BLOODHOUNDBLOG.COM

Such a simple phrase, yet apparently so difficult to execute. Agreeing with myself on what my purposes are was at the same time a task easily accomplished, and reminiscent of a root canal. Once they’re established, any goal flowing from them will almost always be accomplished. The importance of having purpose in our lives can’t be overstated.

I learned about purpose by analogy. Purpose is a map — any destination on the map, if we choose to go there, is a goal. The reason goals aren’t achieved, the root cause, is because the goal’s ‘destination’ isn’t on any of the ‘maps’ of the person’s purposes. If your goal is to go to Canada, but none of your maps include that country, it’s highly unlikely you’ll find your way there.

Experts have devised several methods to help folks discover their purposes. Frankly, I’ve always shied away from the concept of ‘discovering’ a purpose, as I’ve always inferred that to mean it was always there, so not necessarily my choice. We can decide at any time to change our main purpose for existence. One of the extreme examples of this truth was the Biblical story of Paul. In the story he not only radically altered his purpose, but reversed it — becoming the world’s strongest advocate for what he’d previously did his utmost to destroy.

So understand, the excuse for not having a guiding purpose cuz ya can’t ‘discover’ it is lame beyond description. We all decide what our purpose in life is, whether it’s a proactive decision or not. Furthermore, having that purpose will not only cause goals to be far more easily achievable, but will generate the goals resonating with the purpose itself. Who’d a thunk?

I don’t advocate any particular method to decide your purpose. Some write down purposes ’till one hits home. Some go to a quiet place and meditate, some even consult experts from different disciplines. It doesn’t matter as long as it produces a purpose with which you’re both at peace and big time excited.

There’s very little in the world more powerful than a purpose driven goal — unless it’s a purpose driven human being.

Your purpose is your map — are you trying to get places not on your current map? Are you living a purpose not of your own choosing? Are you constantly in flux cuz you simply don’t realize your goals are totally incongruent, if not in conflict with your purpose — stated or not?

When setting goals for your business, what’s your track record? It’s one thing to fail cuz your plan/strategy/execution was iffy. Failing due to setting goals in direct opposition to your purpose is self sabotage at it’s most elegant. A goal in misalignment with your stated purpose is maybe one of the most effective Trojan Horses ever. The irony is it was inserted inside your ‘city walls’ by you — guaranteed to fail from Day 1.

I review what I call my ‘umbrella’ purpose annually. It hasn’t changed since I set it in stone back in the ’70’s. The purposes safely underneath have though. This year I’ve deleted all of them in favor of one that seemed to be speaking to me every time I thought of the concept of purpose. I relaxed whenever it came to mind. It’s now, in fact, almost a tag line to my umbrella purpose. Sorry, but unlike some others, I tend to keep my purposes to myself. It’s not that I think it’s wrong to share one’s life purpose. It’s just that it’s not me.

I will share one thing — knowing my overriding umbrella purpose — the one whose approval I need to do anything in life — is part of my DNA, makes all the difference in the world. Take time out to name yours and see what a difference it makes.

One of the key differences in the purpose driven life, is how many decisions simply don’t hafta be made. They make themselves. When it becomes part of who you are, it becomes almost painful to establish a goal (much less work towards it) when it’s not aligned with your purpose for getting up every day.

Though downright hard times hit all of us, those with a crystal clear purpose in life experience far less stress, at least in my personal experience and observation of others. It may be your turn to take the E-Ticket ride in Murphy’s Barrel, but as a consequence of living a purposeful life, you won’t lose your way. Knowing in your heart of hearts the ultimate destination — driven by your purpose — seems to be a natural salve for the road rash caused by ‘Life Happens’.

Learn for yourself — Purposeful Living isn’t just a catchy phrase. It’s living for real.

Bookmark this to: del.icio.us • Digg it • StumbleUpon • Subscribe to RSS feed

Getting obsessed with delivering good customer service has become more and more a focus of what I’m doing.   I’d rate myself a 3 on a scale of one to ten, but before June,  I was a -2.   So there’s that, at least.  My goal is to get to a “5″ by the end of the year.

Customer service is the difference between “doing transactions” and “having a business.”  Creating a process that honors the customer’s intent is our job, and figuring out a way to do it within the human constraints of bandwidth and knowledge is not easy. But doing it is rewarding, both in the “artistic” sense and in the monetary sense.

Getting honest feedback is hard, too.  People don’t want to identify what you can do better, and our own egos create a situation where we justify our failures.  Perception of the customer is reality, and when we wanna break the stereotype of the entitled and mediocre Realtor (in my case, consultant), we have to fix what’s broken.  We have to be committed to the outcome of good service, and good perceived service.

They are both important.  When my wife was at Dominion homes, the customers there were all given a survey.  The managers would do whatever possible to let the customers know that “yes” was the only real answer.  Dominion was deprived of feedback because of the perverse incentives of the bonus program they created.  People were flat out told that they’d get $100 cash if they brought the survey back for the manager to fill out.  Attaboys were really what they were after.

Not “how can we–as a company–get way better.”

They assumed that they had achieved operational perfection.  They had not.   I have not achieved operational perfection yet (though I’m far closer now).   I want to know where I’m weak, and where I’m perceived to be weak.   Where the communication is chunky and commitments are unmet.

This is the core difference between doing deals and having a business.  Finding a way to get actionable information.  Hearing feedback.

My customer service survey that goes out says this:

I want to be the best ever.  I am building a company that constantly gets better, more valuable.  To me, every detail matters.  Everything I touch, I want to be the best for you.

So, I’m asking for feedback, not “attaboys”.  I want to be the very best web marketer for the money, so please point out where I can improve.  That will do me–and you–more service.  I know I’m above average, I want to get in the top .1% of all practitioners, and I want you to feel lucky that you found me.  Please help me continue to get better.

I have about 12 questions on things I want to know.  I will change them after I get better.  Every one has free space to write in suggestions.  That has given me an idea as  to what my people want, and that feedback has been profound in teaching me what to do and how to do it.

I don’t take it all seriously–some people have dumb ideas and some things aren’t feasible.  But, it gets me moving, learning and doing.  Had I done it months ago, I would have been farther along in my business.

Getting customer feedback does two things:  it makes it so that you know that you’re gonna hear about it so you improve the conditions for the customers as they happen, you think of things naturally from their point of view, and build a process that honors them, communicates well, and moves you from functionary deal-doer to fiduciary partner.

You know the feedback is coming, so you try harder, close rank and put the customer first.

For a rake, it’s unnatural, but it’s the only way that I’m going to get to be as good as I’m going to.

Bookmark this to: del.icio.us • Digg it • StumbleUpon • Subscribe to RSS feed

Sometime in late 2007 I ran into a guy who wrote weekly articles about the stock market, using what he called a Super Chart. He’s what’s known on Wall Street as a Chartist, a long established school of thought. He was mentored for several years by an iconic chartist whose name escapes me.

