Coach Kip

I have recently got my Real Estate Licence and am working with Keller Williams.  I also have a one year contract as Consulting Teacher remaining.  For the next year I will be a Realtor helping people find houses and helping existing homeowners sell theirs as well as Consulting Teacher at Nashville School of the Arts.  But what I really need is your help in making some key decisions in building my business.  I have one year to grow it and work out the kinks.

First step is to Crowdsource a really cool name.  I am currently working with several investors and am a member of Real Estate Investors of Network of Tennessee (REIN).  I will be flipping a house this summer (maybe two if all goes well), and then continuing on working on rehabbing houses as the year moves forward.  All the money that I make from that will go right back into my business with the end game to buy rental houses and have a steady stream of income from them while the houses increases in value.  No I do not want to unclog toilets in the middle of the night either, part of my investor network includes property managers, they will handle that.

I need a cool name for my Real Estate Investing business.  The two biggest and most popular websites out there right now is Trulia and Zillow, real estate websites whose name has nothing to do with real estate.  I do not want to be Bryan Kipke Real Estate, The Kipke Group, Team Kipke, or anything else like that.   I want my Real Estate business to be something different, something cool, something memorable.  Unfortunately I am not very creative that way.  There are a lot of “Groups”, “Teams”, and individuals using their name in the real estate business.  My thought on this is it does not matter what the name is, only that it stands out and is memorable.  What I mean is that it does not have to have the what in the title.  You don’t go to a “search”, to search you go to Google, Yahoo, or Bing.  Heck Google has become a verb.  You don’t go search it anymore you Google it.

Want more?  Twitter, FourSquare, Yelp, WordPress, Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Flickr.  All Tech companies yes.  But that is what we are dealing with today and I want my Real Estate business to have a large component of tech to it.

A big part of my marketing will be having a great blog where I can share local and national Real Estate trends along with investing tips, rehabbing pictures, how to increase the value of your home, how to budget to get that down payment, etc.  Anything that I think will help people mostly focusing on the investment side of the Real Estate business.  Surprisingly there is not that much competition on this in Nashville.  I don’t think that it will be easy but I think that there is a huge opportunity to be the authority in the area very quickly.

Some more things to think about.  I have an alter ego sprinkled around the internet and he is called Coach Kip.  See CoachKip.net, Coach Kip on Facebook, and Coach Kip on Twitter.  I have never really figured out what it is but I do have a few followers, or at least I did for a while.  If you Google Coach Kip half of the results on the first page are me.  I am not sure if I should transform Coach Kip into the Real Estate Investment expert or keep that more of a Personal Coaching and develop that further.  Maybe I should use it as my blog and create another site (the one that you are naming), maybe I should be a Realtor under that nick name?  Not sure.

I recently attended a great technology conference called BOLDTech through Keller Williams.  Thank you Liz Landry for some great ideas. So here is what I am thinking right now:

Launch BryanKipke.com as my cv and make sure that it explains me.
Team Kipke (Or Bryan Kipke Realtor still haven’t decided) as BryanKipke.kwrealty.com
Your Name for TheKipkeGroup.YourKWAgent.com
CoachKip.net???
I need a Real Estate Blog – A Little Help Here Please!

So here is the strategy from the conference.  Have 4 websites.  A buyer site – Team Kipke, a seller site – Your Name, a blog – Coach Kip or attached to the seller site, a niche site – possibly Coach Kip my seller site or a site totally separate.

OK I know I am getting scattered, just think of what is going on in my brain right now.  That is why I need you.  Help me sort it all out.  Throw me a bone here.

Finally my Tennessee Real estate License is here and I am certificated and licensed.  That really means that my business is finally here and ready to launch.

My business strategy is developing and I am loving being part of the Real Estate community.  I will be focusing on investing and helping people judge a home not just on how much they love it and the neighborhood but in making sound long term financial decisions.  It is not hard making money living in a house over the long term.  But I can definitely advise people on making great decisions and shorten the amount of time it takes for a house to appreciate enough to feel like there was money made.  Money is not made when you sell a property, it is made when you buy it.

So the next goal is to attend all the events that I can in my office, find a few mentors, and learn how to market and attract leads.

Meet the Kipke group.  

• We are here to sell your house
• Find your Dream House
• Project Management and Design
• Property Management

As I develop The Kipke Group it is important that I develop it in a way that lets it expand and grow easily and runs on its own.

