BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Flourishing (page 33 of 38)

Thriving as only a rational animal can

April 24, 2009

Unchained Melodies: Here’s what our world sounds like to me tonight…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Everything I see lately of what was once so decisively “our world” just looks to me like intramural patty-cake. That’s as may be, by now. It is what it is. I am not in it. I am not of it. And I am quite a bit less interested in it than I was when this was still an avoidable fate. But I know — and in a year’s time everyone will know — that BloodhoundBlog is what’s left outside the walls of the Praesidium. We are free because we understood that chains can be forged from burnished gold and not just pig iron.

But I am a rude dude in a rude mood, tonight more than most nights. We’re four days away from BloodhoundBlog Unchained, and I am profoundly inspired by all that we are going to do. And I look around me and I realize that “our world” is what it has always been. It doesn’t matter who chose to kneel for those “glittering prizes and endless compromises.” All that matters — all that ever mattered — is who didn’t.

Here’s what our world sounds like to me tonight.

April 21, 2009

Feeling Overwhelmed? Turn To Ayn Rand

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

Again, I found this:

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours. -Ayn Rand

If your reading this, chances our, the world is yours.  Don’t get discouraged by the losers, mediocrities and mealy mouthed pieces of excrement that want to homogenize the best among us.

April 18, 2009

Sometimes It’s Good to Go Home

by

Realtor, Rabble-Rouser

Author website

I just returned from a brief respite – short of 2 weeks – in Dallas.  I went home.

I needed to get away from the day-to-day grind that my life had become, seemingly caught up in the negative energy that seems to have taken over.  My dad just had knee replacement surgery and I thought it would be a great opportunity to help out and reconnect with my folks, my brother and his family.  I also wanted to spend some time refocusing my efforts on my business plan to create a web-based community for do-it-yourself buyers and sellers of real estate as well.  I had a full plate.

While I did get a plan down on paper regarding my new business idea, I realized I accomplished so much more – quite honestly, it was a significantly more valuable exercise.

I became grounded again.

Ever feel like you’ve lost your mojo?  Needless to say, many of us are facing really troubling circumstances, but it so important to keep perspective on our lives.  Sometimes when we take a brief moment in time to step away from our crazy lives, we get to experience timeless treasures.

I consider myself blessed to have wonderful, loving parents.  My folks are getting older – edging into their late 70’s.  Still in great health and active, but beginning to show the signs of lives entering into dusk.  I wanted to be around to help out – let my mom have some time to do her own thing.  Just be there.

But something both unsettling and comforting at the same time happened.  I saw for perhaps the first time my dad completely vulnerable.  This is a man that never cracked.  A West Point Grad – a man who served his country.  Raised 7 seven kids.  Proud, disciplined, smart, kind, but a tough son-of-a-bitch.  He’s mellowed over the years for sure – but my brothers and sisters and I often laugh that he’s gone from a Type A++ personality to maybe an A-.  The surgery seemed to have broken him – just a bit.  I wasn’t prepared to see him like that.  I felt like I Read more

April 17, 2009

10 reasons big box brokers suck

by

Realtor, Indie Broker

Author website

Did I really just say that? Sorry but it’s high time to call a spade a spade.

I recently decided to cut the apron strings so-to-speak with my old broker and go “indie”. After paying in about $200K in exchange for about $12K worth of business over a five year period, I had to evaluate whether the relationship with my broker was anything other than terribly one-sided. Since about Year 1.5 when I began working full-time from home, I’d managed to become pretty independent in terms of how I operated and procured business. I finally saw I wasn’t getting much of anything in return for those hefty commission splits and transactions (not counting the occasional pep talk, although at times it was much appreciated.) So I left at the start of the New Year. Since making the split official, I’ve had a chance to evaluate the cost of every aspect of my business compared to what it used to be. Not surprisingly, I’ve found that my overall costs are much lower. More surprisingly, however, I also discovered:

1. business cards were a profit center for the broker
2. sign installations were a profit center
3. color copies were a profit center
4. template sites (complete with crappy framed in MLS data) were a profit center that did not even generate leads
5. advertising was a profit center
6. leasing back office space to agents was a profit center
7. accounting services were a profit center (in the form of huge transaction fees)
8. sending closings through the broker’s joint venture with a local title company was a profit center
9. home warranty applications were a profit center (by skimming off the top of agents’ referral checks)
10. 100% tax deductible sales meetings were a profit center – vendors paid the broker to have their mediocre template sites etc shamelessly endorsed & pushed on agents

But wait, you may be thinking. Surely there were other ways your broker was adding value? Sadly, not really. Training beyond the basics was almost non-existent. Occasionally something would be offered gratis, eg a bank talking about changing lending standards, thus hoping to get some loan business. Or “training” Read more

April 14, 2009

If you want to learn what we know — and to learn what we are learning — you’re coming to BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Okay, this is my last pitch for BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix. If you can’t figure out which side of the bread has the butter on it, you’re just going to have to wear a bib.

Here’s the deal: What we’re going to teach you, nobody teaches. We’re going to go hands-ons, step-by-step through the things you need to be doing to create a state-of-the-art marketing profile. By the time you leave Phoenix, punch-drunk and exhausted, you will have built yourself a brand new marketing profile — just in time for the real estate market to make its rebound.

We’re going to be together for 72 hours, and out of that you might sleep 15 hours. The rest of the time we’re going to be working — in eight three-hour hands-on labs and in between-class and after-class sessions where we can learn, think and grow together.

The goal is to build a scenius, a shared genius among the bunch of us, so that we all come away smarter and better-equipped to take on the wired world of real estate.

What are you going to get for your money?

State-of-the-art weblogging techniques, photography and graphic arts expertise, social media marketing acumen and the salesmanship skills necessary to make belly-to-belly conversions. (Excuse me: To Skin cats.)

On my side of the quad, you’ll learn search engine optimization and search-engine marketing, lead generation and management techniques, landing pages and a whole lot more.

Taken together, we’ll be covering every step of the real estate marketing process from the customer’s first tenuous investigations through first contact, incubation, the sales cycle and conversion.

And these classes will be taught by actual working real estate professionals who are actually doing this work in their own practices.

Like who? Mister Ubiquitous, Brian Brady, is the Dean of Marketing. He’ll be leading Linda Davis, Kristal Kraft and Sean Purcell on the content side of the campus. I’ll be serving as the Dean of Geeks, working with Eric Blackwell, Kelly Kohler and the inmimicable Ryan Hartman.

There will be other people speaking, including Mark Green giving a presentation on CRM marketing. And there will be a support staff of experts to Read more

April 11, 2009

Wanna Piss Off The RE.net? Succeed with Online Sales Letters

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

I forgot how much I love Copyblogger.  Greg Swann is echoing its posts on a scene in the sidebar.  I just clicked over to the one which explains that the death of ugly long-copy is overexaggerated.  That article links to an article that asks “Is Your Tribe Holding You Down?”  When you read about “the Cool Kids”, does it remind you of the RE.net?  A few wealthy tech guys and a whole lotta bloggers with a real estate license, pontificating about how consumers “might” behave.

Then there’s the “IM crowd” who remind me a whole bunch of the BHBU grads.  Speaking of which, where are all the BHBU graduates lately? I think I know the answer to that because I’ve talked to a lot of them on the phone.  The BHBU grads are JUST like the “IM” crowd Copyblogger talks about; they’re hella busy.

If  you’re all worked up, you can skip the rest of this rant and yell at me.  Otherwise, keep reading

THIS burns my ass- agents and originators marketing the way the “cool kids” tell them to rather than doing what they KNOW works.

Take a look at this.

“EEEEWWWWWWWW” says the RE.net (usually over on ActiveRain).

Okay…but what about this?  This agent is using long copy techniques in a her video.   Is what she is doing much different than this?

Check this! This Unchained graduate is  inviting people to register for free homebuyer education courses (and building a HUGE opt-in database).  If you think he’s a genius, he’s not.  He ripped a page from the Dan Kennedy playbook.  (Scott will admit that, too- ask him in a few weeks at Unchained)

Here’s another example of ugly marketing.  I don’t know how many agents have told me that they have inventory problems.  Could you turn to CraigsList to find properties, that aren’t listed,  for your buyers?  Before you criticize the messenger, consider the message.  Few agents reverse prospect for home buyers.  While we talk about single property websites, nobody is discussing single-buyer websites.   Think old-school cover letters, accompanied with offers, to tug at the heartstrings of hard-hearted sellers…on the internet.

