FIRST, I WOULD LIKE to thank all the endorsers. Most especially, I want to thank Parnell Black, CEO of NACVA, who told me when EACVA was formed in 2005 that a Certified Valuation Analyst will only be successful if they can market themselves. NACVA has always supported its professionals with marketing. Parnell Black has inspired me to spread these thoughts in Europe as well.

Second, I would like to thank Anja. Anja is my partner's best friend. They have known each other since childhood. Anja's assistance with the English translation was a blessing for me. I knew that the publisher would make sure that the English translation would be grammatically perfect and that the book would not contain spelling mistakes and comma errors. However, it was much more important to me that the content be understandable to professionals in the United States and around the world. Anja is a German native speaker and has lived in the United States for 18 years. She made sure that the content and the translation are suitable for US professionals. Thank you, Anja.

I would also like to thank Elke. She has been my personal assistant for 15 years and has managed the format and scope of this translation, ensuring that this book meets the highest standards of accuracy and integrity. She usually does this with our appraisal reports. It is often incredible how meticulous she is in spotting and correcting errors. She is the rock in our office. Always dependable and conscientious. Thank you, Elke, for your support over the years. I appreciate it very much.

And most of all, my thanks go to my partner, Nicole. I have known Nicole since I was in school. I first fell in love with her after I graduated from high school. Nicole did not consider me as a partner at that time. We only fell in love after our failed marriages many decades later. Time for us was not yet meant for each other in the first half of our lives. In Germany, there is a saying that your partner is your “better half.” I couldn't do anything with this phrase for a long time. It wasn't until I fell in love with Nicole that I understood what was meant by it. Ideally, couples complement each other. The strengths of one partner and the strengths of the other partner make a couple really strong together. In this book, you will learn which four prerequisites must be fulfilled for a partnership to last. Perhaps for a lifetime.

Nicole's curiosity to just try things is inspiring to me. For example, when it comes to food, Nicole will try almost anything if there is an opportunity to eat something new. But Nicole is also interested in new things in many other areas of life. She has kept her childlike curiosity. A characteristic that many adults have lost in everyday life. But even more than things, Nicole is interested in people, and origin, education, and social status play no role in this. She is genuinely interested in others and gives them full attention during conversations. She is empathic, which is a quality that everyone should have.

If Nicole can help, she helps. So, it can happen that a supermarket shopping trip takes much longer than planned, because she helps an elderly and needy person find all their food.

She grasps life with all her senses. This especially includes her unique sense of smell and taste. She smells and tastes things and describes them in her unique way, which fascinates me every time. Qualities that I am sadly lacking. Unfortunately, I often don't smell or taste these subtle differences.

And finally, she has a creativity that is unique. When it came to the cover for this book, I asked her to help me. In less than an hour, she had this great idea with the elephant. And she found the right image for it right away, too. She also had the idea with the elephant because there are qualities that both Nicole and elephants have. They are intelligent and do not forget anything. It is known that elephants remember past things better than humans. This is true for both the elephant's sense of hearing and their sense of smell. For scientists, this is a clear sign that these animals are highly intelligent. However, elephants perceive the world much differently than we do, and their world also requires vastly different skills than ours. The soft skills that humans need to be happy and successful are presented in this book. That's why the elephant is the perfect symbol for the content of the book. Thank you, Nicole, for this great idea with the elephant.

But most of all, thank you for your unique way of loving me and thank you for every minute we spend together. You enrich my life every day with many small and important things. Thank you for helping me author this book. I love you and am grateful to be with you.