You’d want to sit down first, ask a few questions, understand who they are and most importantly, see if you actually connect.

Love and Marriage most of us understand. That is important for sure. In my on move to the Real Estate profession years ago, I still to this day wonder why people on both sides are so loose with precision and compentence in this business. The barriers to entry are low but the barrier to excellence is super high. And yet even a very skilled doctor with perhaps weak bedside manner does not do the most operations.

The weaker agents sometimes have great sales records. They have polish and panache but the buckle under the scrutiny of a more strategic real estate professional asking them questions about how they present an offer or how they wrote their own language in the additional clauses section and that language is not only risky but wrong. Or I wonder if the general consumer cares about that and the general state of this industry at the average where the transaction is the purpose and the precision be damned.

And yet, under the new NAR rules that took effect in August of 2024, many buyers are being told that before they tour a single home, they need to sign a binding buyer broker agreement. Some states required it already. Some do not.

And I 100% disagree with the buyer brokerage agreement process that I see many say they are following. “I got em on a buyer brokerage agreement for all purchases made in Florida for the next 10 years”. Really? That is essentially what many are encouraged to do.

To me that is not the correct method.

Let’s Clear This Up

Yes the new rule says that agents and buyers must have a written agreement on compensation before showings begin and an agreement to show homes. Well more precisely a written agreement to show a home and compensation is not a pure requirement.

Certainly absent stating compensation a real estate professional representing a buyer is running a risk. If you just met someone outside of a first home you intend to show, then you are running multiple risks. But no it does not require a full-blown, long-term buyer brokerage contract for an agent to show a home.

There’s another option: the limited-purpose showing agreement.

It does one simple thing: it allows you to tour a few homes with an agent without locking you into a long-term commitment. It gives both sides space to build trust, evaluate fit, and decide if there’s value in moving forward together.

In other words, you are able to have coffee before the wedding. Indeed on our team, I much prefer that our real estate professionals have “coffee” well before a first showing.

The Risk Isn’t the Paper It’s the Premature Promise

A buyer broker agreement, in the right context, can be a great thing. It means everyone is on the same page. Expectations are clear and incentives are aligned.

When you execute that or a showing agreement is critical. Shouldn’t it be after you have checked compatibility? What about strategic thinking at all does that matter? Is that important to you that a person is competent. You know in this industry being competent makes you great by comparison.

Brilliant and yet simple.

But signing that kind of agreement with someone you just met like some will do?

The weaker real estate professionals are not seeking a trusted relationship. They are seeking locking you in. In locking you in they do not have to improve demeanor or skills. The skills they have to improve are those that cause you to sign the agreement to be locked in. If they are well scripted, have some volume behind them and are “empathetic” you will sign up and have no idea what the comps are in our area.

Mind you, our business clientele has within it a fair number of people that were very unhappy with their past experiences with other real estate professionals. We have encountered it all.

You see we stick to our knitting. Competition in our industry is not about us rolling over and changing our methods for each client to meet what they want to do. Our strength is in being comfortable to know that a person that wants someone just to unlock doors is someone we are not compatible with. The competition in the market with different real estate teams and people will allow that person to find the door unlocker.

What Confident Agents Do Differently

A confident, seasoned professional doesn't fear transparency. They welcome it.

They’re not desperate for a signature but instead they’re eager to earn your trust and have the dialog. The will write the very direct email that tells a person how they do business and they will not waiver. And they know that if they do the work well, you’ll want to continue. But they also know that some people do not respond to objective data or clear communications. They want the “Don’t you just love it” experience. That is available. But not with all teams.

That’s why we often use showing agreements to start. No pressure. Just clarity.

We want you to experience what it’s like to work with us before you commit to something long-term. How do we think? Is it compatible with your thinking? Can we listen well enough to find a home to show you or are we only capable to show you homes that you have identified on Zillow? Because you see this isn’t just about showing houses it is also about knowing our market and our homes. It’s about strategy, insight, and understanding what you’re really trying to find.

I cannot tell you how often we get comments about how knowledgable we are from others. Does it mean they all work with us? No. We have knowledgable buyers that come to us and like what we say and do very well but want to be “Unrepresented”. Thats ok. The market provides that service. We however, do not.

This Isn’t About Fear — It’s About Fit

The NAR rule is designed to protect buyers from hidden compensation structures and encourage more transparency. We support that. What we do not really support is a unilateral conditionally cancellable buyer broker agreement.

Now to be sure a nefarious cancellation because you found a home and decided you wanted to ditch the buyer agent and go to the listing agent because they promise a discount on the buyer side commission is bad behavior by a would be buyer. But it is not the job of a document to protect an agent from that behavior. It is coffee and gauging the true heart of an individual.

Let’s not confuse structure with trust.

• You deserve to know who you're working with.

• You deserve to feel confident, not cornered.

• You deserve to make informed decisions — about homes and about representation.

The agent you sign with should welcome your questions, offer alternatives, and let their value speak louder than their contract. Indeed a real estate professional should also be confident in their ability to select clients with whom to work.

Final Thought: Start With Coffee

If you’re thinking about buying a home this year, remember this:

Trust is built through a hand shake and a conversation that indeed may have awkward moments and challenging exchange. But designed to find out who the person is with whom you may be working or indeed “marrying” is worth the effort. Do not sign away your independence as a home buyer or even as a real estate professional in the first meeting.

Take your time. Ask the questions. Start with a showing agreement if that feels right. And make sure that whoever you choose is there to help you win not just win your signature. Both sides deserve the right to know their relationships are proper and a confident buyer will want to test the waters as will a confident real estate professional.

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You’re not planning it. Remember this is just something you know how to do right?
You’re not analyzing each foot placement. If you did that I am not sure you would even be able to take the first step.
Walking down stairs is just like You’re walking.
It is Effortless and Natural just moving forward.

But here’s the question people ask once they’ve let go of the big goal-setting model:

“If I’m not setting a destination, how do I know I’m not just wandering?”

That is a very Fair question.

And here’s the answer:
You don’t need a destination. You do not need to find first where you are going on a map. You just need to know the direction is good. You need direction.
What you have then is a certain kind of integrity.

What Is Integrity, Really?

Let’s be clear, I don’t mean the slogan-on-the-wall version of integrity.
I do not mean some polished, professional, PR-safe word people use when they want to sound trustworthy or have a mantra that is tik tok catchy..

I’m talking about something internal. Something visceral. Something you have.
Integrity is when your actions match your values even when no one’s watching.
Even when no one’s counting. Even when it costs you something. Be true to yourself even if you are a bank robber right?

It’s not about perfection. It’s about alignment and the movement you need to make every day to get to the next point

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A Map Tells You Where to Go. A Compass Tells You Who You Are.

People love having a map.
A Map feel certain. Maps feel safe. It is as if you know you will get there. Unless there is a road block. HINT: Waze is better!
You can chart your course. You can mark milestones. You can color-code your progress.

But the moment life shifts and you lose that map you better have some way to recover.
The moment someone cancels, or breaks your trust, or turns left when you expected right Your map is worthless and unless you have a voice from afar to correct you , you need a voice from within to push you forward.

A compass, though?
That still works.
Because a compass doesn’t rely on conditions. It doesn’t need roads or markers or cell signal. True North.

It just points. It just knows. Then you can just start walking. The path may not even be certain either. But the direction is.

Integrity Is That Inner Compass

When you’re operating without rigid goals, without five-year plans, without the need to prove anything what guides you is whether you’re still in alignment with yourself and you have your true north well programmed.

That’s how you know you’re not just spinning in circles.
That’s how you keep moving forward even if the scenery changes.

You trust your internal compass.

You say things like:

• “This isn’t right for me.”

• “That’s not how I want to treat people.”

• “I’d rather take the slower path than sell myself out on the faster one.”

• “This moment calls for honesty not strategy.”

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Speed Doesn’t Mean Progress

Let’s be honest: we’ve all confused movement with meaning.
We’ve sprinted toward things we didn’t really want. We do a lot sometimes without getting a lot done. We’ve all chased recognition, approval, applause only to find out we left ourselves behind. We have to back track and go another way because we really just have ourselves to satisfy.

The world celebrates speed. But speed without integrity is just noise.

Walking With Integrity Feels Different

You’re not frantic. You’re not pushing for overt results.
instead you expect things to come to you as you do the next right thing. You work instead on making sure you are true to the next right thing not the next shiny object.

This is what it means to walk down stairs. It is Not to reach the bottom per se.
It is to move and end up at the destination.

Try This

Ask yourself:

• Where am I making decisions just to feel productive? Doing a lot but getting nothing done.

• Where am I ignoring my own values to fit into someone else’s system? Competing against someone for no reason forgetting my own value system.

• What’s one thing I know I should stop doing not because it’s illegal or immoral, but because it’s out of alignment? Scrolling tik tok?

Then ask:

What would my next step look like if I were guided only by integrity not pressure, not expectation, not fear? What if I had won the lottery? What would I do next? What work would I do and why?

You might not know the destination. But you’ll know you’re going the right way.

And that’s the way to walk down stairs.

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You ever notice how “record setting” sales along 30A only seem to get blasted out when the agent was on the listing side? Funny, isn’t it. Maybe they were even on the sales side. Do you know if they are good or not? What constitutes good? Is good a record sale or annual volume? Is good polished? You decide. I can only tell you what our good is.

A listing agent wants more than anything to make sure you know they’re the linchpin, the “rainmaker,” the “one who set the record.” They want you to believe they have the system and the methods. They do not want you to know that they just “buy leads” and have 30 agents on the team.

But think about it: if that same agent represented the buyer, are they going to trumpet the fact that their buyer just paid the highest price ever recorded in that neighborhood? What do you think that buyer thinks? What if they represented the seller and then posted “Highest Price some DUPE ever paid for a home here” and still the best shops we offer is Alvin’s Island? This ain’t Palm Beach. Quiet is usually better.

Do you really want to tell the client you just represented that you guided them right into being the comp everyone else will use against them? Unless the buyer specifically wanted the honor of being the record breaker, that’s not a brag. It is discretion-less puffery.

That’s why the smarter path is discretion. Records get set, yes. But the job is not to run into the street waving a flag. The job is to make sure both sides of the deal, whether buyer, seller, or both, feel like they achieved what mattered most to them for their families and their lives.

the Jabbour Luxury Group way

At the Jabbour Luxury Group, we’ve set our share of records. At one time or another (and yes, records always get broken eventually), we’ve held:

• The highest priced home ever sold in all of WaterColor. (broken)

• The highest price per square foot ever sold in Seaside. (broken)

• The highest priced home north of 30A in Seaside. (still stands)

• The highest priced beachfront lot ever sold on 30A between WaterColor and Eastern Lake. (still stands)

We could keep going. But you’ll notice something: we never posted the screenshots or the MLS links. Why? Because in those sales we represented sellers, buyers, and sometimes both in the same deal. Were they looking for visibility?

We think more like a cardiovascular surgeon rather than a lawyer or realtor when it comes to sharing past successes. Seldom on Tik Tok will you see a cardiovascular surgeon come on line an say I just set the record for the fastest time to open and close a patient for a quadruple by-pass. I am sure they person wanted time to be taken. He would say “Was that me?” Wow. Slow down.

That means our responsibility goes beyond a single headline. Our role is to protect reputations, build trust, and make sure that at the closing table everyone walks away feeling like they got what they came for and has a future they can enjoy. They do not want to feel like they were part of someone else’s marketing campaign.

But if you want that check this out. And not anyone can do this.

For the record too, the “we did this one too” is now a single family non rental home where our friends live and the “I wonder how this one is gonna turn out” sold before it was finished to a Memphis resident that now spends time in the home and it is also a non rental. Now there is a record worth talking about on 30a. We are the team that has sold more homes to people that do not rent them out on vacation sites.

Why discretion wins

Real estate is not about trophies. It’s about people. Families. Legacy.

