Mine wasn't so much a meeting as a series of telephone conversations and emails. It started with a call from the firm managing an apartment building I owned about 1000 miles from where I lived. They were changing the focus of their business, and my building was not in the part of town or catering to the clientele they were moving toward. They were giving me plenty of advance notice so I could replace them.

I liked working with them so much, I realized anybody else I hired would have a hard time filling their shoes. I decided it was time to sell the building and use the proceeds to buy other property somewhere else. My building was in the poor part of town, but it was well kept. Across the street, a pair of nuns took in young pregnant women, taught them parenting and basic life skills, and nurtured them along until they were firmly on their feet with their newborn children. Instead of putting the building on the market, I asked the nuns if they wanted to add my building to their facilities.

It turned out that building codes would require expensive retrofitting of fire suppression equipment if we converted it from apartments to their residential program. Remodeling it for use as office space would be even more expensive. They had to decline.

But they knew the group who ran the local soup kitchen, which was considering startup of a program to move people from homelessness into decent housing. My building was well located for them, and it was in such good shape that they wouldn't need to do anything to it before starting to place people in the apartments.

I leased nearby parking space for the building. The owner of the parking lot agreed to enter a long term agreement so that as the new shelter's residents moved up in the world enough to get a car, they would have a place to keep it. A local Realtor provided a market valuation at no charge because the deal was for community benefit, and I sold the building a little under the price recommended by the valuation. A local attorney donated legal services to facilitate the closing. My property managers helped the new shelter program get a grip on how to "run" the building after the sale took place.

I made a reasonable gain in a tax deferred 1031 exchange, rolling the proceeds into another property purchase elsewhere. The soup kitchen got its shelter building without paying commissions and without having to bid the price up against the rest of the market. The local newspaper printed a story about the deal, which gave good publicity to everyone who had done something to make it all happen.

Everybody did well by doing good. In many respects, it was the best deal I ever made.

Mine wasn't so much a meeting as a series of telephone conversations and emails. It started with a call from the firm managing an apartment building I owned about 1000 miles from where I lived. They were changing the focus of their business, and my building was not in the part of town or catering to the clientele they were moving toward. They were giving me plenty of advance notice so I could replace them.

I liked working with them so much, I realized anybody else I hired would have a hard time filling their shoes. I decided it was time to sell the building and use the proceeds to buy other property somewhere else. My building was in the poor part of town, but it was well kept. Across the street, a pair of nuns took in young pregnant women, taught them parenting and basic life skills, and nurtured them along until they were firmly on their feet with their newborn children. Instead of putting the building on the market, I asked the nuns if they wanted to add my building to their facilities.

It turned out that building codes would require expensive retrofitting of fire suppression equipment if we converted it from apartments to their residential program. Remodeling it for use as office space would be even more expensive. They had to decline.

But they knew the group who ran the local soup kitchen, which was considering startup of a program to move people from homelessness into decent housing. My building was well located for them, and it was in such good shape that they wouldn't need to do anything to it before starting to place people in the apartments.

I leased nearby parking space for the building. The owner of the parking lot agreed to enter a long term agreement so that as the new shelter's residents moved up in the world enough to get a car, they would have a place to keep it. A local Realtor provided a market valuation at no charge because the deal was for community benefit, and I sold the building a little under the price recommended by the valuation. A local attorney donated legal services to facilitate the closing. My property managers helped the new shelter program get a grip on how to "run" the building after the sale took place.

I made a reasonable gain in a tax deferred 1031 exchange, rolling the proceeds into another property purchase elsewhere. The soup kitchen got its shelter building without paying commissions and without having to bid the price up against the rest of the market. The local newspaper printed a story about the deal, which gave good publicity to everyone who had done something to make it all happen.

Everybody did well by doing good. In many respects, it was the best deal I ever made.

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When I was subcontracted by a major automotive supplier and got to develop a major ERP-integrated eCommerce site alongside General Motors, BMW, Mercedes, Opel, Ford, Lamborghini, and other automakers. It was a $56,000.00 contract that made last year a great one.

This years pivotal moment was having my software http://www.NexusRecycle.com featured on Recycling Today's website and landing some sales with that product.