Anyway, his name is Max Whitmore, and he’s the real deal — and a half. He’s the most unassuming guy you’d ever wanna talk to. Yet his record is second to none.

The guy hasn’t missed a major market move since 1965. Those who listened to him before this most reason meltdown still have most of their capital. He’s guest posted at BawldGuy Talking the last two Mondays, and will continue to do so until he and I, along with Tom Vanderwell launch our new site.

Here are the links to his first post, and the one this past Monday.

I began talkin’ about Max a couple years ago. Then the national site who carried his posts in subscription form, dropped him. Their loss. Then something began to happen. Whitmore followers all over the country began to email me from my blog asking if I knew where to find him. They’d subscribed to his stuff, and missed him sorely. This went on for a year at least.

Meanwhile Max and I had become email buddies. I let this be known on the blog and the queries intensified. His followers are the poster kids for loyal. Anywho, go take a look. As I said before, Max Whitmore is the real deal.

Bookmark this to: del.icio.us • Digg it • StumbleUpon • Subscribe to RSS feed

When I was a mortgage guy, when I doubled my volume and income in 2007, I did it because I created systems and loops.

Systems: do the same thing every time.

Loops: have an end point that, on every job, fixes the system.

At the end of every transaction, no matter how routine, I would write down the points of friction, error and mistake. I’d write down EVERYTHING, try to get the # of phone calls down, focusing on delays and customer impacting changes.

I learned to have “Accurate Hud-1, Day 1″ as a standard that I forced title companies to adhere to.
I sent DAILY updates to every party to the transaction: buyer, seller, listing agent, selling agent, title company. I stopped doing business with buyers that didn’t like this. That practice preserved good will on one transaction that had been put in a flood zone that requires flood insurance, to the benefit of all parties.
This was stuff that I learned because of operational flexibility. I had a survey for my customers, and myself. The one for myself I was more concerned with. “How many touches/phonecalls/passes…did this need,” and most importantly, “what can I do better next time.”

I Ignored My Own Advice When I Learned a New Business.

What Can I do better? That question, on every deal, no matter how routine, makes us better practitioners. When I went into the Web marketing thing, I avoided it for a while as I learned the topography and what I was good at. I was too focused on making ends meet. The teeth of the hydra–the nonsense that is the IRS–was upon me, so I was focused on right now selling.
When you’re burdened by time debt, you don’t have the operational flexibility to be proactive. When scarcity creeps in, you can’t be as proactive as you want. You feel scared. And your flailing and not doing the work that makes the most difference.
I had a mediocre business, that is now enjoying rapid improvement by having a self correcting loop.

What Is A Self Correcting Loop?

Has four steps:
1.) Have a process, send people through the process.
2.) Solicit feedback from everyone in the transaction at various points, especially from the end. Collect data.
3.) Figure out what things are likely to recur at some point, and were not unique to this transaction (hint: what’s important in one phase may be unimportant later).
4.) Add new steps to the process that prevent or mitigate bad factors…so you run people through the process again.
For the real estate business, it’s knowing what’s next. People wanna know what’s next at all times. For the web business they want similar situations, but the bottom line is this: every deal makes you smarter, better, more & more fun.

Why Don’t People Do This?

Fear and Ego. No, not in the good, Greg Swann way, but in the way that is destructive. I’m not always perfect. I have given people crappy service (and refunds, when called on). I have underdelivered and overpromised. (And I am working on it.) There is resistance to admitting limitation and imperfection. There is resistance to admitting that you’re not perfect because you haven’t made the leap that allows you to overcome the Implied Accusation.
You need to know that you probably have vast blind spots. Things that you do that piss people off, that slow down deals. You need to know, no matter your profession, how to fix it, how to be a better people helper. Why? Because that’s your calling card. A standard of excellence, a good example. Getting these out is quick and simple.
Make a survey, put it in Cforms, act on the results, add questions and remove questions as your competencies shift. Get better ON PURPOSE.

I’m doing it over the weekend, figuring out times and places to intentionally solicit feedback that improves my system. I’m doing it within the context of some WICKEDLY cool software called Digital Access Pass, which will also get some ink spilled here.
This may wind up being Chris Johnson weekend here at BHB, as I share the cool stuff I’m building.

Bookmark this to: del.icio.us • Digg it • StumbleUpon • Subscribe to RSS feed

Most of us can remember a time, sometimes even a specific moment when our spirit was so beat up it seemingly had to look up to see down. I’ve had those times. They come and go for all of us, and come in so many different forms. It can be financial, health, family, or a combination of all the above. Although in my head I’m still roughly 22, and even though I’m healthy as a horse, very fit, blah blah blah, I can remember bad times like they were last week.

I was first licensed in a recession — went full time after school was done in a recession — saw my first child born in a recession — see a trend there do ya? I’d be the last guy to claim having lived a hard life, though I’ve had my fair share of, um, challenges. In our minds we tend not to step back and extract the lessons life so generously offers to teach us. But we do learn from our times in the barrel, don’t we?

You’ll not meet many folks more private than I, on that you can bank. I tend to keep to myself, though paradoxically I’m gregarious and outgoing by nature. Today I had one of those moments when it seems everything goes into super slow motion, and you begin to ’see’ things you musta been missing. I’ll keep the subject matter to myself as it wasn’t directly about me, but suffice to say I was both emotionally and intellectually moved a great deal.

It reminded me of the lessons I’ve not only learned about life and living, but about myself — many of which were learned in the pressure cooker of desperate straits. I’d love to hear what some of you have learned when things in your life went to hell in a hand basket, but fair is fair so I’ll tell you some of what I learned in some of the darkest hours from my past.

I learned no matter how much family support there is, no matter how many friends there are, in the end we traverse through life’s most treacherous roadways alone. We make our decisions alone — even if it happens to be alone in a crowd. We deal with our thoughts alone. We deal, ultimately with our greatest fears alone.

I learned my spiritual faith was rock solid, deeply rooted, and part of my DNA. That’s a discovery I wish on everyone. Fortunately for me it happened when I was still a young man. It’s the reason I’m still standing today, and the reason I know nothing will ever defeat me.

I learned how to be brutally honest with myself. Those who know me know this about me. Knowing yourself is a gift most people really never experience. It’s value is priceless.

I learned who I’m not. Not net worth, what I drive, where I live, or any of those silly trappings. Finding out you’re the same person in all circumstances is akin to finding out you can never really be lost. Who you are is everything. Knowing who you are is the best weapon against whatever life throws at you. There’s a confidence from knowing who you are that transcends what usually passes for confidence.

I learned maybe most of all, that when I’ve suffered the most, when I felt the sun might never come up again, I was so very wrong. That no matter how bad things were, others were going through times so difficult it made my anguish and stress look like church summer camp.

