The Gene Molloy Real Estate Blog

January 2007

Jan. 16, 2007 - The Gurus

Every single day of my life I am blitzed by the gurus. They are the guys who are out there trying to tell me that they have the keys to the kingdom of real estate nirvana. For a nominal fee they will share the secrets of real estate bliss with me. They will make me a better agent than the next guy, I will gain business beyond my wildest dreams, my listings will fly off the MLS, my marketing efforts will be so fruitful that I will know unimaginable riches, my web sites will become client magnets. All this for a nominal fee.

I get a couple hundred e-mails a week from these guys. Mostly they never get to my inbox any more. They go to a folder called Guru Spam if my spam filter doesn't catch them first. I go in and look them over every now and then. Some of them can be rather entertaining. If they happen to be having a free seminar on a day when I have nothing else to do I might just even go, especially if they are offering a free lunch or something. Some of what they will reveal in their free seminars is usable, but I rarely hear anything new any more. If you want to know what you don't know, you have to pay, pay, pay.

I guess if I took all of the gurus seriously I could spend about $40,000 to $50,000 a year or more trying to find out what they know that I don't. If I did that then I would have to try and make it up by shaking the last coins out my clients pockets. I would only get to work with the most gullible clients out there. My pre-guru track record of success would be rendered meaningless. I would have to charge an extra 1 or 2 percentage points more in commission so I could pay the gurus.

I have often wondered why the gurus are in the guru business instead of the real estate business. I mean, if they hold the secrets to success beyond imagination, why aren't they making their money serving the needs of all the real estate clients in the world? Why aren't they cutting out all the competition like they are offering to teach me to do? Could it be that they can't operate within the realm? Could it be that convincing real estate agents that they are lacking in some skill or another is an easier sell then giving a listing presentation? I believe so.

I do have formal training in the things that count, and my track record speaks for itself. Anyway, everything I need to know about foiling the competition I learned from the comedian Chevy Chase. "I'm Gene Molloy and your not".

As always, if you have found yourself receiving my blog postings via e-mail, it is because I have either blogged about you personally, blogged about something I know is of interest to you, or I consider you to be a person of deep thinking and intellect and I would love to have you occasionally commenting on my blog. If you would like to be removed from the list simply send me an e-mail saying so.

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Jan. 12, 2007 - Gene's Board

Hey, Happy New Year everybody. I hope that things are going well for you. So far so good here.

What is Gene's Board, you ask. Well feel free to click the link and go there. Once you get there it's kind of self explanatory, but I will expound upon it in a minute. Why would I talk about it in my Real Estate Blog, you wonder. Well if you follow this blog you will already know that the term Real Estate Blog is used pretty, loosely and I do usually tie everything in, but sometimes not.

Anyway, Gene's Board is a community bulletin board that I put up for the use of anyone who wants to get the word out about something. I have it tied into my web sites in the hopes that people will go to it and actually use it. There are a few categories right now, such as an explanation of what it is (sort of my vision of what I hope it will become), For Sale (which did have a cool Mercedes posted in it, until it sold) Business Directory (which does have a couple of business posted in it) and today I added a Not For Profit Organizations category. That should have at least one organization posted in it soon.

Outside of word of mouth and the links on my web sites, I haven't quite figured out how to promote it though. That maybe explains the lackluster use it's been getting. I mean here I am offering what amounts to free Internet advertising to anyone who is interested in using it and it gets so little attention. That's why I thought I would blog about it. Maybe that will light the fire.

I realize that if someone should want a particular category added they would have to contact me to set it up, but that's OK, I don't bite. I love doing this stuff, so don't be shy.

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Here you will find thoughts, opinions, rantings, ravings, news, views and other things I think you may find useful. I will publicly answer questions here, so that many may benefit from the curiosity of my visitors, community created content if you will. I am trying to attract "experts" in various fields to comment on different topics of interest, we will see.