Those that know me well, know I love technology. One of those individuals is Jim Fairbanks, whose company I helped start-up in Houston, Texas. It was Jim, who coined the phrase, “complexity is our friend.” What he meant by this was, the more complex the problem, the easier it was for our company to provide a solution. This was because many competitors shied away from providing complex solutions. We simply embraced complexity.
Over the years, I realized that I enjoy solving customer problems that involved technology. This enjoyment allowed me to search for solutions that involved technology. In doing so, I became very agile with and around technology, particularly when there were several sub systems involved. I, for what ever reason, was able to have an abstract view of the solution.
Four Pillars of Business Initiatives
As I became comfortable with presenting complex solutions, I also gained the knack of relating the solution to customers in a way they could easily understand. The knack came about as a result of listening to the customer’s business initiatives, researching possible solutions, and then presenting the solution to the customer by using the words they used to describe the problem.
Their words usually revolved around a problem, goal, or initiative for which they were tasked with solving. These were usually categorized into four business initiatives, otherwise called four pillars. These pillars include reducing costs, increasing revenue, protecting a brand, or compliance/risk mitigation.
We are on a First-Name Basis
As I became more and more adept at presenting a complex solution in an easy to understand manner, I took Jim’s quotation and added a few phrases so that I can now best describe what I do. That phrase is,
Complexity and technology are my friends. We are on a first-name basis.
Applied to Real Estate
These four pillars, which I described above, also relate to real estate agents since they are essentially independent business professionals. Every real estate agent has the same issues of needing to reduce their costs, increase their revenue, build and protect their brand, or comply with complex real estate regulations and mitigate risks.