Fast forward to the present.

The Stockdale Paradox is how I’d describe what some of us learn, even though sometimes, surely in my case, we’re unaware we’ve actually learned it. Admiral Stockdale was a POW in Viet Nam for a very long time, eight years — and the highest ranking officer. When asked how he survived both mentally, physically (including consistent torture) and emotionally that long, his answer was surprising to say the least. I first read about it a few years ago while reading Good to Great, one of the best business books I’ve ever read. I was reminded while reading a post today by The Mortgage Cicerone. Here’s what Stockdale said.

“I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

He was then asked, “Who didn’t make it out?”

He answered, “The optimists. They were the ones who said ‘we’re going to be out by Christmas’. And, Christmas would come and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. Then they died of a broken heart.”

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

You can help so many here by simply sharing some of the lessons you’ve learned from past challenges. What are they, and how have they helped you as life moved on?

Have a good one.

Bookmark this to: del.icio.us • Digg it • StumbleUpon • Subscribe to RSS feed

Born in the summer of 1951, I’m one of those Boomers who’ve lived the transformation from simpler, more innocent times, to the hi-tech, everything’s gotta be in the fast lane, in your face 21st century. 1951? Possibly the best debut year in post WW II Major League Baseball, as both Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays broke in that year. I grew up watchin’ both of ‘em in their primes, as they played at levels normal human beings could only daydream about.

America was a country in transition. The big war victoriously concluded, albeit at horrific cost, the Korean ‘Police Action’ about done, and Boomers were being born by the dozens everywhere you looked. So many paradigms were shifting all at once it seemed. The GI Bill was sending thousands of young men and women to college — folks who before the war would only have fantasized about affording a college degree and the life it promised. Suburbs entered our vocabulary. Home ownership begin to grow at prodigious velocity. Cars became a must have item.

It all sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it? It was, but it wasn’t all Channel No. 5 and Willie makin’ basket catches.

My memory really only goes back to around 1956, when I turned five, started kindergarten, and got to attend ‘regular kid’ Sunday school at Dad’s church. Of course, it wasn’t ’till much later in life that I realized why I had such a good time with the older kids — duh, I was the preacher’s kid, but wasn’t anything in the same zip code as a goody two-shoes. Yeah, even back then.

Ironically, like many in my generation I learned how Americans handled hard times by listening to my grandparents tell about the Great Depression. Once you’ve heard enough of those stories from folks who lived through it as teens and emerged as adults of tempered steel, you tend to shy away from self pity when hard times come knockin’ at your door — hard times hardly in the league about which they talked.

Grandma was the oldest of eight kids who were born and raised in rural Missouri. Hard times? Most don’t realize this, but hard times hit rural areas long before the big crash of 1929. In the mid to late ’20’s Grandma and Great-grandpa (also a preacher) several times headed out on a freight train, leaving the rest of the family to work on dairy farms in Ohio, pick crops in other surrounding states, or in one case shuck corn at harvest time in Nebraska. She was 14 when her dad began bringing her with him on those sojourns.

Hard times? Those were hard times. And that’s how Americans back then got through them. They relied on family and neighbors and themselves, making incredible personal sacrifices as a matter of course. It takes a village? My ass. It took rugged individuals who helped those who helped themselves. Their hard core sense of self reliance, responsibility, duty to family and those in need was fierce. Wanna know what was missing?

A sense of entitlement and moral relativism. Even those showing up at Grandma’s door, later on during the actual Depression, in Vista, California, would refuse even a sparse meal of scraps unless they could do something, anything to earn their way. The worst of it though was when, “We literally didn’t have anything to share — then being thanked for our kind hospitality.”

Hard times.

We’re in the middle of a giant helping of what my Uncle calls FUBAR. Don’t know what it means? Ask anyone who’s been in the military. It means things are screwed up pretty badly. Having lived through several recessions, I have my own sad stories, which I won’t share here, as my stories are surely no different than yours. I’ve stared into the black abyss alone too.

It’s an experience we’ve all had when times turn harder than Aunt Evie’s stare after you’ve crossed her. It’s the sudden awareness that your worst fears may indeed become the new reality in your life. The cold chill of desperate fear that sweeps through every part of you with a sometimes literal sense of temporary paralysis. It’s when we look directly into the black abyss — alone with our thoughts. It makes some, it breaks some — but it’s difficult to imagine it leaving anyone the same as before.

And the nights? Geez, Louise, Mytle — who hasn’t gone through a 20 hour night of your mind playing horror movies with you as the victim? It can be debilitating.

So many of those in real estate and related fields have been playing out the black abyss part of their life’s script lately. We all make that trip alone, regardless of our support system. It’s like major surgery — your family and friends will be there for you, but you’re still the only one on the table with a doctor standing over you wielding a scalpel. Support only goes so far.

I write about this only to remind you — you’re not alone — not by a long shot. Speaking only for myself and my past trips through the black abyss, I can tell you this without reservation. I came out a better person, with a stronger sense of who I am, and a steely confidence born only from the heat it takes to temper high quality steel.

I also discovered quite happily that my spiritual faith had been tested. Turns out my faith and beliefs were strong, and made stronger — a blessing from which I benefit to this day. There’s nothing like getting your priorities right, while learning you were up to the task.

Would most of us go through the black abyss again by choice? No sir, not me. But I’ll tell ya something that surprised me about myself — I wouldn’t go back and erase those experiences for all the gold in Fort Knox. There’s a freedom that comes with successfully staring down the demons that seem to arise in us during soul-wrenching, character testing, hard times.

There’s no feeling freer than the knowledge you measured up. You were knocked down, but not out. You emerged as a higher quality, tempered steel. And even better than that? Hard times will never scare you again.

Put a price on that.

Bookmark this to: del.icio.us • Digg it • StumbleUpon • Subscribe to RSS feed

Do I really want the Cap & Trade lunacy, its huge loss of freedoms and destruction that will be wrought to the economy, including the real estate industry?  No, not really.  But I think it might be better than the alternative.

Because WHAT I WANT is for Americans to WAKE UP!  I think Cap & Trade, HR 2454, may be just the ticket.

Surely, this will wake people up to what is happening!  Skyrocketing energy costs, tax hikes, economic stagnation or worse and the nanny state in places it should never have been considered.  Won’t that be enough to wake folks up?

I’m very concerned about what it might take to get the public to finally understand.  Has public education wrought us a feckless population that has turned off their brains and are simply cannon fodder for smooth talking thieving politicians?  Has that been the end game all along?  There aren’t too many places left in the world to go where capitalism is still valued.  When the U.S.A. is taking a more socialist stance than the People’s Republic of China on economic intervention, I have to wonder how folks have lost appreciation for why America is great.

