What would Greg Swann do? Integrity, transparency and Web 2.0

Kicking this back to the top in response to Chris Johnson’s post on bribe-offers from vendorsluts. — GSS

 
Hey, y’all! Are you in the mood for a truly incredible offer?

You’ve seen the kind of single-property web sites we do at BloodhoundRealty.com. Dozens of pages. Hundreds of photos. Maps, movies, PDFs, off-site links — the works!

What if I were to tell you that you could have a single-property web site just like ours — with your choice of style templates and your own domain, hosted for a year — all for just $99.

Or, for just $99 more, I’ll mimic your weblog’s theme. Your single property web site will look just like your weblog — to promote and protect your brand identity.

That’s actually not a bad business, and I already have everything I need to start it. The software we use to build our single property web sites is called engenu. I give it away for free, but no one uses it. If I built it to be forms-based with everything hosted on our servers, it would be easier — but much slower — for end-users, and I could make a ton of money milking Realtors by selling them the same thing over and over again.

Why not do it?

Because it’s a piece of everything I hate in the real estate industry as it is presently comprised. It’s the vendorslut syndrome in action. I write a piece of software, then sell it to you over and over again, taking a huge profit every time you pull out your credit card. You get pitches like this every day — with the difference being that our single-property web sites are a lot richer in content than the ones you can buy from sleazy vendors.

I’ve been wanting to write a post about leadership in the RE.net. I don’t like hierarchies, or none beyond the sort of adhocracy that works so well in the Web 2.0 world. We are thought leaders at BloodhoundBlog because we think wisely and well — and write wisely and well — about issues that most other people prefer to skirt.

But: I don’t kid myself: We don’t have any huge influence — nor do I want one. We have a healthy influence on thoughtful people, which I like a lot, and we have a nagging influence on the ninety-and-nine — the people who want to work better and to do better. My own interest in abstract leadership doesn’t stretch very far beyond that.

But in the comments to my post on vendors offering bribes to real estate webloggers, Jay Thompson said this:

[T]he people that become my clients swiftly come to understand my goals, motivations and integrity.

It’s an interesting statement, because it goes against what we already understand about the Web 2.0 world. Most of the time, the people who are considering hiring you as their listing or buyer’s agent, or as their lender, will not take the time to personally explore your “goals, motivations and integrity.” They are shopping for an agent or a lender, yes, but the buying process consists not of looking for reasons to accept and embrace you, but, rather, of looking for reasons to reject you. They pick the person they want to talk to by eliminating the ones they don’t want to talk to.

In that same comments thread, Bloodhound Teri Lussier says:

I would not want the people that matter to me — personally or professionally — to ever question my character.

And that’s exactly the right way of thinking. In the Web 2.0 world we each of us must be above reproach because we will not get the opportunity to issue the “But, but, buts” that undergird the defenses we devise for objectionable behavior.

Watch: This is me in May of 2007:

This is real life inside my skin: When Inman Connect rolled around in January, I took a little poke at it. No big deal, except I had just started posting as a guest blogger at the Inman Blog, a position I have since resigned. Some sleazoid insisted that I wouldn’t say the same thing in Inman’s salon. And that would have been, true, too — until he said it. Instead, I wrote an extended evisceration of all things trade show — at Inman Blog. I didn’t care if I got fired as a guest blogger, but I did care that anyone could even think that the fear of getting fired would serve to silence me.

Here’s a slice of the trade show evisceration:

The RE.net is all atwitter about this week’s Inman’s Real Estate Connect in New York, but the coming week owns an embarrassment of trade show riches. Also on tap this week: The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. And, best of all: The Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco.

These are all basically vendor shows, despite the hype — or, rather, in support of the hype. The big announcements will come from Apple, of course, and much of the ‘news’ coming out of the other two shows will be fun to make fun of. At BloodhoundBlog, I get no end of mileage out of the goofy crap corporate weenies try to foist off on long-suffering Realtors.

The goofy crap is the true purpose of all of these shows, and far and away the biggest profit center. And from the vendor’s side of the table — like the casino’s side of a Blackjack table — they’re a good bet. On the punter’s side of the table, the camouflage of meaning will come in the form of keynote speeches and breakout sessions — providing uncomfortable chairs as a welcome respite from the hours and hours of aimless walking up and down the aisles of vendor booths, each one offering cheap pre-printed promotional premiums in support of very costly unbreakable contracts for useless, goofy crap.

