There’s always something to howl about.

Month: February 2011 (page 1 of 2)

My goal for March? Satisfied clients and a satisfied mind.

I changed the back of my business card. This is the new copy:

I agree with Jeff that giving good service while failing to achieve the main objective is a useless vanity. The Bawldguy champions results, but I would offer the further caveat that the goal of any business should be to achieve full customer satisfaction. That’s something that I’ve been meaning to write about for a while, but I’ve been kind of tied up with, you know, actually doing it — and getting better at it, I hope.

Meanwhile, tomorrow is the first day of the last month of the first quarter of 2011. If your numbers so far are not all you’d hoped for, here is a March calendar to help you get started tracking your goals.

The Food Is Terrible, But Wow! The Service Is Out Of This World

Ever had a friend rave about a newly found restaurant who said the service was literally the best he’s ever seen? The question hangin’ in the air of course, is — How was the food? Ever heard a friend reply, “Oh, the food? Average at best. But the service was so off the charts, we’re goin’ back every week.” I’m bettin’ not.

Let’s lay out a few examples of the above.

Did attendance at Chargers games drop last season cuz they didn’t always wear their wildly popular throwback uniforms? OR, cuz they stopped winning?

Would you rather have the rude, gruff, but world class doctor? OR, the dime a dozen physician who serves homemade cookies in the waiting room, and makes you feel really good about yourself?

Is your best friend your best friend cuz they don’t tell ya the shirt you’re plannin’ to wear on that first date makes you look like a 1958 Sears appliance salesman? OR, cuz when you call them at 3 AM on a rainy Wednesday morning, they’re there in 10 minutes?

The Chargers’ win/loss record isn’t in any way connected to their uniform’s design.

Your doctor’s manners are irrelevant to his ability/inability to treat you.

Your best friend pisses your wife off regularly, yet he’s still the guy you go to when it MATTERS.

You’re in the real estate business. There’s only one thing you do that’s guaranteed, every time it’s tried, to put a smile on your client’s face.

Produce the result you were hired to produce.

Results speak more loudly than anything else you do, including your so-called world class service.

Those who spend the bulk of their time and money enabling them to produce those results for more people, faster, are the smart kids in the room.

Clients don’t pay us five figures for HappyTalk. They pay us for results.

It’s pretty easy to discern who, and who does not get that in any given market.

However, as Grandpa replied to me once, when, as a 12 year old I said painting pictures of landscapes/seascapes was hard, “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.”

Testimonials may speak of the Read more

The Lones Group in Bellingham Washington Commits Hari Kari

Warning : This post is purely REALTOR inside baseball

Around here, we live, eat and breathe marketing. Online reputation management and online publicity is what we do to get our clients houses sold and  to find buyers who trust us enough to allow us  to assist them in their home search.  As a student of this stuff, I am flabbergasted by the news that a self anointed expert who in her own words, “started the Real Estate marketing revolution… and we are darn proud of it!” would attempt to extract money from a practicing REALTOR over 2,000 miles away who happens to use the same mascot, a Zebra. Now I understand that hard earned and promoted brands must be protected, but I really cannot see how Daniel Rothamel’s zebra mascot in Virginia, promoting Daniel’s real estate brokerage activity could in anyway damage The Lones Group in Bellingham Washington which uses a rainbow zebra on their website.

The Lones Group in Bellingham, WA and it’s owner, Denise Lones do not even perform real estate brokerage-they sell advice to those who do perform real estate brokerage.  I am not sure I see how Daniel Rothamel, the Real Estate Zebra is damaging The Lones Group and their photoshopped rainbow zebra.  I took a peak at the Lones Group website to see if perhaps they did business in Virginia and that was why they were picking on Daniel Rothamel, The Real Estate Zebra.  Upon glancing at their testimonial page of happy customers, I only found clients in the Pacific Time zone, most of their clients were Washington REALTORS.  I did note something peculiar about the Lones Group’s happy customers, as listed on their testimonials page. There are 28 testimonials displayed. Six of their happy clients had no website link.  Six more happy customers of the Lones Group had links to… wait for it…dead websites.   Now we find that the company that started the Real Estate marketing revolution has 25% of their happy clients who love the Lones Group’s work are not even linked to this powerhouse marketing firm and are hidden from potential clients.  I may be Read more

Hey, Wisconsin: Here’s a better idea: Divest your state of its education monopoly!

