There’s always something to howl about.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,–
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
–Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses
One of the things that the Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World has taught me (or maybe re-enforced to me) is the power of relationships and the wonderful power of giving. Paying it forward is more than just being nice, or the Golden Rule. It is a powerful marketing agent as well, when practiced with sincerity.
As controversies swirl and debates rage, I have 3 people that I simply want to thank.
They may not even realize it. Actually they might, I don’t know. But either way, they have inspired me by simply giving and sharing of their time and talents…not with the intent of an ROI, but with the intent of helping the new guy along get caught up in this thing we call blogging.
If you remember the story of Hansel and Gretel…they left a trail of breadcrumbs in order to find their way home. These folks leave their trails with an entirely different purpose…so that others behind them have an easy trail to follow in catching up. In my role as a teacher (and student) of all things technology and e-commerce to those in the real estate industry, here’s to the following fine folks:
Dave Smith – His most recent posts are very typical of his understanding of WordPress and of how to drive traffic to a hyperlocal blog. Thanks for building your reputation simply by sharing. It is an honor to call you a friend. And to think we got our friendship started with a post about In-n-Out Burger. Amazing, no?
Cheryl Johnson – I had not read your stuff prior to your addition to the pack of contributors here at BHB. Thank you for the tutorials and selflessly giving of your time to those who want to learn the art of WordPress. While I can find my way through code OK, there are MANY who benefit from your straight forward and easy to follow writing. We have never spoken and yet I can assure you that when we get to meet and hang out I will be a better person for it.
Greg, lastly, thank you. You are Read more
I just wrote this in a comment to Kevin Tomlinson, but it’s important, so I want to address it in the larger arena:
On the internet, everything is Kevlar.
This is for real, and it’s a lesson people are slowly learning all over the globe:
Ergo, on the internet, Socrates would have lived.
This is the triumph of the Greek ideal, an amazing, world-changing accomplishment.
Technorati Tags: blogging, disintermediation, technology
SO. What an entirely eventful week. When I’m done here, you may be shaking your head in disbelief, but YOU JUST CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP. Every single thing contained herein is the truth, and all of it has occurred within the last 7 days.
First, on a routine visit to the doctor’s office with my oldest son Hayden, I am informed by the physician that he has a very irregular heartbeat, and needs to be transported to Phoenix Children’s Hospital by ambulance, immediately, for more thorough testing. Of course, there’s an 8 hr line at the hospital for the paediatric cardiologist. Both of my sons are my absolute LIFE. You can imagine. . .
I’m happy to report that 48 excruciating life-times (hours) after that, my wife and I were informed that my son is fine. An exuberant new doctor made an overly cautious judgement call on a sinus arythmia (A common and harmless irregular heart-beat caused by. . .breathing; it is especially common in children between the ages of 3 and 6). Wow. That sucked. Try to settle in for some seriously needed “do-over sleep”.
Second, my cat Jasper, whom my wife and I picked up from the Humane Society in early January of 1990 passed away. This cat was 18 years old. He had been with my wife and I since just a few weeks after we began dating. I’d never had a cat like this one in my life. He was the most mellow, laid-back, snuggly cat I’ve ever has the pleasure of loving. Here’s me and him a month or so after we got him. (Don’t laugh at me. I was 18, and I’m fairly certain I was stoned.)
Eighteen years later, here we both are, much older and wiser. (This picture was taken about 4 hours before he breathed his last in my arms.)
About mid-morning today, as I’m burying my cat in the sunny spot under his favorite tree, my mother calls to tell me that my sister, who is 31 years old, and pregnant, has suffered internal bleeding from a tubal pregnancy. The baby is gone, and my sister comes close Read more
Wait…you’re still here?
Why?
====
I’m still a blogging outlier. I don’t pay enough attention to my own blog, let alone BHB; I read blogs and love to write, but it’s never been obsessive. I write when I’m inspired, not when I’m on deadline; when I’m short on time I scan enough to get the gist and mostly ignore links. In doing so I occasionally miss the gist entirely. One of the reasons I’m really looking forward to Unchained is to learn from those I like and respect to channel the process productively.
