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Over the past two years, I have slowly shrunk my world to two basic elements -- my family and my company, zipRealty.com. This isn't the healthiest attitude, I admit, but it's what I needed to do to ensure success on both fronts. With each new round of financing and every new hire, however, the drive to make certain that the company succeeds has started to distort my perspective on what is really important in life. But two things happened this past week that shook me back to reality.

The first thing occurred last Friday while I was jogging. The radio reported that a helicopter had crashed off the coast of Corpus Christi, Tex. I stopped dead in my tracks because I knew the helicopter belonged to my old squadron, HM-15. At home, I checked the Internet for details and called some old friends. I was hoping everyone onboard was all right, but the information I got indicated that two people were dead, two were missing, and two had miraculously survived.

My mind flashed back to the early 1990s when I was assigned to investigate the last crash from HM-15. The morning started off with a routine four-hour flight that left me exhausted. Afterward I ate lunch and went back to my office to monitor the afternoon flights. Three hours later, I received information that no one ever wants to hear: The very same helicopter that I'd flown that morning had crashed into the water; the fate of the crew was not known. In a bizarre twist, the night before the crash I had switched flights with the pilot in order to tend to some administrative duties. Now this friend was involved in a crash. Luckily, the crew escaped unharmed. But the memories of the investigation into that crash -- and of two other squadron crashes in which the crews perished, and of friends calling to tell me about a mutual friend who had crashed and died in some remote ocean -- are things that never leave you. In that world, a "bad day" means someone is never coming back, and news of the latest crash brought back that feeling to me.

LIFE'S SPECTRUM. Fortunately, I didn't have to dwell on Friday's crash and the memory of the earlier sad events for very long. On Tuesday, I witnessed the opposite event in the spectrum of life experiences -- the birth of my second daughter. Standing next to my wife watching another person brought into this world was one of the most incredible events in my life. It was at that moment, reflecting on the crash and then the birth, that I realized how inconsequential my world is compared to the greater stage of life.

What does all this have to do with running zipRealty.com? As I said earlier, I had become too focused on running the company, magnifying problems to such a degree that I was getting stressed out over less-than-monumental challenges. The increased stress was not healthy because it caused me to interact with people at the office in a way that did not benefit company productivity and made me ignore the needs of my family.

In the future, when someone comes to me with a crisis concerning our phones or an escrow that is less than perfect, I'll sit back and take a breath and think about all the people in my family that love me. Then I'll face these challenges with a smile on my face, knowing that no matter how these problems get resolved, I'll be fortunate enough to be going home alive that night to a wonderful family that is eager to see me. See you in two weeks.


Scott Kucirek is president and co-founder of zipRealty.com, an online real estate brokerage. The company's Internet site and online real estate agents let people complete the entire purchase or sale of a house via the Web. The company's Web site is www.zipRealty.com, and you can E-mail Scott at Scott@zipRealty.com.