Almost a month since my last update on here, there's no excuse. Maybe I've been watching just too much of the Olympics which is finally over. August has moved pretty fast for me, I kicked off the month with a birthday. I'm 27 now, I can already tell I'm looking much older than when I was 26. I've started playing in a kickball league this month. That's right, kickball. Raleigh has an organization for adults that runs co-ed sports from flag football to dodgeball. I would rate it better than finding a slinky on top of a tall staircase.I've spent this past weekend working with some old friends from high school. They are living up north but see the opportunity for investments here in the Triangle. They are Chapel Hill guys, so trying to show the places I liked in Durham was a hard sell. I think they agreed after seeing downtown that there is too much revitalization going on to be ignored. The growth in Durham and it's support from it's neighbors will only help our area as a whole. Durham has a stigma that for some people is hard to shake, but I feel I'm doing a good job of disproving it with every client I get out.
As a self employed professional you have to always be looking at ways to improve and grow your busin
ess. Networking is a key to being successful in real estate, if no one knows you then good luck drumming up a sale. I've been attending the local Chamber events and visited their leads group on occasion, but never got the feel it was greatly improving my business. Two minutes with someone drinking a glass of wine at a 6:30pm Chamber event is not catapulting my career. The odds are they will talk to 8 other Realtors before they leave too, we seem to be everywhere.
ess. Networking is a key to being successful in real estate, if no one knows you then good luck drumming up a sale. I've been attending the local Chamber events and visited their leads group on occasion, but never got the feel it was greatly improving my business. Two minutes with someone drinking a glass of wine at a 6:30pm Chamber event is not catapulting my career. The odds are they will talk to 8 other Realtors before they leave too, we seem to be everywhere. I was recently invited to a Durham BNI leads group as a guest of another Realtor. She was the only Realtor there, in fact there was a rule that limited it to one person from each field. This was a leads group that met for an hour once a week. They passed referrals back and forth, one after the other. They had gotten to know each other well and were comfortable with who they were giving leads to. The agent I attended with does several transactions a month from her group alone. That's all I needed to hear and see, I along with a friend have the ball rolling on our own, and the first, BNI group in Chapel Hill. We have about 10 members and they are a really good group of folks. I was somehow appointed President so I'll be busy increasing the size of our group and my business over the next few months.
I'm very much looking forward to this Labor Day weekend. As many of you know I'm an ECU grad and they will be playing football in Charlotte this weekend against Virginia Tech. I'll be staying with a friend there who just got a new boat, which means Sunday will be spent on Lake Norman. Hopefully the weather will hold out for us as I'll be outside 90% of the weekend. I got season tickets this year, which translates into several trips back to Greenville. It's nice to have gone to school so close, I always look for excuses to get back for a weekend and now I've got 3 or 4 of them. Go Pirates!
