A Griffith Listing

Real Estate Services by Jon Griffith

Stop Using Paper Altogether

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I’ve been a REALTOR for 3 different brokerages.  I’ve closed dozens of real estate transactions.  I’ve also trained and coached some of the top producing agents in the Valley of the Sun, Phoenix, AZ.

In every one of the environments that I’ve been a part of, there wasn’t a single day that passed where someone didn’t have an issue printing a document. It didn’t matter how well the office computers and network were designed, the problem still persisted.  Even after building a 9-office network, following industry standard practices, I was unable to prevent printer related problems, no matter how hard I tried.

Some of these problems at times were due to standard maintenance issues.  Some of them were due to the computer that the user was printing from, often owned by that person, and almost ALL of the problems occurred on Windows based computers.  The only actual reason I found that was causing the issue was the expectation the REALTOR had of the technology tools that the brokerage had put into place.

Brokers do NOT educate REALTORS in basic computer literacy says http://www.workbootsnerd.com, and 99% of the printer problems I’ve witnessed on a day to day basis have been directly related to what the agent expects the printer’s capabilities to be contrasted by the level of computer literacy that particular agent possesses.

I have been closing sales for 5 years without needing to print a single page.

 

Have I printed?  Yes.  Have I needed to?  No.  Today’s digital tools empower you and eliminate the headache associated with printing paper documents.  Let go of the printer.  It is a cost center.  Not only does it cost in materials, it costs you in time.  Your competition is paperless.  I can teach you how to be paperless too.

A Few Influential People I Need to Thank

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I believe I’m fortunate to be living in this era.  There are certain individuals that are in my life to one degree or another who have influenced my mindset which has resulted in my successes over the past 6 years.  I’m going to gloss over the obligatory “Jesus” as that’s just a given in my life.  Without Christ, I don’t believe I have much to stand on.  So THANK YOU almighty creator of all things.  Onward.

Let me first start with Michael Barrish.  A strange individual who I “met” online in 2001 or thereabouts through a new medium called “blogging.”  He was publishing under Moveable Type (a blogging platform) and his blog still looks the same as it did back then.  There’s one thing I remember distinctly about him which involved his fingernails.  I exchanged a few e-mails with him about it back then, but nothing came of our connection, other than my burgeoning passion for writing about every stupid thing I could think of.  Thank you Michael Barrish.  You started me on this online path.

Alas, that was 13 years ago, just before I purchased by first house, and, this is more about those who have influenced me in more recent years, which in my profession, are often measured by the real estate crash of the 2000’s.

Second on the list is a small pairing of quirky individuals who happen to have a pair of flip flops for a logo, and an Australian outlook on business (it’s not really a cultural outlook, but more of a geographical metaphor.) They do it the way everyone else says “you’re nuts” for doing it.  These two characters and I (plus everyone else mentioned here) must have nailed all of the same branches on the tree of life when we fell out of the sky.  I’m speaking of Kevin Kauffman and Fred Weaver of Group46:10, two “outback” thinkers who opened my eyes to the possibilities when the real estate market was pooping on the locals in Phoenix and all we could do was work through the notorious and now relatively elusive short sale.  Without you two, I wouldn’t have “seen the light” and my first few years in real estate would have been a nightmare.  So, to you, gentlemen, I offer a heartfelt THANK YOU.

Third on this list is a man who seems to figure out how to hack every skill in life to better himself in record time.  At about the same time I became licensed in real estate, I “met” Tim Ferris through a client of mine via the 4 Hour Work Week, a New York Times best seller.  He challenged my way of thinking and put a name to the very things that I was feeling about corporate life.  As a result, I am a devout follower and will always hold what Tim writes in high regard, as he is willing to do the experimentation that many of us are not, to ultimately make all of our lives easier to work with.  So, Tim Ferris, THANK YOU.

Fourth on this list, and by no means are these numbers in any particular order, is Seth Godin.  I would argue Seth to be the most brilliant marketing mind on the planet, currently.  Every time he writes on his blog, I’m informed, and enlightened, and his points are so concise, clear, and brief, that it’s as much a pleasure to read his posts as it is to glean wisdom from Harvey Mackay, who also tops this list as the fifth.  Thank you Seth, you truly open my eyes to ways of thinking that should simply be…obvious.

Thank you Harvey.  My father continually sends me newspaper clips in the mail despite the fact that I get your newsletter electronically.  I thoroughly enjoy both you and Seth Godin, so THANK YOU!