A record-setting sale might look flashy on Instagram, but if the buyer later feels they were paraded around as the one who “paid the most,” that’s not good business. That is a realtor’s ego wanting to be the #1 agent by volume and not necessarily by panache. Likewise, if a seller feels their home was reduced to a comp used for someone else’s branding because our “buyer” raked em over the coals, they’re less likely to remember the experience as positive and way less likely to tell their friends how good you are even if you have the highest volume in the whole system.

Our philosophy is simple: clients first, always.

• If we’re with the buyer, we want them to feel like they got the home of their dreams at a value they’re comfortable with.

• If we’re with the seller, we want them to feel like they achieved a number that honored the value of their property.

• If we represent both, then the goal is to make sure trust is created on both sides, so goodwill carries through even after closing.

We’ve seen it firsthand: when trust is there, buyers and sellers stay connected long after the ink dries. Repairs happen more smoothly. Future referrals happen naturally. And families make the beach memories they were chasing in the first place.

Our real record

So yes, the Jabbour Luxury Group has set records in WaterColor, Seaside, and all along 30A. But our real record, the one we care most about, is how many families we’ve helped plant roots, create traditions, and build memories.

Because homes may change hands, team members may change, records may get broken, but what lasts is the life people live in these places and the people you help to build up for the lives they want to create for their families. And on that score, our record still stands.

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There’s a strange magic that happens when you toss a piece of paper across the room into a trash can. You crumple it up. You glance at the bin. You flick your wrist.
And you Swish it almost every time. Yep, Nailed it without even thinking.

You really do not need some x and o training on how to run the play. I am sure you do not need a coach but there are probably people that can convince you that you do. You just need to let the instinct work.

Ironically, if you do try too hard and if you tense your arm or overcorrect your aim and maybe analyze the wind resistance from the ceiling fan you’ll probably miss. At least you will hesitate and maybe never throw it from a far distance but instead walk over and place it neatly in the bin.

Uh Oh - Detour.

This is what I call The Trash Can Theory:

There are moments in life when trying to think about it less works better.
Some things don’t require effort they require some inner direction.

We’re Not Wired to Overthink Everything

What makes tossing paper into a bin so successful at least some of the time is that it taps into unconscious competence. Your brain and body know what to do. They’ve done it a thousand times. You do not have to think about elbow angles or parabolic trajectories or even the real calculus that is involved. You just need to move. In golf which I used to play a fair bit, I found that reacting to putts was easier for me. I did not deep read, I looked and found a line and traced it quickly to an aiming spot and just let it go. I was just doing.

The same applies in business. In love for sure and In leadership and In life.

Some of your most important decisions won’t come from forced or researched planning. They’ll come from noticing a moment, acting intuitively, and being present enough to respond and execute. Once we know what to do, those that spend less time thinking about why not and executing win the race. Those that cannot react, over-engineer and over think before the first move are miles behind already.

But Wait—Isn’t Success Supposed to Be Hard?

We’ve been fed the myth that all success is supposed to feel like a grind and a plan that has to be measured and turned in at the end of each day. In working out if it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t count. If it’s not measured and tracked then is it even real? Remember to plan SMART.

But what if that’s just… wrong?

It could be the doing a lot does not mean getting a lot done. Yes it is true. Doing the right thing is the step. To me, it is finding the way to focus like a laser on a small think that works and amplifies to bigger things in time.

Of course, this doesn’t mean effort is useless. There’s a time for rigor. There’s a time to go deeper into thought to find direction and to prepare and revise the path. But remember the compass still has to point you. But if your default setting is always maximum effort and visibility branding and being the smartest in the room and showing everyone you are……it might be worth asking why.

Don’t get me wrong. It matters but you know it doesn’t. I like Scottie.

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Because sometimes the best results come when we stop gripping so tightly.
When we trust our instincts. When we make the throw, or swing or release the clube, but we also know what it is for. It is not because we’re certain, but because we’re ready enough.

When You’re Over-Working, It Shows

We all know what over-working looks like. Like this. You are doing a lot but not getting a lot done!
You’re trying. Really trying. Too much. Perhaps you are working on the wrong things.

You’re writing and deleting the same email seventeen times or You’re stuck on a decision, replaying every scenario in your head. Worse you are not actually working at all because you are not aligned to the goal you set or that someone set for you.

Trying is not bad. Trying the wrong thing is. Trying what someone else programmed for you because like Tom Ferry that never sold a dang thing but think they can tell you how? is working his next endorsement deal with Follow Up Boss?

And the more energy you pour into “figuring it out,” reading others the more likely it is that you’re cutting yourself off from the very instincts that could move you forward. Do you think that coaches get coached for ever?

So What Do You Do Instead?

You stop gripping and let er rip. At some point you have to throw the paper, walk down stairs or take the dang putt.

You return to the simple truth:

Some things don’t require more effort. They require less interference.

Think about how many areas of your life would open up if you loosened your grip just a bit. What if your job wasn’t to push harder, but to more clear and have less clutter around your effort? What if success didn’t always require a MAP, but a compass?

When you walk down stairs, you don’t instruct your knee to flex at 43°.
When you toss that paper toward the bin, you don’t measure your release velocity.
You know. You move. You trust.

That’s not lazy. That’s evolved. Yes practice. If you do 26 push ups a day everyday it will lead somewhere.

You have to be wired to know what to do and just do it. For us in Real Estate we know we want to help people find great homes or bring great homes to the market for our buyers to evaluate for their families.

What is our goal? To toss the paper in the trash can. To do it. To Engage. To have one good conversation a day. Not to Sell XY or Z homes per year or to get a buyer to agree to sign a brokerage agreement only to have em disappear. One good conversation a day. Is that a goal? Probably. Is it 5 year planning. Probably Not. Will it land the paper in the can! yes it will. Walking down stairs is simple.

Try This

Pick one area of your life where you’re applying too much effort. Clear out the clutter. If you need to make a phone call make it.
Is it Work, parenting, fitness, relationships, business doesn’t matter. Whatever you feel you are forcing or not doing or planning for too much just do that one thing. I rode my bike 4 miles today. My thought is simple. Ride the bike every day. How far? who cares. Go do it.

Now ask:

• Am I trying to control every variable? Why am I measuring every outcome?

• Am I mistaking thinking about 10 things as progress when not even doing one thing?

• What would this look like if it were simple?

• What if I just let go of the crumpled paper?

You might find that all the striving has actually become paralysis.
That your real power isn’t in the over-analysis, but in the quiet move you already know how to make. One thing do it now. And repeat it and see where it leads. If you do 26 push ups today and no more for a year that is silly. Do it everyday. What are the things?

Sometimes, the most important thing you can do is stop aiming so hard and just throw.

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Why You Might Be Closer to Tax Fraud Than You Think

So let’s say someone tells you while you are sharing a morning coffee that they are…..

“gonna rob First National Bank tomorrow at 5pm.”

They tell you how they’ll do it and what they’ll wear. They even tell you the car they will drive and all the plans for where they will stash the money.

What if you just sit there? Some people would ya know.
I wonder what happens if you offer to be the driver? How far do you go? Maybe you hold the door open and be the lookout. Are you sure they are even really gonna rob the bank or are they just having fun?

At what point are you no longer an innocent bystander?

Now let’s bring this back to real estate where you know it belongs.
If a client comes to you and says to you

“I’m selling my investment property and I want to do a 1031 exchange into a second home. We’ll probably use it about 90 days a year. I also want to do bonus depreciation and a cost seg.”

If they say it like it is just any regular old thing what do you do next? The reality is, even if someone has a home they think is a 1031 eligible property and they knowthey have stayed in it for 45 to 60 days a years for fun, they are already unqualified for an exchange to the new property. “yeah but everyone does it.” Doesn’t make it right does it?

🎯 Wait, What?

Let’s break down what they just said and what you now know.

• They’re using a 1031 exchange which is reserved for investment or business property

• They’re buying a second home and planning to use it personally well beyond the rules and the said so. They may even be coming out of a home that is not qualified.

• They want to take bonus depreciation and cost segregation, which is reserved for rental properties and business-use assets under special provisions. Perfectly legit but only if done very precisely.

In other words, they’re telling you:

“I’m going to tell the IRS this is an investment property, even though I plan to use it personally.”

Now it is ok to 1031 from a true investment property to another true investment property and under the rules use it as such for a period of time and then later call it your primary home? Sure it is. There is special tax treatment that comes into play. But you followed the rules.

What they are saying whether you are a tax advisor or lawyer is plainly and obviously to a person that has some professional training not the rules. That’s not tax strategy.
That’s a misrepresentation and you, my friend, just became the guy holding the door at First National Bank whether you think so or not. Now comes your integrity check in.

📚 The Actual Law

Under IRC §1031, a tax-deferred exchange only applies to:

“Property held for productive use in a trade or business or for investment.”

It does not apply to personal residences, vacation homes, or “we might rent it later” situations. Of course there are variations on these themes many of which My wife and I have used in our various properties we have owned. But we follow the rules.

There is a safe harbor—Rev. Proc. 2008-16—which allows for limited personal use after two years of bona fide rental activity. But if your client buys the house and moves in for 90 days a year right away? That safe harbor’s not going to save them. If they did it with forethought candidly that is tax fraud.

🚫 A Qualified Intermediary Would Say No

Here’s the kicker:
If a reputable Qualified Intermediary (QI) heard this plan…

“Second home… 90 days a year… cost seg… 1031 exchange...”

They wouldn’t just raise an eyebrow they’d refuse to do the exchange because QIs know their role. I wager to say that most real estate agents do not know why they should default to “I am Not a Lawyer and I am not a CPA.” I wager to say 1,245,678 our of 1,278,980 realtors have no idea what they are really authorized to say and do before the cross a line.

Intermediaries are not just paper pushers. They are part of a regulated process. If they knowingly facilitate a fraudulent exchange, they’re on the hook too.

And that should make you ask if the QI won’t touch it, why the hell would you or I?

🧨 Realtors Aren’t Immune

You might be thinking:

“I didn’t sign their tax return. I just helped them find the house.”

But if you:

• Knew what the client was doing

• Understood that it didn’t qualify

• And still helped structure or close the deal along the way, you are going to at least be deposed.

You’re not clean.

And if you ever said something like:

“Don’t tell the intermediary about the personal use,”

That’s the moment you just stepped over the line straight into:

• Conspiracy to commit tax fraud

• Aiding and abetting false filings

• State licensing violations

• Loss of E&O coverage for participating in knowingly illegal activity

No, you're not the mastermind but you helped open the vault and bag the cash. Not cool at all.

💡 How to Stay Smart — and Safe

Here’s what to do when this comes up (and it will come up):

1. Don’t give tax advice. Say it out loud: “I’m not a CPA or tax attorney.” La la la la la

2. Document what’s said. Even an email to yourself helps preserve context.

3. Clarify in writing. Send something like:

“Just to confirm, you mentioned using this as a second home for 3 months a year. Please make sure your CPA confirms whether that works with your 1031 and depreciation plans.”

1. Don’t participate in fraud. If it feels bad and runs against your internal compass, it probably is not the right thing to do. It’s okay to say no. Oh by the way, this should feel bad and run against your internal compass.

🧠 Final Thought

If you help a client misrepresent their intent with a 1031 exchange especially when they flat-out tell you the truth you are no longer “just the agent.”

You are now a participant even if you think you’re not.

We have a higher standard of care. The deal might not be worth the reputational damage and is certainly not worth the legal risk. We are not attorneys or tax advisors but we are aware of the general rules and have a higher standard of care when engaging with clients. If you disagree with that then you are in the wrong business and if you are working with someone that plays it loose with the rules because you need someone that does, then go for it. We are not your people.

