The Odysseus Medal this week goes to another truly amazing essay from outside our little RE.net cloister. I knew when I saw this on Saturday that it had won. Teri Lussier convinced me on Sunday that I have a leadership opportunity with the ten dozen people following me on Twitter — so I led them to this article. What is it? You weren’t meant to have a boss by Paul Graham. Ostensibly he’s writing about programmers, but that’s a superficial characteristic. What he’s writing about is the nature of human beings. What he’s writing about it you:
A few days ago I was sitting in a cafe in Palo Alto and a group of programmers came in on some kind of scavenger hunt. It was obviously one of those corporate “team-building” exercises.
They looked familiar. I spend nearly all my time working with programmers in their twenties and early thirties. But something seemed wrong about these. There was something missing.
And yet the company they worked for is considered a good one, and from what I overheard of their conversation, they seemed smart enough. In fact, they seemed to be from one of the more prestigious groups within the company.
So why did it seem there was something odd about them?
I have a uniquely warped perspective, because nearly all the programmers I know are startup founders. We’ve now funded 80 startups with a total of about 200 founders, nearly all of them programmers. I spend a lot of time with them, and not much with other programmers. So my mental image of a young programmer is a startup founder.
The guys on the scavenger hunt looked like the programmers I was used to, but they were employees instead of founders. And it was startling how different they seemed.
So what, you may say. So I happen to know a subset of programmers who are especially ambitious. Of course less ambitious people will seem different. But the difference between the programmers I saw in the cafe and the ones I was used to wasn’t just a difference of degree. Something seemed wrong.
I think it’s not so much that there’s something special about founders as that there’s something missing in the lives of employees. I think startup founders, though statistically outliers, are actually living in a way that’s more natural for humans.
I was in Africa last year and saw a lot of animals in the wild that I’d only seen in zoos before. It was remarkable how different they seemed. Particularly lions. Lions in the wild seem about ten times more alive. They’re like different animals. And seeing those guys on their scavenger hunt was like seeing lions in a zoo after spending several years watching them in the wild.
The Black Pearl Award this week goes to Sean Purcell for Every Day a Birthday:
Staying fresh is a difficult concept in real estate. Essentially, a good agent is someone who endlessly repeats the same tasks around an ever changing core – yet does so as if it were the first time each and every time. In this way good agents are quite similar to good stage actors. It may be the 100th time they have given their listing presentation, but the best know that their current audience is hearing it for the first time. Embracing change and supporting a willingness to recreate yourself is a formidable weapon if you earn your living in the arena competitive – which real estate most certainly is.
Over the past few days we have been privy to posts on super real estate companies, being entertaining, virtual remodeling and, believe it or not, talking signs! Lots of good ideas, but only really useful to those among us that are willing to rearrange ourselves; root around inside and make changes. Sometimes a new idea will require letting go of a long held belief. In the 2.0 world these ideas fly by us at breakneck speed and the blessing is this: when you miss one it is OK because another one is coming. We do not have to assimilate every innovation that lights us up. But the ability to assimilate anything is made difficult if we are not ready to be new.
Yesterday was the first day of spring, a day traditionally celebrated as a day of rebirth. The secret… is to celebrate today in exactly the same way.
This week’s People’s Choice Award goes to Barry Cunningham with Would You Hire Yourself?:
There is an ongoing argument as to the value of a real estate agent in today’s real estate market. It can’t be settled with rhetoric and mantras. In order for there to be an effective resolve, the Realtor industry must reach out to the American consumer and seek to validate the need for their existence in a transaction.
This should not be a hard feat. However most agents, for some unknown reason, find it to be beneath them to quantify their “value” much less dollarize it. When posed with the notion that they may be required to actually prove their worth, many ignorantly say that doctors and lawyers and professional athletes don’t have to justify their fees so why should they. Oh really?
Is that the answer you want the Consumer to walk away with? If you are not willing to justify yourself to the Consumer, how about justifying your commission and worth to yourself?
Would you hire yourself? Be honest. You know what you have done…lately. Don’t tell me, the Consumer or yourself that you USED to be great. At one point Carl Lewis was the fastest man in the world. At one time Bear Stearns was a respected fixture on Wall Street. At one time you may have been a high performing agent.
Banks only allow appraisals going back 6 months, some are only allowing data that goes back just 3 months. In doing a realistic appraisal of yourself, it’s not accurate to say what you have done. The Consumer wants to know what you have done LATELY.
If you haven’t read Barry’s post, don’t miss it. Every question he asks is a Black Pearl.
If you didn’t check out this week’s nominees for The Odysseus Medal, you should.
We have a brand new tool for promoting The Long List of Odysseus Medal nominees. The Long List will be shown in that little gizmo until the current week’s Short List is announced and then I’ll update it with the new week’s nominees. This is link-love back from BloodhoundBlog, but my reason for building the tool is to promote the best ideas in real estate any way I can. To that end, read this post so that you can learn how to echo The Long List on your own site.
The Long List also has its very own weblog, a link blog of the latest Long List nominees as they are nominated. Feel free to visit, but probably the best way for you to keep abreast of the best in real estate weblogging is to subscribe to The Long List RSS feed.
And as always, if you see a work of genius stalking like a lion in the wild, nominate it.
Deadline for next week’s competition is Sunday at 12 Noon MST. You can nominate your own work or any post you admire here.
Congratulations to the winners — and to everyone who participated.
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