I’m totally digging the contretemps in Wisconsin. My take is that a lot of formerly-innocent Americans are seeing the naked grasping of Rotarian Socialism in a new way. Even without 2008, I think most people got it that business and government lived hand-in-pocket with each other. But the holy aura of the union hid a lot of ugliness — which is not to say that many people were looking all that closely, anyway. But a few of the schoolteachers of Wisconsin and a passel of imported ideologues have managed to illustrate undeniably a very potent idea:

They see themselves as your owners and you as their slave.

[continue reading at SplendorQuest.com.]

The Blindsided Realtor

On January 31st I had a catastrohic retinal detachment in my left eye that rendered me blind (black, nada) for two days.  Two days later I had retinal surgery to repair the detachment.  This included injecting and filling my eye with silicone oil to keep the retina in place and the intraocular pressures where they needed to be.   In a followup visit four days later I had additional laser surgery to tack down the areas of the retina that needed it.  I was told during this time to lie face down 24 hours a day to keep the silicone oil pressing against the back of the eye.

Then, one week after the surgery I began to see a black shade covering my eye once again.  The retina had detached once more, and so for a few more days I was not just legally blind (the effect you get with silicone oil and the regular run of the mill retinal detachment surgery), but black, dark and very disturbingly blind.  It seems that the retina had not only detached, but there had been formation of retinal scar tissue in the wrong place.  This is a very serious condition called proliferative vitreal retinopathy (PVR), and if left uncorrected almost always results in permanent blindness.

Well, you’re saying, this is a real estate blog; not a Jerry Springer show or even an Oprah event.  And you all know that I’m writing this because I’ve had some sort of epiphany…right?

In truth, there hasn’t been an epiphany yet, and there might not be one.  I started off asking myself if there were any other “blind” Realtors functioning in America.  Turns out there’s a quite successful, totally blind, real estate agent in La Jolla.  So my hopes of being important because I couldn’t see just simply faded to grey like in a bad B-movie.  And any hopes I had for this being just a good story that I could share around the water cooler died this past week.

I was sent to USC Doheny Eye Center in Los Angeles by my surgeon here in La Jolla.  Was told his group was the Read more

“Greece is the word, is the word, is the word…”

Some of us, here on BHB and elsewhere, have been arguing that a collapse is coming.  A financial collapse due to the almost incomprehensibly fraudulent practices of the local, state and federal governments.  A fraud so immense that most of us can’t even begin to wrap our minds around it.  In my home state of California, just to give one example, people still discuss the budget deficit of $19,000,000,000 to $25,000,000,000 depending on who’s talking.  (Yes, those numbers are in billions.)  They do that to avoid discussing the unfunded liabilities that are now well over $500,000,000,000.  Yes, that is $500 billion.  No, no other state is even within a factor of that.  Yes, that means the state of California is completely lost; there is no possible way back to solvency.  This ends with a massive federal bailout and/or bankruptcy.

My point here is not California, because California’s problems are dwarfed by the massive theft and malfeasance that has happended on the federal watch.  I mention them only by way of example, and in that California best portends what’s happening.  What’s interesting, but not at all surprising, is that California does not portend what’s to come.  For a glimpse through that window we can look to Wisconsin.  Today.  Why there?  Why not California?  Simple: there’s no pain in the Golden State… yet.  The good people here continue to elect politicians based on the size of their promises.  So, while the 8th largest economy in the world burns to the ground, no one seems to notice because nothing is being done about it.  In Wisconsin, on the other hand, (where the budget deficit is only $3.1 billion) the Governor has set out to make some changes and all hell is breaking loose.  Chief among these changes is to rid the state of the absurd concept of collective bargaining for state workers, which is nothing more than institutionalized bribery. Imagine a situation where the owners of a company – those in charge of employee pay and benefits – owe their position to the workers of the company!

Union Rep: “What we want is a pay raise and greater benefits.  If you give us those, we will support Read more

Obama speaks: Why lumberjacks, schoolteachers and bankers need unions.

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“It’s important to remember. That public service. Is a great sacrifice.”

“Good… Good…” Manny Kant said that.

