I know, I have a BSBA in Marketing but until about 4 years ago I did not really follow what I learned in school. What happened 4 years ago?

I reconnected with Jeff Dostal with Marketing Firepower.  Jeff and I went to Norfolk Catholic High School together.  Jeff completely revolutionized what I think about marketing, advertising and prospecting.

Some things I learned.

Building a brand take time.

If you want to succeed you need to dedicate time, money and resources to marketing, advertising and prospecting and they are very different from one another.

These activities are all about consistency

No matter what your budget is you need to have a budget.

You need a plan  and you need a team to help you execute that plan.

You need to constantly remind people, including your current customers, what you do.

You need to reach out and touch your customers often.

If you do not focus on growing your business it will ultimately go out of business.

Jeff has a lot of great resources on his website, check it out at

http://www.marketingfirepower.info/

I wanted to take this opportunity to update you on some of the exciting things happening at Landmark. It’s been three years since we moved into our new office. Our plan was to use an open floor plan to foster communication and collaboration among employees.  This move has exceeded our expectations.  It has improved our operational efficiencies and allowed us to avoid the proverbial “dropping the ball”. We have continued to expand the services we offered based on what brings the most value to you our customer.  Most recently:

            -Real Estate Assessment Appeals.  Real estate taxes are often times our largest single expense of which we have little control.  This week we were at our hearings for the Tax Equalization and Review Commission for 2010 and 2011 real estate valuations. We had amazing results. We saved our clients over $50,000 in real estate taxes this week. Because we have learned so much from these hearings we expect 2012 to be our best year of appealing real estate valuations ever. We brought on Alex Karimi to head up this effort. Alex is a real estate investor himself and has a personality that makes him a “Natural Born Killer” at appealing real estate valuations. If you are interested in us appealing your assessments, please give Alex a call at the office and he will step you through the process for appealing 2012 valuations,   

            -Omaha Towing and Recovery   Last December we started a towing subsidiary named Omaha Towing and Recovery.  We did this because of the constant complaints from current tenants about unauthorized parking in our lots. In 4 months, we have all but eliminated the parking problems. In fact a tow truck showing up in a parking lot brings more tenants out of their apartments than a police cruiser. So we have added property patrols to one of our many property investor services. If you would like to have us patrol your lot/properties on a regular basis, whether we manage the property or not, please give me a call.

Since property values have dropped dramatically in the last three years combined with low interest rates and high occupancy levels now is best time in the last 20 years to buy residential investment grade real estate.  To capitalize on these opportunities we have reorganized our Sales Department to the team approach.  Jim Posey and Chris Bauer have moved on to our bigger non-investment property competitors.  I am now the only Full Time real estate agent and have built a team of staff around me to best take advantage of the amazing investment opportunities. Call or email me and we can get together on this unique time we live in.

As always we appreciate your business and look forward to serving you in the future.  Please feel free to contact us at any time.     

Dave Paladino

PS We now have our own reality show called “The Super”. Check it out on HD net on Monday nights at 8pm

My seven year old daughter has been struggling with how to be a sweet girl so I proposed something to her last night. Before she said anything to her brothers, her mom and I she would run it through an internal filter.  I asked to her to ask herself  if what she is about to say kind? Is it necessary and is it true? Once what she wanted to say met those criteria. I asked her to run what she was going to say through another filter.  When you speak, speak the truth in love. I think that we all can, especially me,  learn from this advice. Think about the things that you are telling your coworkers, friends, and family. Do they pass this open your mouth filter test?

This is an interesting look at what Warren Buffett thinks about investing in single family houses. There is one potential hurdle with this idea. It is hard to get 30 year money on rental properties unless you live in it. However, I do think that it is a great idea to start shorting the US Dollar.

This is an interesting concept. I found this talk on the TED(technology, entertainment and design) website.  I love this quote, “if you are not prepared to be wrong you will not be creative.” Check this video out, its some very interesting stuff.

This is a great video about happiness and how it affects your athletic and business performance.