• 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.

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

– Martha Beck

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

– T.S. Eliot

Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation that indicate opportunities for success.”

– Peter F. Drucker

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

– Andrew Carnegie

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

– Guy Kawasaki

Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes.”

– Benjamin Disraeli

An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he’ll quickly learn how to chew it.“


– Roy Ash, co-founder of Litton Industries

If you were independently wealthy and never had to work a day in your life, would you still choose to spend your time attempting to become a successful entrepreneur?”

– Steven Schussler

Persist and persevere, and you will find most things that are attainable, possible.”

– Lord Chesterfield

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

– Nelson Mandela

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

– Carlos Castaneda

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.”

– Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., U.S. Supreme Court justice

Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them!”

– Madam C.J. Walker

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

– Leonard Cohen

Tolerance and patience should not be read as signs of weakness. They are signs of strength.”

– The Dalai Lama

As each woman realizes her power, she transforms the world.”

– Patrice Wynne, WomanSpirit Sourcebook

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

‎That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures.”

– J.G. Holland, novelist

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

– Dalai Lama

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

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

– Benjamin Franklin

Passion makes perfect.”

– Eugene Biro

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

– Thomas Edison

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

– Winston Churchill

Are you willing to help other people succeed even when it’s not a requirement of your job to be of assistance?”

– Steven Schussler

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

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

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

– Jimi Hendrix

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”

– Robert Frost

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

– Albert Einstein

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens?
 A terrible thing: no one to blame.”

– Erica Jong

Inspiration and genius — one and the same.”

– Victor Hugo

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

– Noela Evans

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

– Steve Jobs

The gem cannot be polished without friction; nor man perfected without trials.”

– Chinese proverb

To follow, without halt, one aim: There’s the secret of success.”

– Anna Pavlova

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

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

– President Calvin Coolidge

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

– Michelle Sedas

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

– Virginia Woolf

The music is all around us. All you have to do is listen.”

– August Rush

When I dare to be powerful—to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

– Audre Lorde

Never cut what you can untie.”

– Joseph Joubert

If it really was a no-brainer to make it on your own in business there’d be millions of no-brained, harebrained individuals quitting their day jobs.”

– Bill Rancic, "The Apprentice"

We are all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die.”

– Douglas Coupland

The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.”

– Marcel Proust

Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost.”

– Robert H. Schuller

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

If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.”

– Jesse Jackson

Never never never never give up.”

– Winston Churchill