All posts by Keith Thompson

How to train a dog

Family, Life

Even though the title of this blog is how to train a dog, I have no idea how. I have a little fat dog (Sheltie) that I love more than I have ever loved an animal, but I can’t train him to do anything. I have watched videos about how to train a dog to fetch, heel, shake hands etc. and he just looks at me like I don’t know what I am talking about. He is with me all the time at home and sits beside my chair at night always waiting for some attention or a scrap of food.

When he was a puppy, he was wild. Because we live in a neighborhood, I couldn’t let him out in the yard without supervision. I didn’t love the idea of putting on clothes, shoes and a coat to walk him every morning so I hammered a steel stake near the front door so when he was little I would just loop his leash on that stake so he could do his business each morning and evening and I wouldn’t have to stay out with him when it was cold. By doing that, he learned to stay close to the house so now he just goes out by himself and stays close to the front of the house and sits on the porch until I come and get him.

One thing he does that tickles me is in the morning when I let him out, he will look back to see if I am watching. If he knows I am not watching, he will pee right in front of the door but if he looks back and sees me watching he will go to the flower bed or the grass. This morning we played this watching game and I decided I might buy one of those training collars that give him a little shock. I thought instead of putting the collar around his neck I might just attached it his little private part. Ha. I bet that would take care of the problem.

So, my dog has a vocabulary of about eight words like eat, bed, sit, stay etc. and he doesn’t do any other tricks like fancy dogs, but I love the little fellow. KT

Granny Bell

Family, Life

There is an old Baptist hymn named, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. The earliest memory I have of the song was one summer when I was at my Granny Bell’s house (my mother’s mother) and I was probably 6 or 7 years old. She took me to Peach Orchard Baptist church for bible school. I remember it just like it was yesterday, her standing beside me singing this song and holding the hymnal so I could see the words. I remember her voice and her very presence at that moment and every time I hear the song, I think of her. Granny Bell died young at 63 of a heart condition in 1975.

The song depicts a person asking for streams of mercy to never cease and for the lord to tune his heart to sing his praise. It speaks of his redeeming love. In verse four it says, O to grace how great a debtor, daily I’m constrained to be, let thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. What incredible lyrics.

The point is you never know what a simple memory will mean to your children and grandchildren. We get caught up in the hurry of life and don’t realize what little moments mean. This story of my grandmother is a good example. She took the time to be with me that day when she probably had many other more important things to do but it was that moment that stays with me today. She was a dear sweet woman and loved her family with all her heart. KT

What the market sees

Career

I had an employee come to me today and ask for more work to do. Ha. That could be the first time that someone has done this. Employees generally try to do as little as they can because they want to be in their car, out of the parking lot at 5:02 in the afternoon. So, this person tells me. “I want to feel needed, involved and helpful.” I was like,,,, wow.

In the course of finding this person some other job (s) that would help the company and be fulfilling, I discovered how easy it is to lose focus on the main things. Our main thing is selling hotels and to do that, you need a very articulate and professional internet presence and that presence needs to look perfect. I went to our website the way a new client would and, well,,,, ours needs a lot of help as I discovered today. A good manager (unlike me) would have been doing this already but clearly, I am not as detailed as I should be.

We all spend our time, writing offering books, updating numbers, doing pitches and basically selling. Using a common analogy, we don’t often look at the front of house because we are so busy working in the back yard. What I learned today was you need to look at the front of the house (what the market sees) more than you need to trim the weeds (what we mostly do) in the back yard.

So, what am I saying? If this employee had not come to me today asking for more work, I would not have put the time into finding more work. In short, I would not have looked at what the market sees when they look at us online. I would have kept trimming the weeds in the back yard. Every now and then something happens (like this employee) that causes you to look at things differently. In this case today, it was what I needed. KT

Show Stopper

Career, Family

Show stopper is a term we use in business when the deal you are working on falls apart for one reason or the other. The buyer or the seller will raise an issue that stops the flow of the transaction and ends the discussion. Usually the issue starts as something simple but escalates into a real problem, hence the term show stopper.

I am working on a deal now where we found out that there were some shenanigans (show stoppers) going on with the buyer that almost derailed the deal. We got it straightened out, but it very well could have killed the deal. I will never forget a conference call we had with a seller and a buyer on a hotel back in 2007. The seller owned one hotel, the one we were selling. The buyer owned 300 hotels and was one of the most respected buyers in the country. We got on the conference call to hammer out the remaining terms of the transaction when the seller got full of himself and started talking like he was the smartest real estate person in the room. I remember it vividly when he asks the buyer in a sarcastic manner, if they knew what they were doing and had ever bought a hotel before. Ha. What a doofus. The buyer just answered very calmly that they had bought other hotels (what an understatement) and they had experience buying his type hotel. Well, I knew that at moment, the comment by the seller was a show stopper. Sure enough, it killed the deal and to this day I remember it like it was yesterday.

Usually, not always, the show stopper is an attitude or aggression that suggest that the person will be difficult to work with and usually, causes the parties to just move on to something else. Attitude, calmness, understanding and flexibility are essential to any real estate transaction. There are always ways to express yourself other than a full-frontal assault and this is something you learn through experience rather than a classroom. This concept applies to not only real estate but many times to life, relationships, jobs, church, children and just about every interaction we have in life. Don’t let one conversation become a show stopper between you and someone you love. KT

Failure can be a powerful teacher

Career, Life

I have failed more times than I want to admit. With each failure I received a PhD in what I would never do again. I will mention two personal failures to make my point. 31 years ago, I invested in some fast food restaurants that failed miserably and almost bankrupted me and then 18 years ago I invested with someone on a land development deal and that same person sold the land and stole all the money I had invested with him.

The title of this blog is, “failure can be a powerful teacher” and I want to share a couple of things. First, you will not understand what you learned by the failure until later. When you are close it, you can’t see it. It is only after reflection that you truly grasp the lesson. Second, a failure teaches you not only the questions to ask, but more importantly, the questions you didn’t know to ask. Thirdly, a failure can give you an incredible understanding of the details you need to address when contemplating a financial move. Lastly, it teaches you the true meaning of liability and risk when you put your name on a document.

See, you can’t really learn these things in a classroom setting and if you did learn them, it would not carry the same weight of conviction and understanding as it does if you experience it. Thankfully, we can be persuaded and educated without having to experience it ourselves. A good friend or advisor can teach us (if we will listen) all the downsides of a decision. If we trust that person, many times it can save us from failure.

Both of those personal failures mentioned above, while incredibly painful, taught me more than I could have ever learned any other way. If you look at the lives of most every successful person or company and if you look closely, you will see that they became who they are, due in large to failures along the way. Failure is a very painful teacher but if you let it, it can teach you life long lessons that will impact you and your family’s future. KT