Hey everyone. Just wanted to let everyone know that my blog has moved to http://www.ryanlucia.com.  My full archives are there and all new updates will be there as well.  So continue to get your sales, marketing and management fix over at http://www.ryanlucia.com. Ryan

Last month I talked about expectation setting and I touched on how motivation is based on proper and realistic expectations.  I want to talk a bit more about motivation, and how important setting those proper and realistic expectations are to an employee’s motivation.  Before I continue though, what are the two primary forms of motivation [...]

What is persistence?  We all have an idea of what it is to each of us.  Is it sticking to it?  Is it staying focused, and following through?  Is it when your kids stay laser beam focused on something they want, and keep talking about it?  Is it that annoying person you know that keeps [...]

What is closing?  Let’s define “closing.”  Closing is the act of asking for business once you believe you’ve shown them the appropriate value.  Closing is not the act of “assuming the sale,” asking an if/then question, or other techniques for asking for business.  A technique can be used, but closing should be as simple as [...]

It was interesting watching the Apple press conference today.  I thought for perhaps the first time we would see Steve Jobs showing a bit of humility when it came to the signal attenuation, hardware design flaw of the new iPhone 4.  If Consumer Reports can’t even recommend your device you have to know it’s bad.  [...]

Last night I attended the Placer County Business Tweetup at La Provence in Roseville.  It was a great event, as usual, but something was said last night that struck a chord with me about networking.  As I was speaking to this person, Dr. Jared Thomas, he said that being on Twitter (or social media in [...]

Wait what? Bleeding? Yesterday, Voyage Team Goodness had a blood drive here at our corporate offices and invited the BloodSource Bloodmobile to help collect. Bloodsource was hoping to get 25 pints, but Team Goodness and some folks from other businesses in our complex stepped up and exceeded the goal. At the end of the day [...]

In talking with Lisa, my girlfriend, last night about her bourgeoning salon, we chatted about a client that has now twice weaseled out of paying for her services.  She has twice asked for haircut X, but then complained that she didn’t get what she wanted, or didn’t like it after it was done.  My thought [...]

Beyond ID4 being a great movie in its own right, I thought it appropriate to talk about how great it is in the context of our business as it is today.  If you haven’t seen ID4, I’m sad for you, but here’s a quick synopsis: Evil, locust-like alien race comes to Earth and positions small [...]

I’ve heard quite a few complaints from real estate professionals lately about how business has slowed so significantly without the first time homebuyers’ credit that lapsed at the end of April.  I’m also hearing it from my Loan Officers and Branch Managers that are primarily focused on purchases.  My retort, especially over the last two [...]