On the Need for Common Definition

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People often argue about if agents are worth what they are paid, who is a good agent, what makes a good agent, and so forth. I’m not (for now) going to dive into any of these questions, but instead step back and try and determine how do we even go about setting up the discussion [...]

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How to Avoid Using Third Party Vendors

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By nature, I tend to be a bit of a do-it-yourselfer. I build my own websites, manage my own hosting, and do my own research. There are times when I just have to use a third party to do work for me like my accountant or my dentist. This was a hard post for me [...]

I am your partner

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I wrote a post back in February about customer service and how important it was to respect and value your customers. I wrote it for a few reasons but the biggest one was that I had been witnessing really poor service on the parts of several business relationships personally and communicated to me by friends [...]

How to Value a Home: Common Sense Over Emotion

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The emotional play – it does work The other day during the annual GenBlue conference, Coldwell Banker debuted their new commercial. It’s an emotional approach to “How to Value a Home” featuring the iconic voice of Tom Selleck. It’s well done, no doubt about it. When you watch it, you’d have something wrong with you [...]

Reevaluating "Free" – You Get What You Pay For

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I received an email the other day from a friend of mine who told me that I came up in a conversation he was having with a client as a Subject Matter Expert on a certain topic. Although they would have loved to work with me, they are a non-profit and are very budget conscious. [...]

A Lesson in Decision Making

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How much time should you spend evaluating any given solution?  As is often the case, there is no single answer to this question. The formula I like to apply requires you to at least estimate how long you plan on using the solution. Short term solutions generally don’t take much time to figure out. It [...]

Don’t Believe the Hype

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I read a post on Lockergnome the other day where Chris Pirillo answered a question someone posed to him about buying a new laptop now or waiting until Windows 8 is out. Do you remember Windows 7? You know that Microsoft Operating System that just had its second birthday this past Friday? To put things [...]

A Lesson in Time Management

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I figure the first post on the new site should be something personal and genuine yet helpful. After all, we are here to help right? So this post is a combination of “learn from my mistakes” and a fundamental business lesson rolled into one. After a brief hiatus, Phacient.com is back up and running with [...]