Sixth on this list is Dave Ramsey, the Godfather of Wise Finance.  Dave, I’ve met you in person and told you that once I paid my house off, I would ride my bike from Phoenix to Nashville to scream that I’m debt free.  You’re an upstanding steward of Christ to whom I will say, “Isn’t this cool?” when we all get to the promised land.  THANK YOU Dave Ramsey, for making my life better by enlightening my brain to the concept of stupid tax.  As a result of your ministry, I and a large contingent of the congregation at my church at New Valley Church in Ahwatukhee are debt free.

Seventh on this list is a full on character that just GETS IT.  Gary, you are the charisma that I draw from when I think I can’t do it.  Your publications are excellent and I enjoy listening to you bitch about how stupid corporate America can be.  Plus, naturally, you’re a handsome guy.  You signed my copy of Crush It in Mesa a few years back and I’ll never forget seeing you in person and hearing your story.  Keep it real, stay strong, and most importantly, THANK YOU!

And lastly, but not leastly, is a man who dominated the blogging scene in the Phoenix Real Estate Market and subsequently went on to be a part of a giant real estate website.  That man has modeled technologies in the WordPress world that I have mimicked over and over again.  His name is Jay Thompson, and I’m thankful that he’s alive, given the nature of the past year or so of his life.  Congrats on your life-changes my friend, and a heart-felt THANK YOU!

So to all of you who have been at the forefront of business innovation, teaching, and general awesomeness, THANK YOU!  I can’t wait to see what comes down the line in the future!

 

A Few Critical Money Tips for Real Estate Agents

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When you’re self employed, YOU are responsible for more than you think.  As an employee, which you may have been familiar with up until the point you decided to become self employed, your employer handled your taxes and social security for you.

Now that you’re self employed, you MUST have a simple roadmap to account for what you’ll owe the government simply for doing business.

Tip #1: Taxes and Crap Like That

When you get your first commission check, or your next commission check, for those of you who have not planned well, you will apply the following formula to the check.  As an example, I’ll use a $100,000 sale with a co-broke of 3%, you being the buyer’s representative, without the broker’s cut considered in the calculations to make round numbers and .

On that $100,000 home, you earn a 3% co-broke, which is $3000.00.  You dance your way to the bank, deposit the $3000.00 and have a jolly old time at happy hour with your clients and friends.

Did you really make $3000.00?  No.  You didn’t, because you MUST set aside a portion of that money for self employment tax and income mcc4tax.  So, a basic rule of thumb for a new agent who isn’t sure what their tax bracket will be would be to put 30% of the gross income in a separate basic, plain jane savings account.  So, on your $3000.00 check, you put $900.00 away for the piper…whom you’ll pay…quarterly.  Isn’t that fun?  Look, self employment tax is 15.3% as it is, and that’s on TOP of your tax bracket.  So do yourself a favor.  Plan according to what you think you’ll make.  It’s nearly impossible to calculate exactly what you will owe, but you can get good at estimating, over time.

Tip #2:  Plan for your annual dues on a monthly basis.

You have annual fees that you pay.  You need to determine how much that annual fee costs you monthly.  Add the sum of the monthly calculation of all of your annual dues together to determine what it costs you per month to have all of the compare motor trade insurace business privileges you have.  If you can be billed monthly on anything, it’s easier to manage your monthly cash flow if you switch.  If you cannot, you need to know what an annual fee looks like monthly.  For example, Scottsdale Association of Realtors bills annually, but it can be expressed monthly.  Figure out that number.

Then, using your business checking account, set up an online transfer that happens monthly for the amount you need.  In the case of a single annual expense of $440.00, you would need to transfer roughly $37.00 per month from your business checking account (account used for business purchases) into a plain jane, separate account designated solely for annual dues expenses.  When the bill comes for the annual expense, you will no longer feel like you’re being raped by the system because you will already have grown accustomed to 1/12th of the amount every month being moved into a designated account just for this purpose…and nothing more.  You cannot borrow from your own account to pay for other crap.  This money is considered spent already.

Every year when I get an annual bill, the money is already there because I move it there in little chunks so it doesn’t seem so bad (that includes things like my annual accountant fee for doing taxes.)  And, every quarter, when I estimate that nasty tax bill, I have the money to cover it and if I’m short, it’s not by very much.

Be smart as an agent and a self-employed person and put money that you earn away or they’ll come get it from you, and that will suck.

How Real is Too Real?

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Since first learning about Gary Vaynerchuck, a date, which at this point, has completely escaped my brain, I’ve repeatedly come across stories of individuals who have adamantly stated that transparency is golden.  This inspired me to be transparent, and I wrote about how transparent I was actually going to be, and that fizzled out like a fat balloon full of chocolate rippling its way through a factory of wayward sailors smoking cigars stuffed with tuna.  In other words, I failed at being transparent, and I continue to do so to a degree.

