Contexto de estudio

“He who is not satisfied with himself will grow. He who is not sure of his own correctness will learn many things.”

~ Chinese Proverb

What I didn’t realize was that the original number of agents working with me, which had started out at 25-30 in number, was slowly dwindling. Over time they either lost their bank foreclosure accounts, or switched their line of specialization, and so the original number of Realtor foreclosure contacts slowly dwindled. When a Realtor I counted on to give me listings lost his account with the bank, they hired another Realtor and those properties went into the MLS, which my partner Paul had exclusivity to as part of our partnership

agreement. I had never thought of the possibility that my Realtors would lose their bank foreclosure gravy train pipeline.

But there was more trouble brewing. From the shadows, my partner was making decisions that were going to seriously undermine our new business.

Paul had started scheming behind the scenes, trying to work me out of the company. He had third party interests with other investors that were bidding against me on HUD foreclosures. In effect, I was indirectly bidding against my partner, which I felt was totally unfair. James sided with Paul on the matter, because either way he was making money. There was no sense of loyalty, and they really didn’t care, so long as they were making their money. I was basically being bullied by the people who were supposed to have my best interests at heart.

189 I decided to change my approach once again, in order to adapt to this new, unexpected challenge. I started thinking of ways to change what I was doing in order to make a better profit. Instead of complaining and asking a negative form of question, I was looking at ways to put a positive spin on these new circumstances. Although I was on the receiving end of some underhanded business tactics, I wasn’t going to play the victim. I simply needed to change what I was doing. Our partnership already had a mortgage company, a real estate brokerage, and I was a qualified broker, and we had done really well selling our own properties so far. There was room for expansion, and I saw an opportunity to sell other properties besides the ones we were fixing up ourselves. Plus, I was becoming bored and simply looking for a new challenge.

Much of our advertising to sell our own investment properties that we kept, was done by means of cardboard flip signs on wire frames on roadsides and medians throughout the counties that we worked in, and we were getting a lot of response from those ads. Of course, we had to go through a lot of people to find one that eventually turned into a sale. For every thirty calls that came in we might get one or two qualified buyers.

I discussed my ideas for change with Paul and James, and we restructured our responsibilities in the company so I could focus more on expanding the retail real estate and mortgage side of things. I hired a bunch of guys to put up more signs all over the city. They went out in the wee hours of the morning, and put them up

everywhere. You’ve probably seen these kinds of signs on the corners of streets in the area where you live.

Some areas have restrictions about putting up those kinds of signs, so we had some difficulties from time to time. One day a really nasty code enforcement woman stopped us. She pulled up to our office in her code enforcement pickup truck, just as I was walking out the

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front door, and she showed me a whole stack of our signs in the back of her truck.

“You see these in the back of my truck? I’ve been picking up your signs all day long. I’m giving you a week to get all of them off the roads, or I’ll bring you up in front of the code enforcement board, and fine your company!”

I had to sweet-talk my way out of an explosive situation. We’d never been bothered before, but now we were putting thousands of these signs up everywhere. And the signs were working. Hundreds of calls were coming in, and the phones were ringing off the hook.

I hired a couple of real estate agents, and mortgage brokers, and we started doing loans for pre-qualified clients and finding properties on the MLS for them, and my side of the business really began to take off. I was adapting, and learning, and growing the business. I had hit an income ceiling with the foreclosure properties at $160,000 a year, and here was a possibility to exceed that.

In the meantime Paul wasn’t keeping his end of the bargain. He had let the HUD property division lie fallow, while concentrating only on his side interests for his own gain. The company had invested in equipment and advertising to the tune of $50,000, over the course of three months. Paul wasn’t happy about it, and he was hoping that I would fail, so he could push me out of the company. That’s the kind of snake that he was. This kind of thing is what ultimately led to the downfall of our partnership.

In the interim I had to adapt again, to compensate for the losses, so I took over the HUD property division once again. It took eight months for the real estate division to get to the point where it was

consistently breaking even and profitable, and I had to carry the costs of the employees I had hired to launch it.

In one county after another we were running into problems from the code enforcement agencies because of the thousands of signs we

191 were putting up. I had to adapt and change, learn from the problem, and find a creative way out of it.

I noticed a cheesy infomercial on a local TV station, done by another company, and decided to pursue that avenue. So I called the Fox 35 station in Orlando, and spoke to an advertising account executive. Television advertising can be pricey, and on a limited budget of $10,000 we put together our first cheesy infomercial.

It’s a little embarrassing to look at those infomercials today. It was my first time in front of the camera, and the quality isn’t something I’m proud of. Even so, after a dry spell of five or six months, they finally started to pay off and we had our first closing from a lead from our TV advertising.

My goal was to grow this side of the business so I wouldn’t have to rely on foreclosure properties anymore. I was reinvesting most of my profits back into the business in order to grow.

I wasn’t financially secure enough to dissolve our partnership and go on my own, so I had to create all these mechanisms to be able to work with my partners. I liked my lifestyle, and my business, and so I decided to create ‘a business within a business’ to get around the problems I was having with my partners.

After years of constant work, and determination, at long last, the retail division started growing, and eventually we needed more space. Our office space was starting to become crowded.

The odd thing was that as soon as my side of the business became successful and profitable, Paul changed his tune, and became friendly and cooperative towards me all of a sudden. He was kissing my ass, full of flattery and compliments, and simultaneously trying to push James out of the business. He’d done the same thing with James, when he was hoping to push me out of the business.

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Fortunately James and I had a stronger relationship than Paul had with either one of us. James and I used to hang out at the office after work some nights, smoke a joint or drink some beers and order a pizza. James would play guitar, and tell me stories from his intriguing past.

“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.”

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