OK… yeah… we’re excited!  Every year, Rory, Steve and I grab the Inc 500 Magazine off the shelves and study the list of successfull companies and try and learn what we can do to grow at such a rapid rate.

Well, we made the list!

GetMyHomesValue.com is officially the 16th fastest growing real estate related company in the country… and ready for this?

The 386th fastest growing company in america!

So, now we’re figuring out how to beat that ranking next year.  8 )

So, we received an awesome piece of mail today!  One of our companies, Get My Homes Value .com (Click here for the corporate site) is officially one of the fastest growing companies in the United States!  It is really awesome when you try to build a great company from scratch… with no funding… and you have helped so many people that you grow to a level that is recognizable by a national magazine.

I did some math, and our gross sales growth was 775% from 2004 - 2007 (the stat used to calculate everything).  The way that they chose the companies last year and will be doing this year is based on total percentage of gross sales growth (which for us is the 775% I just mentioned).

Last year (if we were using our numbers), this would have put us at number 363 - right in between  Oceanos Marketing and Enjoy Life Foods.

This being said… it would be KILLER if we made the Top 500 List… and our numbers look like we will… But we will have to wait until the inc.com goes live on August 20, 2008.  If we do make the top 500, we will be featured in the September magazine.

Either way… we’re in the top 5000, so we’ll be heading to Washington in September.

It seems as though when you hear from me on our blog it’s because there’s a really great new product to talk about. Well, I’ve got two of them.  I’m going to talk about one now and stay tuned for the other.
Our tech team is currently in development of a site called HutFetch.com. There isn’t an expected release date on the product as of yet, but the big question is this… How is it going to help real estate agents when it’s launched?

This site is going to help real estate agents to meet home buyers and is then going to automatically email the buyers listings as they come on the market along with the subscribing real estate agents information. The technology we’re developing to make this happen is simply remarkable!

Be sure to sign up at HutFetch.com to get free updates on the status of the site and also visit Buddy’s Bloghouse where you can actually watch the concept come to life!

If you have a successful business that doesn’t sell to a nationwide audience, I have a lot of respect for you. I find myself scared of business ideas that don’t have an immediate national reach. Our largest company, GetMyHomesValue.com, was successful from the first days of it’s founding largely in part to the fact that it was nation wide. There’s simply no way that we would be profitable on a local level.

I was thinking of this today as I read about StubHub.com. If you ever find yourself wanting to go to a show, concert or sporting event and the tickets are sold out, just go to StubHub.com. People who have tickets to these events sell them for a profit on StubHub and StubHub charges a fee. I have personally used the service on numerous occassions and have been happy each and every time, always getting the tickets that I had paid for.

Imagine how the “scalping” industry has changed now that one “scalper” (StubHub) can advertise to a worldwide audience with limited expense. Imagine the money that it would have taken to do that just 20 years ago - without the internet.

To put it all into perspective, Ebay decided that StubHub was so valuable that they gave the Co-Founders $310 million this month for the company. Not bad for scalping tickets.

If you are thinking of starting a new company, the first thing I would ask is, “Can you sell nationwide?”.