Scottsdale Real Estate, Foreclosure Prevention, Short Sales, and other stuff too...
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Real Scottsdale Living isn’t just a site about real estate in Scottsdale. It’s not only a place where you can search for properties, learn about the Short Sale process, or research what the community has to offer. It’s also a site about getting REAL in Scottsdale. The name Real Scottsdale Living was born after seeing Steve Belt’s success with Real Phoenix Living. Steve Belt, formerly a real estate agent and property manager with Realty Executives, now owns and operates a successful coffee shop at 78th Street and Thomas called Echo Coffee.
At the time I discovered Steve’s real estate blog, being part of a blogging community was more important to me than working on real estate, which essentially is working on relationships. True, blogs provide a way to develop relationships, but when I first began this venture, it was all about being noticed as a blogger.
Boy was I on the wrong track, and thankfully, I believe the purpose of this website is evolving into something that means more than I ever thought it would. What that is, I can’t exactly place yet, but I know that I have a higher sense of purpose in mind, and I think it may have something to do with the hidden meaning in the name of this site.
True, the name is good for search engines, and it’s good for indexing based on common real estate phrases, but I think I got lucky with the name, because the higher purpose of this site is to help people realize (REALize) their financial dreams through the process of personal refinement. I’m on a mission to help people who are ready to get REAL about life in Scottsdale, their life in Scottsdale.
I’m a pretty straight forward guy. I say what I think when I think it as long as I can debunk the myths that I tell myself, and I’m okay if you don’t like it. There are plenty of people who do, and I work with them to help them achieve their real estate results.
I came across the following statement that is a clear myth we all buy into from time to time. “I can’t do it.” I nothing more to say to someone who says that “I can’t do it.” I find myself believing more and more that I can do it as I pick myself up over and over again to continue through something even after I fail at it. “Until you try, you can’t possibly know what you can or can’t do.” – Gary Keller, Keller Williams Real Estate.
Coming from a mastermind of the real estate world, a statement like this sinks in and does its work in my heart and in my mind. But what about in others’ hearts and minds?
I have found that it is so much easier to be pulled down by people who live inside of “I can’t do it” than it is to pull myself up and out. If you surround yourself with people who believe they will never succeed, or that they have reached their limit, it’s likely that you’ll follow along with them because you’ll be afraid of going against the grain, because going against the grain means discovering something new, which means change will happen. When change happens, old relationships pass, and new ones begin. So the daily risk of surrounding yourself with people who don’t believe they can do it, is a very high risk activity, and the risk is never creating new relationships that can help you achieve your goals.
Gary Vaynerchuk.
Never heard of him? It’s possible that you have, since the demographics of the readership of blogs like this one typically consist of like-minded individuals who are constantly looking towards the future, finding new ways to communicate and connect. Most of the people I have met who are deep into the online world of entrepreneurialism know who Gary Vaynerchuk is. But, if you don’t know who he is, read on.
I had the pleasure of attending a recent event which was put on by Keller Williams. I was offered free registration by @FreedomWeaver and I took him up on it. Introduced to Gary via one of his Keynote Speeches, I was instantly captivated by his charisma and direct, no holds barred, in your face approach to telling the world how business is changing, and who is going to succeed, and fail.
Gary does what he wants to do, and that started, as he explains, as a young entrepreneur in Edison, NJ where he ran his very own lemonade stand franchise. Yes, I said franchise. While his minions manned the stands, Gary watched the eyes of the potential consumer, and adjusted, finding the best place to market his product, which wasn’t a unique product. What was unique was his fearless approach to doing business how he wanted, when he wanted. He later applied his knowledge to the sales of trading cards which earned him $1000/week before he was 15 years old. That’s $52,000/year people. He goes on to talk about his entrapment in his father’s business at $2/hr for hours every day, to his discovery that he could apply his entrepreneurial skills to the business, making it extremely successful in a very short period of time.
After launching WineLibrary.com, and tv.WineLibrary.com, he has turned the world of wine upside-down, bringing the once snooty knowledge of fine wining to the average Joe. Now, after pursuing his passion for wine without taking a paycheck for 18 months, “working his face off” as he says, he’s turned that passion into a thriving, very profitable business. Now, with a New York Times best seller, he’s opening up his “secrets” to a world of people who don’t spend time reading online.
The point? Gary realized that “there’s no reason you should be doing shit you don’t like doing,” and he started doing what he loves.
