Cape Girardeau, MO

Dear Agent: Don't email me every time you get a price reduction, a new listing, or your seller decides to offer a selling agent bonus (unless--maybe--if it's enough to finance a family vacation).

I pay MLS dues. That means I get updated information through MLS. Your email notices to me are spam, and they clog up my email. The MLS HotSheet works just fine for me. During this very busy end of the year, holiday time, I received the following email announcements today from local agents:

Hello fellow Realtors,

We have a new price on our listing ...... Great home, great location on nearly 1.5 acres..lots of updates and space.

If you have a buyer looking for style and land this home could be it. NOW $273,900 They are ready to move.

Happy New Year

Of course, that email inspired another agent to mass email everyone. She, however, just did a "Reply all" to the first message, and then added her own sales pitch without having to type all those pesky email addresses:

Then there was the New Year's e-greeting that I received from a fellow agent, obviously the one he sent to all of his clients, thanking me for choosing him as my "REALTOR for life."

It's past closing time now on Dec. 30, and the holiday weekend has officially started. Hopefully, the other 253 agents in MLS are too distracted by the impending New Year to send out such meaningless mass email updates on their listings.

Come to think of it, I'm still working. I have 22 active listings right now. One of them just listed today. Several of them have had changes in the past week. I also have several pre-lists in the works. Maybe I should get busy with my own mass email! It would be so easy to just "Reply All" again, following the lead of the second agent. Or maybe I should just send 22 emails to the three offenders...

PS: If you are interested in either of the two properties mentioned above or in receiving information about Cape Girardeau area listings and/or foreclosures, please feel free to contact me. I promise that I won't SPAM you, but I will be happy to be your "REALTOR for life!"

• You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. ~Wayne Gretzky

I first heard that slice of wisdom from my daughter's church league basketball coach nearly 20 years ago. He put it on hand-written signs for every girl to post in her room. I thought then that it was a basketball quote, but also I know it's a life philosophy. Today, while trying to find the author's name, I discovered that hockey great Wayne Gretzky is responsible for those wise words.

Turns out, Gretzky quotes apply to real estate decisions and even to a real estate career.

• I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. ~Wayne Gretzky

Don't you know lots of buyers and investors who wish they had known in 2007 where the puck was going to be just one year later? A whole new crop of investors is now trying to discern the future. The market is going to turn, that's for sure. When and where?

• The highest compliment that you can pay me is to say that I work hard every day, that I never dog it. ~Wayne Gretzky

As agents are faced with paying dues for 2012, I'm betting that REALTORs whose reputations meet that standard will be the ones who go forth into the new year.

• A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be. ~Wayne Gretzky

I know that this quote is much like an earlier one, but I like the distinction it makes betweeen good and great. I need to know what marketing tools WILL work, not merely what is working now or what has worked in the past. I'm good right now. I'm working on great!

• I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. ~Michael Jordan

We have to learn to learn from failure, get back up, and get back in the game. Now if only the market will learn its lessons as well as Michael Jordan!

The caller wanted to see one of the company's listings, but she wanted an appointment that day, 30 minutes after our office closed. The floor agent did not want to work that late and offered the phone call to me. I now have a very nice listing, another deal under contract, and the prospect of yet more business--all from that showing.

The listing the caller wanted to see was not mine, but I knew that the owners needed to sell. The caller was impatient and even demanding, having already left unanswered messages for the listing agent, who was out of town that day. More than anything, I did not want the sellers or the listing agent to lose a potential sale, and the floor agent was about to put the caller off again.

I showed that first house to the caller sort of as a personal challenge. Could I change her mind and convince her to choose me as her agent, rather than the one she had in mind (she did not have an agency agreement)? You know, I was exercising my persuasive muscle a bit. This is a sales business, after all.

If a salesperson never has to face a sales challenge, she will not grow; so I decided to take a chance and lengthen my work day that rainy day back in September.

At first, you see, she just wanted to "look at" a specific house and made it very clear to the floor agent that she already had another agent in mind if she liked that house. I understand the floor agent's reluctance, but the fact remains that the caller represented a business opportunity.

I did not sell that house, but I became acquainted with the caller. The person with whom I am under contract is a family member of that "looker" who sounded like a dead-end floor call. Not only did I eventually list the caller's house, but I also was able to meet other members of her family, two of whom have real estate needs. I will be getting a commission check in January because of it. As I continue to work with the extended family, more commissions may follow.

I put on my bright, cheery face and went out on a cold lead that day. Try it, every once in awhile, instead of waiting for the perfect lead. You might strengthen your own persuasive muscle and dampen your inner diva.

