A lot of people really enjoy gambling. They play the lottery and bingo, go to a casino and play the slots or blackjack or roulette. They love the bright lights, the excitement, the risk. I am not one of them. I own my own business. Every day is a gamble. Am we getting calls for [...]
There is a divide, nay, a gaping chasm between free and $1.00. Does $1.00 mean that much? Not really, if a gallon of milk is $1.00 more this week than it was last week I doubt any of us would give it a thought. But paying $1.00 online requires time and effort. You have to [...]
I know it is a little odd, but as a youngster I had a fantasy of being a Gentleman's Gentleman. Of serving and helping a great man, well, be great. Maybe this fantasy wasn't so odd. After all, who wants the burden of being great themselves? Isn't it better, safer and easier to bask in [...]
Last week President Trump signed an Executive Order allowing the sale of health insurance across state lines. This is all well and good, I thought, but how would it work mechanically? So I did some research and realized that this is change could be very exciting, especially for people who own small business or are otherwise [...]
...that the Universe tries to thwart your efforts. It is not only your personal Lizard Brain that can work against you, the entirety of the Universe seems to want to put you in your place for daring to create something. Want to write every day, smart guy? Ha! Crashed your computer! The Universe knows that [...]
That's what I want to be, unrelentingly kind. But at what point is it simply the bad habit of people pleasing? And how much is just ego, wanting to be viewed as "kind?"
I recently received an email request for a donation to the Appraiser Prosperity Coalition. I was not familiar with the organization, but I took some time to read up on who they are and what they are trying to accomplish. What I found was a group of well meaning residential mortgage appraisers fighting their latest [...]
Gagliano & Company is a small business. A boutique firm, if you will. There are only three of us: Miss Sophia, Office Administrator, bookkeeper, preparer of paperwork and utility fielder; Miss Kim, Researcher extraordinaire, datakeeper, spreadsheeter and report ninja; and Yours Truly, the Wearer of the Turban. As a result, our capacity is limited. We [...]
There are times in every business when the ol' backlog gets a little, um, thin. Many business people at this juncture do one of two things: (a) panic or (b) slow down. Both responses are perfectly natural. Panic is simply our fight or flight response at work. Our ancestors would panic when they saw a [...]
It is sometimes astonishing how often human beings fail to learn from history. For example: This Monday's Wall Street Journal featured an article entitled, Dodgy Home Appraisals Are Making a Comeback. The article by Annamaria Andriotis opens, "Home appraisers are inflating the value of some properties they assess, often at the behest of loan officers [...]
[ˈhīdˌbound / adjective - unwilling or unable to change because of tradition or convention] My industry is hidebound. Stuck. Full of rules. 50% to 70% of my reports are standard boilerplate that has to be there. That's a lot of senseless murder of trees. After the real estate crash in the early 1990s, the Federal Government decided [...]
Mr. Smarty Pants had it all figured out. Two data backups. One onsite, one in the Cloud. What could go wrong? Well, it turns out that I was saving the data just fine, but I neglected to think through the recovery part. The Old Way - Onsite Our onsite backup was to an external hard [...]
Nobody spends a lot of time looking at the market for industrial properties. Probably because they lack glamour, are usually grimy and not terribly visible. But the market for industrial property in Northern New Jersey is heating up, and from what I understand from my friends in the business, we may be looking at a [...]
Seth Godin has been saying for years that scaling and mass-production are things of the past, for the simple reason that we have gotten so good at it. We can take any methodology or process and make it more and more efficient. What matters today, according to Godin, is art, honest expressions of individuality and [...]
In the lexicon of real estate investing there are three primary types of investments. In order of risk from he lowest to the highest they are Core (typically fully leased and cash-flowing), Value-Added (the real estate version of Streetcar’s Blanche Dubois, something of a a faded rose) and Opportunistic (visionary, big-picture thinking, but the bank [...]
In a recent post I talked about my friend Big Artie and his son, Little Artie and their latest real estate venture. Here are some additional lessons we can take from this exchange: The money in real estate is made on the buy. Your basis in a deal will dictate your outcome. Don't ever count [...]
The concept of eminent domain contains two parts: public purpose and just compensation. Certainly the idea of public purpose has gotten fuzzy lately. In Kelo v. The City of New London apparently viable private property was condemned and turned over to a redeveloper. But most issues of public purpose are much more mundane and settled: the [...]
I have received a number of inquiries about appraising Jersey Shore properties that were damaged by Hurricane Sandy for casualty loss under Internal Revenue Service Rule 165. Thus far, I have not taken on any of these projects. I am not going to lie to you, this has ticked off some clients. Let's start from [...]
If someone claims to have a "surefire" marketing/sales system, walk the other way. Here's why: The system is unlikely to be a fit for your business. Or for you personally. The system will force you to do and say things that are unnatural for you. Even if she is not conscious of why, a potential customer will [...]
