Chris Kopf Featured in Bloovanprime Article – Bloovan Prime the Home of Prime Real Estate News
Below is an excerpt from the Article in Bloovanprime:
CHRIS KOPF: REAL ESTATE’S MOUNTAIN MAN
Chris Kopf is one of the top 2% producers in Coldwell Banker and not only a specialist in mountain resort property, but the #1 producer in his market. You’d be mistaken for thinking he’s a long standing real estate veteran, but in fact Chris became a real estate agent only 6 years ago and is already seen as the go-to expert in his field. We were intrigued to hear that he’s also been writing books on the subject, so we got in touch to find out his story.
BvP: Chris, tell us a little more about your background before you made the move into the real estate business.
CK: I graduated from Ohio State University in ‘84, I had some internships and jobs during college in technology sales. I worked for a telemarketing company and I knew that when I graduated I wanted to be in the technology industry and started selling dedicated word processing systems before there were so many personal computers in businesses. Most small businesses didn’t have much automation, so it was pretty early on in the technology world and I worked for 3 different companies. The majority of my early career was spent in start-up companies bringing new products to market and expanding those companies. I was selling in competition with much larger companies with greater resources, which meant I had to be pretty creative so from the early part of my career I wasn’t always able to have technical support on a sales call or presentation. As a technical salesperson I had to take the time and make the effort to learn about my product, industry protocols and standards in order to be competitive.
I took a year off in early 2000; I’d spent 20 years in the corporate sales world as a sales rep and sales manager with quite a bit of success but, as many people in that world find, I was on a treadmill that never really stopped. My priority was my career and my income and to some degree that put some of my other priorities on the back-burner; my family, my marriage, my children as well as my faith, my fitness and other things which were still important to me.
BvP: That’s a familiar story, so you took a year off?
CK: Yes, I ended up taking a year off, readjusted and balanced my life, then I decided to take those skills that I had and use those to start my own business. Along with a business partner we started buying up billboards and real estate under other people’s billboards, so a departure from the technology business.
The business plan I’d originally written involved an investment I have in a Dallas business, Reflex Systems, which is some guys who used to work for Audionet that was eventually bought by Yahoo. I still have that investment today and it’s a growing concern that’s developed into an in-store advertising business in hundreds of retail chains and locations. My original plan had been to set up a reseller model deploying that technology and trying to sell that advertising into different locations. Like most small businesses the plan changed and we started down the path of working with some colleges on advertising and billboards. My business partner had a background in that area and he went to law school with my brother so we ended up doing that for a number of years and I still have an interest in that.
BvP: And what brought you to Crested Butte, Colorado?
CK: We were second homeowners here and I was an average skier. I’d grown up (until the age of 9) in Pennsylvania and my father wrote a column for the newspaper on skiing in the Poconos and the Pennsylvania area. This meant we could ski for free, because he was writing that column, and so I was getting on skis from an early age. I hadn’t done much skiing after that, except for a few college trips, when my brother came to me back in ’99 and said why don’t we go to Colorado? There’s this great place, Crested Butte, and maybe we could buy a ski house together or build one. We came here to take a look, just the two of us, and left our wives at home. We were here for three or four days before we went home and told our wives we’d put in an offer on a ski house in Crested Butte. We can laugh about it now as we ended up buying the home and owning it together for about six or seven before we sold our interest to my brother and his wife. We then bought another property originally as a second home, which is the home we live in now.
BvP: So at what point did you move permanently to Crested Butte?
CK: We moved here full-time in 2009. We sold our house in Dallas, which meant a huge change for us as a family. There are millions of people in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, but only around 2,500 here so there were a lot of differences for us to adjust to but it’s been a great transition and we’re really glad we made the change.
BvP: At what point did you transition your career and business into real estate and mountain homes?
CK: I really wasn’t sure what I was going to do when we made the move. I took an inventory of my skill-set and what things I liked to do and felt like I’d gained some knowledge of the real estate also from my billboard business because we had ground leases, we’d had to re-zone property and my partner was a real estate attorney, as is my brother. I had a sales and marketing background and quite a bit of knowledge gained on the real estate industry, so that combination led me to think about the network of people knew back in Texas who either had homes out here in the mountains or would just vacation here and I thought this could be a good way to build a business out here.
I got my real estate license in May 2009 and became a Crested Butte real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Bighorn Realty the following month.
BvP: I recently read both of your books – The Complete Guide to Selling Your Mountain Dream Home and The Complete Guide to Buying Your Mountain Dream Home and wanted to know what spurred you to write these?
CK: It was a combination of a number of different things…. READ FULL ARTICLE CHRIS KOPF: REAL ESTATE’S MOUNTAIN MANat BLOOVANPRIME.COM
How can I help you? The Crested Butte area offers a wide variety of properties including ski in/ski out single family homes, ski-in/ski-out condominiums, lake and river frontage properties, golf course property, and true fine mountain homes on acreage. To see featured properties or search the MLS – visit chriskopf.com. How is the Crested Butte Real Estate Market doing?
Click this link to see my monthly Crested Butte Real Estate Market Reports I appreciate the opportunity to earn your business and be your Crested Butte Real Estate Agent.
Contact me at: (970) 209-5405, or chriskopf@bighornrealty.com
Thanks,
Chris Kopf
Previews® Property Specialist
Coldwell Banker Bighorn Realty
(970) 209-5405
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