Who is David Donaldson?

The same guy behind the mic at the hockey rink over the weekend and in the boardroom on Monday.

I’m Dave Donaldson.

Over the weekend, there’s a pretty good chance I’m the dad behind the mic broadcasting my son’s hockey game on YouTube — doing play-by-play, providing some colorful banter, and probably going hoarse when our goalie stands on his head.

Monday morning, I’m the Operating Principal of two Keller Williams market centers in Northern Virginia — KW United Falls Church and Alexandria | Kingstowne.

Same guy.

That’s really the whole point.

I’ve been a licensed real estate agent for twenty years. I originally got into real estate as an investor. Before that, my background was hospitality, which probably explains a lot about how I’ve approached this business.

I was a people person who landed in a people business.

And I never looked back.

I love real estate. I love the business of real estate. And maybe more than anything, I love figuring out why something works, why something doesn’t, and then trying to explain it in a way that actually makes sense.

That might mean figuring out how to use the acquisition of real estate to help fund the life you want to live. Or how to build the systems, technology, and leverage that allow you to run a business instead of having the business run you.

Different problems, same question:

How does real estate work for me?

Because this business has a remarkable ability to make simple things complicated.

For seven years, I was a Regional Technology Trainer for Keller Williams. I taught thousands of agents, and somewhere along the way I figured out that my job really wasn’t to teach technology.

It was to translate it — and help people build systems they could actually use.

Take the complicated stuff, strip away the noise, and get to:

Okay, but what does this actually mean for me and my business, my family, my life?

That’s still what I do.

I had a podcast called Entrepreneurial Impact about how entrepreneurs act, think, grow, fail, adjust, and occasionally get something right.

And for the last four years, I’ve written a letter every Tuesday to the agents at KW United.

Tuesdays with Dave.

If you’ve been at KW for a while, you may already know it.

There was never some grand content strategy behind it. I had something I wanted to say, something I thought our agents needed to know, or something happened that made me think.

So I wrote about it.

Sometimes it was real estate.

Sometimes leadership.

Sometimes technology.

Sometimes the market was doing something and I thought everyone was looking at the wrong metric — or being led the wrong way by sensationalized news headlines.

And sometimes it was about my kids, hockey, getting older, something I screwed up, or one of those moments in life that unexpectedly teaches you something.

After four years, I started wondering:

Why are we keeping this between us?

Because the conversations we were having inside a real estate company were increasingly the same conversations people were having outside of one.

Should I buy right now?

Should I sell?

What is my house actually worth?

Are interest rates really the story?

Does this investment make sense?

What is AI going to change?

What should I be paying attention to — and what is mostly noise?

And for agents: How do I build a business that actually works? How do I use technology without losing the relationships that built my business in the first place? And where do I want to build the next version of it?

Different people.

A lot of the same questions.

So now Tuesdays with Dave is public.

I don’t know that I have a manifesto, but I do have a few things I believe.

Technology is leverage. Relationships are the point.

Your career and real estate should fund your life!

The numbers matter, but knowing what the numbers actually mean matters a hell of a lot more.

You should be willing to change your mind when the facts change.

And whoever sits across the table from you during a real estate transaction ought to be someone you’d trust with your kid’s college fund — because in Northern Virginia, that’s about what a house costs.

So here’s the deal.

If you want to understand how this business really works, pull up a chair.

Give me about three minutes every Tuesday.

No guru act. No pretending I have everything figured out. No fluff.

Just what I’m seeing, what I’m learning, what I think matters, and every now and then something that has absolutely nothing to do with real estate.

If you’re thinking about buying, selling, or investing in Northern Virginia, I’d like to be part of that conversation. I’ve spent twenty years in this business, and I’ll tell you what I think the numbers actually say — even when the answer isn’t necessarily the one you expected to hear.

It’s your house. Your investment. Your money.

I’ll treat it that way.

If you’re an agent trying to figure out the next version of your business, maybe something here helps.

And if somewhere along the way you start wondering what it might look like to build that next version with us at KW United, my door is open.

Let’s talk.

And if none of those describe you, but you enjoy the conversation anyway?

Stick around.

Because after twenty years in this business, I’m more convinced than ever that underneath all the technology, AI, market reports, business models, recruiting plans, training classes, and spreadsheets...

this is still a relationship business.

Let’s fight to keep it that way.

Thanks for reading.

We should grab a beer sometime.

I’ll be at the rink. ;)

— DDD

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