Lots to think about in this book.

I’ve been slowly reading Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek. I’m reading it slowly, so the points he makes sink in.

The current chapter talks a lot about Apple. It turns out that when they “introduced” the iPod, a portable MP3 player had already been on the marked for almost two years. Instead of talking about what they made (technical specs), their advertising talked about why they made it and why you would want to use it. Remember the dancing silhouettes? I sure do.

That got me thinking. Although we’ve talked about our Why, we don’t focus on it. There are lots of other people doing what we do. Why would you want to do business with us rather than them?

Does it all come down to money? Of course not! We’ve even done deals where the seller told us flat out that we weren’t the highest offer. There were other reasons Why they did business with us.

It turns out the reasons people want to do business with us are the same reasons we have for being in business:

• We do business ethically.
• We strive to treat everybody kindly.
• We want every transaction to benefit everyone involved.

In short, we want A Better Life for Everyone (ABLE):

• When we buy a property, we want to help our sellers solve a problem. That’s why we buy houses that most people won’t bother to look at. If we can’t pay them what they need, we try to help them find other solutions.
• When we renovate a property, we want our contractors to thrive and be successful. So we pay them fairly and promptly when they complete their phase of the project. We’re also not afraid to refer our great contractors to other people, including other investors. We know we’re not a 100-property a year company. We don’t want to be.
• When we renovate a property, we also help our neighbors have a better life by improving the neighborhood. That raises the value of everyone’s property around us.
• When we sell or rent a property, we provide our customers with a great house for that market at a fair and reasonable price.
• When we borrow money to buy and renovate a property, we help our lenders meet their income goals by paying them much more in interest than they would get from a CD with much less risk that the stock market.
• When we do all of this, we make money, too. That give us a better life and enables us to continue building a better life for everybody we work with.

ABLE informs everything we do.

If you’d like to work with us to build a better life, call or email us. We’d love to talk to you about win-win scenarios.