You are there. The introduction of the "condo." The development of buyer's agency. The creation of RIN. The launch of Realtor.com. Fulfilling the dream of an online Realtor community. The painstaking crusade to convert Realtors city-by-city to the benefits of Internet marketing. Meet the one man who has done it all and more - Saul Klein.

Whether he knew it or not, real estate was in Saul Klein's blood.

Over the years, as a young teenager growing up in San Diego, he had watched his grandfather and father make money buying and selling real estate. Klein's grandfather was a fireman. Firemen didn't make much money, and many moonlighted with other types of jobs, working one day on and one day off. Granddad was a part-time broker who bought and sold properties.

Klein recalls his father, a naval officer, having a magic touch with real estate, too. One property he bought for $10,000, selling it shortly for $16,000. In Hawaii, he bought a property for $20,000, and flipped it two years later at $28,000.

It was the end of the Vietnam war, when Klein, then a graduate of the Naval Academy and an officer, caught real estate fever. Long tired of what he calls "the single man" reward, in which single men covered for married men at holidays, Klein got to talking with another sailor who had acquired his real estate license.

"He took me out and showed me property," says Klein. "The MLS property books were very exciting to me."

He decided to become a broker, too. Armed with a college degree and the required courses to obtain his license, Klein tentatively entered the real estate business. The sailor only got his toes for the first two years until finally a medical problem arose that resulted in his discharge from the service. He became a broker.

"I was waiting to get out of the navy and it was the greatest thing in the world," recalls Klein. "I sold common interest subdivisions. It was 1974. At that time, the new product was the condominium. In the late 70s there were a lot of lifestyle changes going on - people not wanting to take care of lawns, waiting longer to get married, etc. I became an office manager after six months. We had about 40 agents.

"In 1979 interest rates started going up and I saw the writing on the wall. Gold was up to $1,000 an ounce! Interest rates ratcheted up and deals fell out of escrow. I knew we were going into a recession."

Klein saw an opportunity in the newspaper about teaching real estate courses, applied and got the job. "I taught every class you can imagine, appraisals, principles, law, finance. I became a utility player. At the same time I stopped working and formed my own real state company and we became a small boutique agency in San Diego. The remnants still exist. We still manage about 50 units of property. Meanwhile, I taught, bought and got interested in real estate syndicating."

"In 1982, I started to buy apartment buildings. I was helped by the Economic Recovery Tax Act, and we were putting together real estate investments. There were people I was consulting for - other syndicators, and we decided to do only the real estate part, not the tax shelter on the deals. We did we really made money."

Soon Klein discovered that people were asking him for investment advice. "I would do all this work prospecting and sell them the biggest investment in their lives and then I wouldn't see them again for five years. I thought, if I had a product that everybody was interested in....

"I became a financial planner, which required more licensing. I took the course to become a stock broker, and took courses to get my insurance license, and became a tax preparer. I saw these services as a means of generating more from my real estate business.

"People will tell their tax preparer things they won't tell their priest!" jokes Klein.

"My plan was a full-service financial planning. At the time, all the financial entities were looking at expanding. I thought...I have a client base - can I deliver more products with integrity? I need to cultivate more leads. So I built a tax practice, and then I got involved in doing homebuyers seminars.

Klein found in doing homebuying seminars, that people wanted to learn more about the process, so he designed courses to teach people what they needed to know, including before they sit down with a broker.

"I was teaching agency in 1986 before disclosure laws," says Klein. "I had all this academic information but there was no regulation yet and used it to my advantage. I was able to experiment with real estate practice."

Klein become one of the first brokers to offer fee-for-service and one of the first buyers' brokers, drafting one of the first buyer broker agreements in use in the country. He formed the California Association of Buyer's Agents, and continued building his financial planning practice and syndication all through the '80s. In 1989, Klein became a director of San Diego Association of Realtors. and then in 1991, became its vice president, and president in 1993. He was the first buyer's broker to attain the presidency. He was a single agent. "One or the other but not both," says Klein.

Then Klein met someone who would change his life, someone who was trying to get agents to put their listings on kiosks. That man was Richard Janssen.

Portrait of a Real Estate Industry Insider - Part II