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The author confidently suggests at the beginning of this half personally-oriented, half professionally-oriented volume that if you like real estate, you may have found the right book. His stated goal is to educate, entertain, and enlighten, using what he refers to as the 80/20 rule: four-fifths is pure gossip and opinion; the final fifth focuses on the methods, mechanics, and lessons that need to be learned. He provides his perspectives on the business, the personalities involved, the "cutthroats" who newcomers may have to work with, and the money to be made. From cover to cover, there are useful business-related charts and illustrations, plenty of personal asides about his life and the dramas, detours and viewpoints that were and continue to be part of it, and pertinent, sometimes even surprising quotes from noted individuals and personalities that he separately highlights. These include many from the author himself.
It could not have taken much of a leap of faith or stretch of the imagination for the author, a successful commercial real estate broker from Southern California, to assume that his life, career, and personality would make a unique book. While the impact of the text would have been enhanced further with some additional editing, the overall content of the author's work is too fascinating to ignore. With the conviction he's demonstrated throughout his life, Potter has written a book that is by turns a professional manifesto, a treatise on people and behaviors, a stream-of-consciousness autobiography, and a warts-and-all professional confession. It's everything a person might want to know about commercial real estate but didn't know who to ask.