So not until yesterday morning, when I got the feed to Cathleen’s post, did I have any clue as to what was going on in RE.net. Not until this morning did I have a chance to read the more than four hundred comments here, here, and here. I’ve had to go back to the last week’s posts here to put them in proper context. (Russell: My apologies.)
Whew. As I said in my comment to Teri, people love to be offended; sometimes they wallow in it. (Note: I’m a people, too.) It brings the warm glow of righteousness, especially if it can be shared with fellow travelers. Objections to the contrary, ‘mob’ is a perfectly apt descriptor; “they’re a mob, but I’m thinking on my own” just doesn’t wash. Hiding behind the vitriolic din brings the false feeling of no consequence.
Since this is all new to me, some observations:
Dave Barnes, may the gods cherish his every atom, offers up this observation in a comment to another post:
Ardell wrote (on another blog): “Greg blacklists and deletes comments when anyone chooses to argue a point on BHB. You can’t have a conversation there or call them out there. That’s the joke of the whole “let us teach you about WEB 2.0″ thing. AS IF!”
Is this true?
Do you blacklist and delete?
Oh, you bet! We have to.
We don’t blacklist. In all of our thousands of pages, there is no black-bordered list of unpersons. But our comments policy is carefully defined and elaborately documented:
Comments policy: Everyone disagrees with us about something, and we welcome this: It’s how we learn. We encourage a free and spirited debate about the issues we raise here. We police comments with a very light hand, deleting comments and banning commenters only for extreme obscenity, flaming or flame-baiting, plagiarism, spam, impersonation (sock-puppetry) or copyright infringement (a fair-use quotation with a link is fine). This warrants emphasis: We are all about ideas, and, because of that, we are very strict about bad behavior. If you get the notion that your fear or anger or rock-ribbed moral fire accords you the right to abuse or insult or brow-beat the other guests in our salon, you will be ejected with dispatch. Nota bene: When you’re done, you’re done. Anyone can make a mistake, but if your behavior is palpably malicious, you will be banned from BloodhoundBlog forever.
I think I’ve probably told you this before, but I have a great respect for you, Dave. I’ve always found you to be open minded, and I don’t think you are one to be swayed by what one might call political considerations — looking good (or bad) in someone else’s eyes. I don’t think this was intended to be a softball question, but, who, practically speaking, tolerates intolerable behavior on his or her own property?
Even so, Brian Brady and I are each playing our own variations of a game we call What would David Gibbons do?, so I am going to take some pains to answer every Read more
This is a comment I just posted to Dustin Luther’s weblog. I’m putting it up here, too, so that people can see it (without the typos I found after I posted my 4Realz comment) and so that I can include links without getting shunted into moderation.
To be honest, I hate this kind of ugliness. But one of the reasons I am married to Greg is because I learned the hard way, a long time before I met Greg, that if you are not willing to stand up for what’s right, you are surrendering to evil.
This is my comment:
Dustin,
Disingenuous? From Dictionary.com: “lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; falsely or hypocritically ingenuous; insincere.” You believe that anything here is descriptive of me?
And let’s look at your entire concluding paragraph:
“And finally, Cathleen, I’ve been avoiding responding to comments on this thread because there is a small group of people (dare I call it a “pack”) who seem to be searching for any opportunity to defend Greg by criticizing people who were offended by Greg’s comments (seeing as how we’re in the midst of a political season, it seems appropriate to call it “negative campaigning”). I don’t assume you, or anyone else, was offended by Greg’s post, but it certainly seems disingenuous for you to insinuate that those of us who were offended must have an ulterior motive.”
