Have you discovered why it is that you do what you do?

I have.

I’m a lucky guy. I built AG not knowing what it would grow up to become, but I knew why; I’ve always known why. My reason why is the very reason that our competitors can’t do what we do- they’ve never been where I’ve been or seen what I’ve seen, but they see the result of it every single day.

It stings the old guard to watch us beat them to the story, to the reader, and it kills them to know that we lead on every single category we write in. It’s a punishing blow to know that our writers are out of their league, and why is this? Because I learned to surround myself with writers who believe what I believe and who write to those who are believers in something better, and let go of those readers and writers who don’t. As a unit, we function as a bulldozer paving a new path forward, leaving in our wake the folks who want to look how we look but simply can’t because they still don’t get why we’re paving the path to begin with.

I’m sure this sounds self serving and indulgent, but anyone that knows me knows that it’s not my style to grandstand or to embellish, and they’ll tell you that if I’m saying it, then what I’m saying is the truth and if you like hearing the truth, you should probably hang around. Otherwise, I’m probably not talking to someone who wants to know why they do what they do, or even why they should and need to know.

We don’t pander, we don’t dote, and we certainly don’t ride coat tails- we create our own destiny. Just last week, we published 170% more news stories than on any publication in our category, we offered four times the number of free stories, while 65% of stories reported here were never even mentioned anywhere within our category, and hell, that’s just news. Our key business categories are second to none and our writers are unparalleled.

AG continues to lead without millions in backing or hundreds of advertisers, yet not a single pop-up impeded your view of this website or it’s articles. Why? Why did I build AG? Why do we work so hard? Why are we continuing to lead day in and day out? Why are we continuing to grow?

Because we believe that being the best at what we do (delivering up to the minute, concise, information, news, and practices) elevates you. We have a passion to inform, to see you grow, and to provide every asset necessary to those who can and want to think for themselves. We continue to grow because our readers know this. They support our advertisers, they share our articles, they link to us, and it shows. We spend zero dollars in advertising or marketing, we don’t abuse our social capital, and we still reach well beyond the real estate space.

I’ve been where you’ve been as an agent, as an executive, and as a business owner, and I know there’s more than the same old crap. I’ve been sold to, lied to, stolen from, and I have faced down those that stared down their nose and said that we could never do things differently, much less our own way.  We’ve watched egos come and go, and theirs won’t be the last, but you can bet that we’ll still be here paving the way. I told you the truth when I told you that tech savvy isn’t a business strategy, and I warned you that a smartphone isn’t going to make you a better business person, rather, what you heard from me is how to better use your assets to better communicate with your clients and why, making you the better agent. No one can teach you how to drink the water (at any price, at any conference), but we are known as the best at leading you to the water.

In the coming days, I’m bringing you a few new tools that I believe will help you keep up with AG, some of which you might have seen already being tested here and there around the site. We’ll announce them shortly.

What I’d like you to do now is sign up here at AG. It’s free and it will unlock some of our reader features now and into the future. You can show your support by sharing AG with your colleagues and friends, subscribing to our RSS feed, and continuing to engage our writers in conversation.

We bring news updates to our readers in a number of ways, be it Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, over email, or via your word of mouth. Do us one last favor and make sure that we’ve got an open channel with you at all times- you deserve the news first and we’ll continue to work our ass off to deliver.

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