Its kind of the same when you recommend that they “tell the mortgage broker its a true second home” even when you know they are going to rent it full time. You have just become the “cliche” agent. Loose and fast with the rules putting yourself and others at risk for a buck. That is over the red line. Technically that is wire fraud. Be careful and be a realtor but do not go over the lines that you know exist. Do not pretend that “well I am not a tax advisor or lawyer” is a get out of jail free card. It is not.

In the eyes of the IRS, helping someone lie about the use of a property is no different than helping them lie about the price or basis or gain.

And unlike that bank robbery fantasy, this one has your name in the escrow file, on the emails and certainly in the deposed testimony. If they get audited I can assure you they will say “Jimmy said it was ok”. Who is Jimmy? Don’t let it be you!!!

Be smart. Be honest.
And if the QI wouldn’t touch it—neither should you.

We’ve all been taught to set them and write them down. Make them SMART. I do not even know what SMART stands for anymore. I have to look it up. Ok….Ok…Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Build a plan. Hold yourself accountable. But after a few decades of watching people set goals and still feel stuck or worse, feel like failures for not reaching them I started to question the whole idea and even for myself.

That’s when the metaphor came to me.

Walking down stairs.

You don’t plan how to walk down a staircase. You just walk. You take one step, then another. You don’t leap halfway down and then check your progress on a spreadsheet. And yet somehow…you get where you’re going.

And think about this - I mean really think about it:

I don’t recall ever standing at the top of a staircase and saying to myself,
“Okay… I want to go to the bottom. So let me think this through. I need to bend my hip this much… flex my knee just enough… shift my weight forward… lower my center of gravity… calculate the tread depth…”

No. You just do it. I just do it. But how and why is a different question.

You don’t micromanage the biomechanics of every step. You don’t analyze the slope or study a staircase manual. You walk down stairs because it’s in you to do it. It’s embedded. You trust your own internal compass to take you somewhere. That somewhere is the bottom of the stairs in an orderly fashion I might add.

Not because there’s a goal but because you want to get there and there’s some kind of required movement. But you know it internally without thinking.

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We live in a culture obsessed with outcome. We want measurable progress, quarterly benchmarks, vision boards, proof of success. We always of course if we are the #6 agent want to be the number 5 or number 1 agent. We fail on so many fronts not realizing that what we are to do is build core integrity and be our true selves.

But ask someone who’s actually built something meaningful, a business, a marriage, a body of work, and they’ll probably tell you: the moments that mattered most weren’t on the vision board. Others of course will have the obvious robotics of arrogance. As if they are the only ones who can get to where they are failing to give credit to the 30 people that lifted them up.

Then there are the integrity builders and the leaders. Not the ones who want to be coaches are teach people how to measure a business but the ones that still want to build families and help others do the same. Quietly.

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The Problem With Big Goals

Here’s the paradox: The bigger and shinier the goal, the more it can distract you from the very motion that might get you there. Sometimes you even end up being kind of a joke among some. There are those that measure by one scorecard and those that measure by many.

If your goal is to get to New York City from Santa Rosa Beach, Florida and you spend all day obsessing about New York, researching every hotel, comparing every possible route, plotting your GPS pin 1,200 miles away you might never leave the driveway. You might post cool tik toks about it.

Or worse: you’ll take some convoluted, rushed, pressure-filled path and miss every beautiful stop along the way. Friends will have not been there with you really. Oh yes deal friends but not real friends.

The goal becomes your blinders. It narrows your focus to such a point that you miss opportunities, lose your joy, and forget why you were headed north to begin with.

Movement > Measurement

What if you didn’t start with the destination?
What if you started with the internal pull to move forward whatever that means for you?

If that pull exists if there’s something inside you that wants growth, truth, or forward motion then forget the finish line for a second.

Focus on the habit. The step. The mile. The movement then will just happen and you can walk down stairs.

A thousand-mile journey isn’t a goal. It’s a rhythm. A way of being. I guess we call that a compass or the compass of internal integrity. Now wait. More on that later.

Here’s the truth I’ve come to believe:

You either have a mindset of movement or you don’t.
And if you do… the only thing worth focusing on is the next step.

That’s how real change happens. Not with grand declarations or ten-year plans. But with small, consistent action that remains aware of where you are today and keeps you walking putting one foot in front of the other.

In this series - Walking Downs Stairs that may continue for some time to come, I will explore this concept and my book outline for this idea. I hope you will find this fun, interesting and well….wait for how this connects to real estate.

As we learn to Walk Down the stairs.
Taking One step at a time because it is in us without checking boxes along the way.

People misunderstand what “going low” means in the card game of Spades. It is not easy. But if you can play that hand then wow you know how to think.

Going low does not mean recklessly throwing weak cards on the table and hoping for the best. What you have to do is know and think your way around while everyone is gunning for you. It means understanding the structure of the game well enough to survive coordinated pressure from every direction while still accomplishing your objective.

That is a very different thing. In Spades, a Nil bid means you are attempting to take zero tricks. The moment you declare it, the entire table changes behavior.

Everyone begins trying to get you even at the expense of getting themselves.

They study your vulnerabilities. They try to figure out your weak suits.
and attempt to force mistakes even if it their own mistake to make you lose.
They manipulate their own thinking to get you trapped even trying to coordinate and engineer traps.

And if you are holding the Ace of Spades?

Forget it. You are not going low, it is not even possible.

You are lying to yourself about the cards you actually hold because the Ace of Spades eventually wins not matter what you think.

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Maybe not immediately.
Maybe not on the first hand.
Maybe not on the second.

But eventually the structure of the game forces you to take the trick. You will lose.

That is exactly what happens with lowball real estate offers. People confuse low offers with strategic negotiation. They are not the same thing.

A reckless lowball offer often signals that the buyer does not understand:

• market structure,

• seller psychology,

• inventory conditions,

• replacement cost,

• or competitive positioning.

More importantly, it often signals the buyer does not truly understand their own objective. They want to “win” a negotiation and that is the main thing. Ego is powerful but also a loser’s game. Ego is holding the ace and trying to go low.

Do they really even want to own the home?

Behavioral economics teaches us that people frequently optimize for emotional victory rather than actual utility of goods and services.

A buyer becomes obsessed with “getting a deal” and in that effort they are really seeking ego validation that they were correct. They want to be the smartest person in the room. It is a pretty small room at that.

In the process, they lose the property they actually wanted to live in and they lose the memories they could have created. Another decade is as likely to go by as another month.

That is not strategic behavior. That is ego disguised as discipline wanting to one day see a little temporary wiggle in the market and say “I told ya so”.

Real negotiation requires proper card recognition.

If you truly want the house…
If the inventory is limited…
If the property fits your life…
If the location works…
If the carrying cost is sustainable…
If the replacement opportunity is uncertain…

…then you may already be holding the Ace of Spades and you should have at least bid the one trick. Go get the home.

At that point, pretending you can endlessly “go low” becomes dangerous to you and your family. It makes memories elusive.

Because eventually reality forces the hand to play itself.

The seller finds another buyer as the market shifts and maybe interest rates move.
The inventory disappears but stays the same but not just like you liked it. Ideas change and parts of your family relocates. Now you have to look elsewhere but you don’t love it and they still would have come here. The opportunity to continue living life changes. Or even worse someone dies.

And suddenly the buyer who was trying to save 3% is now paying 8% more for an inferior property a year or two later. If you income keeps up sure. Most people do not track the market we are in however.

Experienced negotiators understand something amateurs do not:

Your objective is not to win every hand. Your objective is to position yourself to own the right asset under acceptable terms and then enjoy your life.

That requires emotional control.

Sometimes the strongest negotiation move is restraint.
Sometimes it is aggression.
Sometimes it is walking away.
Sometimes it is paying appropriately before someone else does.

But what serious buyers understand is this:

A proper offer is not weakness. A proper offer is recognition that a rational seller will see it too and a proper transaction can occur.

In Spades, going low with the Ace of Spades in your hand is fantasy.

In real estate, trying to lowball the perfect house while three other buyers are circling the table is often the same thing.

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The podcast studio is up and running. But I’m in Charlotte, and I’m supposed to be in Atlanta, and I’ve got to get home tonight. And... That’s a good topic. Getting home. You know, in the in-between is about life. I’ve had things happen to me and I’ve written about them on Substack and I’ve got

that in the description below. Doing a podcast while I’m walking through the airport. And today my wife Gayle and I had a brief conversation about the next thing we’re going to do. And it was quick and fast. And we understood it and we knew it was the right thing to do. And we just went for it.

Because the emotional maturity of making decisions that are sometimes very impactful. Where are you going to live? How are you going to live for the next couple of years of your life? We’re building a house in Seaside right now for our family. We did one before and that was for the family.

We kept it for, we were in the house for almost eight and a half years. But we rebuilt a new one on that location, and we were in that for, well, about four and a half years before we sold it. And, well, we’re building another one in Seaside,

but we’ve kind of taken on some people into our lives who are good people, and we enjoy them so much. Somebody on our team’s living with us now. So there’s three of us, and we’re about to be in a small little cottage. And that will not be enough room. So we’re going to buy another house.

Something that we can hang out in while we’re building the big main house. We’ll all live there and have a great time. Won’t be too far from the beach. And we made that decision so quickly. Because these are not hard decisions to make. Nobody should pretend that what I’m talking about as a real estate professional is easy to do for everybody in the world. It’s not. We’re on 30A. The luxury market, the median price point is probably $1.6 million and up. And I operate in Costa Rica where there’s also luxury homes. So I get it. I’m talking about something that’s a little tilted towards maybe a little bit more of the wealth spectrum.

I apologize to those of you who might be offended by that. But still, it’s amazing to me that I encounter so many people that struggle with making decisions. And in the in-between is about one simple thing. Just like tonight, I’m flying into Atlanta and we’re getting diverted because of weather. That’s what’s happened.

And I get online in about 15 minutes. I’ve got a ticket from Charlotte, North Carolina to Panama City. Gonna land at 1130 tonight. And I’m home on time, just like I was planning on being the whole day. Didn’t even blink an eye because it’s important for me to get home and be there and

not sweat the small stuff. buying a ticket that I might not have even been able to use. But I’m going to that plane right now, and I’m going home. Same with any other decision we made today as well. You make the decision, you move on. Yeah, there’s money involved, but will you lose that money forever?

When you decide to buy a beach house, do you lose that money forever? Not usually. Do you lose time forever? Don’t lose time forever.

See this Movie for the counter point.

If you are comfortable working for other people do consider this carefully. This is what most of us actually do in our lives perhaps for our whole lives or maybe ust in part. Some break away from this and that is “risky” and has some fear of the unknown.

Who this is for?

This episode is for individuals evaluating how they earn money, how they deploy capital, how they can or cannot be patient for investment in themselves to payoff and how those decisions affect long-term flexibility particularly those considering second homes or even living in a couple of different places or countries.

“Let’s just meet in the middle.”

It sounds reasonable and is the typical approach. There is no pattern interupt and there is no real focus on what we are actually buying and how much it is worth.

It is also, in most cases, completely detached from objective reality.

Compromise is wrong but because the math behind it is non committed to objetive value anymore, and more importantly, because the numbers themselves are often meaningless, both buyers and sellers are ending up in the wrong place.

The Setup Everyone Recognizes

A home is listed at $2,400,000

A buyer comes in at $2,000,000.

Predictably, the seller doesn’t engage emotionally. They respond with the typical structure. A counter at $2,350,000. And the invalid signaling begins. The value is already lost because it might have never been in the list price and usually is never in the buyers initial “counter offer” to the seller’s list price.

Now both sides feel like something has happened. They feel like they have something to work with. Of course they do but it is not value.

Lines have been drawn and the typical positions established.

And almost immediately the gaming assumption takes charge over any objective value proposition:

“We’ll probably end up somewhere in the middle.”

So let’s do the math.

The gap is now between $2,100,000 and $2,350,000.

This is maybe not the mid point. You could game this back and forth thousands of different ways.

