Steven Kropper will speak at Real Estate Connect July 28-30 in San Francisco.
Panel at Connect: Outsourcing: good or bad for real estate?
1. What are your current or childhood nicknames?
Everybody calls me “Kropper.”
2. Which daily newspaper do you read and which section of the newspaper do you read first?
Boston Globe and Wall Street Journal at home, and The New York Times when I travel. At breakfast I read the world and national news to my daughters (ages 5 and 8), hoping they will grow up to read the newspaper themselves. Then I read business (the girls are not interested).
3. What’s the most unusual thing you’ve ever packed in a suitcase?
A coconut from Miami to show the kids. I once mailed a tumbleweed to a friend at college.
4. What kind of music do you listen to?
Classical, old jazz, folk, especially biting political sarcasm.
5. What style of home do you live in and when did you buy it?
I live in one of the hundred oldest homes in Lexington, where the revolution began (American Revolution, not Internet). My home was built in 1820 – I like old. Newer homes are poorly built. We also have a barn – that’s only 50 years old. My neighbor is a 20-acre working farm, so at breakfast I try to guess where the crew will be planting, weeding or harvesting today. I think of it as a backyard that I do not have to take care of.
6. Where did you spend your last vacation?
South Dakota – stayed on a farm 35 miles from the nearest restaurant on the edge of the Badlands.
7. What professional accomplishment in your life are you most proud of?
Building a long list of loyal employees who I have treated well, and a long list of professional friends with whom I have a deep trust relationship, and the respect that I will introduce them to the future in real estate and mortgage.
8. What personal accomplishment in your life are you most proud of?
Ongoing political activism since we owe our kids a better world, and that won’t happen by accident.
9. How many e-mail addresses do you have?
Really only two, and you can’t have them.
10. What worries keep you awake at night?
Whether the skunk or raccoon will tip over my trash.
11. What lesson did you learn in the last year?
Take risks, judiciously evaluated. Also strategy follows analysis.
12. What is your favorite technology device or software application?
Integrated PDA and phone. Having my 4,000 contacts in my pocket at all times with the 15 years of notes I have taken makes me dangerous! Also, with the ability to send and receive e-mail and browse with a big-enough screen makes me feel that I have all the knowledge in the world in my pocket at all times. Samsung i700 or Siemens sx-56 are best.
13. What is your opinion of Inman News?
Essential to keeping me on top of the industry buzz. And an essential voice to getting out my ideas, and what I’ve learned.
14. What was your top New Year’s resolution and have you kept it so far?
To set aside a few minutes every day to make sure I’m not too far ahead of the pack and too early for revenue, and also that I’m not buying into the dominant trend if it may be wrong or short lived – I meet this resolution on most days.
15. Are you a morning person or a night owl?
Both, and I keep forgetting to take a nap in between.
16. What is your worst vice or bad habit?
I’m the Eagle Scout I seem to be – never smoked, barely drink. Kind of like the Mormons hired by Howard Hughes to run his casinos. However, I am very mischievous. And it runs in the family – at Wang Labs when my dad ran manufacturing, he put a fish in a salesman’s desk once on Friday night when he radically overprojected demand for a product. Having fun and goofing around some times is the best antidote for business stress.
What’s your opinion? Send your Letter to the Editor to newsroom@inman.com.