Decades ago as a lark, I unilaterally decided to write and self-distribute a monthly in-house newsletter for my colleagues at Royal LePage. Somehow that thing caught fire (figuratively) and I kept it up for six years, never missing a month of sliding a paper version into each person’s mail slot. Back then I was one step removed from a monk with a quill and an ink pot, toiling under candlelight in my musty windowless tower turret.
But I digress – that early (and frankly unrequested) effort was part of my start getting published far more broadly across Canada, including right here in REM.
More recently I was going through an old folder on my computer (I must have scanned some of those original parchment copies somewhere along the way?) and came across this timely quiz from 2000. Admittedly, I may have updated it over the years and had it appear in this space, but it’s a long weekend and I’ve misplaced the key to my writing tower. I wasn’t able to check my database of columns.
This is how the original piece appeared years ago back in my monthly newsletter. Some terms may be murky now and give you pause, given the passage of time. Hey, we all used pagers and pay phones back then – my first real estate vehicle was a Conestoga wagon!
1) You are finding it a little difficult to get back into work mode after a long summer of beachin’ with the kids. How do you switch back into gear?
a) dust off Top Producer, try contacting some of your old clients
b) start returning ad calls from the first week of April
c) call the office to see if your name is still on the sign-in board
2) Even though it’s barely the end of August, you can already feel your tan fading. The pager is going off non-stop and your partner may have switched offices without telling you. How do you get the fall campaign off the ground?
a) hunt through your desk for the Maximizer manual. Call old clients
b) re-issue all those postcards about how you out-list, and out-sell everyone
c) change your e-mail address to automatically intercept the company’s relocations enquiries
3) Your resources are depleted from too many tequila shooters on the deck at the waterfront cottage. Your listing inventory is three mobiles, a time share and a restaurant that closed five months ago. How do you steer around the looming financial iceberg?
a) check the shoe box under your desk for old clients to call
b) ask management for a commission advance based on goodwill and unproven projections
c) remember, a colleague’s unlocked filing cabinet is pretty much the same as prospecting for yourself
4) You haven’t actually noticed that it was summer. You’ve been working 25-hour days and the last day off you had was when it snowed your garage door shut. How do you react?
a) ask your assistant to get a new pine deodorizer for the office. It feels more like a campsite with that robust fragrance
b) promise your spouse and kids that you’ll join them, just as soon as you close these next 10 deals. Then start to work on even just one
c) ah, the heck with it…take another Maalox, increase your blood pressure pills and get ready for September
Humour columnist and author Dan St. Yves was licensed with Royal LePage Kelowna for 11 years. Check out his website at danstyves.com.
