• 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.

He who knows he has enough is rich.”

– Tao Te Ching

A lot of people have ideas, but few decide to do something about them now. Not next week. But today.”

– Nolan Bushnell, founder, Atari

You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”

– Steve Jobs

It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.”

– J. Kristnhamurti, The First and Last Freedom

Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth. Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.”

– Noela Evans

If you do not tell the truth about yourself
, you cannot tell it about other people.”

– Virginia Woolf

If you would create something,
 you must be something.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A truly forgiving person is someone who experiences all the anger merited by injustice and still acts with fairness and compassion.”

– Martha Beck

There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.”

– J. Robert Oppenheimer

Many people prefer to play it safe when it comes to business matters. Are you willing to take risks in the pursuit of entrepreneurial success?”

– Steven Schussler

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

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

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

– Robert Frost

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

– Barack Obama

I may not be able to change what takes place, but I can always choose to change my thinking.”

– Michelle Sedas

The great use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.”

– William James

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,
 what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Women once had the goal of being Superwoman; I think most of us now simply strive to have a super day.”

– Author, Activist Lee Woodruff

The only way to compel men to speak good of us is to do it.”

– Voltaire

A person who learns to juggle six balls will be more skilled than the person who never tries to juggle more than three.”

– Marilyn vos Savant

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

– William Butler Yeats

By your stumbling the world is perfected.”

– Sri Aurobindo

No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.”

– Martha Beck, from "Leaving the Saints"

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

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

If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more.
 If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.”

– Oprah Winfrey

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.”

– Henry David Thoreau

As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.”

– Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.”

– Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

If people like you they’ll listen to you; if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.”

– Zig Ziglar

Do you have the desire to create something new; the strength of conviction to believe your creation will be successful, and the reservoir of energy necessary to thrust it into the marketplace?”

– Steven Schussler

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

– T.S. Eliot

The awakening to the mystery of life is a revolutionary event; in it an old world is destroyed so that a new and better one may take its place.”

– J.J. Van Der Leeuw, The Conquest of Illusion

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’”

– Brian Tracy

Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.”

– Gandi

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

– William Jennings Bryan

A man without a smiling face
 should not open a shop.”

– Chinese Proverb

Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science; it’s about trading.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

4oz tequila + 1oz TripleSec + 2oz lime juice + 1oz simple syrup (sugar=water), 1 cup crushed ice. Shake + dance around the kitchen.

– Avenida Margarita

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

– Carlos Castaneda

Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.”

– Debbi Fields, Mrs. Fields Cookies

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

– J.K. Rowling

The best reason to start an organization is to create a product or service to make the world a better place.”

– Guy Kawasaki

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!”

– Andrew Carnegie

The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.”

– Andrew Carnegie

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.”

– Robert Fritz

Never never never never give up.”

– Winston Churchill

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

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

– Louisa May Alcott

Some things are destined to be—it just takes us a couple of tries
to get there.”

– J.R. Ward, Lover Mine

They who give have all things. They who withhold have nothing.”

– Hindu Proverb

Remove those ‘I want you to like me’ stickers from your forehead
and, instead, place them where they truly will do the most good—on your mirror.”

– Susan Jeffers