So, back to Cap & Trade, or “Clean Energy” or whatever con they’re calling it.  You see, I figure Cap and Trade can be made to go away pretty quickly.  Sure, it will set us back and cost us just like the still to be spent stimulus money will cost us.  Call it tuition for the American public whose memory is so far gone they can’t even remember back to Jimmy Carter.  Again I digress, but that lesson was good enough to get us Ronald Reagan at the time.

What won’t be so easy to make go away is nationalized health care.  I don’t think the lobbies that would support keeping Cap & Trade in place would be anything like the uproar that would occur if Nationalized Health Care, if it happens, has to be reduced or dismantled.  So, I would rather have the populace figure out what a bad deal this whole socialist thing is with energy than health care.  Energy rates should start to go up before even the mid-term elections.  I smile thinking what that might accomplish.

I do believe that a public pays (even more) health care plan would be just as disastrous to the economy, the country and our freedoms and harder to reverse than the energy bill.

So, while I am against ALL OF THIS STUFF, I think that the energy bill, Cap and Trade, might be just the alarm clock the public needs.  I’m trying to think a few moves down the game board.  Bloodhounds, what do you think?  Oh, and a Happy Independence Day!

Bookmark this to: del.icio.us • Digg it • StumbleUpon • Subscribe to RSS feed

One of my favorite Hollywood staples is the bad ass hero that blows something up and doesn’t need to look back.  He’s already won the battle, and he’s done his damage, and he’s walking away towards the next thing on his todo list.  Jerry Bruckheimer seems to use this 3 times a minute in his flicks.    I think of Jack Bauer and not caring, the explosion happened, so what, moooooving along now.

The only thing that matters is the mission. The explosion is in the past. Cool guys never look.  What you do next to accomplish your mission is the now. So many times I’ve either:

1. Admired my past successes.  (Hey, pin a trophy on me, I sold a house)
2. Looked at the things I screwed up. (I lost a customer today)
3. Been distracted with red flashy nonsense.  (Oooh, what will Inman do next)

All of it’s rubbish.  Our job is simply to lead by example.  Move more product.  Get them to sign on the line that is dotted.   Do it honestly.  Do it to the best of our ability and know that that will always improve.  Know that the job we do today isn’t gonna be as good as the job we can to tomorrow.  Do better.  Don’t sweat the screw ups, and don’t laud the victories.

Don’t look at explosions.

I see politics as an explosion.  Yes.  Obama wants our money.  SHOCKER.  So did Bush, who was all to eager to fire up the bailoutmobile.  The government is a parasite.  TELL ME SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW.   We can pour energy and tears into politics.  Or, we can look at the landscape, get into an OODA pattern, and figure out…what to do next.  We cannot moan ineffectually about the loss of our freedoms, blaming Obama on our faulures.  I mean, we CAN, but dude, setting a good example amidst the chaos.

Learning the laws first isn’t whining about them.  Creating a business that can survive HVCC or whatever BS the power drunk Ivy Leaguers can do…and not whining that we’re not surviving.   THATS the play of the day.

Sure things changed, and more obstacles were thrown up.  That means we have to be faster, better, meaner and ready to rumble.   Did Jasone Bourne bitch about how hard it was to get into customs, or did he just find his way in?

Here are my predictions for the future:

• There will be more, and stupider laws.
• The penalties for violating laws will be more severe.
• Things will get harder and they won’t benefit the consumer.
• Banks will have the upper hand.
• The National Association of Realtors will promote policies that cause churn.
• The GOP will continue to fool some people into thinking they are pro business when that is just Mercantilism.

All of this is a matter of degree.  Now, we can advocate against these policies, but it must be tertiary to surviving them no matter what.  We gotta focus on navigating the territory that exists, not trying to turn the clock back to June 2005.  Spending too many braincycles thinking about them keeps us from realizing the success that’s gonna happen now.  Our responsibilities are to succeed honestly no matter what, and it’s rare that if we look at the political explosion happening around us that we can.

Ignore the explosions, complete your mission.

Books to read:

• Boyd, the Fighter Pilot Who Changed War
• Sun Tzu’s art of war
• Book of Five Rings

That’s it.

Bookmark this to: del.icio.us • Digg it • StumbleUpon • Subscribe to RSS feed

Take the time to participate in one of the many remembrances in your community.

They gave months, years, blood, sweat, tears and lives. Give them a few hours.

Celebrations will be held on Monday at Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery, Alameda’s USS Hornet, San Francisco’s Presidio and USS Pompanito, and San Bruno’s Veteran Cemetery, among other places.

Bookmark this to: del.icio.us • Digg it • StumbleUpon • Subscribe to RSS feed

In October, 2006, I had a problem. While getting ready for a trip to the Outter Banks, I was bouncing my 17 month old on my lap, drinking a coffee and checking my emails.   Fast like lightning, he spilled the Starbucks on my Toshiba…and in an uncanny feat of chance, the coffee had also gone into the back of my Networked Drive, and my Router.

A cleanup made my computer seem to be OK, but it wasn’t meant to be.  About 10 minutes later, my Venti Verona seeped into the computer, and it breathed its last.   I was using ACT 6.0, nothing online at the time, and it was tweak-figured to my liking.  Activity series, word docs, and all.  Gone, toasted, busted.  A trip to the data recovery center at MicroCenter said it was dead to them, dead to all.

The whole disk.

My backup disk was in worse shape, taking it out of its casing revealed that it had been entirely saturated in coffee.  My son in one swoop, used a 1.85 cup of coffee to destroy a $700 laptop and a $300 backup drive.  In a lot of ways, I was a proud dad.

But, I had a problem: I was leaving for vacation without a database.  My lifelong history of maybes, dids, mights, won’ts and dids-but-with-someone else was gone.  I only had my pipeline of 7 deals in the Flagstar pipeline, and the emails that my gmail had archived.  And that was it.  Nothing else–nothing else at all.

That was about the best thing that ever happened to my throughput.  That blessing from Jack doubled my income and my capacity to produce.

One of the things every realtor-mortgage lender (that doesn’t use something like Kaliedico) does is over-report and overestimate their pipeline.  The reason for this is the maybes.  These are the folks that could benefit from you, but don’t feel a sense of urgency.  They may not get the paperwork together for weeks or months.  But they close, and they kill your inventory turns because you count ‘em in March, April and May.  And hey, you are right at the beginning of each month.   But you make less and work more because you chase the maybes.

I had a lot of maybes in my pipeline.  People coming off subprime BS loans, people wanting into new sub-prime BS loans. Chasing probables. Inefficient and stupid.  And with the probables gone, and me then (as now) having to earn each month to pay the hydra that is the IRS, the maybes were suicide.

My maybes were gone.  I had to find people that could close the second I got back from the OBX.  So, what to do?   (Hint: it’s me, so it involves picking up the $@#% phone).