That becomes the next focus. By now the nice backyard is lost just like the 2 minute walk to the beach or the game room or home office that would be just “perfect”. The seller is forgetting that the mountain house they want is hanging in the balance but they need to WIN this back and forth more for ego and not to be fair and balanced to reach the next goal.

Nothing about the numbers has anything to do with the value of the home.

The First Mistake: Negotiating Against Yourself

At this point, both parties are no longer negotiating the value or even the life. It is now a game of tug of war and someone always wants to win. Winning is by default at the expense of someone losing and that is now where failure of amateurs will come into play.

Now negotiating the spread between two arbitrary numbers, the chances of success have already been greatly reduced from 100%. When you go back and forth for any reason the chances of failure are literally a coin toss.

• The list price is not necessarily value.

• The offer is not necessarily value

• The midpoint is definitely not value

We are now trying to win the algebra test.

Once both sides accept the premise of “meeting in the middle,” they have quietly agreed to forget value and find out who gets to WIN. If that win is too far tilted there will be no deal.

The outcome will be now be determined by arithmetic only and egos only and not by value.

The Math Gets Worse, Not Better

If both parties keep “moving toward the middle,” something interesting happens.

The middle moves.

After several rounds maybe 3, 5, 7 exchanges (HINT: You will never get it done if you go back and forth 3 5 or 7 times…almost NEVER) the likely agreement doesn’t stay anchored at $2.10M or some other mid point. It drifts. Depending on who concedes, or the numbers in play at the moment or how often the ball has been pinged back and forth, the next move is amateur math. The needs of either side that may be more subtle or hidden might have never been expressed or discovered.

This is where the amateur negotiator feels like progress is being made but does not realize one side or the other is about to walk away from the table..

This is not strategy.

John Nash Would Recognize This Immediately

John Nash’s work, which earned him the Nobel Prize, wasn’t about splitting differences.

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It was about equilibrium of outcomes shaped by strategy, incentives, and behavior. There are other compromises in play.

In a Nash framework, rational players don’t blindly converge to the midpoint.

They look for moves that change the structure of the game itself. They are looking for not just numbers but other utility cues. This business we are in is not easy. Some do a lot of business but don’t do it strategically. They eventually find trouble. It may never show up in volume but it shows up in relationship churn.

John Nash won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics for his groundbreaking 1950s work on non-cooperative game theory, specifically defining the “Nash Equilibrium“. This concept determines that in any strategic interaction, players achieve an optimal outcome by not deviating from their strategy, assuming others keep theirs fixed.

Key Concepts of Nash Equilibrium (Game Theory):

• The “Nash Equilibrium”: A state where every player in a game is making the best decision they can, based on what they think everyone else will do. No player can improve their outcome by changing their strategy alone.

• Non-Cooperative Games: Nash focused on situations where individuals act independently and compete, rather than acting in collusion (unlike traditional, earlier game theories).

• Equilibrium Existence: He used advanced mathematics (topology) to prove that, even in complex, multi-player, non-cooperative games, there is always at least one stable equilibrium point.

• Beyond Zero-Sum: While early game theory focused on “zero-sum” (one winner, one loser), Nash expanded this to “variable-sum” games, where all players could potentially win, or all could lose, depending on their decisions.

Impact of Nash’s Work:

• Application: The Nash Equilibrium is essential to modern economics, political science, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary biology.

• Real-Life Relevance: It explains situations where rational individuals might not cooperate, even if it is in their best interest to do so.

Which brings us to the moment where the negotiation either stays amateur……or becomes professional and intellectual around many ideas of the overall needs of each side in an offer.

The Pattern Interrupt

Let’s go back to our numbers.

• Buyer: $2,000,000

• Seller: $2,400,000

The amateur move is obvious

Move halfway or think halfway but don’t immediately go there or beyond. Afterall we are going to WIN.

But what happens if the buyer does something different? Instead of moving toward the midpoint, they move through it.

The next offer comes in at:

$2,192,000 knowing that is the value of the home too or close to it?

This can interrupt the pattern and finish the game. The buyer feels better the seller is OK with the value. This is just one ending and the permutations are endless.

What Just Happened?

Two things, immediately.

First, the buyer (or seller) broke the pattern.

They are no longer participating in a “meet in the middle” sequence and the anchoring is broken.

Second and more important they just reframed the conversation to a different outcome if they know what to do next.

That number is not halfway. It is value based presumably which is the subject of another paper - Why Everyone Ignores the Obvious Value - The Defeat of Low ballers and High ballers.

“We are no longer negotiating your number versus mine. We are negotiating what this asset is worth.”

Whether that number is right or wrong is almost secondary. If it is the value to either party is what matters first, and if it is defensible based on economic analysis then it wins.

What matters is that the negotiation has shifted from arithmetic to value. The next move after this pattern interrupt is well a closely guarded secret sauce reciepe.

The Likely Outcome

If the seller is still playing checkers, they try to drag it back to the midpoint game. They respond with another incremental move, trying to restore the rhythm. Sale for the buyer.

But if the seller understands what they just did and if they are playing chess and have thought through the next sequence of moves then we will find a way. Life will find a way. Good negotiations finds a way and people feel ok about good negotiations at the closing table. They almost never feel good about back and forth meet in the middle games.

The final outcome depends on who can define and defend value. If the other side tries to reset the conversation back to the midpoint game, the disciplined move is simple but our secret sauce.

The Real Conclusion

“Meet in the middle” feels fair and is the typical approach in the United States culture. HINT: NOT EVERYWHERE in the world.

Feeling fair is not a strategy that holds up or gets to the best conclusion. It is not the value of the home.

Meeting in the middle of two uninformed numbers is not insight. It is at best checkers.

Most negotiations fail not because people are unreasonable, but because they are solving the wrong problem and they are trying to solve it by going back and forth too many times. Times kills deals just like time does.

Remember:

What is this actually worth?

Both Buyer and Seller What is it Worth? What can be Rationally Defended?

Final Thought

The amateur negotiator moves toward the middle. The professional negotiator decides whether the middle matters at all.

And sometimes, the most important move in a negotiation…

…is the one that makes the middle irrelevant.

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These are not people reaching for the unattainable. They have the means. But they also have the means to buy APPL at $300 and sell it if somethings goes wrong in the market for $270. They never think twice. They are not confused about what they can afford. In many cases, they could write a check for the property and never think about it again.

And still, in real estate there is more hesitation. I do not doubt that some of it is agency expense sure. Trading APPL barely costs a penny. Trading a home can be costly either way.

They will talk about markets. They will reference 2008. They will want a certain price for a specific kind of property and those things do not line up. I can even know the seller will not even entertain the offer. It does not matter. Maintenance, hurricanes, rental risk, opportunity cost, renovations or the idea that “real estate is goind down in price for sure and is too high right now” is always the conversations. All of those explanations seem good but are ways people often use to “I love the house” while in the back of the mind they have to find ways to get out of making the purchase. None of them are the real reason.

The real reason lives in psychology, not finance.

Daniel Kahneman explains it cleanly in Chapter 26 of Thinking, Fast and Slow, where he lays out Prospect Theory which a framework for understanding how people actually evaluate risk, loss, and value.

The short version is this human beings do not experience gains and losses symmetrically. Losses hurt more than equivalent gains feel good. And once that imbalance exists, it distorts otherwise rational decisions. They will, all else equal avoid a possible $100 loss in favor of a more likely $100 gain by doing nothing.

Vacation homes sit right in the crosshairs of this thought.

How Prospect Theory Shows Up in Real Estate Decisions

Prospect Theory tells us three things that matter here.

First, people measure outcomes relative to a reference point, not in absolute terms. everything in “economics” is relative. Second, losses have a much larger impact emotionally than gains. Third, when an outcome is considered to be a minor possible loss, people become risk‑seeking; when it is considered as a “maybe” possible as a gain, they become conservative.

Now apply that to a discretionary purchase like a vacation home.

The buyer’s reference point is not the life they could live with the home. It is their current balance sheet. How liquid are they and clean is the purchase?

Anything that moves money out of one state into another, like from liquidity to illiquidity is often considered to feel like a loss, even if it is converted into a hard asset they intend to use and enjoy creating meaningful memories or just purposely living out the remaining few years of an ill spouses beach life on purpose.

Ownership costs are therefore framed mostly as losses, not expenses for value and gain. We always here, “what is the cost to own this home” in conversations but I never here anyone ask me “you think my kids will visit more than a few times a year? or do you think our Thanksgiving can be more special here?”

Maintenance is not upkeep for most it is erosion of capital and not the preservation of a place where a special memory can be created. Property taxes are not participation in a community they are money gone, but I do kind of like the idea of transfer taxes rather than property taxes. More on that one day maybe. Insurance is not protection. it is money spent because of fear of loss.

Rental income, even when predictable, is not experienced as a gain by most, it is maybe an offset. It is uncertain so is discounted if marginal.

This is why two buyers can look at the same pro forma and have completely different reactions. One sees a balanced exchange of monetary costs for live value. The other sees a slow drain of cash that could sit more easily under the matress.

The math is the identical math. The emotional reaction to perceived gains or losses is an “economic utility” metric that we would love to think we can measure with an R Squared ruler. We cannot. We can just see it and try to isolate it in meta studies.

The Thought Experiment That Clarifies Everything

When I sense a buyer is stuck in this place, I slow the conversation down and propose a simple scenario.

I tell them. Let’s agree, for the sake of discussion, that the home we’re looking at is worth $3,000,000. We both believe that. The market data supports it. You buy it for $3,000,000 and you own it outright. No debt. No leverage. This is not about financing risk.

You use the home with your family. You also rent it occasionally but not aggressively, but simply enough to offset some of the marginal cost ownership.

Let’s say it generates $200,000 a year in short‑term rental revenue, and after all expenses you clear roughly $100,000 annually. We will ignore income taxes and depreciation entirely so it is easier to follow the thought.

You do this for ten years.

Then, seven maybe ten years from now, your life changes. The kids are grown. The beach no longer fits your life. The childhood memories created are gone now and “the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon” is what has become of your life.

We look at the market honestly in that future time, the same way we did on the way in. We agree, and at the closing table, you might walk away with $2,965,000 in cash. And you wonder? Is that possible? I will say yes. If you purchased a home in 2022 here on 30a depending on many factors it might be very possible it will only be worth $3,000,000 in 2029 or maybe even 2032 depending on all kinds of things. Timing is everything. And yet people will question me. Gayle and I have owned here collectively since 1996 and we have seen values over now 30 years with all of our eyeballs. It is 100% possible that 10 years can go by and you might have only treaded water. Even in Rosemary Beach 5 lots from walkover A.

Not $3,000,000. Not a win on paper. A modest loss is now possible. At least consider that. This goes against the internal story line and beliefs and if you have listened to the story and read along by now you feel a cringe like maybe this guy is not a good real estate professional. He should tell me all the things to make me smile. That is not my role. It is to make sure you are in the proper mindset to do this no matter the outcomes.

But then the question is nearly ready to be posited. At that moment of nearly cringe when they think I am not going to see homes with this guy and after a long pause, I ask a single question:

Will you have been happy?

Why This Question Is So Uncomfortable

For someone not trapped by Prospect Theory, the answer comes quickly.

“Of course.”

Ten years of family time and ten years of holidays, summers, long weekends, and ordinary days made extraordinary by place is the entire purpose here. I remember saying this to one couple and the wife was “Yes” and the husband was “what about this” dollar or that. I could tell they “hated” me at that moment. 11 months later they bought a lot and are building a home here and they used our team for that purpose and help. The right people get the message.

Ten years of optionality on a great life. Ten years of a life actually lived. Perhaps 5 good years with your wife before she passes away from that long illness. “I’m good with that”.

The money did its job. But for someone deeply loss‑averse, the answer is like Rush and Spirit of Radio. It “Plays that song that is so elusive”.