Which is more important to Read more

April 8, 2009

IF (…for the real estate crowd)

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

A little Hump-Day fun.  (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling.)

If you can keep your deal when all about you
Are losing theirs and talking of failure to you;
If you can trust your client when all clients doubt you,
And understand their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired of writing offers,
Or, being lied to, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being rejected, don’t deal in scoffers,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream of clients – and not make clients your master;
If you can think of volume – and not make volume your aim;
If you can meet with REO agents and short sale specialists
And take pride in what you do just the same;
If you can bear to hear the comps you’ve spoken
Twisted by appraisers to make agents fools,
Or watch the escrow you gave your all to broken,
And start again with new marketing tools.

If you can save 10% of all your winnings
And run through a prospecting plan,
And gain nothing, and start again at your beginnings
And never make complaint or show you ran;
If you can force your assistant and lender and staging pro
To serve your turn after they want to be gone,
And so hold on to that open escrow
With nothing but the Will to say: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with banks and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Brokers – nor lose the common touch;
If neither real estate coaches nor time vampires can hurt you;
If all clients count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ of marketing done;
Yours is the farm and all the transactions in it,
And – which is more – this profession will be fun!

March 26, 2009

Reflecting upon the Obamanation: “Love of our brothers? That’s when we learned to hate our brothers for the first time in our lives.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve been thinking about the disgusting spectacle of millions of Americans presuming to have an opinion about whether or not some AIG employee deserves to be paid a bonus. This was once a country where the idea of minding one’s own business was virtually a sacrament. And then I can’t turn on the television without seeing some grandmother bragging that Medicare makes it possible for her to dine on her own grandchildren. And to top it all off, tonight I’ve been trading depressing emails with Joe Strummer about our progress down the Road to Serfdom.

I know people think they understand what I’m talking about, when I talk about political philosophy, but I’m pretty sure that’s not true. The simple truth is this: I am sovereign in my person — and so are you. I do not have the right or power or privilege or duty to push you around by force, and you do not have that right or power or privilege or duty with respect to me. That’s easy to understand when we’re only talking about we two: If I overstep the boundaries, you will surely help me find my way back to the righteous path. But there’s no difference whether we’re talking about two people or two billion people. Each one of us is free in our person, free as a necessary consequence of being what we are.

Does that mean that other people cannot try to push us around by force? Obviously not. It simply means that failing to respond to human beings as sovereign entities, each one of us a unique end in himself, is wrong — epistemologically incorrect, morally unrighteous, politically criminal.

All of economics is based in collectivist premises, which leads to statements that are true but fundamentally irrelevant. Smith taught us that leaving men free to produce is better for everyone — which does not matter, because each one of us is free regardless of the benefits freedom yields for other people. Hayek among others points out that enslaving us is bad for everyone, which also does not matter. The impact upon the collective is meaningless. Read more

March 25, 2009

Is your business about to take a quantum leap? So is mine, so all I have time for is this: Whip your on-line and off-line marketing message into shape now, to make the most of the business coming your way

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

If you’re looking for the long, newsy pitch, I’ll try to get to it later this week. But for now I am working with and incubating more solid money work than I have in three years. I expect your dance card is starting to fill up, too.

Even given all the turmoil in the economy, BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix could not be coming at a better time. Why? Because you need to get your marketing profile in shape now — first to take advantage of all that new business coming your way, and second because your days of idle blue-sky time are coming to an end.

If you’re ready to rock, all you have to do from here is click a PayPal button to reserve your place at BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix. The event runs from April 28th to May 1st, 2009. Many more details can be found at the BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Phoenix weblog.

CyberProfessionals: $397


















Unchained Alumnus: $597


















Regular Price: $697


















Each of our eight three-hour labs will be taught by an expert, by a working real estate professional balanced on the bleeding edge of hi-tech marketing. We’re building this curriculum for our own self-improvement, too, so we know there is simply no better investment you can make in your career this year.

