Preface

I have a saying taped to my desk, right next to my computer that I look at almost daily:

God, grant me the strength to fight the good fight
Not because it’s always winnable,
but because it needs to be fought.

There’s not a day that I read this verse when I don’t immediately think of my Dad and how, as I was growing up, he taught me through his example to “fight the good fight no matter the consequences".

For the past 12 years as I’ve experimented with different compensation options and a whole new way of looking at my industry, I’ve heard my share of negative comments such as “Real estate has always been paid by commission,” or “This is the way we’ve always done it.”

I take comfort in the following absolutes expressed over the years:

"This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." 

 -- An internal Western Union memo, 1876

"Everything that can be invented has already been invented."

-- Charles H. Duell, director of the U.S. Patent Office, 1899

 "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" 

--H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." 

-- IBM chairman Thomas Watson, 1943

Change is difficult and takes time. Changing an entire industry from one where real estate salespeople are paid to move product, to one where real estate consultants are paid to provide counsel, guidance, and care to people looking to buy or sell their largest financial asset is, I believe, a fight that needs to be fought.

Is it winnable? Perhaps, but I hold no illusions that the radical ideas that I present in this book are going to be adopted, by either the public or the real estate industry itself, in any kind of big way in the near future. Shoot, they might not be adopted in my lifetime.

But, as President John F. Kennedy said so eloquently in his inaugural address when speaking of the many goals he wished our country to reach:

“All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in
the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”