The Birth of a Seminar
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Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the April 1977 issue of the Real Estate News Observer.
How does a Seminar/Workshop begin?
Perhaps you think somebody just sat down and decided to write two or three day’s worth of material on a subject he was familiar with, and then asked other people to pay money to hear him read it off. Not so! That just wouldn’t work. Why? Well, because the “other people” would probably think they could do a better job, so why pay someone else for what they could do themselves?
No, the beginnings of a Seminar are usually something quite different. In evaluating the really successful Seminars today—the Allen’s, the Berven’s, the Star’s, the Considine’s, the Hamel’s— one thing stands out: the Seminar is filling a need. The “other people” are feeling and experiencing a need and are reaching out to find the solution to the need.
Now, sometimes that need has to be pointed out, has to be brought to the attention of the practitioner because perhaps that need is hidden from view—or ignored because of its intensity. (Individuals cannot always face a threat.)
Let’s consider, for example, the new “Broker Asset Building” Seminar/Workshop with B. Hunter Quistgard. The story is that the late Clifford Paul Weaver, a successful real estate practitioner from San Jose, California, always admired and respected the town’s leading real estate “Professional”; we’ll call that “professional” Mr. V. I. Powerful for the purpose of this “true story.”
Mr. Powerful lived in a lovely home on the outskirts of town with a lovely wife and lovely children; he was a man of considerable estate that he had made himself, obviously in successful real estate dealings along the way; he had built his reputation by building estates for his clients and associates; he owned a lovely car and was a community leader.
Well, Mr. Powerful passed away very suddenly one day.
The entire town mourned the passing of this great and noble man. But, of course, wasn’t it wonderful that he certainly had left his wife and family so comfortably set? No worries for the rest of their lives, no doubt. Not so!
In a few short months, the family home had to be sold, the children had to leave school and go to work, and the wife was thrown to the mercy of relatives.
This “great and powerful man” was not really so great and powerful. He died penniless.
How could this be? Cliff Weaver and Hunter Quistgard were utterly shocked by this turn of events.
They decided this would not happen to them. They decided to find the ways and take advantage of the opportunities that should have been known and utilized by Mr. V. I. Powerful, who lived for years in the preferred business of real estate, making fortunes for others but ignoring his own estate. Taking that commission and “running”—asking nothing but the brief, short-lived commission or fee for his efforts—while giving the client the benefit of his expertise.
Cliff and Hunter found ways to solve this problem and put them to use in their own lives. They simply did for themselves what they were doing for their clients and, in addition, took advantage of the opportunities that were theirs as professionals in a field they knew from the bottom up—they built their own estates.
In doing so, they talked to their associates and friends who could see the need and who had felt it. People began asking them for advice and suggestions; soon they had more information than they could possibly use themselves. Other friends of friends began to ask them, personally and in letters, to tell them what they had learned, and a Seminar was born!
Mr. Cliff Weaver passed away in November, 1975, having worked to eliminate the problem in his own life that he had found so long before in the passing of Mr. Powerful. And B. Hunter Quistgard is here now to answer those questions for all of us in this new course, “Broker Asset Building,” something that fills a real need for most of us.
