I Have To Start Somewhere

The purpose of this blog is to give a personal account of the entrepreneurial side of my life, and how it pertains to real estate. It has been a very long road to get to where I'm at professionally. I started my professional career in inside sales, working for Michigan's largest furniture retailer. Although not the most glorious business to be in, it built a strong sales-mined base for me to expand on. Without that base, I certainly would not possess the negotiating skills that I employ today in real estate.

After years of thinking, and being told, "Start your own business" I finally did. I filed for my first LLC with a partner. This was around the year 2000. We started a marketing company called Direct Net. I spent around 9-12 months building a business and marketing plan. After what I thought had some pretty great potential, I found out that my partner's wife didn't agree. That was the first $2500 I truly invested in myself.

I certainly wouldn't trade that whole experience back for the $2500, because I was finally bitten by the bug. That being the "ENTREPRENEUR" bug. The excitement of brainstorming and finally implementing your own ideas is indescribable to me. The one experience that sticks out the most is; we had a business meeting with the President of the Palace of Auburn Hills. He had some interest in some of the marketing and display products that we were using. Although nothing came from the mini-conference, I had a renewed confidence in myself.

From those early days forward I knew that I could not ever really be happy unless I was writing my own ticket. It should have hit me years earlier, but I was unfocused, living in a world of adolescent nuttiness. My father always told me that one day I would be running my own corporation. I never understood why he thought this until one day he sat me down and explained why he and I had never quite seen eye to eye in business.

See my Dad is a corporate guy, with a little history in physical labor. 25 years ago or so, he became the head of a division for one of Michigan's largest privately held companies. He is the head of quality control, so his job is to make sure suppliers and such are actually doing what they promised the buyers. He does not negotiate with clients, and I believe he is happy about that because he is the epitome of being non-confrontational.

With that being said, my father finds me highly confrontational when it comes to business. Not meaning that I argue for the sake of argument, but that I do enjoy it at the very least. So as I was saying, my dad sat me down to psychoanalyze me one day, or at least give me his feelings on my personality. He sites one day many years ago. My Grandfather, Dad, and myself went to a coin and card show in Southfield back in the Eighties. It was the biggest show in Michigan every year. So as my elders were obviously interested in the coins, I was interested much more in the sports cards. Their pricing fluctuated aggressively, so you could make money similar to how a stock would work.

Apparently as I walked around ready to make my "investment", I was secretly being followed by the "guys". I thought I was a hotshot with my $20 bill, which was allocated for a certain whole box of unopened packs. I spied my prey on a table full of other merchandise. As best I can remember, or as I've been told, the dealer behind the table was in his 40's. So I walked up and asked "How much for the box". He said "$20". So before I handed my Andrew Jackson over, I looked one table to my left. Lo and behold, my dealer's neighbor had a whole box of the same unopened packs of cards.

This is where it gets interesting. I said to his neighbor, "How much for a box?". He said "What did he ask?" pointing to my original dealer. "$20" I said in my toughest pre-pubescent voice. "Well, I can go $19" my new friend said. Now all I had to do is look at the first guy, and he quickly said "$18". Holy crap I thought. These adults are fighting over my twenty bucks. "How 'bout you" I said casually to the second dealer. "I'll go $17" he blurts. With my chest puffed up I take a last look at my original seller, figuring he's going to yell at me. He was a grown up for heaven's sake.

"Fine! One dollar over cost" he says sternly to his neighbor. "He's all yours" the second dealer snickers to the original. So I ended up paying $16 instead of $20. That was a 20% cost savings. Little did I understand at that point in time, that my life as a negotiator had started.

As I stated earlier my Grandpa and Dad were secretly watching the whole thing go down. It wasn't until a couple of years later, when my Dad and
Uncles were talking about me that I realized how powerful the tool of negotiating was.

More to follow...
My sites to visit:
http://www.prettymichiganhomes.com/ our homes for sale.
http://www.weoffertoday.com/ where we buy houses, or take over payments
http://www.reiaofmacomb.com/ Michigan's Premier Real Estate Investing Club