I’m a 41 year old guy right now.  Who’s to say when you’ll actually read this, but that’s the case at the moment.  I’m not married yet, I don’t have any children, and I’m in a career that utilizes about the same percentage of my gifts and talents as the human utilizes his brain.

I have ADD, despite what you may believe to be a bunch of crap, and it’s poison to my ability to function on a daily basis.  It takes the extroversion that God gave me and makes in introverted.  It builds walls.  It creates a barrier to success through unexplained and misunderstood behavior.  It makes me think in ways that cause me to believe I’m unlike everyone else, and while I see what “appropriate” is, I don’t want to live in the land of “appropriate.”  I need an outlet.  I need a way to be me.  I need a way to be who I am and still put food in my belly and provide for a household.

Or maybe I need to abandon everything that the world tells me that I should achieve and pave my own path with goals that don’t line up with what we (and by “we” I mean “everyone but me”) expect to be the “norm.”

How real is too real?  How much truth can we speak about ourselves in our current sphere of influence…the truths that we know about ourselves that nobody else knows, without causing a complete melt-down in our community structure?  A pastor I knew once said that “if you knew some of the thoughts that went through your neighbor’s head, you wouldn’t want to be their neighbor anymore.”  What about those thoughts?  What would happen if we actually expressed them?  What if I actually pushed you off of the top of Camelback mountain?

There are people who operate with reckless abandon in this life.  They say what they want to say regardless of the consequences.  How do these people get along in life?  Are they TOO transparent?  Are they angry?  Are they oblivious to what’s “appropriate?”  Some days I just don’t care what others think.  I have respect for the fact that they have thoughts and opinions, but they ultimately don’t matter.  To me, there is only one thing that matters and that is that God loves me and made me and will support me and love me regardless of my errors and omissions (real estate reference, sorry about that.)

I want so desperately to be 100% real, but in testing the waters with this “transparency” idea, I have received less positive feedback than negative feedback and I struggle to understand why.  I’m hesitant to be as real as I really feel like I need to be, for the very reason I feel I need to be hesitant.

“Some things are best left un-said.”

I have a miserable spirit of discernment when it comes to what I should or should not say, but tonight, I feel like I need to say some things, so I’m going to get real, and try some genuine transparency.

Earlier today I was texting with Melanie Mitchell (a relatively common activity done mostly on a device we call “smart”) about how I felt.  I don’t have a problem expressing my feelings.  So I told her that I was feeling rejected today:

“Not by you. Not by family. Just in general.  It’s probably me being hard on myself for not walking the walk I talk sometimes.  I’m having difficulty getting motivated to work today.  On a lighter note…etc., etc…”

I had no idea the shit was going to hit me in the face before it hit the fan.  Today, it seemed as though nothing went the way it was expected to go.  The events of the day had me doubting my career, my time at Crossfit, and ultimately, my life.  I’ve been through tough times before.  I’ve experienced heartache in the past in many ways.  I’ve struggled with thoughts of suicide before, and have recovered.  No need to call any hotlines, I’m okay and will continue to be.  BUT, there are times when I feel like giving up.  Quite honestly, a few of the things I enjoy in life the most are the most likely things to be at the bottom of the list of priorities.

I’ve heard about 100 times in the past 5 years, that I sound like the Moviefone guy and that I should be in radio.  I was told by Kevin, the owner of Cactus Crossfit who can also will provide special expedia coupons and on one of my first consultations 18 months ago before I was a Crossfit junkie, that I missed my calling as an Olympic weight lifter.  I was then told by the daughter of the architect who designed the Optima on Scottsdale Road that I have the perfect body type to be an Olympic lifter.

I sell real estate.

I was in the Phoenix Boys Choir for 4 years, and I traveled the far east and most of the U.S.A. singing goofy little songs that mean a whole hell of a lot more to me than the value of their actual sound (sorry, some of them just suck.)  While in high school I used to acquire by questionable means various types of Kodak 35mm slide film for all of the annual church trips we would attend and then I’d put together a musically …  dammit.  I’m tired of how long it takes to get a point across.

I love making music.  I love So You Think You Can Dance.  I love stories of people overcoming adversity.  I love financial freedom.  I love my friends and family.  I do a shitty job of letting them know it.  I do a mediocre job of letting my clients know that I care about them.  I love shooting video.  I love editing.  I love the creative process.  I have no idea how to make a living doing what I love to do.  Teaching is primary motivation that I have when it comes to helping people with real estate.

