What It's Really All About

My Birmingham agent and I were talking last May. I asked her if she knew of anyone else who could use our program. She said we should put an ad in the paper. Oh, duh!

Given I have a degree in Marketing and Public Relations, ran my own freelance PR business for several years before converting to what I do now, it seemed like this is something that should have been intuitively obvious to me. However, living where I do, I am jaded to such thinking. A three Sunday ad in the Arizona Republic would have netted me three phone calls--and one of them would have been the wrong number.

Apparently this is not the case down South. The first Sunday the ad ran, my agent called and asked exactly what I was thinking of doing with all the phone calls. The word, "calls" got my attention. Exactly how many calls were we talking about? Three, five. No, 30. By the end of Sunday, the number rose to 60. By Monday at noon it was over 100. I pulled the ad Monday night. From the 100 calls, I got several applications and four immediately solid candidates. I also got a couple more that came up months later. I am still amazed by this.

There are those (namely my partners) who are ready for me to run another ad. I have been hesitating, knowing how the first one turned out. It was a lot of work. But, I need to remind myself, it turned out good in the long run. It was just a lot of short hoop jumping.

As I write this, I am reminded of all the work that came with the newspaper ad. And, there was a TON of work for about three months. The call screening, background checks, contract negotiation, lease writing, phone calls... and more phone calls. However, I am also reminded of the rewards I have received. The greatest reward was simply helping someone achieve their dream to own a home.

To sum it up: my favorite quote from my tenants is simply, "Thank you for the hand up, not the hand out." And, that is what makes the difference to me. Sigh. I guess it is time to call the Birmingham News