I had a bad experience last year - I won't go into details, but I took a great job with a respected company, but the executive leaders were rotten and myself and a few others quit because of it. You know the drill - when you work for people you can't trust, it's only a matter of time. It hurt to leave, but staying would have been worse, and it gave me a lot to ponder.
"Who can I trust?"....that's the question, isn't it? In corporate America, it's a tough question to answer - and in Real Estate, it's even harder. The problem is that the industry has so much independence, and such a focus on production, that "bad apples" can easily sneak in & set up shop without anybody noticing.
I trust Jesse Gonzalez, the founder/administrator of the REO Pro Agent Network. Jesse's been a great friend over the last few years, and he's always been straightforward with me - even when it's not in his best interest. He's honest, and that's a rare thing. I do volunteer work for him every now and then - not because it does anything for me, but because he's a good person trying to make a difference for agents, and that means something.
Another person I trust is Tim Harris, of Harris Real Estate University. I did some work for him last year - before I took the "great corporate job" - and found him to be friendly, honest, and having true integrity. A year later, that hadn't changed, so I started doing volunteer work for him, and it led to a role at the University.
Trust matters in life, and we all value it more now because I think we've all been burned. Between "fix & flip" schemes, mortgage-backed securities scandals, and "hot new lead-gen" packages, we've probably all put ourselves into one idea or another that failed miserably, and usually involved somebody selling us a dream that simply wasn't true.
Let's face it: the last few years have been tough for real estate - for agents and the entire industry in general. Sometimes it's been a tooth & nail struggle just to pay the bills, but somehow we've survived, and we're stronger, wiser people for it. If all that pain & struggle had some purpose to it, though, let's hope that it was to make us wiser people, and part of that wisdom is knowing who to trust - and who not to.
Now it's your turn: who do you trust? Who are some of the people in your life who've made a difference, kept their word, and been honest with you even when it might not be in their best interest? Integrity matters, and I think it's more important to give credit to the people who have it than it is to complain about the folks who might not...
Sincerely,
Tim Ventura |  |
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