This real estate business is about serving client needs, but first you have to sell yourself, if you are going to get the business. A lead is a precious thing to be valued and cultivated. That's the sales aspect of the business, so put on a smile and challenge yourself.

Chilled to the bone five times today, I closed out the day by bringing home some House Special Soup from Chan's Restaurant. After she took my take-out order, Kiki brought me hot tea to drink while I waited. My family and I love Chan's, and it is our Saturday lunch destination every weekend, so Kiki and Niki (wife and husband proprietors) were somewhat taken aback when I showed up on Friday evening.

Not to worry, though, I will be back tomorrow with the family. Tonight, I needed the soup and hot tea when I finally wrapped up the day's business after 8:30 pm. I sometimes refer to it as "Chan's Magical Soup," while invoking its magic to ward off illness or to chase away illness. Tonight is going to be the coldest night of the season, and today was windy with falling temperatures.

My daughter and I are trying to get four new pre-list foreclosures through the cash for keys (in lieu of eviction), rekey, property preservation, valuation and pre-marketing processes. Today, I took inside and outside photos of three cold houses, as well as finalizing a cash for keys transaction, doing an occupancy check, and meeting a vendor who was preparing a trashout bid. Two additional trips outside involved meeting an insurance adjuster and, finally, attending a closing!

A very busy December will mean a comfortable number of January listings to see me through the coldest month of the new year.

Thanks to Chan's Magical Soup and a warm pair of pj's, I'm now toasty!

PS: Chan's is located at 1159 N. Kingshighway in Cape Girardeau. The soup I refer to in this blog is their House Special Soup. I know that I should have taken a photo to post with this blog, but I admit to eating the evidence...

I knew that students might scoff at "the speech," but I gave it anyway--just in case it would reach someone. I told them that they were important to me and wished them a Merry Christmas, and then I cautioned them to be safe over New Years--pretty much the same speech I also delivered right before prom and graduation. As a teacher, I always felt that I had less influence over my students during the holidays--either to reassure them when they might be having a holiday depression or to caution them right before New Year's Eve. I had to do my part to prevent one of "my kids" being in a horrible accident or making a careless decision that could not be taken back.

In the 21 years I was in the classroom, I never had to teach class where there was an empty chair due to the death of one of "my" own students, though I shepherded student editors through the writing of numerous tributes and news stories about deaths of their classmates and teachers. Of course, I also knew students who had serious health issues (some that eventually took the lives of those students), and I had former students who died after graduation.

I once feared for several hours that one of my own students had committed suicide. Assistant principal Robert King also believed that to be true; and we worried together, making frantic phone calls off and on all day and hearing conflicting reports before finally learning that the student in question had lived through the attempt. Not long before she graduated, that student came to me and asked what I would have thought if she had actually died in the suicide attempt. I remember very clearly telling her that I would be mad at her for the rest of my life, because she would have thrown away the love and attention I had given her for three years.

Though maybe not politically correct, that response came right from my heart and it shocked her. She objected, saying that she thought I would tell her how sad I would have been. I told her straight out that suicide is not romantic, and then I told her about Susie, whom my parents fostered for two years in her early teens. Susie wrote a suicide note and took an overdose not long after she turned 21. Standing beside her bed for days and then being there when the machines were turned off nearly killed my Mom. In the end, it seemed that Mom's love and anguish had been tragically wasted. "Don't you ever be the Susie of my life," I said.

During my years as a yearbook sales representative, I had numerous phone calls from advisers who needed help with the memorial pages in their books. One of the victims that I remember well was on the yearbook staff at her school. The teacher and the entire yearbook staff were devastated, as you can imagine, over the death of their assistant editor.

I remember so clearly seeing that student earlier in the year when she was sporting a horribly bruised forehead. She had banged her head against her car's windshield during a minor wreck. "Not wearing your seatbelt, I see," I told her, chiding her about how impossible it was to kiss the windshield while wearing a seatbelt. She broke her neck a few short weeks later in another accident, a wreck that her passengers walked away from, uninjured. It was a stupid accident caused by going too fast and goofing off with her friends just minutes after school let out one spring afternoon, and it was one she would have survived with a seatbelt.

One of my former students just sent me a note on Facebook to tell me that she is grateful that I have made it through some recent medical issues. She also said that she remembers "the speech" I gave every year before Christmas break. She thanked me for caring. I guess the speech did work. Wow. I'm so grateful that she went out of her way to tell me that, so many years later as her own children are in high school!

I might go crazy nowadays, if I were still teaching during these days of texting and driving... I'm so grateful that "my kids" made it to adulthood.