I'm big on specialization.  I think our industry would be a lot more respected if more agents took the time to really learn a specialization well instead of trying to grasp at any deal they get near. (You say ya wanna buy a coal mine in Paducah?  Well I sell houses in St. Louis, so give me a day to figure out how to do that...)

Also, niches lead to riches, or so the saying goes.

So I guess it’s kind of ironic that early in our career as I was trying to focus Kimberly on investment real estate (since she has so much experience in it) that life would keep throwing us relocation clients which we knew nothing about but worked anyway in order to pay the bills... ka sera, what do I know.

Anyway, late last year we opened our eyes and realized that investment real estate was eating up 80% of our time and budget and producing not a whole lot more than headaches whereas relocation clients were our bread and butter and yet we were only doing the minimum to get it (they just keep finding our website).

So we fired 35 investment listings, killed our investment websites, parted ways with an investment buyer specialist, revamped most of our strategic partners and changed brokers to one where we don’t compete with an internal relocation department.  Now we’re focused on really learning and building a relocation base beyond internet, Kim has joined ERC and I've built our own relocation kit.

It's been a long year but we're rebounding nicely.  Would love to network with others that focus on relocation.