Every house that went into contract, got a phone call from me.  “Congats on getting your house in contract, I’m assuming you need a pre-approval for your next purchase.”

“Why yes, we do, but we’re working with the RealtorsLender.”

“Oh, so are they giving you daily updates about your mortgage status so you know your move is smooth–and do they have a backup plan working to ensure that nothing….”

Etc.  I had to find people that were ready now, to fill my shiny new ACT fields.  I didn’t have the pseudosecurity of a pipeline that counts in each month, and the whole understanding of velocity changed.

I needed NOW MONEY.  People that had to have a loan RIGHT NOW.  Purchase money.  Finding them, even if it started transactional was the most efficient and real part of the next step in my business.  Telling people I’d close in 2 weeks (I know, not super realistic now) and doing it.   The CRM let me see that my pipeline was good, so I got complacent.  Hell, there are 40 loans in process in my ACT, so why hustle?

…

Because the loans were pseudoloans.  Clients could benefit, but I didn’t sell them on the urgency.  (And, kids, it ain’t my way.  There’s nothing more repulsive than someone that needs your business.  It doesn’t work, objection handling is BS, and Jedi Mind Tricks only cause tension).

The real question is this:  what false realities are we all embracing?  What faulty assumptions drive our businesses?

For me, it’s not cool to fail.  I’ve failed before, it hurts like hell, and I hate it.  Its not an acceptable outcome to be anything less than excellent in any metric.  Complacency leads to failure, and we rationalize it all saying ‘it’s no big deal.’

It’s no big deal till it is. My CRM was holding me back from having the Rake-Tacular business that I rocked in 2007.  Not Brian Brady numbers to be sure, but 19mm in central Ohio didn’t suck.
…

The lessons to learn:

1. Focus on NowMoney.  75% of my efforts are focused on the soonest spending people.
2. It is 100x Better to know TODAY that someone’s not closing, than it is to think they are for 3 months, and learn that they didn’t care/couldn’t pay their second mortgage.  Don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions.
3. Have killer systems that deliver on your promises. (This is where I’m failing right now, but each week gets me closer to my goals).
4. Use a LIFO system for follow up.  The newest are the hottest, and work backwards off of inquiries.  Don’t start at the back and work your way to the front, it’s assinine.   If you’ve made someone wait 3 days, start with the dude that just pinged you, and take the loss that was your screwup.
5. Consider Acceptable loss:  I care deeply about my relationships, but I also know that I am not operating right if I’m serving anyone.  Jam your capacity to the max, and understand that customer services issues will happen and are chances to get better.
6. Don’t get complacent when you have loads of tepid people kind of interested in working with you.   Those don’t all close, be happy and fed if you close 25% of your pipeline.
7. Limit followup then automate.  IT was two calls for me.  Then it would go into an activity series of quarterly calls.
8. Finding new leads is easier than extracting gold out of nonsense leads that were never closing.  Leads are abundant and plentiful and WAITING for some spark, some intelligence to interact with, someone with intellect and competence.
9. The path to money is finding compatible and happy people that are like you, that like you, and that trust you.
10. Old Jags Still Suck. Avoid them like the plague

Bookmark this to: del.icio.us • Digg it • StumbleUpon • Subscribe to RSS feed

Sometimes You Have To Push The Seriousness Away. Seriously.

Fellow blogger April Winchell posted this little tidbit a few days back:

If you’ve ever read President Obama’s Dreams From My Father, good for you. I couldn’t get past the foreword.

I wish I had. Because today I discovered that there’s a fairly juicy little subplot in the book, involving one of Obama’s high school friends.

Ray, a fellow classmate of Obama’s, was also bi-racial, and also trying to define himself. But what set him apart was his colorful manner of self-expression. Ray cursed like a motherfucker.

This would all be snickerworthy enough, but it turns out that Obama actually read the audiobook version of Dreams From My Father.

And that means he read Ray’s quotes.

And that means you’re about to hear the President of United States using language that would finish Cheney off once and for all.

Warning: Mature Content

http://tinyurl.com/cvrbap

(Don’t shoot me - I’m only the messenger)

Bookmark this to: del.icio.us • Digg it • StumbleUpon • Subscribe to RSS feed

Blogging is a fad and by definition, it will eventually run its course and fade away to a small niche. Blogs will be the bell-bottom pants of Web 2.0. The technology of Blogging will not go away, but the style of what we now do on Blogs will change significantly and will be renamed “Klogs” (more on that later).

How can I make such a claim in the face of overwhelming statistics documenting the growth and popularity of Blogs? That’s an easy question. My answer: because this is a Blog post and I can spew whatever opinion I wish and the only thing you can do is try to out-spew me with your own opinion. But spewing opinions is not what is going to undo Blogging - lack of civility will keep Blogs out of the mainstream.  Simply put, corporate leaders have not embraced the Blogosphere because many Blogs often spiral down into a pit of venom and character assassination while hiding behind a cloak of anonymity. Many Blogs revel in being snarky because it gets them quick exposure and generates lots of readers and comments. It is all in good fun until someone gets their eye poked out.

Corporate leaders are fearful of Blogs because these freeform formats of fun are too risky for the image of the Company.  Sure, many corporations have started a Blog, but most are tame, humorless, boring sites used for product promotion and press releases.  The NAR Blog is a good example of that.  These are not real Blogs because the writers are not free to say what they think; rather, they must say what the company wants to say/hear.

Because there is not widespread adoption of Blogging on the corporate level - and VERY few individuals are making money off their Blogs - I can only draw the conclusion that Blogging will fade away to the fashion status of bell-bottoms, or at least not reach a significant level in business communications.  Without adoption by the business community, Blogging will not have sustainable cache’ and, I believe, has almost peaked in popularity.

Currently there are about 4 Blog readers for every 1 Blog.  In the real estate market, 4 “buyers” for every property is great, but in communications, that is an unsustainable number.  In addition, Blogs have a very low level of credibility (ironically, I site a Blog as the source of Blogs having a lack of credibility).  Capitalist, however, often see beyond such shortcomings and adapt a product for use in a business environment.  Thus, I predict that we will soon see phase two of the Weblog and it will be called a Worklog or Klog.

What is a Klog?  A Klog is a private Internet discussion site that provides employees, entrepreneurs, and scientist a freeform format to discuss, develop, and debate issues, products and services without the fear that is attached to Blogs.  By “private” I mean password or firewall protected from the general public.  Businesses may shun the risks associated with Blogs, but they will recognize that the technology - which is simple and powerful - has many valid business applications.  Klogs can replace many meetings, connect employees from all over the world to discuss product development, and document the entire thought process.  Klogs will be a powerful new business tool for the transfer and storage of knowledge much like Blogs are able to transfer and store opinions.  Klogs will not be as fun as Blogs, but that’s why they call it work.

