583,"position":2},"title":"Greg Swann’s second request: I need a partner.","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"What? No one is going to send me to the NAR convention? Their loss -- and the losses are but beginning. Meanwhile, I need a partner. I've been thinking about this for months, but I don't know that it's something I can actually do anything about. Here's where I am,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flourishing"","block_context":{"text":"Flourishing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/flourishing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13002,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/13002\/me-and-claudia-and-php-using-internet-real-estate-marketing-to-you-know-sell-real-estate\/","url_meta":{"origin":10583,"position":3},"title":"Me and Claudia and PHP: Using internet real estate marketing to — you know — sell real estate…","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"So, the Arizona Republic ran an article yesterday on on-line real estate marketing and you will never in a million years guess who they did not call. I never get called for any of those kinds of things -- the RaiseTheBarTab kinds of events -- even though we're doing cooler\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flourishing"","block_context":{"text":"Flourishing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/flourishing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6889,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/6889\/the-way-of-the-farmer-in-downtown-seattle\/","url_meta":{"origin":10583,"position":4},"title":"The Way of the Farmer in Downtown Seattle","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I'll be doing a different version of The Way of the Farmer in Seattle today. I know we won't be able to do a lot of hands-on stuff, but still I'm keen to take on some practical, real-life marketing problems. Here's my syllabus, for which I have about a zillion\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5499,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/5499\/thinking-out-loud-about-bloodhoundblog-unchained-in-phoenix\/","url_meta":{"origin":10583,"position":5},"title":"Thinking out loud about BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 10, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's where we start, and we knew this last May in Phoenix, but we hadn't yet figured out how to pull it off: BloodhoundBlog Unchained is not a conference or a seminar, it's a workshop, a lab. 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