How we say_What we say_Is important

by Don Reedy, San Diego, CA

Realtor, Renaissance Man

Author website

This is actually a post about transparency, but as you’ll see, I am not a big fan of the ‘word’ itself. The idea of belaboring a word all of you seem to take for granted came about as I was talking with Scott Schang a few days ago. We were just enjoying each other’s company, doing real work, a lender and real estate guy talking about the industry, our own ideas, sharing and laughing, scribbling notes and taking stock of the ideas that just never seemed to quit coming.

For me transparency is about saying what you want to say, showing what you want to show, sharing what you want to share, and doing it in a manner and method that is most likely to allow the reader or listener to understand. In order for that to happen the writer or creater of thoughts and ideas, facts or fictions, must decide up front HOW they will present the information.

Let me give you some examples.

Greg Swann

“I write well. I’m a tough read here, but I can be much, much more difficult to read. I understand grammar the way other people understand cars or football or cooking, and I can build perfectly valid sentences in English that almost no one can understand, much less diagram. The English language is like Jazz to me, and it ripples and rolls through my head all the time, making connections like lightning strikes that take many paragraphs to explain to other people.

Brian Brady

“I posed this question at Unchained Phoenix ‘09 and you would have thought I asked the REALTORs to walk on coals…at first. A few bright agents listened to my reasoning:”

Geno Petro

“When I awoke from my dehydrated coma and rack focused my blurry vision toward the general direction of the deactivated alarm clock on my night stand, the numbers 7:07 burned my retinas digital red. I jumped up in a virtual panic, threw on a suit and Hermes noose, splashed on a handful of Bulgari, gargled a Red Bull and Diet Coke highball and flew out the door in search of my car. Alas, God was looking out. I located the salt and cinder mottled vehicle less than a half block away, albeit double parked beside an alley dumpster with two City of Chicago orange tickets taped to my windshield and emergency flashers just barely groaning. By yet another whit of Divine intervention, the engine turned over on the first twist of the key. I tossed the tickets into the glove box with all the others and tore westward toward the highway from my lakeside apartment.

Jeff Brown

There’s a better chance of a million monkeys in a room full of computers writing Romeo and Juliet than you finding the perfect property with all the perfect circumstances attached to it, and owner financing.

Decide what you’re Point B is, and what kind of property will best get you there. Buy the best properties you can locate in a reasonable time. They’ll close escrow. Then….

Live your life.

Repeat until you see the sign for your Point B turnoff.

Retire.

Send me a card from (insert your favorite ‘paradise’ here) saying “wish you were here.”

Ryan Hartman

Just watch him speak to you with his own medium.

Oh, I could go on and on, but if (as Greg says once in a while) you’ve read this far, then you can’t help but see that each of these guys is telling you exactly what they want to tell you, in exactly the way they process information, and with such clarity and focus that all it takes at the receiving end is a string and a can attached to your ear to understand.

What about me?

I really want to write with Civility.  I know its value, but sometimes I’m just pissed off.

I really want to write with Clarity.  The reader is deserving of that, but sometimes my mind just wants to wander around spinning tales.

I really want to write with Brevity.  I value your time as well as my own, but sometimes I want to go on and on, not making sure so much that I’m understood, but making sure I can purify my thoughts and get them on the record just in case there’s not another chance.

I really want to write with Passion.  No “buts” needed with this one.

How you say_What you say_Is really important. Pay attention to the How you say part. It will make you “transparent”, and you’ll never have to say the word. It will define who you are so that you can give and get the most from those you touch. It will shape your message, and the answers you get back.

Finally, if I’m poetic, do not disdain me should you be analytical. If I am analytical, do not dismiss me because I lack sensitivity. If I am philosophical, do not judge me because you lack the purity of thought, sensibility of argument, or historical perspective from which to understand. Let me be. I am who I am, nothing more.  Ergo sum Bloodhound.