So if you’re still doing what you don’t love to pay the bills, take the extra time you have, no matter how inconvenienced you’ll be, or how uncomfortable it may seem (in other words, quit whining, it’s hard work) and start doing more of what you love. Soon, you’ll find that what you love will pay you more than that job you hate, and you’ll wonder why you ever doubted yourself in the first place.
You can watch Gary’s latest Vlog post on his personal blog, or catch an episode of his Wine show at WineLibrary.com.
Dear, David H. Stevens, Margaret Burns, and Bonnie McCloskey,
Nothing is more infuriating than a policy within a company that cannot be explained other than “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”
Digital signatures save everyone time. A VERY LARGE AMOUNT OF TIME. But in a world where a vast majority of the buyers are going FHA, with a policy that doesn’t allow digital signatures, many lenders are slowing us all down by requiring pen to paper.
Here’s why pen to paper is a stupid idea. PHOTOSHOP. I can extract your signature and drop it into any document I want and pass it off as genuine and it instantly becomes legitimate. Not only can I do this, but I have done this, but only after receiving written permission to do so from my client. No funny business here.
It’s been my only solution to FHA’s antiquated practice of requiring pen to paper.
Digital signatures have been part of the business world since 2000 and they’re perfectly legal. There’s no reason we should be chasing people down, inconveniencing them, to acquire handwritten, less-than-secure forms of authentication. It’s just ludicrous.
So, FHA, please stop this horribly annoying practice and bring yourselves up to speed. We’re tired of the whole world moving faster than you, and you’re just getting further and further behind. Drop the dead weight. Loose the anchor. Run like the wind and allow services like @Docusign to usher us into a world that should have existed 9 years ago.
Sincerely,
This post was inspired by Jacki Semerau‘s recent article at http://knowyourplace.blogspot.com/.
I was recently asked this question. “Where do you find the time? I have to be at work by 6:30AM every morning and I don’t get off until 6:00PM.” It was in reference to the other set of activities that I engage in on a regular basis. The activities that I always wished I could do when I was working in a cubicle in a prison cell called Corporate America.
If there’s one thing that certain, it’s that nothing is certain. I don’t know who said that first, but it’s true. Your job security is as uncertain as the day of my next closing, and in the world of real estate, I don’t get paid unless I sell a house.
So what is it about being in business for myself that is attractive enough to keep me from being stressed about the lack of regular income?
I just enjoy working for myself way too much to be oppressed by the corporate culture, which is leaning more towards a model of independence as it is anyway. Punching a clock is the last thing I ever think about, because I now know the value of my time.
All of Wednesday had me thinking about overcoming a fear that I never would have chosen to overcome. When we’re faced with fear without choosing, and we stand up and push through it, we grow. It’s even better when we choose to face something we’re afraid of, or even when we try something we never knew we’d be afraid of.
A little voice inside my head today told me that I would be fine; that I wouldn’t get nervous, and that I would be able to perform just like I envisioned I would.
As much as I tried to fight the feelings of apprehension, they were still there, but I pushed through, and by the time the night had ended, I was scaling the very same wall I started on twice as fast as the first time.
This is me conquering a fear.
I never considered indoor rock climbing to be something I would ever be interested in doing, but tonight, I learned how to do so at the suggestion of my closest friend from my high school days. After 9 years we reconnected as a direct result of Facebook (for those of you who find no value in it…think again) and spent the entire night catching up and climbing in the gym.
Belay (be-lay [bi-lay]) -verb: 1. To secure a person by attaching to one end of a rope. 2. To keep your friend from falling to their death.
I learned both how to climb, and how to belay, which also means to stop. One person climbs, one person stands anchored to the floor, and anchored to the rope that keeps your partner from falling. While one climbs, the other takes up the slack and secures the rope after the climber’s forward progress. It’s all about teamwork, and it’s great exercise. The coolest part about it is that once you learn to trust the harness and your partner, it doesn’t matter how high the wall is.
There’s something about an activity that requires the work of two people and that involves putting your complete trust in that person to ensure you are secured. I can’t quite describe it. Perhaps the right word is Synergy. There’s also something to be said for life-long friends who can pick up right where you left off.
So here’s to rock climbing, friends, fitness, and overcoming silly fears.
$209,000 -
7247 E Oak Street
Scottsdale
$135,000 -
959 E Rockwell Drive
Chandler
$169,000 -
4123 W Menadota Drive
Glendale
$120,000 -
6885 E Cochise Road, Unit 224
Paradise Valley
$77,800 -
1217 N Miller Road, Unit 2
Scottsdale
$139,000 -
27708 N 24th Lane
Phoenix
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