They start recalculating. They feel the missing $35,000. They mentally erase the rental income as if it never existed. That $1,000,000 in pretax income is vanished. They replay the decision as a financial outcome rather than a lived experience.

In that moment, something important is revealed. They are not buying a home or experience or memories. They are trying to win something in the money game.

And vacation homes are not designed for winning in the way financial instruments are. Vacation Homes are designed for use, memory, presence, and time, These are all things Prospect Theory shows us people can undervalue because they do not show up cleanly on a balance sheet. They are in an elusive song on a memory Profit and Loss Statement.

Better to buy stocks and bonds. Mediums of exchange. That is easier to value.

The reality of the story is simple. You would have put $3,000,000 to work, you would have gained $1,000,000 after expenses, and you would have walked away from closing with $35,000 lost on the initial investment. Of course present value of a dollar not considered for ease of discussion, what’s wrong with this knowing “you cannot build sandcastles on the beach with your grandbabies on a pile of bitcoin” - CB

It is a 33% absolute return on the $3,000,000 over 10 years in the income side of the sheet. Horrible by some lofty normally unachievable standard. But if they get framed in that thought, then well, we are probably done looking for homes.

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The Reality Check

This is the part most real estate advisors avoid saying plainly.

If you cannot answer “yes” to that question and if a modest, fully understood, fully affordable financial loss invalidates ten years of meaningful living then you should not buy a vacation home. Not here. Probably not anywhere. There I said it. And I would rather find a person that can get to yes than spend countless days trying to Salesman someone into a purchase here over the next few years. They have to be a yes to life.

Because the problem is not the market, the price (given you walking in budget) or the property.

It is that you are measuring life decisions with a framework designed to avoid regret, not to enable joy. Prospect Theory 101.

Prospect Theory is useful for protecting capital. It is terrible at guiding discretionary life choices.

The Path Forward

The most grounded buyers I work with make a quiet shift in thinking. They stop asking, “Will this outperform?” They start asking, “What is this money for?” And then they buy the beach house.

When the answer is “to support a life we actually want to live,” the math becomes simple. I will probably have this $3,000,000 somehow someway later if I need to make the change. A zero percent return on capital for 10 years for a 100% return on joy is a good trade..

Whatever your dreams are, they must leave the realm of dreams and get cast as goals with effort taken daily to reaching the goals that ultimately fulfill the dream. At least that’s my interpretation.

The worst outcome is not losing a small amount of money. The worst outcome is realizing later that you were financially right and existentially wrong.

That question at the end will you have been happy? is not rhetorical.

It is our diagnostic tool for a person that sees the world as we do. You cannot be everything to everyone or you will be nothing to no one. There are many real estate professionals and teams all with varying degrees of styles. This is ours.

Our market is a life‑choice market. The sooner that is understand, the sooner we can be comfortable with a beach walk.

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If I offer you one $5 hand of blackjack, you may or may not play.

You understand the house has a small edge. The outcome is uncertain. You could win. You could lose. For many people, the rational response is just a bit of hesitation.

Now lets change the conversation a little and give you something to think about.

If you are at a no-limit table that is different I can assure you.

You are allowed to double your bet after every loss. Remember too I will say there is no cap - No Limit. You have sufficient capital to play oh lets just say 100 hands at a 2 dollar table. That is not $200 dollars.

Lets keep this fun. Lets say you hit at 11 or less and stand otherwise.

Now we have gone from one hand with about a 51% chance of losing to 12 hands and to lose 12 in a row and be wiped out and off the table you would need $16,382 to start the first hand and your odds of losing 12 hands in a row is 1 in 6,685 and you you could still bet the 13th. Would you? Mind you when you win a hand you start all over and you have won 2 dollars on each winning hand.

The probability of any single hand has not changed. Most people take the first option but should be taking the big bankroll options. But cleaver casinos have LIMITS on Blackjack tables for a reason. The reason above!

Why?

Because the game has shifted from a single trial to a longer sequence. Most people “know” the chances of flipping a coin and getting heads 100 times in a row is astronomical. The math of one hand is uncertain. The math of 100 coin tosses is exact. The math of repeated attempts, with adequate capital, works better than one hand or one flip of the coin.

That thinking shift is exactly what Daniel Kahneman describes in his work on loss aversion. Humans overweight the pain of a single loss and underweight the cumulative effect of repeated gains. When risk is framed as one exposure, we hesitate. When risk is framed as a durable system, we should accept that gladly. Maybe in horse shoes and hand grenades but apparently not in building homes to present back to the market. One lost and we walk. That is exactly wrong.

Now let’s talk about building homes or any investment for that matter:

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We see three types of builders.

First, the one-home builder. He comes to market with enough capital to build one house. If it sells for a nice profit quickly, he feels brilliant. If it stalls on the market or produces a modest loss, the anxiety is real and he is going to cash in his chips.

For him, this is a single hand of blackjack. It’s emotionally tricky and personal. The result feels like a being good or bad at a thing. Only if it works will they do it again.

Second is the hesitant builder. He has enough capital for one house, maybe two, but he knows he cannot absorb meaningful loses either in reality or in his mind. Because of that constraint, he often will never starts. The money is not big enough on one build they will say, but what they are really saying is I am scared to start. The fear of being the one who closes at a loss keeps them on the sidelines entirely.

And then there is the third builder.

This builder understands something different.

He understands that building is not a single hand of blackjack or a coin toss. It is a portfolio of attempts. He understands that over time, outcomes tend towards the averages and the averages here on 30A are good.

Some homes will be singles. Some will be doubles. Occasionally there will be a home run. And yes, once in a while, there will be a loss. He may even do 2, 3, or 5 at a time if he can and wants to do so.

Because they fundamentally know the market to move carefully but the move.

Across 22 homes so far we have helped bring to life ending in September 2025 with this wave 1, with our broader team, only one closed at a loss for the developer. One.

That same developer had completed another project with us. On the first, he generated a 41% nominal return on capital in less than two years. That is a gain of $1,239,000. On the second, he lost $148,000. What would you do?

Objectively, across the two projects, he was still far ahead.

Emotionally, the loss carried more weight than the gain. He disengaged. Precisely at the wrong moment.

That is loss aversion in its purest form.

Kahneman showed that losses hurt roughly twice as much as equivalent gains feel good. So even when the aggregate math is favorable, the psychological imprint of a loss can cause someone to stop playing the game altogether. They never get to the 13th hand and well the odds of having to get to that hand are nearly zero,

And that is where most builders miss the larger point.

If all you can do is one house, then yes the outcome matters enormously. You might do very well. You might experience a modest loss. One attempt is variance. It is not destiny.

But for those with sufficient capital, the structure changes.

If you can build repeatedly, prudently, without over-leveraging to “goose” returns, the numbers begin to tell a different story. Over time, across a portfolio of builds, we have produced an average annual cash-on-cash return of approximately 24.6% without financial engineering, without excessive leverage, without chasing artificial boosts to annualized figures. For those builds that used leverage hitting on all cylinders we had a maximum annualized return on capital of 106%. Yes leverage helps. We did not make more money we just had less capital and well tuned cost to carry and a fast sale!

That return does not come from one extraordinary project. It comes from the distribution and proper analysis of risk of loss and value of gain unemotionally. Indeed we had 2 in that first wave that remain for sale today and are rental homes. Those annual returns are moving towards 14%. But with the ability to stand at the plate throwing off tough pitches with foul balls until you make contact you will get on base.

It comes from continuing to play.

The blackjack table analogy matters here not because we are doubling recklessly, but because we are recognizing that probability stabilizes over multiple attempts. The house edge in blackjack diminishes for the skilled player over many hands. The anxiety of any one hand fades in the context of hundreds. But alas, the casino knows this and that is why you have limit bets on blackjack tables.

Building is similar. A single home can feel like a referendum. A disciplined portfolio becomes a business.

The real risk is not the occasional loss. The real risk is stopping after one.

If you experience a modest setback and allow loss aversion to remove you from a structurally sound opportunity set, you never reach the average. You never experience the singles, the doubles, or the occasional home run. You freeze at the one hand that didn’t go your way. You step up to the plate in the majors for the first time, strike our and then quite the next day. Are you kidding me?

For builders with limited capital, prudence is necessary. One project may be appropriate. Two may be too many. Risk must match capacity.

But for those with the balance sheet to sustain repetition, the strategy is clear: build, offer back to the market, evaluate, and build again. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

Systematically.

Because over time, markets reward disciplined repetition far more than they reward perfect timing.

One hand of blackjack is “crazy” but fun.

A hundred hands, properly capitalized, is a sure thing. Heck 13 hands is.

Building is no different.

And now you know why there are table limits at BlackJack tables.

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What They Actually Are — and What They Signal to Consumers

Most people talk about inflation and deflation as if one is bad and the other is good.
That anchoring thought is lazy and completely wrong. Let me help you understand what inflation and deflation really are.

Inflation and deflation are not economic outcomes. They are guideposts that policy makers target and avoid. They are signals not destinations.

They tell consumers when to spend, when to save, and how to think about tomorrow relative to today.

That’s it nothing more. They signal behavior and indeed they create behavior.

It is not politics it is just incentives.

Inflation Is a Signal to Spend Now

Inflation is monetary devaluation. Sorry to bust your bubble on that. And I would argue as Milton Friedman would that it is completely unnecessary in a balanced economy where money and productivity rise equally.

Inflation occurs when the supply of money grows faster than the supply of real goods and services. When that happens, each unit of currency buys less over time if policy makers by their actions create money. We have figured out at least twice in our history that is easy to do when the currency becomes unanchored.

The signal to consumers is simple:

If something will cost more tomorrow, then somehow buy it today.

If a loaf of bread will cost more tomorrow, you buy it today.
If a car will cost more next year, you buy it now.
If housing prices are rising, you don’t wait you move capital into the asset before the dollar’s purchasing power erodes further.

This isn’t psychology. It’s incentive signaling and math.

Inflation penalizes holding cash. Money sitting idle loses purchasing power. As a result, inflation encourages consumers to:

spend rather than save,

invest rather than hoard,

borrow rather than wait.

Does it matter whether we need more cars, clothes, or houses?
From a macroeconomic standpoint, not really. That is not the point. If we stop buying new things that are more shiny even when the old thing can still work that could cause perceived problems. But only because we have been trained by policy.

Inflation doesn’t care about need.
It responds to incentives. The system creates incentive. We respond.

When policymakers expand the money supply beyond productivity growth primarily by excess government spending on social programs and defense, they manufacture urgency moving money into a system that is not ready with goods and services. Spending accelerates. Credit expands. Economic activity continues to move forward.

This is why modern economies tolerate and even target moderate rate of inflation. You did not see substantial inflation in the US economy until after 1913 and there is ample proof of long term price stability prior to the formation of the federal reserve and US income tax policy. While there were periods of significant inflation in the US economy before that time, deflation was also tolerated and acceptable. Today it is not.

Now it is also possible that from time to time in the aggregate, the consumer has fewer needs as money supply grows. With fewer needs for aggregate goods and services, excess money then finds its way into paper assets. But that is Ray Dalio’s lane.

Deflation Is a Signal to Wait

Deflation is the mirror image.

When prices fall, the purchasing power of money increases over time provided wages do not fall as fast. The signal changed from the AC of inflation to the DC of deflation:

Why buy today if it will be cheaper tomorrow?

Under deflation, consumers are rational to delay discretionary purchases.
Why buy a car now if it will cost less next year?
Why buy a house today if prices are trending lower?
Why spend savings if money itself is becoming more valuable?

Deflation rewards patience.

As a result:

saving increases,

spending slows,

credit contracts.

This is not because consumers are afraid.
It’s because waiting is rewarded.

Deflation tells people to preserve capital, not deploy it. All else equal, because our society is built on spending and consuming, and because inflation has pulled forward demand and borrowing overtime, deflation, and its slowing effect leads to job losses, wage contract and real fear of a spiral that policy makers just cannot allow. That spiral of course is the economy cleaning itself up of bad businesses, bad actors and just plain old excess that is unsustainable, and on I can go.