How is that not a personal attack? You are smearing the integrity of people who have disagreed with you as a means of undermining their arguments without addressing them. How is this not an ad hominum attack? Or, do you claim to be righteous in offending Teri, Mike, Brian, Russell, Geno and me (the only six from, excluding Greg, twenty-two BHB contributors who have commented on this thread) because you’re Dustin Luther? And, by the way, isn’t your blanket statement that the BHB contributor’s comments “search for any opportunity to defend Greg by criticizing people…” a straw man argument? I certainly didn’t read the kind of defense you describe into either Teri’s or Geno’s comments. So that leaves Russell, Brian, Mike and me. Have you ever seen any Read more
I listen to misery and woe almost daily. There are plenty of Chicken Littles out there reporting that the sky is falling. And it is! There’s no doubt that the real estate market is in the tank in many places in the country. It certainly is in my neck of the woods. The question needs to be not, “Why is the sky falling?” or “Is the sky actually going to touch the ground?” or even “Is there a sky any more?” but “What do I do with this new reality?”
In my market, equity is a very rare thing. The area that I service primarily is a relatively new area of metro-Phoenix. So new, in fact, that there are very few people who have any equity left. Unfortunately, many of them are throwing up their collective hands, and thinking something like this:
“My house in not worth anywhere near what I paid for it. It will not be worth what I paid for it for a very long time. There are tremendous houses out there that are much better, much bigger, and more upgraded than mine, that are offered for sale for way, way less than I owe on my house. Let’s see. . .I’m paying $2500 per month on my mortgage. The market is glutted with rental properties that are better than mine, and I can rent them for about $1,000 per month. Think of the money I’ll save! It makes financial sense for me to kick my house to the curb, go rent a better one for half-price, let the market continue to go into the tank, then buy a better one a few years down the road. What will I lose? My credit? Credit comes back. My mortgage interest deduction? Pah. . .a measly sum compaired to what I’ll save each month on payments. Sounds like a plan to me. . .”
An unethical plan? Sure, but one that is ultimately appealing. Who said unethical was synonymous with unappealing? This is just the people who are manufacturing a crisis to get out of an unfavorable position. There are plenty who are facing a real Read more
Those who know me online KNOW that I am all about relationships.
That’s my currency and my value to people is my word. As contests like the GREATEST REAL ESTATE AGENT IN THE WORLD unfold…sometimes all you can do is correct things as they go…
Bob Wilson from San Diego and a couple of others did me a great service yesterday by clarifying something for me. He enquired about whether he would get a link back from my page AFTER the contest was over (with a bio and a picture for being one of the greatest real estate agents in the world). I indicated that he would.
In doing so, it “could” be claimed that I violated the spirit of the competition…I do NOT want to do that in any way… Sometimes you have to CLARIFY positions as you go and for me it is time to make things clear.
The true benefit that you get from joining my team is that you can work with the best of the best in building AUTHORITY online. This is NOT about trading links and has never been. We have learned more together as a team and formed some great relationships. (Wanna join us and LEARN together?) That is what it is about. If you linked to me in the hope of getting a link back:
PLEASE take your links down. I do not need that kind of help and I humbly apologize for the misunderstanding.
Here is what I hope:
That you can SEE the sincerity and HEAR the honesty in what I am writing and that because I am being totally upfront about this you will still want to participate. In fact, if you really want to be part of TEAM Eric…simply start building some on line authority and pass it to us.
And thanks Bob for pointing it out in the email to me last night. When I make mistakes I try to correct them quickly. I had to talk with existing team members to make sure that they had no misunderstandings as well.
I will be posting this same message on several places on the web in Read more
I thought that post title would get your attention. I’m not a regular lawyer. But it does seem odd that no one has even dared to ask the obvious question, “Is 
Marc Davison a Little Nebbish”? Please understand, I am not saying that he is a little nebbish. But if Greg calling Marc a little nebbish is what got this whole mess going, I think it is a valid question. Why the big fuss over Greg calling Marc a little nebbish? Of all the things Greg has said and done it seems a bit odd that it is now important to unsubscribe to BHB and or stop posting here. I guess advocating the end of the NAR or all state licensing laws or all mandatory continuing education or the end of dual agency, not to mention the separation of the buyer agent commission from the seller – each and every one a common and typical and startling, in your face, post from Greg Swann. Lets see, this is the guy who went from just starting his blog to one of the most highly read real estate blogs in existence in less than a year – and this little faction of the real estate community is just now announcing, “I’ve unsubscribed”.