We’re looking forward to seeing you in Phoenix!

March 22, 2009

Why should you buy real estate — and lots of it — now? Well, inventory abounds, prices are low, and interest rates are incredibly low. And there’s one other factor you might take into account…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Follow the tiny blue line. That’s the growth of the U.S. money supply. That vertical surge you see there at the right is, essentially, a doubling of the number of dollars in (virtual) circulation since August 2008. Every dollar you own will soon be worth fifty cents. And every dollar you owe will soon be worth two bucks. You do the math…

March 20, 2009

There are no second acts in American real estate listings: It’s priced right, prepared right, presented right — and the house still won’t sell. What do you do now?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Barry Bevis in Tallahassee is looking for help. And he’s willing to pay for it.

He has a listing that he’s having trouble moving, and he’s looking for marketing ideas to draw the attention of a buyer.

Here’s Barry’s note:

I have a great listing that just won’t sell…

I’ve given it my version of the Bloodhound treatment: Custom Sign, Website, URL and lots of photos. You can see the home by clicking here.

It’s in a preferred neighborhood with parks and shopping within walking distance. It has been well maintained and is priced well — according to comps and other brokers feedback. It has a great yard and a hot tub!

The negatives: After a year of trying to sell I know them! Small Master bath and No Half Bath. Tile Counters in the kitchen — our area prefers Stone. The cost to cure these “issues” is beyond what the seller can do.

We did start with it priced too high. The seller was “not in a hurry” and wanted to try a higher price. I said okay because he is a friend — knowing all along that it was a mistake. Now its in the ballpark and would appraise at the new list price.

I get a couple of people in a week — and loads of website traffic. But no offers. Not even obnoxious low ball offers.

So the seller keeps asking me what to do… Besides lower the price. So this month we are dropping the price 1K a week, a 4K price drop. That will make it show up on any buyers automatic web searches as “Price Reduced.” We are also offering to pay a point to drop a buyers interest rate, likely below 5%.

What else should I be doing?

I’m looking for ideas to ignite interest in this home and get it sold. I’ve got a $100 AMEX gift card to the most creative idea. Greg and I are the judges.

Step up and tell me what to do!

This is a tough problem, one I wish I were unfamiliar with. F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “There are no second acts in American lives.” One of the Read more

March 18, 2009

The Wannabe Cosmopolite

by

Chicago Broker Owner Realtor | RE 2.0 Blogger

Author website

I choose to live in a big American city because frankly, I stick out like a sore sport in most rural settings and my accountant says we can’t afford London. One of my earliest pre-school memories was a Trenton to New York City train ride with my mother on a blustery Saturday morning.  How much of  that early 1960s day trip I accurately recall and how much is anecdotal family filler (pulled, kneaded and peppered over the redolent decades around my parents’ kitchen table) I’m not quite sure.  Still, certain sepia frames have been imprinted in my mind for life— gazing up at the sky scrapers whose dizzying heights give me vertigo to this day; creeping like a mouse through the bowels of  The Museum of Natural History, terrified of the mummies and the smell of all that marble; seeing  a man get his arm tore off by a taxi cab while standing at a busy Broadway corner…I’m pretty sure; sitting on a New York City phone book for a child’s eternity at  Mamma Leone’s, waiting for the dessert course to arrive.  Feeding the ducks in Central Park.  Observing  the landscape artists with easels and tams, their turpentined pigments slathered on thumb-holed palettes, probably all long dead by now but  full of  abstract perspective on that day.  Not peeing my pants for the entire afternoon.

A similar ferment churned in my gut when I first strolled the arrondissements of Paris; same thing along the canals of Rome; and Gaudi’s Barcelona.  And while I can easily inhale the woodsy fragrance of say, a Walden Pond (or even Dyer, Tennessee) without much complaint, I am clearly no Thoreau.  Once you think you see a guy get his arm torn off in Times Square, you can never really go back to the suburbs.  Not entirely.