But this is an all else being equal conversation.

Savings and Credit Follow the Signal

These signals show up clearly in behavior:

• Inflation environments

  • Savings rates fall

  • Consumption rises

  • Credit expands

  • Debt becomes more attractive because inflation erodes its real cost

• Deflation environments

  • Savings rates rise

  • Consumption slows

  • Credit contracts

  • Debt becomes more expensive in real terms

Again, no judgement here nor political party affiliation here. I am just the party of Math. 1 + 1 = 2. Just incentives responding to price movement.

What If Prices Never Moved?

Now ask the real question.

What if prices stayed flat for years or decades?

No inflation. No deflation.

In that world, consumers would buy what they need and no more or no less.
There would be no urgency to spend early and no reward for waiting. Capital allocation would be driven purely by preference, utility, and productivity.

That world would be stable. It would also be a ton slower in GDP growth and paper asset value expansion. The false sense of being a millionaire today when that million is only worth $100,000 yesteryear dollars is a false feeling of weath.

Modern economies are built on movement, not stasis. Inflation and deflation are tools and far more blunt ones than the average bear thinks. Those signals influence behavior to keep the system dynamic. Make no mistake about it, societies, governments and central banking regulators have every incentive in the world to create inflation and none to create deflation. So what does Wimpy say?

I would gladly pay you Tuesday with substantially less valuable dollars if you will sell me a hamburger today at today’s price.

Why Neither Is Good Nor Bad

Inflation isn’t evil. Deflation isn’t virtuous.

They are simply price signals about time.

• Inflation says: Tomorrow is more expensive.

• Deflation says: Tomorrow is cheaper.

Problems arise not from the existence of these signals, but from:

• their speed,

• their magnitude,

• and whether wages and productivity adjust alongside them.

Understanding this framework helps us better understand the entire conversation about inflation since now we can know what it really is and why deflation is something some people fear.

Inflation and deflation don’t tell you what to think.
They tell you when to act.

Closing Thought

Money is not wealth. It is a claim on future goods.

Inflation weakens that claim over time and encourages action today.
Deflation strengthens it and encourages full stop restraint on unneeded purchase first then necessary goods and services can suffer.

That’s the whole story. Everything else is noise to try to get your vote.

Wait a minute!!!!

Epilogue - What I really Think!

Sandcastles, Signals, and the Lie We Tell Ourselves

So what the hell does inflation, deflation, and monetary signaling have to do with building sandcastles at the beach or buying a vacation home for your family?

Everything.

Because at its core, this was never an economics paper.
It was a paper about time.

Inflation is a signal that says tomorrow costs more.
Deflation is a signal that says tomorrow costs less.

But life doesn’t operate on price indices. It operates on windows of time and experience.

There is a window where your kids still want to build sandcastles with you.
There is a window where they still reach for your hand without irony.
There is a window where “someday” actually exists.

There is a window where you “kids” are now your grandkids and you move a little slower.

There is a window when you will reach for a hand and maybe find it just a memory.

There is a window where someday was yesterday.

People obsess over whether it’s a “good time” to buy a vacation home.
They ask about rates, cycles, appreciation, taxes, and timing.
Those are real questions. They matter a bit.

There are realtors that are trying to sell you the investment dream, the bonus depreciation trick idea and then there are those that have lived a bit, gathered some scars along the way and realize what they are trying to do is to help others live with life scars more intentionally and more graciously with more joy.

I wonder about this when I say it. Do people really care that much or will they just work with anyone that can spin a lockbox code?

The question is this:

What signal are you responding to, money, or life?

Inflation teaches people to act before value erodes.
Life should do the same thing only quietly, without a CPI report.

Time will be more expensive tomorrow. There will be less time tomorrow and more demand for it as we age.

And unlike currency, you cannot print more of it.

So if you’re asking what inflation and deflation have to do with vacation homes, sandcastles, and family

Oh yes…….actually……..Nothing at all.

You cannot build sandcastles on the beach with your grandbabies on a pile of bitcoin.

Sources & Citations

• Investopedia – Inflation vs. Deflation: What’s the Difference?
  https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/111414/what-difference-between-inflation-and-deflation.asp

• Investopedia – How Inflation Affects Your Cash Savings
  https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/090715/how-inflation-affects-your-cash-savings.asp

• Britannica – Inflation vs. Deflation
  https://www.britannica.com/money/inflation-vs-deflation

• European Central Bank / Household Expectation Studies – Inflation Expectations and Consumer Spending
  https://hj.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1866922/FULLTEXT01.pdf

• Federal Reserve Bank Research – Deflation, Expectations, and Consumption
  https://www.sjsu.edu/people/ali.reza/docs/AMR%20paper%20Defln_Jun.pdf

• ResearchGate – The Dynamics of Deflation in a Growing Economy
  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310834733_The_dynamics_of_deflation_in_a_growing_economy

• Lyn Alden – Prices as Signals
  https://www.lynalden.com/price-signals/

Our good friend Donnie was a radiologist. He was trusted because he doesn’t dramatize anything. He simply tells you what the images say. For us that was immediate always. Brenda and I had spent our lives around medicine. She through more than a decade in mental health, me through a family legacy of physicians and a stint in private equity analyzing reimbursement strategies and clinical labs. We knew the shorthand and jargon. We knew the people that would help us quickly because of my father’s history.

So when Brenda started having neck pain at 58, about to turn 59, neither of us worried. She looked great. She felt fine except for the stiffness. It was supposed to be simple. A nerve or some compressed vertebra a little out of place. Maybe some physical therapy or a tiny procedure would fix her right up. She scheduled the MRI with Donnie and went on her own. That’s how routine it felt.

I was at home that afternoon. She had taken off work early and I was already back home when the phone rang.

It was Donnie.

And this is the first time the Universe spoke to me. The very first of four moments in my life when something real made itself known to me and I began letting it speak. It was the start of four chats the universe would have with me. Maybe two of those chats were more than just the universe.

In short, I learned to Listen for the universe because it will let you know what you need to know when you need to know it.

The phone rang and I answered.
Donnie said, “Hey Richard”

And in that half‑second, something inside me said clearly She has cancer.

The Universe, whatever you want to call it, nudged me for the first time in my life. And it didn’t seem at all unnatural or scary.

Donnie continued, gently: “We found something we weren’t looking for…”

Everything after that sentence became a kind of underwater sound. But Brenda’s voice, when she took the phone, was calm.

I suppose the first of many mistakes I would make as a Caregiver that she did not every make started right here. I said “I’m coming there to get you, stay right there”. We assume people, because we have not experienced it, are going to be weak in these moments and that we are the strong ones. I have news for you. Of course all of us in challenge and even the most significant one of our lives will feel pressure and may feel regret or remorse or we may be in modest denial……from time to time. But the strength of your person….of mine… is more than you think. Calmly and with her first show of acceptance of the reality of the moment but the early indication that she would live life showed through as the dots I can see now looking back.

“Richard… it’s alright. I’m coming home.”

We had a humor between us and we always did, but this wasn’t a moment for humor. This was something quieter. She came home, and I remember sitting on our back porch at Bentwood Creek. I can still feel the chair. The air. The angle of her shadow as she walked toward me.

She stood. I sat.
She wrapped her arms around my neck.
Neither of us cried. We weren’t ready for that yet.
We were simply aware.

We both understood, without speaking , that whatever Anguilla had meant to us and that version of life we were living up to that moment had quietly ended and the 10 year hoped for plan we all think we have, for us, was gone. And somewhere in me, still stunned, I knew this was only the first time the Universe would intervene. There would be three more universe moments before this story ended.

I will share deeply personal moments of my life that have led to the power to be me and no one else and to just live as I do saying what I say mistakes and all because I learned this day, looking back, that everything I thought mattered does not. Nor does it matter for you. I do not mean live without purpose, but I do mean live open and welcoming to life. I learned if you are careful what you say, and I mean in just being who you are, not hurtful things deliberately, but being who you are, unguarded and free open and giving, then you are not in the moment. You are building a life that does not really matter in the big scheme of what the universe is trying to tell you and show you. Or, more importantly I learned only looking back at this day that you are forestalling the life you need to live because of artificial beliefs of what anything you are doing now means.

But to understand that moment fully, you have to go back to where it all really began.

November 9th, 2009.
A few days before yet another trip to Anguilla and months before the neck pain and that MRI.

We’d been countless times before looking at homes, dreaming about a life we might have. She coughed up a little blood that morning. Just a little but enough to notice, not enough to sound alarms. And with a stuffy nose what would anyone think?

She saw a doctor the next day. X‑ray inconclusive. Again never just any doctor. This was a friend’s father. Someone I went to School with and a noted physician. We were in good hands. Given our connections, if we needed an appointment, we had one. That’s how our life worked then we had access, answers, immediately. The doctor prescribed a Z‑Pak. By Saturday, wheels up, the symptoms were gone. So we left for Anguilla.

And life kept happening. It brought what would be a distraction for a few months. In looking back at the dots, probably something I needed.

My son’s mother, also now gone from cancer, called to say my son had been kicked out of school. Not suspended. Expelled. Eleventh grade, seventeen years old, spiraling a bit. Brenda and I had raised him through most of his childhood and onward, and he was with her while we took a week off. But in that moment, there was nothing I could do. Or would do. I told her I’d handle it when we returned.

We came home to a different kind of life with real addiction struggles, school placement, the painful but necessary decisions a parent must sometimes make to save a child who hates you in the moment you’re trying to save him. Brenda guided both of us through that time. My son righted himself in fairly quick course beginning the process of realizing what a solid and capable human he was(is). He went on to college with super grades, clear direction and a wife and a life most would envy and yet he already like me is just a funny open person. And now at thirty‑three (2026) he stands today as one of the greatest humans I know. But that is its own long arc, his story. But the dots looking back? I probably needed the distraction this provided us. The focus of a broader life and family while the core of it for me was falling apart.

We handled the chaos in front of us and didn’t look for the things ahead nearly as much.

Until March 10th, 2010. She came home and we hugged, as I said, and we had our first laugh. This is tough but here it goes.

Brenda was indeed a smoker for a fair share of her life and continued a bit here and there for most of our lives together. While I was not the same, I smoked a bit but not nearly as much. “Richard, I know this is probably the wrong time to do this but you and me...we are going to smoke our last cigarette” and you know what....as silly or crazy as you think that sounds and judge her not lest ye be judged, we laughed, and smoked what was indeed our last cigarette.

The day the phone rang.

The day Donnie called.

I would change the way the possible remaining time was introduced to us because time, more than cancer, became the thing we really would have liked to know with certainty.

It is clear to me now that Steve Jobs was right when he said you can only connect the dots looking back. Looking back the dots pointed me to a new behavior and a new freedom of being and more joy in my life that has come from all of this. Guilt is a terrible thing and I can have it and certainly carried it for a long time, but I overcame it. I embraced new joy for a time, but even now I am not free of the belief of tomorrow rather than the knowledge of now. Said more simply, I have returned to thinking my life only ends by getting hit by a bus.

I did learn clearly at that moment that her fate will be mine and yours. None of us have any guarantee we will live long enough to reach the five or ten year plans we imagine for ourselves living days in Anguilla or meeting up again on a beach in Zihuatanejo.

When the doctor said “six to eighteen months,” he thought he was giving us information that we could use. What he gave us was a countdown and not a clear one at that. Once you start counting down, you can stop living, and stress you never had worrying about tomorrow becomes your new way of life. You brace for the inevitable and to some extent stop living any kind of free life. It is hard to get that back and certainty of course is my dream only looking back. But what if? What of Hope?

Still, we were deep in the medical profession and had access few really have. Even still, we did know there was some finite point we could point to but we knew something was coming and we did not know when. But as I write in economics, the Doctor anchored us on 12 to 18 months.