Grow Easily

I will be using the Keller Williams design for growing a Real Estate Business.  The first step is to grow my Real Estate sales business as an agent.  As I do this I will be creating models that will lead to easy expansion.  The Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller maps it all out.  All I have to do is follow what it says.

Runs on its Own

The one thing I don’t want is to own a job.  It will be a business.  The definition of a business is that if the owner leaves it will continue to run and grow on its own.  It is ultra important to me to be able to have a business that continues to produce.  I have a wondering spirit.  I have had two careers in 20 years since graduating college and now this will be my third.  This career will be all about building businesses.  Building these businesses must be built so that they can run on their own so that when it is time for me to leave to the next one it will sustain itself.

One thing that I have learned is that not everyone is an entrepreneur.  Actually a majority of the people are more than happy to work for a company.  If I can build companies that sustain themselves and continue to make money for me they can continue to employ people and grow the economy.  That is the ultimate goal.

Finally The Kipke Group will be providing a great service.  Through education, understanding, and taking a little extra time with each client to really get to know what they want we will be able to deliver excellent service to each one of our clients.  By advising and creating great housing opportunities everyone wins.

In the spirit of self experimentation and learning how to do what I want in my life it is time to really commit to creating a business.  I have always been interested in Real Estate, the housing market, having rentals, and eventually vacation properties.  Now is the time to commit.

I have passed my real estate exam and will be starting my career with Keller Williams.  One of the things that Gary Keller likes to say in his books is Work to Learn before you Work to Earn. I really like that quote, it sums up what my new philosophy is (has been for about the last 5-8 years).  I will now work with Keller Williams as a selling agent and listing agent.  While doing this I will be learning the ins and outs of the real estate business.  I will be much more prepared as I develop my business.  So I will Work to Learn this summer and next year.  My plan is to launch the business in all aspects in May 2014.  Think of it as those grand openings that you see.  You know the ones that last for a couple of years.  Seems like every time you dive by that new restaurant they have their Grand Opening sign out.  Well mine won’t last that long.  It is more of a learning year for me with the Grand Opening next May.

However I have already committed to continuing on as Consulting Teacher for the 2013-2014 school year.  This means that I will be concentrating on getting listings, networking, and learning the real estate business.  It will be an interesting juggling act as I refuse to let one thing interfere with the other.  However to continue living the lifestyle that I want to lead cannot be done through being an educator.  I have reach my limit of advancement without paying to get another degree.  I simply don’t want to do that.  Besides it is still a job.  I love teaching but going to school every day is not the way that I want to live.  I will be teaching.  I will be able to add business building on a bootstrap budget to my teaching repertoire.

I will be blogging my journey for the next year.  This is what I will be concentrating on and spending my time doing so I might as well pass the knowledge on.  Wish me luck.

I developed a saying while I was a Business Coach in Miami.

Discipline is freedom

While working there I realized that if I could be discipline in my scheduling and stuck to tasks, activities, appointments, and work schedules I created more freedom.  Or the contrapositive (a math term because I don’t like to use negative) if you don’t have a schedule you spend all day spinning your wheels trying to get stuff done and never get anything done.  The key to sticking to a schedule, to sticking to goals, to transformation, is discipline.  If you can make yourself do something you will be successful.  That is it.

Here is a great side effect to having self discipline.  You get a lot of free time from it.  If you can do something when you say you are going to do it and get it done you don’t have to spend a lot of time procrastinating, finding little things to kill time, or just wasting time.  There will be plenty of time to do all kinds of time killers when you get your stuff done.  It is great.  Discipline is freedom.

This is especially important for entrepreneurs.  For many of us when we start our next project we are either working for someone, or we are still working in our last project.  For many of us we just keep starting things, getting things going, and then moving on.  Without discipline we can’t do both.  We know that things just have to get done.  Usually we are the only person to do it in the beginning.  It can seem all consuming and take away exactly what we do this for in the first place, freedom in our lives to do what we want.  But guess what?  If you are discipline in your schedule you can do it all.  You can have everything you want.  You can definitely do it all.

I had to relearn this in February.  Lets see:  I finished my Real Estate class, took my Real Estate licence exam, had a hockey tournament (finished second), trained all of Metro Nashville Public Schools Algebra I teachers on Common Core State Standards, kept up with my trading and turned a profit (two for two this year), spent quality time with my daughter and wife, and a few more little things.  Did I get it all in?  No.  I did not do very well with my dieting and fitness.  Not that I am on a diet just trying my best to eat right.  That got pushed aside.  Why?  Did not plan for it.  That was the lesson that I had to relearn.