Although the economy is slowing, opportunities keep peeking around the corner. I'm hoping for a good 2010

When I was subcontracted by a major automotive supplier and got to develop a major ERP-integrated eCommerce site alongside General Motors, BMW, Mercedes, Opel, Ford, Lamborghini, and other automakers. It was a $56,000.00 contract that made last year a great one.

This years pivotal moment was having my software http://www.NexusRecycle.com featured on Recycling Today's website and landing some sales with that product.

Although the economy is slowing, opportunities keep peeking around the corner. I'm hoping for a good 2010

My company had a large imaging supplies contract with a Fortune 100 Aerospace firm. One of the major office supply chains had bid and won the office supplies contract but imaging supplies was excluded from it because we had provided them a high quality product for so long they didn't want to change. Given that imaging supplies represents such a major portion of an office supply contract the major chain kept hammering them to leave our company. Finally, in exasperation, they said, why don't you guys all sit down and maybe work together...it might be better for both of you in the end.

When we all sat in a room together of course nobody wanted to give up anything...so the discussion was going nowhere fast when a young lady with the office supplier got a guy on the speakerphone from the headquarters that ran their imaging supplies division and explained the situation. We had tried to get into this company several times over the years but were always I think considered too small and therefore not technically savvy enough to maintain quality. After some back and forth questioning he asked if he could come out for a site-visit which of course we agreed to.

While we were confident of our abilities and capabilities we were still nervous when the actual day arrived. The first thing he said in our conference room was..."My first priority is quality....give me that, and I'll manage price." He said "Our sales people won't sell anything but OEM products anymore because too many times they've sold a client only to have too many problems and the client switches back to OEM in 3 months and we can't make a profit selling OEM." By now all the nervousness was gone...we were discussing the very thing we'd been trying to push for 13 years and nobody would listen, only wanting a cheaper price.

As we were leaving the building to take him back to the airport I shook his hand and he said...."Just please build me a good cartridge."

We've had a private label contract with them for 7-years...only one time, on a single sku did we ever have to negotiate price...because of 13 vendors in our catagory, only one month were we not #1 in quality...that month we were #2.

The net result was that our original customer that put us together did us a huge favor. Rather than just selling them, we were now selling nationwide through a major retailer which obviously meant much more business from the greater exposure. The moral of this story is to: Never be afraid to listen.

My company had a large imaging supplies contract with a Fortune 100 Aerospace firm. One of the major office supply chains had bid and won the office supplies contract but imaging supplies was excluded from it because we had provided them a high quality product for so long they didn't want to change. Given that imaging supplies represents such a major portion of an office supply contract the major chain kept hammering them to leave our company. Finally, in exasperation, they said, why don't you guys all sit down and maybe work together...it might be better for both of you in the end.

When we all sat in a room together of course nobody wanted to give up anything...so the discussion was going nowhere fast when a young lady with the office supplier got a guy on the speakerphone from the headquarters that ran their imaging supplies division and explained the situation. We had tried to get into this company several times over the years but were always I think considered too small and therefore not technically savvy enough to maintain quality. After some back and forth questioning he asked if he could come out for a site-visit which of course we agreed to.

While we were confident of our abilities and capabilities we were still nervous when the actual day arrived. The first thing he said in our conference room was..."My first priority is quality....give me that, and I'll manage price." He said "Our sales people won't sell anything but OEM products anymore because too many times they've sold a client only to have too many problems and the client switches back to OEM in 3 months and we can't make a profit selling OEM." By now all the nervousness was gone...we were discussing the very thing we'd been trying to push for 13 years and nobody would listen, only wanting a cheaper price.

As we were leaving the building to take him back to the airport I shook his hand and he said...."Just please build me a good cartridge."

We've had a private label contract with them for 7-years...only one time, on a single sku did we ever have to negotiate price...because of 13 vendors in our catagory, only one month were we not #1 in quality...that month we were #2.

The net result was that our original customer that put us together did us a huge favor. Rather than just selling them, we were now selling nationwide through a major retailer which obviously meant much more business from the greater exposure. The moral of this story is to: Never be afraid to listen.