Still, it was no longer going to be the 5 or 10 year plan to retire to the Caribbean like we had thought November of 2009 when the first sign was given to us but we did not really want to see it then.

If he had said instead, “You have 1,627 days, and 30 more that will be hard,” our life would have looked different. Maybe? We would have understood that the first 1,627 weren’t a funeral march. They were life a bit unpredictable to be sure, and sometimes painful. Still it would have been our life to live if we could figure out how to do it.

But how could we or how could anyone if you have no idea what time is. I wonder if Justin Timberlake could have put a clock on our arm.

As Dan Bern Wrote in his Lyric “I asked God” God retains a secret weapon. Time belongs to God.

I learned it more than her of course. I understood that it was her life being cut short and not mine. That is the grief each of us feels in a thing like this and “right soon” the warden would say.

We didn’t know the number of days then. You never do at the beginning. I am not sure you do in the middle, but I did at the end. Only then did I know.

What surprised me most was not the fear or the grief. It was how my thoughts of love and compassion changed. One morning you’re a husband and a partner. One day you are whose making coffee or planning the next trip was fun… but the next morning someone is a caregiver and someone is an advocate. Someone has to be a translator of medical shorthand and be the guard against the thousand small indignities people would place upon a person as they are going through the motions of care and not caregiving. They give shots, put in the port, take the x-rays and move on to the next patient.

You learn to be steady on command with what you have to do. The Caregiver starts the process of doing what they know needs to be done.

You are faced with the reality that your ten year hope was having wasted time to live already. This began to change at 51. I finally made the decisions I should have made sooner to leave the job that no longer mattered, live where I wanted to live, speak plainly, and stop pretending time was something owed to me. Some people read that as me being a bit too direct. Candidly, I care deeply. So much so that I do not guard myself or try to filter for the palatable truth someone needs to hear.

The lesson has now arrived fully but let me show you how I got there whether I was ready or not. I made all the decisions then that I could have made with her. I never left the job that was useless and unneeded. I guess we did live where we wanted to live at least for a time. The life that I was to have was being planned somehow and someway.

People think the hardest part is the diagnosis. The hardest part is when your life becomes unclear and uncertain in a real way. Newsflash. All of us have uncertain ends as Rush sings. But we have a life that is pleasant enough and creates a false sense of certainty for us all at least for a time. Until some “before you had and after you hope” that somehow you can get it all back.

You have to carry on both of you living a life. You have to build a new way of loving, a new way of being, a new way of holding on. Who are you? What are you? Why do we all play these silly games of social climbing and trying to say all the perfect words and be so correct? You might lose some of the social pretense.

Some of us eventually learn that none of this “matters.” We wrap ourselves in virtue signaling and things to show others thinking we matter. Can you name your Great Great Great Uncle? You have one. Who was it?

She learned all of this in the hardest possible way at 63, and I was left at 51 wondering whether I would learn the same truth without her cost (HINT: We won’t). Let me say it again this way.

She learned what we will all know in the very most difficult way at 63 and me remaining behind at 51 and now 64 as of this re-write have not really learned her lesson of life. I did learn peace and did find joy again and really hit a place of unconditional care for everyone. I have lost some of that around the edges because of getting back into a work profession that is not exactly one where you can be quietly anonymous about what you do. Still, I might be able to retain the beauty that would come to me in the learning she gave me that for a time I had to perfection. I Hope. And you can read it all.

This book is about that journey. It is about the long path between what you’re told and what you actually live. It is about how love changes when confronted with mortality, and how the daily grind becomes much more precise when you know time is finite, I mean you really know! We met our vows of “til death us do part” head on. That is not as easy as you think.

But it’s also about something I didn’t appreciate until much later. It is about how much life is still available even when a diagnosis you didn’t ask for comes along. We did laugh. We did get some of what we were back for a time.

But when you are the only one that remains what happens then? How is it joy comes back?. Even when you are finding joy again is that ok and how does that feel? I had to learn that laughter can coexist with fear and tears a walk on the beach and a random song like “Weekend in New England” could bring on.

I found myself standing again, somehow still upright ”making it through the rain,” as Barry Manilow once sang, a line that carried more truth than I expected.

If you are beginning your own journey, or walking beside someone who is, I offer this. Assume the first treatment will work. Assume you will have more time than you’re being told. Not because of false hope, but because you deserve no panic and to not surrender to hopelessness.

You deserve a chance to live the days you still have and not pretend you have lost all days to come. You never really know. Oh, you can suspect, but you never really know. Yes there is a point B but the line between A and it is not always straight. Try to enjoy the wiggles and curves in the line. Look for them when they present themselves and take the left turn.

I didn’t know how to do that at the beginning. Very few people do. But you can learn. You can grow and you can love someone not just in the way you promised on a wedding day, but in the way that only real hardship teaches.

This preface is not the story. It is only the beginning and the beginning of what I ended up learning when I looked back. And only when I looked back did I see the real story of how I came to be where I am. You cannot connect the dots of your life before the dots have been created. Hansel and Gretel could not get back on bread crumbs that they laid before the walked the path.

But if you walk through it, I hope you find what I eventually found. Even in the darkest times of life you do not have to give in. You can keep living. You have to. Did you know that on the death of a spouse the chances of the remaining partner dying within the first 12 months for men is a 70% increase in risk of death? For women it is 27%, Sometimes you just have to remember how to take it on and do something. Keep at it.

Do something typical and life affirming if you can every single day.

But while you are both still here, take the trip, have your date nights. And remember this.

1,627 good days is far more than the 365 to 545 we thought we had. I am not sure we can all avoid 30 bad days no matter what. But go Live with the good days you have and prepare yourself. If you are in this journey remember that you will remain after them. Do not let their last great lesson go unheard and unlearned. And remember today is someone’ Day One of the 1,627 good days they have left.

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As we’ve grown in this business, I’ve realized people deserve to know who we really are and why we do this and not the cliché of “Hi, I’m in real estate, want to buy a house?” That has never been me.

So here’s the truth of how life brought me to this now.

Most people think caregiving is appointments, medications, logistics. They have no idea. Caregiving can change your life if you let it. It is the loving someone through their worst days and being there always. But who is it that is give care does matter in the end. It’s the giving up of your previous identity. It’s the beginning of grief that eases in time, but comes back time and time again. It is ‘til death do us part’ in real life.

For a long time, I carried this privately. I started the writing in 2014 and touched it many times and it continues to evolve.

Some of it was too hard to talk about. Some of it was too sacred.
Some of it, I simply didn’t have words for. I worked on this for 12 years and it is finally finished.

Whenever someone asked me while touring homes, “Richard, how did you come to Florida?” I’d give the easy answer — “I love the beach.” But eventually I realized that wasn’t the real story. The real story is that life reminded me how short our time can be at a moments notice. This is that story and journey of a cargiver.

Over the last few years, I’ve learned something. Many people walk this same road of illness, loss, and sudden unexpected change. Most never feel seen while they’re going through it. We hide the most hurtful memories and parts of who we are. We seem scared to share our real truth because we fear how people will react. The freedom this journey gave me to be me and speak freely is a great give. I have gotten over that fear.

This new 10-part series, The Caregiver’s Journey is my attempt to embrace at least this for myself. It’s an honest exploration of what it means to love someone through illness, loss, and the long, uneven path back to re-find yourself and your great joy of life.

This isn’t a memoir or your guide. It is my truth. While it is similar to many, it is only my truth, but the journey out and the drive to continue to live joyfully is my wish for anyone suffering this kind of unexpected change.

I needed and wanted to do this years ago and never found the way until now.

What’s Ahead in the Series

• the moment life changed into before and after

• how love quietly becomes caregiving and who is giving the care

• the slow uncertainty of days

• anticipatory grief and the false hope of preparation - I got this because I am prepared false hope

• final days that do come

• what loss actually feels like

• the “fantastic” world of voices that follows the funeral

• the first time guilt of new joy fades away

• who you become or can become and the struggle to maintain the new better you

Some parts will be uncomfortable and I do not gloss over personal events.
Some parts will be tough for some people to understand. But it is me.
All of it will be honest. I do not hold back. Why do that?

If you’ve ever cared for someone you love…
If you’ve ever lost someone who set you on your proper course….
If you’ve ever had to rebuild your life because of loss no matter how it happened……

…you’ll find hope here I hope. I hope like Red hopes. To find Andy.

The first installment arrives republished Now with the accompanying Podcast this week - Today | Now.

It’s time we let people see who we are, why we are, and why this life matters — now.

—Richard

If this resonates, consider subscribing.

This series is personal, but it’s also universal — and you’re welcome to walk it with me.

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I find my writings fall into a few categories.

1. The reason for all of this willingness to try and to be open - The Caregiver’s Journey.

2. Goal Setting Thoughts I have had over the years that it is all a look back rather than a look forward an Walking Down Stairs

3. Ideas that try to discuss economics in a behavioral sense so to get away from the financial economics most think of and to describe choices in Economics 101

4. Real Estate talk which is my own counterpoint to the tik tok crazy real estate people that no longer really desire to sustain a practice helping people and instead prey on new agents to buy “Coaching”. So in a round about way I share my thoughts on what people should expect of the professional practice of real estate.

Today we are in a final beginning of the journey as we re-organize all of my social media.

The idea is simple. They tell me (who you might ask) that I am a long former. That means I am not that great at tik tok or Instagram shorts. Maybe they are right.

So where this all begins to get organized is on my YouTube Channel where we are making it smooth and crisp and fun for all. Take a look. It is fun but informative.

Here we are re-oganizing the content and giving a clearer way to find areas of real interest.

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That leads to a continued improvement in the “less polished” more fun Richard. My Tik Tok. I think if you listen to Gary Vanderchuk he says go do it. I started some time ago and continue to try to find my way, the way I want to be on that platform. We will be making organized improvements there to that point to the things we already do there but add new repeating ideas.

1. Construction Monday’s with Richard

2. Dressed as I am Tuesday

3. Wednesday Home Tours

Leaving Thursday and Friday for who knows what, but more random tik tok stuff. On tik tok you must be who you are but you do not always have to wear a suit.

That takes us to Instagram, our quiet “brand”. There you see our homes that we bring to the market, our real estate tours and talks, our Elements of series and other more “polished” content.

I hope you enjoy all we do to make it known to the world who we are. Share this with your friends that want to create a special life.

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Not might. Will. Somewhere in a life spent walking down flights of stairs without thinking about it, one step is going to be shorter than your foot expected, or your heel is going to catch, or you are simply going to misjudge a stair that has been exactly the same height for twenty years. It happens to the person who never thinks about their feet and it happens to the person who thinks about nothing else.

That part isn’t the interesting part.

The interesting part is what happens on the next step.

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The Stumble You Didn’t Plan For

Here’s what a stumble actually is. For one half of one second, the automatic system fails. The body that has been walking down stairs its entire life without a single conscious calculation suddenly has to think. Where is my foot. Where is the rail. What just happened.

And then it’s over. You catch yourself, or you don’t, and either way you’re standing on a stair looking down at the rest of the flight.

Now you have a choice, except it doesn’t feel like a choice. It feels like a fact. Do you keep walking the way you were walking, without thought, trusting the same legs that just failed you for half a second? Or do you start looking at your feet?

Most people start looking at their feet.

What Fear Actually Costs You

I want to be precise about what fear does here, because it isn’t what people think.

Fear doesn’t stop you on the stairs. Fear makes you start calculating the stairs. It sends you the message that the automatic system can no longer be trusted, and it offers you a replacement. Think about the angle of your ankle. Think about the distance to the next step. Think about where your weight is at every single point of contact.

That sounds like caution. It feels like caution. It is actually the opposite of what kept you safe for every flight of stairs you walked down before this one.