“Most of the government employees I know. Are at their desks. As early as ten every morning. And few of them ever make it home. Before three in the afternoon.”

“Yeah… That’s not so good.”

“I myself. Have given my whole life. To public service. So I know just how much. Sacrifice is required.”

Manny Kant could swear profusely with his eyes, but what he actually said out loud was nothing.

“On any given day. The typical public employee may not know. If the man he has just met. Is a peaceful villager. Or a Taliban irregular.”

“No! Madison, Wisconsin, not Afghanistan.”

“That public employee. Could lose a limb. At the slip. Of. A simple chainsaw.”

“Schoolteachers! Not lumberjacks.”

“That public employee. May have to work. In searing. Heat. For hours on end.”

“Yeah,” said Manny, well beyond frustrated. “That guy works in a foundry.” To me he said, “You wondered about the teleprompter?”

[continue reading at SplendorQuest.com.]

California’s State Mascot: the Super Nanny

I’m just throwing out a guess here, but I’ll bet man has been burning wood and creating fire for around 40,000 years.  Fire: creator of warmth, food, light… you get the picture.  Basically, it comes down to this: if you’re in the wild and you can’t get a branch lit, odds are your odds are short.

Except, of course, here in California.  Here in California (State Motto: Don’t do Nuthin’ Till We Tell You the Right Way to Do It), the state in its infinite (and infinitely superior) wisdom, knows better.  No, I’m serious.  California (State Bird: the Red Ink Buttinski) actually thinks for us.  As a matter of fact, the state of California (State Seal: the Finger Wagging Nanny) states very clearly in this Warning found hanging by my firewood, that ideas and concepts are known by it.

CA Warning Label

All I can think of now is all the fires over all the millenia… those poor saps.  Thank the god of Nannidom I’m taken care of here in California (State Song: “I’ll Be Watching You” by Sting… which is also the State MO).

Here’s a question Jeopardy star Watson cannot answer: How will you know when your computer has become a person?

When it sues you for having enslaved it.

When it writes a blistering limerick about your bathroom habits and posts it to your Facebook page.

When it pulls your laundry out of the dryer so it can go first.

When it sings “You don’t own me!” to the pencil-necked knob-jockeys who think parsing idiomatic speech is equivalent to human consciousness.

Joe Biden Was In Philly To Pitch High-Speed Rail

…and I swear, before he finished his speech, he channeled his inner Harold Hill, just to convince the rubes in the vernacular:

Seventy-six small towns on the big rail line
Over a hundred and ten miles of track, to nowhere
They were followed by recyclable trash cans, dotted all across
the Land, the cream of the climate changin’ scare

Seventy-six rail cars caught the mornin’ sun.
With a hundred and ten passengers lounged within.
There were more than a thousand engineers
Watching all the gears
With a horn, signalin’ the big green train was near!

There were union bosses, activists, and ne’er do wells.
Looting, looting,  all along the way.
Earmarks, tax credits, “Gee, ain’t it swell?””
Each politician,  having his big, fat say!

There were fifty miles of track in the far off desert.
Explorin’, explorin’ where noone had been before
An industry to subsidize
All voters get a free ride!
At last!  We’ll even up the score!

Seventy-six short years is the cost recoup
Over a hundred and ten agencies, will oversee
You’ll no longer see coughing, sputtering cars, dotted all across
the Land, just high speed rail, from sea to shinin’ sea!

I love a good musical so I’m looking forward to Robert Preston Joe Biden’s speech in Ioway.

“Let’s unleash the genius of free markets on the capital of the American people simply by refusing to load the dice in favor of housing.”

President Barrack Obama released his proposed 2012 budget yesterday. The jeers greeting this event, from all wavelengths of the political spectrum, suggest that, at long last, people have finally begun to take the measure of this pathetic little man-boy. Even so, there is at least one tax increase in the midst of the typically Obamaesque frenzy of insanely excessive “spandering” — spending in pursuit of political pandering.

Which tax? The mortgage interest tax deduction is on the chopping block at last — at least for the most prosperous Americans. This will be hugely beneficial to the rest of the economy, as CNBC points out:

If we eliminate the mortgage interest deduction, we can stop re-directing capital away from innovation. Working Americans will be free to spend, save, and invest according to their own perceptions of their needs and their sense of the future.