Over the past 4 years, I’ve had the opportunity to help people prevent foreclosure through the sale of their home.  The primary focus was always preventing foreclosure.  The secondary task was selling the home.  The home sale is easy.  Keeping a client who is short selling happy is also easy because of the type of tasks that are involved in making that short sale happen.  Agents shied away from short sales because they were “difficult.”  I find them to be very easy because 99% of the time, the seller has checked out.  They don’t care anymore about their house and they have no emotional tie to it anymore.  They’ve thrown their hands up and handed the problem over to someone else.  Maybe I have a savior complex.  Maybe I’m just good at calling “bullshit” to their lenders.  Through the short sale process, there was greater emphasis on helping the seller understand what was happening and how they were going to navigate the short sale.  It was where I was able to exercise my ability to teach.

I don’t want to be a “teacher” of children.  Don’t get me wrong.  What I really enjoy is showing people how to get better at something.  Showing people that there’s a new way to do something, or if it’s not exactly new, it may be new to them, so it would be great to be able to help them learn it.  I am finding that I’m struggling with the “normal” day to day tasks…and…CUT.

Was that good?  Do we need another take?  CRAP!  Seriously?  The film ran out 20 minutes ago?  Son of a…

Spending Your Time Struggling to Flail

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You’re standing there wearing a harness with a slacked bungee cord attached to your back and you don’t even know it.  That cord holds you inside a circle with a radius that you haven’t yet discovered.  That radius will soon be made known to you as your currently perceived boundary of personal limitations.  One day you wander far enough from the center of your own world to feel the tension build.  You realize you need to put more energy into moving further from the stagnant world of comfort you live in and the bungee cord starts to tighten up, holding you in a pattern.  As you struggle, you get stronger, but at the same time, while attempting to break through the barrier and be released from the grips of the bungee cord that’s holding you at bay, you fear the few seconds beyond the release as you know that you will be completely out of control until you situate yourself.  Stronger and stronger you become as you persist, tugging, and pulling, hoping that the cord will finally break and you’ll go flying out into a new realm, expanding your reach, enlarging the radius of your world.  You’ve grown accustomed to the angle of attack, the pressure on your shoulders, the burn in  your thighs, until suddenly, the cord snaps sending you tumbling forward towards a new horizon.  Wham, crash, bang, scrape.  Again, another SNAP as the end of the bungee cord whips you from behind, reminding you of where you were and making it evident that even though you’re somewhere new, and your world just got bigger, breaking through was a struggle followed by a short period of being completely out of control.
That moment when we realize we are stuck somewhere and that we need to get out is often enough to foreshadow the impending “snap” of the past which will inevitably send us flailing into the unknown feeling completely out of control.  More often than not we perceive our current circumstances to be less painful than change, but the truth of the matter is, change is good, and yes it is painful, but it leads to a bigger and better world for those who dive in and make it happen.

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How do YOU manage your photos?

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I’m curious to know your point of view.  For years, I have dumped the photos that I’ve taken with my digital devices into folders organized by some sort of common theme or location or time-frame and I’m finding it nearly impossible to properly categorize the pictures.  I mean, how do you sort them properly?  One picture has my mom in it, but it’s of her in her 20’s, and it’s in California.  I’ve traveled to California and I have pictures of me in Long Beach, but those are Beach pictures AND California pictures, and my mom happens to be in some of them too.  So is my dad.  I’m wearing red swim trunks, so not only am I swimming in the pictures in California with my mom, but my shorts are red, and they’re shorts, which I’ve worn to other places that I have photos of, which don’t have my mom, nor my dad, nor a beach in them.  What folder do they go in?

It’s a mess.  There’s no way to easily sort your pictures using file folders to make them effective.

Enter Picasa.

Tonight I am on the precipice of attempting something new.  Google does it with e-mail.  Why shouldn’t I do it with my images?  I mean, the new iOS7 is going to change the way our mobile photos are organized.  What implications will that have?!

What I’m thinking about doing is dumping ALL of my digital images into one folder on my computer, and create one other folder from which to draw on the best of those pictures.  One library of images, one library of favorites.  That’s it.  Do you think that makes sense?

This was all prompted by the fact that setting my MAC to change desktop backgrounds every 15 minutes or every 5 minutes caused the most retarded images that I have in one folder to be displayed.  Icons, logos, half-baked photoshopped crap, and anything you can imagine were becoming my desktop background.  How stupid.

My theory is this.  If I make a general rule of behavior that states, “All photos shall be managed through Picasa,” then ultimately, it doesn’t matter where the photos are stored.  It only matters that I properly tag and describe photos in Picasa.  But what if Picasa gets shut down some day?  They shut other things down.  (By they I mean the Google.)

Ugh…so frustrating.

How do you store and sort and file your digital images and why?