Welcome to My Blog

Welcome to my blog!  I'm very much looking forward to a dialogue on what's happening in real estate in the Northern Virginia and Greater Piedmont area.  I can offer my insights, observations and opinions. But this will be a much more valuable use of space and time if all of you are contributing your thoughts and opinions as well!

I can't promise the answer to every real estate question you ever had or the resolution to every current or future real estate related dilemna.  I can promise spirited opinions and an openess to new ideas.  I can promise no flaming on my part.  And I can definitely promise an overuse of exclamation points!  Some bad habits are hard to break!

Going forward I promise that this blog will not be primarily about naval gazing!  While I'm a fairly introspective person by nature, this is about real estate, not me!  But in this introductory chapter a little introspection seemed appropriate!  After all, you might be curious about who's going to write this blog!

I was at a seminar last week where we were privileged to hear from Ann Atkinson. She is truly extraordinary and if you ever have the opportunity to hear her speak I'd highly recommend you take advantage of it!

She began by asking this group of real estate professionals why we were in the business.  Predictably the first answer that came back was "to make money" and "to make a living."  She rightfully challenged us to dig deeper, telling us that's not enough.  It's too easy to make money if that's really all you want.  She suggested that we aim higher, expect more from ourselves and our businesses.

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to think through why I'm here in more detail several years ago.  I was asked to write a mission statement for my life.  Some times you'll be asked to do an exercise like this and the results are lost from your memory as soon as the seminar ends.  In this case it proved to be very significant for me and I carried that mission statement with me everywhere I went for years.  The mission statement basically said that I'm here to lift other people up and help them to reach their goals and dreams, to inspire them to live their best lives.  There are many methods for doing that kind of thing.  And you can probably choose just about any profession and find a way to carry that out.

For me, my own unique set of skills and abilities make real estate a natural choice.  And I try to incorporate my mission statement for my life into what I do in this business every day.  I've definitely got a reason to get out of bed every morning!  And I hope that mission will underlie and inform everything that I say here going forward.  I look forward to the dialogue with all of you!