Here’s a Klog image for you to consider:  E-mail - “Greg, we have set up a Klog at http:RotaryKlog.net to discuss the failings of Realtor.com to position itself as a valuable asset in the minds of NAR members.  Categories have been set up to discuss the topics of long-tail marketing, automated evaluations, and the extortion of members money.  Please weigh in on all these topics by Friday and plan to attend the web meeting on Monday at 10:00 a.m. est to discuss our future actions to correct this mess.”

Klogs are already in use.  In my office, we have set up a private FaceBook group to allow staff to share business information that is not appropriate to discuss in an open format.  Staff is free to share a thought, professional opinion, or idea without the fear of being blasted by some anonymous jerk.  I have also set up a Klog for a committee that I am involved with by using a standard Wordpress Blog format.  The safety of a Klog will promote more people to share their real thoughts which will, in turn, create better thinking.  Many people are not as bold as those of us who are willing to share our thoughts and opinions with the entire world.  Klogs will be a safe haven for the 99% of humans not contributing to Blogs.  They will also facilitate knowledge management in small businesses that can’t afford expensive and complicated technology.

(Note:  I consider the BloodhoundBlog to be one of the most legitimate Blogs because almost all those who comment here use their name.  Without a willingness to attach your name to an opinion, you are meaningless to me.  Blogs like this are the exception to the rule and will serve as a valuable resource for as long as Greg, Brian and the many talented writers are willing to be part of the 1% of humans creating content on the Internet.)

Bookmark this to: del.icio.us • Digg it • StumbleUpon • Subscribe to RSS feed

Where to begin? Chris, you remind me of myself 35 years ago. You know, before I learned what couth meant. If you haven’t read Chris’s latest effort, it’s not long. It’s all about him payin’ the bills kickin’ booty via 1.0.

Payin’ the bills? Here’s some perspective. Chris made more money in the hell hole known as ‘any city in Ohio’ than the sophisticated, whining posers in San Diego who’re still pullin’ down over $10,000 a deal. ‘Course they’ll never know that. It’s so hard to read through teary eyes or hear through the din of constant whining and complaining.

I remember, mostly fondly, agents smiling condescendingly at the 18 year old calling all the FSBO’s every weekend from breakfast ’till dinner. “Why’s his daddy forcin’ him to waste so much time gettin’ his head bashed in?” For the record, I listed a FSBO six hours into my career. I had just over zero talent, and the bulk of my ‘knowledge’ of the business was embodied in the state licensing test I’d just taken. I just did what I was told would produce results. And what’a'ya know? They were right.

Six years later folks told me knockin’ on the same doors every month was a waste of time. They’re still tellin’ me that. ‘Course they never had their car nearly run off the road twice by homeowners who couldn’t wait another week to see you so they could list his homes now. Most agents will do anything under the sun to avoid going one on one with a stranger who might tell them to go to hell — or provide them a skinned cat for their wall.

Then from the late 80’s thru the early 21st century, they harangued me about all the time I spent sending out direct mail.

Chris makes the best points of the young new year when it comes to creating new business.

1. 1.0 still rules the real estate world. Period. There might be an exception here and there, but they simply prove the rule. Will 2, 3, 4….27.0 take over? Some day, but not real soon. I can already hear the geeks crankin’ up their whine machines on that one.

2. Skinned cats? Though Chris merely implies this, it’s still there, between the lines. Nobody gives yesterday’s cat crap about how you skinned your cats, until they ascertain you actually skinned the damned fur ball. Only then do they begin to care how you did it, and only then if your wall appears to have been made with fur.

3. “…and then you wear out from always ‘working,’ but never trying.” I nominate that gem as the quote of the month so far. It’s been my contention that passive methods of acquiring business, i.e. ‘floor time’, newspaper ads, open houses, and the rest of the ‘I’m too lame to get in the trenches myself’ crappola, have been transitioning folks from real estate to Von’s training program for decades.

4. I defy you to show me a 2.0 approach, that works universally for thousands, requiring less than 500 hours a year while producing 40+ closed deals. Uh, that sound you’re hearing is crickets.

And no, I don’t mean cold calling exclusively. I’m referring to any proactive prospecting method that was available for productive use when Nixon first took office. They all still outperform 2.0 magic regardless of how it’s analyzed, as long as the analyst has a grain of integrity. Again, don’t come harpin’ with a comment showing how you’re such an online superstar. My blog produces six figures yearly, though the first year’s production all came in the last half of the year. Took eight months to see results. Still, in ‘08 as much as my blog, website, and new sites will produce big time, our (my son and I) 1.0 efforts will dwarf those numbers. It won’t be close.

For those of you who’re offended by Chris’s way of getting his point across, here’s some advice. Dad was the same way. What a total jerk he used to be at office meetings. But what he preached worked every time out. One day he sensed the Kumbuya crowd was near tears so he segued a bit with his tone.

He grew very quiet, sounding like the most empathetic grandpa ever. It literally took me back to early childhood when he was a pastor, making a quiet point from the pulpit. He said, “If my growling tone makes some here wet their pants, I’m profoundly sorry — sorry you haven’t been shown the door before today. This business is custom made for doers, not pretenders; for those who find a way, not hope for a way. Understand this: If you’re not prospecting with enthusiasm you can count on being fired with enthusiasm.”

By the next week’s meeting almost 25% of his full time sales force was gone. His business the next 12 months grew over 30%. His agents consistently made hamburger out of the competition. Because he only hired ‘assassins’, he never, ever had more than 30 full time agents at any one time, never more than a dozen part timers. Yet in one four year period, his firm closed over 4,100 sides. No wonder his company generated more new brokerages per agent than any other back then.

Wanna know what his secret was?

He hired an army of Chris’s and laughed his way to the bank every year.

Bookmark this to: del.icio.us • Digg it • StumbleUpon • Subscribe to RSS feed

So it’s almost five days since I dropped the dime on the bribe gifts being thrust upon the contributors to AG. Has anyone publicly renounced them so far? We got to see Jay Thompson issue some tepid caveats about the gift products — from our pages, not AG’s. And we got to watch in horror as Russell Shaw imploded, which wasn’t pretty. But if anyone has actually come out and said, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” — I’m not aware of it.

Doesn’t much matter, by now. The moment is gone.

You — meaning you, the invisible reader — will react as you choose, and that is not only your business, but it’s your perfect right. But I can give you a very simple lens for understanding the issue, one that not even the chorus line of tap-dancers who showed up in our comments could manage to gainsay:

Suppose you are finally about to be interviewed by the real estate reporter from your local “City” magazine. Very big deal, very exciting, maybe your chance to break through to the target market you’ve spent a fortune trying to attract. But then you discover that the reporter has taken $2,000 in in-kind gifts from your fiercest competitor. How does that make you feel? Is it possible that the reporter is on the up and up and the gifts mean nothing? Well… yeahhhh… Is is plausible to you that you are about to be served up like a plate half full of cold leftovers? That’s what’s running through your head, isn’t it? Taking expensive gifts from people you write about doesn’t mean you are necessarily corrupt, but it sure makes you look and smell corrupt.