So this will be a reboot in more than one ways.  First why I decided on a reboot and what I am rebooting.

Why the reboot?

I started to read The 4-Hour Chef at 5 am this morning.

Tim Ferris.  Yep I will blame it all on him.  I got his first book ordering it before it was released at a Boarders Book Store.  The Four Hour Work Week turned my life upside down.  I was totally not ready for it.  I implemented some things and believe that I have become very good at activity management.  I have found time where time was needed.  I expertly applied the ideals and techniques in teaching, which became very dangerous.

I experienced new things as a teacher that I had never experienced before.  Time.  Lots of extra time.  I developed a classroom that would run on its own.  I felt useless as if I should be doing something.  Fortunately our new evaluation system gave high praise to teachers who were facilitators in their classroom.  That was me and I quickly rose to the top of the evaluation system and busted right through the top scores of evaluation and student growth.

But now what.  I said my life was turned upside down.  That sounds really great.  The part that got me turned upside down was that I realized, like a giant light bulb exploding in a fiery death, I was better than many teachers who were getting paid way more than me just because they were older.  And I had no chance to increase my pay without getting another degree and getting older.  The system was flawed.

THE TEACHING PAY SYSTEM DOES NOT REWARD SUCCESS.  IT IS OLD AND ANTIQUATED AND MAKES NO SENSE IF WE ARE TO GET BETTER.

I had a great leadership training session recently where this great old gentleman with a grandfatherly voice told us that we knew what we were getting into when we started so there was no reason to grip about it.  And he is absolutely correct.  However when we receive new information we can make better decisions and we may have to change our thought patterns because we find out that they were wrong.  I was wrong.

The Reboot.

So with new information we can make new decisions.  For me it is like installing new software.  I am a Microsoft guy.  Not because I think that Microsoft is wonderful and can never be better but because it works (usually).  It is compatible with the world, it is usable because that is what I have always used, and it is widely available.  Not the best reasons but it is the reasons that we have.  I would love to be a Linux guy but it is another thing to learn and it is down the list a little bit.  So…the reboot.  We who use Microsoft equipment know all about the reboot.  But why do we do it?  Two reasons.

Things are running slowly.

Sometimes when our computers are running very slowly we do a reboot.  It clears out the temporary memory, stops ghost programs from running, and generally cleans things up.

We have Installed New Software

After we install new software most of the time the software calls for a reboot.  It does this to organize itself from a clean slate.

So now I am doing this with my brain.  I am rebooting it.  I am cleaning out all the old thought patterns that have gotten me to where I am and I am creating new ones so that I can go where I want to go.  The old thought patterns were great.  They allowed me to get to where I am and I am grateful for them.  Now it is time to move on, and move on I will.

I cracked open the 4 Hour Chef  this morning.  It inspired this post.  Another Tim Ferris book, this one on how to learn.  So another piece of this blog will be me marking my progress on learning something new.

I will apply the things I have learned in the 4 Hour Chef to learning how to trade and invest my hard earned money.  The goal is to retire at age 50 with enough investments giving me a steady income to live the way I want.  Yes the FU money.  A simple calculation tells us that I need $6,250,000 in assets that produce an average yearly rate of return of 8%.  That gives me $500,000 a year income to do with what I please.  I don’t know how I can possibly spend all that money but I will do my best to achieve it.

February always seems to be the beginning of new years for me.  It takes all of January to get organized and ready for a change.  It is February 10th, time for a new year of change.

Two goals this year.  Become a confident investor with a winning record and a 8% return on my investments.  Weight 170 pounds by my 40th birthday.  That is a half a pound loss every week.  I can do this.

Me trying to be cool

It is not so much turning 39 that has really turned my thinking introspective; it is the fact that the next birthday is going to be 40.  40 is a big number.  It is the number that I feel like I have to have done something, or on the way to doing it.  It is the number that I should be an adult, or at least act like one.  It is the number that I should have accomplished something, or at least feel that way.  Of course the last statement is not true, but in the global picture I do feel like I have not accomplished much.  I have a lot of little things under my belt, traveling the world, athletic achievements, a great family that I am so incredibly proud of.  So at 39 the big push is to become who I want to be, and that is what 40 is all about.

There are some very lucky people in the world who know exactly who they are and they act that way their entire life.  There are some of us who are very talented at something and take on that persona, they receive accolades, success, and achievement through that talent.  Then they have the means and the ability to be

Look how nice of a guy I am, giving the Fonzie Thumbs Up!

who they truly are.