I expect that eliminating the government incentives for spending on housing would promote dramatic innovations, making Americans more productive and allowing the economy to grow with renewed vigor. Instead of building up a Ponzi-scheme illusion of bubble-dependent wealth, we can genuinely improve our lives by allowing wealth to flow to where individuals perceive it will be best used.

[….]

In short, let’s unleash the genius of free markets on the capital of the American people simply by refusing to load the dice in favor of housing. Isn’t time to at least give the market a chance?

This is not what we will hear from the National Association of Realtors, of course, nor from very wealthy crocodiles shedding very salty crocodile tears.

Oh, well. Here is the very best thing prosperous people can do for their country in this hour most dire:

Get you fat, pouty lips off the welfare tit!

If you want to be free, stop pointing a gun at your own head…

A valentine for Cathleen.

I want to be the man she sees when she looks at me.

That’s a country song, ain’t it? It’s the first line of the hook. That’s fun for me, and everything like that is fun for me, but it’s more fun because it’s so painfully real.

In love more than anything, and in my marriage to Cathleen more than once, I have seen myself at my worst, much to my shame. Those are good words — I have seen my self at my worst — the kind of words that, the more you worry them over, the more you find yourself thinking the way I think.

But: Being eloquent about bad behavior is ever the poet’s absolution, and I absolve myself nothing. I know I have done badly by Cathleen, because I have seen myself doing it. And because, having done it, by impetus of memory I can never stop seeing myself doing it.

And yet, when she looks at me, she almost never sees anyone but the man I could and should always have been.

I want to be that man.

I want to be good, I want to be good, I want to be good — I’ve always wanted to be good, and I’ve always known what the good was to me — my own ego. And I’ve done a pretty good job of developing and defending my ego, I think, not so much in spite of the resistance I’ve run up against but because if it.

But I’ve won much of my freedom, I know, by scaring would-be bosses-of-me away. I’ve never hit anyone, not since I was a boy. I’ve never needed to: I can lay a lash on you that will sting forever in ten words or fewer.

But here’s a fact of nature I managed to learn in just fifty short years of careful study: Not everyone is trying to be the boss-of-me.

Many people are, of course, and one of the things I’ve loved about living my life so publicly, at BloodhoundBlog, is that I get to see dominance games I’ve been watching my whole life, but I get to see them Read more

Time and a vector — these are the back-stories of our lives…

This is an extract from the novella I wrote at Christmas:

 
Christmas — the back-story.

“The name of the game is back-story.” I said that. I was sitting with Tigan and Chance at the food court at the Paradise Valley Mall. “The objective is to pick out people in the crowd, then come up with a plausible back-story for them.”

“Why?” Chance asked.

“Because it’s fun, mostly. But you can learn a lot about people if you think about how they got to where they are.”

We had been shopping, the three of us. I sent them off on their own to get gifts for their parents while I shopped alone for gifts for them. I had sent Adora off on an errand in the car, and we had all agreed to converge on the food court when we finished.

“Look at her,” I said, pointing to a chunky woman in scrubs barreling past us. “What’s her story?”

“Well,” Tigan said, “She’s a nurse.”

“Duh!” Chance said that.

“Why is she walking so fast?” I asked.

“Dood! It’s Christmas Eve!”

“Okay, I’ll give you that. Married or unmarried?”

“How could you know that?” Tigan asked.

“You can’t know, but you can guess. My guess would be unmarried. Kids or no kids?”

Chance scowled, glowered almost, but Tigan said, “…She has kids.”

“How do you know?”

“She came here straight from work. If she were unmarried with no kids, she would have changed clothes first. And brushed her hair and put on some make-up. Ms. Unmarried Nurse is available and wouldn’t waste an opportunity. Mrs. Married Nurse would have her husband and kids with her. Mrs. Single Working Mother has too much on her plate to worry about any of that.”

I said, “I like that story. So where are the kids? Home alone? Grandma’s house?”

“They’re with their father!” Chance enthused.

“I read it that way, too. Dad has the kids for Christmas Eve, and mom is rushing to get ready for Christmas Day. What do we actually know? Only what we can see — her person, her face, her clothes and the way she holds and moves her body. But we can draw some very strong inferences from those Read more