In our comments threads, there were a lot of specious arguments made in defense of taking these bribes, or at least not renouncing them. One of them was the notion that “everyone is biased.” This is a very common fallacious dodge — which is to say a persuasively invalid argument. We start by acknowledging the obvious facts that each of us has a unique point of view, and each of us is operating from limited information. The fallacious dodge is to imply that these facts are equal to corruption.

Like this: Miss Misled is in deep earnest, is striving to be impartial but, alas, is factually in error in the position she has taken.

Mister Crooked is shamelessly and recklessly mouthing the specious propaganda has has been paid to spread to a gullible public.

Neither Miss Misled nor Mister Crooked is factually correct in their pronouncements. But those pronouncements are not morally equal — very far from it. Miss Misled has made a mistake, but Mister Crooked is deliberately lying to you.

(Every logical fallacy can be understood at this level of detail if you take the time to take them apart. Learning to reason according to the rules of sound rhetoric could be a worthy goal for 2009.)

In this particular instance the purpose of the rhetorical dodge is to fudge the difference between honest bias and dishonest tendency.

Tendency or tendentiousness is an attempt to deliberately mislead people into doing something they otherwise would not do. I can think of two flavors, political tendency and pecuniary tendency.

The latter is what salespeople are often accused of — not always without justice. It consists of fudging facts and tickling emotions to get people to do things that will be profitable to the proponent.

We’re more apt to excuse political tendency — to our peril. Politicians lie to us in order to get more power or to pay off their supporters — themselves most often advocates of pecuniary tendency.

The funniest stooges in this charade are the taxpayers, of course, who get whipped this way and that, getting their pockets picked all the while.

The saddest clowns, to me, are the newspaper and TV reporters, who deploy the tools of political tendency for no gain of their own, but simply because they are puerile believers in the beauty and justice of whipping innocent taxpayers and picking their pockets.

We’re watching all of this happen right now, in Phoenix, as we become the latest city to be encysted with that risible product of political tendency known as “light rail.”

If you understand railroading, you will know that, whatever “light rail” might be, what you are looking at in the picture shown above is a trolley car. Absolutely everything about this boondoggle is a lie, starting with its name.

There are many, many more lies behind this trolley:

• Like all municipal transit systems, it cannot possibly ever make a profit
• According to its builders’ own projections, only one car in 1,000 will be taken off the roads by the trolley
• That same report admits that the trolley will make both traffic and air pollution worse, not better
• There is no profitable route for a trolley in Phoenix, but the route that would lose the least money — north and south on Central Avenue from Dunlap to Baseline Roads — was not used; this is the route with the greatest concentrations of bus passengers right now
• The second-least-unprofitable route — north and south on Central Avenue from Dunlap to Buckeye Roads, east and west from there along Buckeye Road/University Drive through the airport, through ASU, and then perhaps north and south on Alma School Road to the commercial heart of Mesa — was also not used
• Instead, bowing to the political tendency of wealthy homeowners in Phoenix, to the political tendency of ASU in Tempe and to the pecuniary tendency of the aging burghers of Mesa, the trolley meanders along a route that is often stupid and useless — unless you understand political and pecuniary tendency
• The failure to connect through the airport, in particular, will cost the taxpayers another $2 billion to build yet another trolley system to connect with this one — even though the stupid route chosen parallels the freeway that runs through the airport from less than one mile away!
• ASU is building a completely redundant medical school in gritty downtown Phoenix in a give-back of political tendency; by forcing undergrads to take at least one round-trip a day for their core classes in Tempe, ASU is artificially boosting the passenger count on the trolley with young, shiny, happy, healthy and prosperous-looking students — each one traveling on a taxpayer-subsidized transit pass
• Taking account of the truly insane route the trolley takes through the campus of ASU, my speculation is that the give-back for the bogus medical school will a rebuilt Sun Devil Stadium — even though the taxpayers just built a brand new football stadium in Glendale
• Though much has been made of the new commercial real estate development along the route of the trolley, little notice has been taken of the hundreds of once-profitable small businesses that were wiped out, either by eminent domain or by trolley construction
• Similarly, hundreds of homeowners were dispossessed by the trolley; going north on 19th Avenue, dozens of homes have been taken even though the trolley may never run that far north
• As you might guess, much of that new commercial real estate development along the route of the trolley is being subsidized by the taxpayers
• In addition, the municipalities along the trolley route have imposed a Transit-Oriented Development zoning overlay to encourage certain kinds of business and to discourage others; in particular, if your business is friendly to drivers, you’re screwed
• As with the bogus ASU medical school, the purpose of the Transit-Oriented Development zoning overlay is to stack the deck in the trolley’s favor: If municipalities can make driving difficult or painful, they hope to compel people to use the trolley
• Even so, in the long run the trolley will result in fewer mass-transit passengers, not more: The massive unprofitability of the trolley will require cuts in much more popular (though still unprofitable) bus lines; this has already started happening
• Even though the trolley is a favorite pet of the political tendencies of Yuppies, particularly, it will turn out to be an unmitigated disaster for the poor — who don’t have any delusions about the “glamor” of mass-transit but have to take it anyway; this is well-established fact in other cities that have built trolley systems
• Even so, in a city where the afternoon high temperature is very often way over 100 degrees — in blistering sunlight, sometimes with fairly high humidity — Yuppies who have to walk some distance, either to their station or from it, will not take the trolley to work; their very expensive clothing would be ruined
• And even though the trolley runs for much of its route behind a curb, and even though the traffic lights have been rejiggered to the trolley’s advantage, nevertheless it will be the source of a huge number of automobile accidents, many of them fatal; this again is well-established fact demonstrated in other trolley-afflicted cities
• If news reports in other trolley-trend cities are any guide, these accidents will either go unreported or will be minimized
• And even though every bit of this is true, none of it will be reported in the mainstream media outlets — not now and probably not ever

This is the curse of tendency. Media outlets in Phoenix have been yammering about this silly trolley system for ten solid years, but almost none of these ugly facts have been reported in the popular media.

And please understand, I like public transportation. I’ve lived in New York and Boston, where mass-transit is actually useful — not profitable, but useful. I used to read all twelve of Ibsen’s “social” plays, in order, every summer, on the MBTA commuter rail on the way into Boston. If it weren’t for the rape of the taxpayers, I’d have nothing but praise for mass-transportation.

