• Columnists

Shep Saltzman and Barbara Balsamo

COLUMN = REAL ESTATE

Shep Saltzman has been working in the real estate industry since 1985. He began his career at the Mortgage Investment Corporation, where he became a partner and worked until 1999 when the firm merged with Access National Bank (now Access National Mortgage).

He also worked as an real estate agent with RE/MAX before becoming a loan officer and consultant with 12th Street Mortgage, which specializes in conventional, FHA, and VA residential loans.

In 1993, Saltzman and his wife, Barbara Balsamo, co-founded the Realty Investment Company. He is the principal broker, and the couple specializes in representing buyers and sellers of residential real estate throughout Northern Virginia.

For more information, visit www.realtyinvestmentcompany.com.

Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.”

– J.K. Rowling

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

– William Butler Yeats

Never cut what you can untie.”

– Joseph Joubert

Things don’t change. You change your way of looking, that’s all.”

– Carlos Castaneda

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.”

– President Calvin Coolidge

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‘em, ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

– Magical

There is little success where there is little laughter.”

– Andrew Carnegie

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not say, ‘why were the former days better than these,’ for it is not from wisdom that you ask this.”

– Ecclesiastes, 7:10

Do you believe it is important to give back some portion of your wealth to support charitable causes?”

– Steven Schussler

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

– Leonardo da Vinci

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

– JFK

The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something.”

– Nolan Bushnell, founder, Chuck E. Cheese's

If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.”

– Anna Quindlen

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which obstacles vanish.”

– John Quincy Adams

I have spent a good part of my life convincing people that a blank sheet of paper is the greatest opportunity in the world, and not frightening at all.”

– Marty Skler, executive vp, Walt Disney Imagineering

Let us seize the day and the opportunity and strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.”

– W.E.B. Du Bois

Part of your destiny is to live in the zone of maximum satisfaction.”

– Martha Beck

Find somebody to be successful for. Raise their hopes. Think of their needs.”

– Barack Obama

You must have chaos within you, to create a dancing star.”

– Frederic Nietzsche

The follow-your-gut mentality of the entrepreneur has the potential to take you anywhere you want to go or run you right out of business.”

– Bill Rancic, "The Apprentice"

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.”

– Albert Schweitzer

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it”

– Andrew Carnegie

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

Do not be afraid of mistakes, providing you do not make the same one twice.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. 
Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow.”

– Mary Jean Irion

The world I believed in, back in my most innocent, uninformed, childish mind—is real.”

– Martha Beck

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

– Winston Churchill

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

– Anais Nin

You must learn to be still in the midst of activity 
and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”

– Indira Ghandi

I was taught at a very young age that you can do whatever you want to, but you have to make it happen — not just talk about it.”

– Kathleen Jo Ryan

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing.”

– Maya Angelou

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

– Nelson Mandela

Destiny is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”

– William Jennings Bryan

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

– William Shakespeare

The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.”

– Nolan Bushnell, founder, Chuck E. Cheese's

Traveling is one way of lengthening life, at least in appearance.”

– Benjamin Franklin

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

– Leonard Cohen

Confidence is the most important thing you can teach someone… if you can teach them confidence, you don’t have to teach them anything else.”

– Vin Diesel

To find what you seek in the road of life, leave no stone unturned.”

– Edward Bulwer Lytton

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”

– Helen Keller

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.”

– Albert Einstein

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.”

– Henry David Thoreau

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

– Albert Einstein

If you want to be busy, keep trying to be perfect. If you want to be happy, focus on making a difference.”

– Lisa Earle McLeod

We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.”

– Winston Churchill

There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be…”

– John Lennon

I’m not afraid of storms,
for I’m learning to sail my ship.”

– Louisa May Alcott

‎No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”

– Charles Dickens