Fluidity was the thing keeping you upright. The moment you replace fluidity with calculation, you don’t become safer. You become slower, stiffer, and more likely to trip again, because a body that is thinking about every joint is a body that has forgotten how to move as one thing. You’ve turned a single fluid motion into forty separate decisions, and forty separate decisions cannot happen fast enough to catch you when the next stair actually is uneven.

This is the part nobody warns you about. The stumble was never the danger. The overcorrection is the danger.

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The What, The How, and The Why

Arthur Brooks has a framework I think about more than almost anything else I’ve read, and it applies here whether he meant it to or not.

Most people operate from the what. What am I doing right now. What just happened. What do I need to fix. Some people manage to operate from the how. How do I do this correctly. How do I avoid the mistake I just made. Fewer people ever get to the why. Why am I walking down these stairs at all. Why does it matter that I get to the bottom.

The person who stumbles and starts managing their what and their how is the person who is now staring at their feet, recalculating a body that used to move without asking permission. They are solving a problem. The problem is real. The solution is exhausting, and it doesn’t scale past the second flight of stairs, let alone a lifetime of them.

The person who stumbles and stays with their why doesn’t need the recalculation. They already know where they’re going and they already know it’s worth the walk. The stumble was information, not a referendum. One stair was off. The staircase is not the enemy. The bottom of it is still where they’re headed, and that hasn’t changed just because one step did.

That’s the whole difference. Not confidence. Not bravado. Just a why that survives contact with a bad step.

The Person Who Keeps Walking

I’ve watched both versions of this play out in people I care about, and it is never about who stumbled harder.

Some people take one bad step, one lost deal, one relationship that ended wrong, one diagnosis that scared them, and they never fully trust their legs again. They start looking down. They start narrating every joint. They get slower and more careful and somehow less safe, because caution without fluidity isn’t caution. It’s just fear wearing a more respectable outfit.

And some people take a worse step than that, and they’re at the bottom of the stairs a minute later, still moving, because the fall was never the point of the walk. It was information about one stair. It said nothing about the nine below it and it said nothing about why they were headed down there in the first place.

I’ll tell you which one I’m trying to be, most days. I’m not always successful. But I know now that the tell isn’t whether I stumbled. Everybody stumbles. The tell is whether I go back to trusting the legs that have carried me down a thousand flights of stairs, or whether I spend the rest of the walk staring at my feet.

Closing

You already know how to walk down the stairs. You knew it before this stumble and you’ll know it after the next one.

The fall doesn’t cost you the staircase. Looking down at your feet for the rest of your life does.

So take the next step the way you took the last thousand. Trust the legs. Keep the why in view. The bottom of the stairs hasn’t moved, and neither has the reason you were headed there.

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A cardiovascular surgeon is more valuable than Taylor Swift. So is a great third grade teacher. And the only reason that sentence sounds insane to you is the actual subject of this essay.

Stay with me.

The Prices We Already Know

Let’s do the arithmetic, because I always want to do the arithmetic.

A song on Apple, if she even releases it there, costs about a dollar. An album runs you twenty. A concert ticket, the good kind, might run a few hundred. Add it up and you are still under the cost of a decent night out. A song is cheaper than a Big Mac. An album is cheaper than dinner at Olive Garden. A concert is a Disney day, maybe two.

None of it costs very much. Millions of people pay it anyway, on the same Tuesday, for the same three minutes of music.

The surgeon charges a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for one procedure. One patient. One morning.

Multiply the cheap thing by millions and you beat the expensive thing by a mile. Taylor Swift is worth more than any surgeon alive, in dollars, and it isn’t close.

Here’s the part nobody says out loud. She isn’t winning because the product is extraordinary. She’s winning because the product is cheap, and cheap scales, and a society addicted to convenience will buy an ocean of something disposable before it will properly pay for something rare.

That’s not a compliment to the market. That’s an indictment of it.

The Trap Called Scale

Cost measures what something can extract at volume. It does not measure what something is worth.

A pop song asks almost nothing of you and gives back three minutes of a good feeling. That’s the entire transaction, and there is nothing wrong with it. But stack a hundred million of those transactions and you get a fortune built on a product with a shelf life of one summer. The genius isn’t the song. The genius is the distribution.

The surgeon can’t distribute. A body only holds one heart, and one surgeon can only be in one operating room. The value she creates is enormous and it is capped, hard, by biology and by time. She will never sell a hundred million of anything. She sells total, irreplaceable value to one person at a time, for as many hours as she has in a career, and then she’s out of inventory.

So when we say Taylor Swift is “worth more,” what we actually mean is her thing was buildable into a machine and the surgeon’s thing never will be. We’ve been grading value by how well it photocopies. That is not the same question as which one matters.

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Now Imagine if the Teacher Could Scale

This is the part that should actually bother you.

A teacher spends a year handing thirty kids the tools to read, reason, and function as citizens. That is not a pleasant three minutes. That is the raw material every other outcome in that child’s life gets built on top of. Literacy. Work ethic. The ability to sit with a hard problem instead of quitting it. Call it what it is: foundational awareness. The societal glue nobody notices until it’s gone.

She reaches thirty kids a year, for maybe thirty years. Call it nine hundred people, if she’s excellent and stays the whole career.

Now do the thought experiment I can’t stop running. What if she could scale the way Taylor Swift scales? Not one classroom. Fifty million kids, the same instruction, the same quality, delivered everywhere at once.

You are not looking at a modest business anymore. You are looking at the single most valuable export a society could produce, an entire generation that reads better, reasons better, and holds itself together better, replicated at the scale of a hit song. That output doesn’t fade in a summer. It compounds for sixty years in every one of those lives, and then in their kids’ lives.

Taylor Swift’s product doesn’t survive that comparison. It was never designed to. It was designed to be consumed, enjoyed, and replaced by the next one, and it is spectacular at that job. It was never doing the teacher’s job, and it was never trying to.

The Actual Diagnosis

So here’s the sentence I actually mean, not the softened version.

We didn’t decide the pop song was more valuable than the classroom. We decided that whatever can scale is more valuable than whatever can’t, and then we let the price tag pretend that was a judgment about worth instead of a judgment about logistics.

A cheap thing, multiplied, buys a mansion. A profound thing, unscalable, buys a pension that barely covers the mortgage. That’s not the market being wise. That’s the market measuring the one variable it knows how to measure, and calling it the whole truth.

I see the same mistake in my own business more often than I’d like to admit. A price tag on a house tells you what it will extract from a buyer. It tells you nothing about whether it’s actually worth it to the family standing in the kitchen. Cost is what scales. Value is what matters. The two keep getting filed under the same word, and every time they do, we reward the wrong thing and call it the market’s wisdom.

It isn’t wisdom. It’s just the only math we bothered to build.

Go find the person in your life doing the unscalable, foundational work nobody prices correctly. Then ask yourself what she’d be worth if the world had simply built her a bigger microphone.

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If the math is 1,627 good days and then 30 you don’t choose, what does that have to do with real estate?

Everything. It’s the only thing the job is actually about, and almost nobody in my industry will tell you that.

The Number That Isn’t on the Settlement Statement

Every closing has two numbers.

There’s the one on the page. Purchase price, closing costs, prorated taxes, the wire instructions everyone triple-checks because nobody wants to be that story. That number gets audited, initialed, and emailed to four different people before anyone signs.

Then there’s the number nobody writes down. How many mornings does this buy them. How many Thanksgivings under one roof. How many more times the grandkids learn to swim in that particular stretch of Gulf before they’re too old to want to.

Nobody puts that number in the contract. I’ve read a lot of contracts. I’ve never seen a line for it.

But it’s the only number that was ever actually being negotiated.

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Two Buyers

I’ve sat across from both of these people. You probably know one of them.

The first buyer runs the numbers for eighteen months. Rates might come down. Inventory might loosen. The market might give them a better entry point if they just wait one more season. Every instinct is sound. Every spreadsheet is defensible. I’ve never once been able to tell this person they’re wrong about the math.

The second buyer walks the house once, stands on the back porch for four minutes, and says let’s write it.

The industry calls the first buyer disciplined and the second buyer impulsive. I’ve stopped believing that. The first buyer is optimizing a number that will still be there next year. The second buyer already did the arithmetic I wrote about two weeks ago, whether they’d ever say it out loud. They know what the porch is actually worth, and they know the clock funding that porch isn’t the mortgage clock.

I’m not telling you to skip the analysis. Do the analysis. I’m an economist by temperament, I’ll run the comps with you all day. I’m telling you that somewhere in that analysis, there has to be room for the question nobody puts a formula around.

How many of these days do I actually get.

I Know This Table

I’ve sat at a version of this table before. Not this exact one. Not with a closing agent and a stack of initials.

I sat at a kitchen table once with someone who didn’t have the option to wait for a better season. The market wasn’t going to loosen up for her. There was no eighteen months to run the numbers in. And what I watched her do with the days she did have taught me more about value than every appraisal I’ve ever read.

She didn’t defer the trip. She didn’t wait for the right time to sit on the porch. She used the mornings while they were still hers to use, and she was more at peace in the middle of that than most people I know who have every year they could possibly want stretched out in front of them.

I don’t bring that up at closings. It wouldn’t be appropriate, and it isn’t really mine to hand to a stranger over a stack of paperwork. But I carry it into every one of these conversations whether the client can see it or not. When I watch someone hesitate over a decision they’ve clearly already made in their gut, I recognize exactly what I’m looking at. I’ve seen the version of this where the hesitation is the whole story, and I’ve seen the version where somebody decided not to let it be.

That’s not sentiment. That’s the actual professional advantage I bring to a negotiation. I’m not just pricing the house. I’m pricing the wait.

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Where My Industry Gets It Backwards

I already picked this fight once, so I’ll finish it.

Most agents are trained to protect the client from spending too much. Lower cost, faster close, everyone shakes hands and calls it a win. It photographs like service.

Nobody trains us to protect the client from waiting too long.

There’s no commission structure for the deal that didn’t happen because the buyer needed one more season to be sure. There’s no line item for the porch that never got built because “later” sounded so reasonable in the moment. That loss doesn’t show up anywhere. It just quietly becomes somebody’s actual life, one deferred season at a time, until the seasons available to defer start running out.

A professional’s job isn’t to get you the lowest price. It’s to sit across from you and ask, gently but directly, whether the caution you’re calling prudent is actually just fear wearing a suit. Sometimes the answer is genuinely wait. The market does that. But sometimes the honest answer is you have less time for this than the spreadsheet is telling you, and somebody needs to say it plainly.

I’d rather be the agent who said it than the one who let the silence be easier.

The Only Question a Closing Table Should Ask

So here’s what I actually think a buyer’s agreement should include, right alongside the commission disclosure and the agency relationship.

One honest question. What are you actually buying this for, and do you have as much time as you’re assuming you have?

Nobody can answer that with certainty. That’s not a flaw in the question. It’s the entire point of it. You don’t get the number in advance. Nobody does. The 1,627 days I asked you to imagine two weeks ago aren’t a hypothetical for the person sitting across from you right now, closing on a house or still deciding not to. They’re either spending them well or spending them on a spreadsheet, and most people don’t find out which one until it’s too late to switch.

That uncertainty should make you move faster on the things you actually value, not slower. I’ve written that before and I’ll keep writing it, because almost nobody actually lives it.

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Go Sit on the Porch

I sit every morning and think about what I value. You know that by now.

What I haven’t said quite this directly is why I do this job the way I do it. It isn’t because I love paperwork. It’s because I’ve watched what it looks like when someone runs out of seasons to defer, and I’ve watched what it looks like when someone spends every one they’re given on purpose. I know which version I’d rather help people choose.

So if you’re the buyer who’s been running the numbers for eighteen months, I’m not telling you to abandon the numbers. I’m telling you to add the one number nobody put in the contract.

How many more times do you actually get to do this.

Whatever that number is, that’s your real closing date.

Go find the porch.