Well, fall convention season is here - and what fun it is, going from state to state and meeting old friends and making new ones. Nothing warms a heart more than catching up with hosts and past students who continue to sit in the front row (ok, and some in the back) to listen once again to the simplest theme in business:

To make money, you gotta spend money.

I think I've been saying this, oh, for maybe 17 or 18 years now. At conventions large and small. During busts - and booms - and busts again. Funny, how the principles of business don't change much.

And funnier still, how I've somehow become immune to the looks on people's faces when I tell them they have to spend $300 to get a Blackberry. Today. Now!

I guess something like "shock" used to come to mind when the NUMBER ONE reason, over and over again, whether it was get a laptop, or get a digital camera and - today - get a Blackberry - continues to surface from the murky depts of pseudo-business:

"It's too expensive!"

Yup. No more shock here. Not even a raised eyebrow. Just my usual, evil grin. A sneer that hides my grinding teeth and keeps back my instinctual remark: You gotta be kiddin' me?

So, once and for all: let me tell you all how to get a Blackberry, and get your money back. Oh, and MAKE money with it, too.

Let's start with some research:

Most timestudies of business professionals estimate that, with the use of mobile email, the average time savings daily is about 55 minutes a day. Mostly, this time is saved from having to go back "to the mother ship" to check email all day long... Let's just estimate that to be an hour. And let's say - for proper sake - that it could be ANY device that gets you email on the go: your laptop, a Treo, a Blackberry, even an electric fish, if it can check your mail. I really don't care what it is. I just care that it checks email on the go.

Now, let's do some math:
Assume for a moment that the average real estate professional bills out at $100 per hour. This assumes someone who just sells maybe 20 houses a year and works maybe 50 hours a week. We know from previous blog entries that the REAL average REALTOR only makes about $13, but let's just focus on those making the sales for a minute.

Now, bring in the financiers:
If the average agent is worth $100 an hour; and the average Blackberry user saves 1 hour a day; and the average Blackberry costs $300; how many days will it take for the average REALTOR to "break even" on their purchase?

Sounds like an SAT question, right? No, it's even easier.

Answer: three days.

Now let's bring in the lawyers:

Well, what about the increased monthly bill? Someone's got to pay for the higher charges once you start getting all that data and email? What do you say about that?

Back to humble, idiot me:
Well, let's see: The average cell phone company increases your bill $45 for data services per month; but if the average agent uses their email more and their voice minutes less (therefore) they could lower their voice charges and, well, maybe it's an even swap?

Lawyers again:
Nope; not buying it. You're not geting off that easy. My client loves to blabber; so no swap.

Idiot me:
Ok, then, add up $45 x 12 and you've got $540. Divide by $100 and that's about 5.4 hours - or six days, if we split them up nicely.

So, if we do it right, we need 3 days to recover our costs from the purchase and six days to recover from an ENTIRE YEAR of data service.

That leaves us 365-9 = 356 days left in the year to either a) save more time (money) or b) make more money by being more available to clients, answering online leads faster and generally being more productive during what would otherwise have been "down time" travelling back and forth from the office to the field all day.

In fact, if you REALLY do the business case: you've got 356 x $100 worth of BUSINESS SAVINGS simply by buying a Blackberry. That's potentially $35,600 in recovered time, which is recovered money.

Even if we compensate for not working every day (yeah, right) and not billing for every hour (indeed) and potentially not getting a Blackberry but an electric fish (most likely because they are cheap) there's no other way to put it.

GET MOBILE EMAIL NOW!!!!!