As each year strikes like lightning, I find myself  being both drawn to, and repelled from, the urban twist of what once was Sandburg’s Chicago with its animal sense of outcome and yellow inner eye… ‘ hog butcher for the world.’  Liebling’s Second City.  On a calm evening the whispers can Read more

March 18, 2009

The quest for all the world’s riches is over: It’s in your iPhone…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The feature set for release 3.0 of the iPhone operating system was announced yesterday, but I think the photo above says just about everything that needs to be said.

Yes, that’s the iPhone serving as its own graphic equalizer user interface in order to maximize the performance of a third-party peripheral.

There is no one else in product design who thinks like this.

The huge benefit of naming things is that it enables us to conceptually separate this from that, to isolate particular objects or ideas so that we can think about their unique properties and potential.

The outrageous curse of naming things is that we tend to force-fit whatever it is we’re thinking about into the shoebox we’ve crafted for it by naming it.

Do you see? A public hallway is a shopping mall, and vice versa, but few of us can think of both at the same time. A mobile phone powerful enough to please Steve Jobs is going to be powerful enough to do almost anything, but only people who think like Steve Jobs can find the almost anything inside the phone.

Every other smart phone on the market is just a phone with some gadgets slapped on as afterthoughts. The iPhone is well on its way to being almost everything…

March 7, 2009

Here’s Some Piss Poor Journalism For Ya

by

Database Marketing Expert

Author website

Since Greg welcomed me aboard BHB last week, ideas have been racing through my head.  What would I write about first?

CRM execution tactics? Too predictable.

Skinned cats? I’ll leave that to my favorite cat skinner.

Then it occurred to me last night:  why not dive right in with an example of why BHB and blogs like it are putting the traditional fish rag out of business.

I’m a sports fan(atic).  I find it to be the ultimate in reality television.

But whether your remote is hard-coded to ESPN or not,  you’re surely aware of the ongoing steroid crisis in professional sports.

This week’s Sports Illustrated features an article about a former football player named Tony Mandarich, commonly known as the biggest bust in NFL history.  However, two decades ago, SI ran a story proclaiming Mandarich as “The Greatest Offensive Line Prospect in the History of Football”.  This story was written by a journalist named Rick Telander.

Now, twenty years later, Tony Mandarich Book Deal is ready to say he’s sorry for using steroids.  So he looks up good old Rick Telander Spineless Jellyfish and lands himself a feature article advertisement.

Here’s the article, please keep a barf bag nearby:  “Tony Mandarich is Very, Very Sorry”.

And here’s my favorite paragraph from said article (via Telander):

“… He lied to me.  Lied to everybody… I knew he was using steroids… but all I could do was hint at my suspicions…”

Um, Ricky baby… you knew he was taking illegal steroids, cheating and gaming the system but you, a Senior Writer for the most respected publication in sports were POWERLESS to do more than “hint at your suspicions”?

Telander’s article goes on to reveal that

  • Mandarich was known at his local gym as the “Doctor”

So what Telander’s telling us here is that he could have easily broken arguably the biggest sports-related story of the decade if he simply noses around the gym a little bit to explain how/why…

  • Mandarich magically transforms from a 6′ 3″ HS kid who rode the bench on his JV team into a behemoth that bench presses 585 pounds and “runs like a deer” in college

Wait a second.  This blog is supposed Read more

March 3, 2009

Demoing engenu: Building a web page, building that page into a web site, adding more content to that web site, reconfiguring the site, building a PDF site and repurposing standing content

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is a 38 minute video of me demoing a lot of different engenu functions. I got myself slightly screwed up in the middle, because I expected automatic inheritance to work at the level I was working on. In fact, it only works on folder levels below your current level, whatever that is. So when you make changes affecting the sidebar at the top level, which is what I was doing, you have to go in and make them manually.

I’m doing a lot of stuff in this video, but the way to learn how to use engenu is to use it.

Let me emphasize this: In this video, I spend most of my time talking, but in the course of all that chatter I built maybe 40 web pages, total. If you can build 40 new web pages in 38 minutes while you’re busy talking, good on ya. If not, you should learn how to use this software.

I’m embedding this, also, at Understanding engenu.

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Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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