Then there are the rest of us who struggle all our lives to discover who we really are when who we are has been there all along.  You don’t have to go searching for you, just listen.  Stop trying to be someone else.  We are all unique and we are all loved for who we are when we are that person.  I could go on and on about how if we all simply be who we are we have a happier and more satisfying life but I also know it is not that easy.  It took me a long time to listen to myself to be who I am.  It took a wife who loved me for me, and a child who will always see through all my different facades and see only her Daddy.

My 39 years of life have taught me something.  Nike capitalized on it, Journey wrote about it, and I have learned it. The key to success is simply doing something and believing in who you are.

Oh I know.  It can’t be that easy.  What about a plan and goals?  How do we have it in us to just set out to do something and be successful beyond our dreams?

Look out Cool Guy sighting

I Don’t Know.  I was in search of a reason why, but I don’t think that we can find an answer that has the proper words to describe it.  I do know this, and I have learned this: It just works!  Call it God, Call it the Universe, Call it Allah, Call it Energy, call it anything that you want when you don’t fully understand how things work.  It just works.

I leave you with this: GET OUT THERE, DO SOMETHING, HAVE FUN, AND BELIEVE IN YOURSELF.  You can do it, you really can.

Me?  Oh yeah! I will be out there too.  I have a lot to do in the year before I turn 40.

Look out I am getting excited

Oh I am excited about my birthday, look even have two thumbs up.

Oh know the excitement is building.

Oh lordy I can’t contain my excitement for what my birthday may bring me. Good luck keeping up with me next year.

I mean I have, you know, fallen, but you get up. You don’t fall, you don’t learn anything

The world is full of lessons if you listen hard enough.  This lesson is from a Vet who now has artificial legs.  No it is not that you have to go through some tremendous tragedy before you can enjoy life.  The lesson is that if you are not failing on a consistent basis you are not learning.  I know I forget sometimes that when I fail at something it does not make me a failure.  I am only a failure if I stop trying.  Failing only means that there is another lesson to be learned.

If everything is going perfectly for you, then you are not growing, you are not getting better.  From an athletic perspective think of it this way:  Let’s take the bench press for example.  If you are a power lifter you want to be able to press as much as possible one time.  Lets say your goal is 500 pounds.  If you are an NFL prospect the scouts want to see how many times you can press 225 pounds.  Lets say your goal is 25 times.  Body builders may just want to use the bench press to gain mass and then use more specific lifts to sculpt their bodies for competition.

What we all know is that in none of these examples do any of the athletes simply go out and hit their goal on the first try.  They have to work at it over  time.  They have many failures along the way.  Many times they will have workouts where the goal is to fail.  And they happily accomplish failure because they know that they cannot succeed until they have failed.

Listen to the interview of Nick Staback on NPR.  Listen to how it begins as another Vet who has come home and has changed.  There seems to be nothing unique about the story until you learn that he has lost his legs.  Then listen to how the tone and the interview changes.  It is not the loss of his legs that has made the big difference, it is not the change to his perspective of life.  It is that he has learned that he needs to keep pushing himself to learn how to use his new legs better.  He knows that he is strong and will have a normal life and falling is part of succeeding in his new life.

So rejoice failure, failing, and challenge yourself.  See if you can fail.  See where failure can lead you.

NPR Interview - http://www.npr.org/2012/10/24/163469815/vet-walks-on-new-legs-with-a-little-help-from-mom

It is amazing how things have been sneaking up on me. I have twice now realized my dreams and have been completely unprepared when I got there. In this case being unprepared has been a wonderful and exciting surprise and is currently opening up massive possibilities.

Let me catch you up a little bit on what has been going on and where I now stand. I know that I have not been blogging much and most of my posts have been substandard for me. I apologize but I have been having a lot of fun living. Here is a little list of what has been going on:

• I spent 8 months living in Taipei Taiwan teaching English to 5-6 year olds. Total easy job but I was deported after having discovered that I started working before my paperwork had been processed, a big no no. I am serving the 3^rd year of a 5 year ban from the country.
• I spent 6 months living on the beach in Miami Beach and working like a dog (with some really outstanding results) as a Business Development Manager for ActionCOACH Team Sage. All of a sudden I woke up one day (while driving) and realized that I was living on the beach, commuting to work through palm trees every day. Exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately was was not being paid enough to enjoy things and my wife could not find work. The result? I quit before I got divorced or had a mental melt down. Location was spectacular but the JOB was still just a JOB. 50% on my way to my designed life but not quite there.
• I came back to Nashville and sulked my way back to teaching, only to have 96% success rate for my students on the Algebra I test, and double the success rate on the new “standards” (or trick questions as I like to call them – totally unfair for the students but I digress), then I promptly quit after 18 months because I can no longer justify working in an industry where the employees believe that it is OK for a teacher who did less than I did (I was the Math Chair, DASH Chair, presented the the entire middle school principles, led a technology seminar, tutored every morning, sponsored a web design class) and had worse results was paid more than me just because they were older, and there was no chance at changing this. JOB acceptable, time off and benefits acceptable, PAY no where near acceptable.
• Started a career as a football official. I know it doesn’t sound nearly as glamorous as a coach but I really enjoy it. It also runs in the family as my Grandfather and father were officials. Plus it is more pay with way way way less time. And I get to be involved in one of the sports that I love. Looks like a win for me.

So what has happened now? We spent the month of July traveling with our baby daughter. I was sitting in a log cabin in the Smoky Mountains when it yet again hit me. I have created the perfect scenario. To borrow a bit from Edgar Allen Poe, I am on the edge of a precipice.

Before I think that I just was not ready mentally to take on the challenge of true lifestyle design. Now I am. I realized after picking up and beginning to reread the 4 Hour Work Week book by Timothy Ferris that I had finally accepted and developed all the tools necessary to get exactly what I want out of life. It is all there for me, time to react. Previously I would have been scared and overwhelmed. What do I do? How is it all going to work? How am I going to live without a full time JOB? What the hell am I doing? Not now. Somehow I have developed all these great skills that all give me a portable income.

A Portable Income is my number one goal. I love to work, I feel so accomplished, so alive, so young. I have no problem with authority. I actually quite respect people who have earned their way to the top and always take time to consider their suggestions. What I despise is being told that I have to be somewhere when there is nothing for me to do. I just can’t stand it.

I have developed skills as a Web Designer, and a Social Media Marketing and SEO Guru. Wow where did that come from? I don’t know but I got right to where I want to be. I now have the time to create what I want how I want it, and I have the abilities to do so. It was a bit of a rocky road, it was not easy, but now I have it. It is so exciting.

As a quick wrap up to get us all back on the same page. Life has surprised me but only looking back. I was living in the tropics (Taiwan and Miami Beach), I was living on the beach (Miami Beach and I still can’t believe I moved), I regained a significant amount of my time (teaching) but there was always something that was not quite right. Now I have the tools and the options to make it all happen. Stay tuned for the excitement.

Oh and thanks Tim. If you have not read the 4 Hour Work Week read it! Re read it! And read it until it all sinks in!

Being a change expert I am proud to say that I am struggling with my current change. Proud?!?! you may say. You are the change expert this should be easy for you right? No that is not right. If it is easy you are not making a big enough change, or maybe not the right change. The more difficult it is the better and the bigger the change.

So that brings up the next logical question. Why is it so difficult for you this time? The answer is because I am not just making a lifestyle change, or a mental attitude change, but I am making both a lifestyle and a mental attitude change at the same time. It has only been recently that I have realized that I need to have both in order to get to where I want to be. You can check out my Bio to see where my changes have been in the past, and although the changes have been significant they were not as big as the change I am making now.

The change that I am going through is a mental change to get to the next level. That has been an ongoing change for me for a long time. I have been holding myself back because it is difficult. I am going to a whole different level and I am leaving some people behind, that is difficult. They are either going to have to change with me or they will only become acquaintances and friends forgotten. I am also having a more difficult time meeting people with the same beliefs and thoughts as me. I find that I am becoming a mentor for a few people who don’t want to be left behind but I am having a difficult time finding my own mentors.

The next change is moving up in a social and financial class. That has become even more difficult than I could have imagined. I will still be a sports loving, beer drinking, outdoor enjoying average guy in that respect, but now I will be choosing micro brews, hanging out in more secluded beaches, staying at nicer hotels, and driving fancier sports cars. I know that the limitations I have been setting on myself are self imposed, but I also feel that there is a little resistance moving up in money and class. People seem to be a little more closed off, more reserved. So is that me and my perception, or is there truth to that and that is how people have gotten to where they want to be? I don’t have that answer yet, but I think that it is a self imposed glass ceiling that I will break through soon.

Ok Coach so what is the point? The point is that the more difficult the change the better. The difficulty does not mean that you can’t do it, the difficulty means that it is worth doing and worth sticking with it until the change happens.