| Yesterday I took two of my kids with me to look at some deals that are under contract. It was a pretty fun day. They’re always asking what I do all day at work so it was exciting to explain the business. Who knows, maybe they’ll follow in my footsteps someday. One big lesson they learned was the importance of communication. Nowadays a lot of people will try to replace picking up the phone and talking to someone with cold, impersonal methods like mass messaging and artificial intelligence. Instead of having conversations, they hide behind technology by sending out mass offers to every single property that they can. While playing the numbers game they miss out on creating relationships and discovering the real motivations of sellers. I recently had a wholetail opportunity out on the market, and I had been getting a bunch of blind offers where people had zero idea what was being made available to them. If these potential investor buyers would have just picked up the phone and called me they might have had a real shot at the property. Interestingly, after the deal went into escrow and it was posted on the MLS these would be investors were still sending me lowball blind offers. My kids got to see the importance of communication in action. We visited some of our rental properties and they saw the power of communication and how really listening to our tenants creates great relationships. These tenants are not just tenants, they are people and are treated with a high level of care and respect. In turn, we all know each other on a first name basis and we both do all we can to make sure that our relationship remains intact. The key here is communication. That’s at the core of every successful real estate business. And this is doubly true in the probate niche. But the best part of the day was when I communicated with my kids that we were going to the Dish Restaurant for lunch. It’s an old favorite of mine. The kids had never been there before and they were so surprised when the staff knew me by name. It was a real treat. When we walked in the front door, the waiter says “Hey Ernie, you brought the kids but where is Mama?” The kids immediately turned to me and said, “of course the waiter and the rest of the staff know dad” The kids find it funny that it seems like everywhere we go either I already have or soon will have a friend in that place since I usually never leave a place without knowing people on a first name basis, and knowing a little about them. Then we had a great lunch and recapped everything they had learned. It was a really nice way to close out the day. To your success, Ernie “Taking The Kiddos To Work” Vargas | The Probate Fox |
June 16
Passing the Torch
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