Yes. I found it interesting, thought provoking reading this past year but now that he has called Marc a little nebbish – hell, that is going too far. I will never read it again. Never. I’ve unsubscribed. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Me too. Yes, I am also one of the original thought people who just now decided that this was simply too much. Too far. No more Greg Swann or anything on his blog. I will never read it again and will get the existing writers there to also leave him. That will teach him. All 50 or 60 of us are G – O – N – E. Gone. Forever. Never again.
Wow.
Wow. Also, I don’t believe the never again part. Each person who Read more
Daniel Gross writing in Slate on how things got so, well, unchained. Key bit:
And so, since the bubble popped and home prices ceased to rise, desperate players in the market have taken a series of actions intended to delay price discovery in housing. Rather than cut prices, sellers began to throw in free cars or other inducements to buyers who paid the asking price. Brokers reduced their commissions. Builders started including all sorts of extras (fancy kitchens, pools, etc.) for no additional price. Every link in the chain sacrificed margins and profits rather than cut prices.
While I know most of you looking in are industry professionals, I found the writing crisp, the thinking clear, and the piece instructive reading for the rest of us in the run up to BloodhoundBlog Unchained on May 18th.
The forms of tyranny we’re most familiar with are the examples of power and ruthlessness over the more genteel and non-violent. Countries without wide acceptance of rule of law and binding constitutions usually fall under the control of the most vicious and powerful gang.
But here in US, we’re more civilized, we fall under the control of niceness, PC and the egalitarian urge toward mediocrity. Many can hardly wait for those who rise to fall, those who succeed to fail, those who achieve to lose and those who speak a raw truth to be silenced. Pleasantville is home town and the middle is a feel-good state of mind.
However, even in Pleasantville the human trait for dominance exists and niceness is a large, sharp sword in the hands of those who would control through kindness. Those who fail the test of kindness are enemies of the state (of mind). Those who are most kind are the leaders – their subjects strive to be more kind and they hate the unkind. Who are the unkind? Well, that’s usually decided by the leaders of the kind and depends on alliances.
The irony is that the kind can be unkind if it’s for the greater good of the kind, because niceness is subjective and must be determined by the wisdom of the leaders of the kind. Usually the unkind are those who think and act differently than the kind. If the kind believe that group support of self-esteem is more important than honesty, then those who say anything detrimental to the self-esteem of a member of the kind is unkind and therefore not nice, an enemy to be destroyed, even if they are destroyed by unkindness. It’s for the greater good of the kind.
Who doesn’t want to be kind? The number of kind is many because kindness is a virtue and niceness is the religion of the kind. Sometimes the unkind have done nothing but speak their minds, yet in speaking they’ve crossed the line of acceptable honesty and violated the code of kindness and therefore a legitimate target for unkindness for the sake of survival of Read more
This one is just for me. Maybe all of them are when it comes right down to it. But if my mission here was to help other agents have a more productive career I don’t see (even if this post isn’t written yet) how that will be accomplished by this particular post. I’ve been meaning to write this post for a couple of weeks and have kept putting it off. Of all the things in the world (and especially the real estate world) to write about this is what I use my time and energy writing about? Seems so.
Las Vegas strippers now have help. That is right – for those of you who like to closely follow the legal gyrations (not just the physical ones) regarding how strippers get paid – this post is going to make you feel better. A lot better. Due to a Nevada Supreme Court ruling, Mick Rusing can now bring a class action lawsuit against Las Vegas strip clubs on behalf of strippers. Scroll down just a bit on this page and check the lawyer’s credentials. This guy is the real deal. Quite an impressive resume. The legal maneuvers on this one have been going on a while.
Las Vegas club owners may need to change how they do business. Me? I haven’t been in a strip club since my future brother in law arranged for my bachelor party at one about 26 years ago. But if Mick wins and I can be sure that the girls get to keep all of the money, well that just might change things. I’ll have to check with my wife.
