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All growth is good. Bigger is better. All businesses must either “grow or die.” If you’re a small business owner, you might have been nodding along as you read those business mantras, agreeing wholeheartedly with each one. After all, it’s what you’ve always been taught. And in fact, these popular business axioms are routinely lauded on Wall Street, at business schools, and by some of the most well-respected business consultants of the day. Few question their validity. But according to Professor Ed Hess, these “truths” are anything but. “At best those beliefs are half-truths and at worst they’re pure fiction,” says Hess, author of the new book Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Entrepreneurial Businesses. “Growth can be good and growth can be bad. Bigger can be good and bigger can be bad.

Over the past few months, as we were gearing up for our 40th anniversary celebration, I spent a lot of time thinking about ERA Real Estate’s roots in innovation. When our founders Jim Jackson and Gene Francis paired

You spend a lot of time and effort on your social media campaign, your blog posts and your tweets. You invest a lot of money in sites that promise good leads. And yet, the conversion rates on the leads you get still aren’t great. This is because you haven’t optimized your web presence to create relationships with your prospects. They simply don’t care about you by the time you contact them. In fact, they never really cared about you at all—they just cared about the information you had to offer. And that’s not their fault—it’s yours. The next seven tips are going to show you how to program your internet leads to care about getting in contact with you.

According to the latest report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of job openings in January was 3.5 million, unchanged from December. Although the number of job openings

Mobile – that’s what Gucci is! The Italian label that is synonymous with all thing luxury is turning to mobile to enhance their shoppers’ in-store experience.

One of the biggest mistakes an agent can make is restricting the flow of energy to their business with the following mindset: “The economy is so slow and I don't even know where my next sale is coming from.” How often have you heard someone say that when business is down and the economy is questionable? It seems logical, doesn't it, to tighten your purse strings? Even though it seems logical to tighten up and constrict spending,

Today’s homebuyer wants more than the typical sales pitch. They expect that their agent be present, focused and highly in tune with their needs.

With over 55 million units sold through the end of 2011, Apple’s iPad has quickly become one of the most successful consumer products in history. With its vast array of features, outstanding resolution and extreme portability, it’s not surprising that the iPad has also become the premier presentation tool for real estate professionals and their consumers. However, while there has been significant adoption of the iPad throughout the industry, many brokers and agents are struggling to transition their listing presentations to a tablet device, searching for a simple and efficient strategy that allows them to take advantage of the rich feature set the iPad offers.

The forecast for the rest of 2012 shows mild increases building up to a stronger 1.2 percent by year end, according to the Home Data Index™ (HDI) Market Report, recently released by Clear Capital®, with data through March 2012. The HDI Market Report uses a broad array of public and proprietary data sources providing the most timely and relevant analysis available. Methodology details are on page eight of this report.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Columbia Rosemary Collyer signed documents to approve the $25 billion mortgage servicing settlement with the nation's top five mortgage servicers: Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Ally Financial. ...

CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX), a leading provider of information, analytics and business services, has released its February Home Price Index (HPI) report, the most current and comprehensive source of home prices available today, the company reported. Excluding distressed sales, month-over-month prices increased 0.7 percent in February from January. The CoreLogic HPI® also showed that year-over-year prices declined by 0.8 percent in February 2012 compared to February 2011. Distressed sales include short sales and real estate owned (REO) transactions. The report also shows national home prices, including distressed sales, declined on a year-over-year basis by 2.0 percent in February 2012 and by 0.8 percent compared to January 2012, the seventh consecutive monthly decline.

National Commercial Auctioneers announces a three-day bank-ordered real estate auction in the Carolinas April 17, 18 and 19, according to Randy Ligon, regional vice president and broker.

Greg Rand (@GSRand), CEO of OwnAmerica.com and host of Rand on Real Estate on 770 WABC, takes a call from an investor in Springfield, N.J. The caller is seeking guidance on selling her current investment property. She is having a difficult time getting her mortgaged refinanced.

In 2012, online real estate marketing promises to be more challenging than ever before for real estate agents and brokers. This is largely due to the sheer number of competitors that have been, or are finally becoming Internet savvy in their marketing efforts. While being an expert on search engines isn’t attractive to many people, developing an overall strategy to win search engine placement on the web is now critical and should be a cornerstone in promoting your personal or professional brand and generating a steady source of ongoing leads. Organic search engine placement is a powerful way to gain dominance over your competitors in the single largest area where your customers are initiating the process of which home to buy or sell and deciding which agent to hire.

REGIONAL SPOTLIGHT—According to the Central Coast Regional Multiple Listing Service, distressed properties make up only 6 percent of the available listings on the market in San Luis Obispo today. The California Association of REALTORS®’ Distressed Home Sales Statistics