If any of the webloggers who were offered bribes — and I now realize I have no idea how many real estate webloggers might have been offered bribes by sleazy vendors — want to establish beyond all doubt that they haven’t been bought, the solution to their problem is to be found in one simple question: What would Greg Swann do?

A reputation for integrity is earned, not presumed, and if there is any possibility of doubt about my integrity, it’s my job to clean the slate. You see me doing exactly that in the matter quoted above, but, if you pay attention, you will see me doing it all the time.

Now the cartoon cowboy’s retort to a challenge like this is, “I don’t hafta prove nuffin’ to nobody!” That’s right. But if my reputation has been soiled, if I don’t work to clean it, no one else will do it for me.

The fact is, whether they admit it or not, these webloggers have had their reputations soiled. You can argue that this was not the intent of their immediate benefactor, but this changes precisely nothing. So what would I do, if I were stuck where they are now?

What would Greg Swann do?

Starting with the bribe “gift” I liked the least, I would write reviews of the “gift” products, one by one — on the pages of AG. Both Jay Thompson and Russell Shaw insist that they have never been told what they cannot write on AG. But Benn Rosales wrote in a BloodhoundBlog comment, “[W]e ask that our writers not endorse products for Ag, but rather do it on their own sites.” That suggests that the first such review might be very interesting. In any case, I would establish my independence by establishing my independence beyond any possible quibble or doubt.

But, of course, first I would renounce the damn bribes altogether, again on the pages of AG. I like the idea of writing the reviews enough that I just might do it here. I have nothing to prove in this matter, but the fact of the bribery itself is revolting to me. In any case, taking expensive “gifts” from people you write about is exactly the sort of behavior that should call your character into question. If your plan is to earn a reputation for integrity, it were well not to seem to be seen selling it in public.

But that’s all one. I’m not talking to them, I’m talking to you. People almost always dig in, in situations like this, when they’ve thoughtlessly made the wrong choice. A moment’s thought would have made all the difference: “Why would vendors want to give $64,000 worth of merchandise to real estate webloggers?” That’s not a hard question to answer, but you have to think of it before you can hit upon the obvious objective of the beneficent vendors. But now they’re trapped by their acceptance of the “gifts” — which was also part of the vendors’ objectives.

That’s their problem. Here is your problem. You need to figure our how to keep yourself out of this kind of mess. This sort of dilemma is not new, and it is not rare. If you take the PR-whores like Inman “news” and Realtor magazine and combine that with the sleazoid vendors they pimp for and then combine all that with the vast, tentacular National Association of Realtors and all of it reptilian subsidiaries — you have yourself some excellent enemies! The whole thing is like a huge tar pit, and if you dip your toe in anywhere, you’re very likely to be trapped forever.

I suppose I could write my own code of ethics for wired Realtors and lenders. But the trouble with any sort of Tablets-of-Moses proscriptions is that people treat them as being exhaustive. Why shouldn’t you put advertising on your weblog? Because it implies that you don’t make your living in real estate. Why shouldn’t you make fun of your clients in amateur videos? Because you don’t like it when salespeople make fun of you. Why should you never, ever even seem to take a bribe, disclosed or undisclosed? Duh.

I don’t even think it would help to ask, “What would Greg Swann do?” — although that certainly would provoke that critical moment’s thought.

But here’s what I do, inside my own mind. It’s the Golden Rule, only backwards: How would I see this — and what would I think about it — if the tables were turned? What you are considering doing may not actually be morally wrong, but if it would smell bad to you from the other side of the table, you need to think it through some more.

The time of your life is your sole capital, but that’s an inexact statement. Your life, in essence, is your awareness of your life — experienced now, remembered and anticipated. When you do something you know in advance is wrong, you have to make war on your own mind. You have to renounce your real-time awareness while it is happening, pretending to yourself that something else is happening instead. And then you have to try to paper over the memory of what you have done — even though it calls itself to your attention again and again. This is self-destruction — the deliberate and on-going dismantlement of your one, real, irreplaceable life.

I think it’s possible that the sanest, most healthy thing you could do is to print out the paragraph just above this one and then tape it somewhere where you have to read it at least once a day. It may not be the most important thing I have to say, but it is the one that will make the biggest difference in your day to day life.

Take a look at yourself as your potential clients will see you on the web. If you don’t like what you see, fix it. If you don’t like who you’ve been — fix that. But if you don’t sculpt and burnish your reputation for integrity in everything you do, you probably won’t have a chance to explain yourself later.