And here’s the real kick in the head: Mass-transit might actually be profitable if government would get itself out of the real estate and transportation businesses. We build stupidly because the taxpayers never tire of being raped. The earth is 70% water, and yet, somehow, municipally-managed water-supplies are always in “crisis.” In Phoenix the tap-water tastes like chlorine bleach and dead fish. In preference to getting out of a business they’re obviously incompetent to manage, the city produces agitprop public-service-announcements telling people to serve up tap-water — rife with who knows what kind of poisons and bacteria — with ice and lemons to kill the awful taste and smell. One would think that the more thoughtful kind of taxpayer could catch a clue about government management of what should be commercial enterprises.

But instead, the people want to play with their Toonerville Trolley, no matter what the cost, no matter what the opportunity costs, no matter who gets hurt. That’s really sad, but our own hands are not clean, either. As bad as the trolley might be for everyone, considered as a group, it can be very good for particular individuals — Ibsen readers, perhaps. So here we are pimping the damn thing ourselves. I’m doing a contract later today with a buyer whom I have no doubt will be taking the trolley to and from her job downtown.

But: The point of all this is this: You are being lied to, all the time, by the very people you trust to tell you the truth. There has not been any honest reporting about this trolley system in Phoenix, nor about the water supply, nor about any other pet project of politically tendentious reporters. For seventy years and more we made fun of Soviet-style propaganda — half hysterical hectoring, half saccharine boosterism. Welcome to Soviet America. If any topic of civic life is subject to the political tendencies of reporters, you will not discover the truth by pursuing the popular media.

And it goes for us, too. If we are not doing everything we can to make sure that political or pecuniary tendency is not creeping into our writing, then it probably is. And if we are not doing everything we can to eradicate doubts about our tendencies in the minds of our readers, there is no reason not to expect those doubts to take root.

Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing

Bookmark this to: del.icio.us • Digg it • StumbleUpon • Subscribe to RSS feed

I was inspired to write this post as I read the comments on Brian Brady’s recent post on Cyber Pros… The conversation turned to the relative value of various barcamps, seminars, and conferences. As you might’ve guessed I have some thoughts on the subject. Go figure.

I’ve attended seminars etc. since the mid-70’s. Back then, and until the internet created its own mushroom cloud of ‘experts’, they existed for the sole purpose of sending you back home better off than when you arrived. In those days the seminars were taught by the giants of the industry. I spent much of my late 20’s attending seminars in awe of the speaker. Unfortunately that’s not so these days.

From 1976 through about 1999 I was able to rely on coming away with much more than fool’s gold or networking opportunities when I laid my money down on seminars, or conferences. The gold standard (pun intended) was in 1980 when I completed the intense/expensive six day long CCIM courses, all five of them then. The info I learned and applied in those five weeks was phenomenally effective, salient, and results oriented. They were there to teach — and let the chips fall where they may. The failure rate for CI 101 back then was about 50% — with an open book final. That’s real. They didn’t, and still don’t tolerate posers.

I don’t know a single soul from those courses to this day.

Of course, if I’d taken them recently, that wouldn’t be the case. I’d of been better off having networked with classmates. But given the choice of either or? Give me the information, the knowledge, the ability to successfully apply every time. Though I attended investment real estate seminars like a groupie back in the day, nothing impacted my ability to produce positive results for my clients and my business more than the CCIM classes. Nothing, not even close.

I’ve been to a couple barcamps. The cost is usually so low, from free to $100 or so, that if I take away the proverbial ‘one nugget’ plus the cool networking, I’m a happy ‘camper’. I go expecting nothing but networking, and am pleased with any worthy new knowledge passed my way.

I’ve polled at last count over 30 people I respect, for their opinions of Inman. And for the record, I don’t have an ax to grind either way with them. Without exception the first thing out of their mouths was how truly impressive the networking was. Yet not one gave the various topics taught an ‘A’ grade. Not one. Most said they blew off many of the topics, or found themselves lookin’ at their watches while attending.

Unchained on the other hand is to my way of thinking pretty analogous in concept to what I experienced with CCIM. They’re there to show you what works — to empirically lead you down the path of greater success in the real estate business.. They give details, the nuts and bolts of what gets bankable results, which is what attendees are there for, right? What I like best about Unchained is how the speakers also give up their failures, especially the ones which lead to what actually ended up putting skinned cats on the wall, or got them belly to belly with someone who could tell them to go to hell — or become a client.

One thing seminars of the 21st century have reenforced for me is that calling the guy is, for the most part, far more productive and cost effective than doing it yourself. CCIM, Unchained, and some of the barcamps are the exceptions. If I ever wanna pay several hundred bucks plus even more than that to network, do me a favor — shoot me. I already have a cell phone and know how to use it. The only time I gladly paid to ‘network’ was when I didn’t have time to meet potential new ‘bosses’ and paid to join several online dating sites. I dare ya to claim any networking you’ve ever done at a real estate conference yielded those kinda perks.

It’s when times turn tough that most folks begin in earnest to discern the wheat from the chaff when endeavoring to improve their game through seminars/conferences/barcamps or vendors’ products. Look at what’s out there now and ask yourself the bottom line question: Will attending this result in more cat skins on my wall? Theory is what makes your grass greener. Empirically proven methods leading to bigger bank accounts is what makes these things worth the time, effort, and money to attend. The rest is crap on a cracker dressed to look like fondue.

And for the record, I don’t make the same distinction some do when it comes to vendors. If they can make money ‘off of the real estate’ industry, instead of sharing their expertise from within, so what? My firm just installed a new database program called REST, and we’ll be shouting ’till we’re hoarse about how superior it is. They don’t have a single worthy competitor. You don’t have to listen to me though, and no, they won’t have paid me. And if they did, so what? Integrity says I must believe in products I’m paid to endorse. Getting paid to endorse products in which I believe is called, for lack of a better phrase, The American Way. In fact it was just last year when on these very pages I unashamedly trolled for a database vendor to pony up to the Put Up Or Shut Up Bar. REST put up.

Ironically, the newest ‘vendor’ product to interest me big time is Greg’s new single-property websites. For a relative pittance I can give him the pictures and whatever else he needs, and voilà! there’s the website, no muss, no fuss, and I take all the credit with my client to boot. Works for me. I love the fact it’s Greg, but do you seriously think I’d give a damn if it was some other web guy who couldn’t spell real estate if you spotted him the ‘real’? Don’t answer that, it’s a trick question. If that product doesn’t earn Greg a truckload I’ll be surprised.

Whether it’s paying for learning excursions or vendors’ products, the bottom line is this: It was either more than worth the time, effort, and money to buy in, or it wasn’t. And the only way to measure that is how many cats gave their skins to prove it.

The rest is, as I said earlier, crap on a cracker no matter how attractively it’s spread.

Bookmark this to: del.icio.us • Digg it • StumbleUpon • Subscribe to RSS feed