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Author: Chris Johnson (page 6 of 6)

Instigator, anthill kicker.

July 14, 2008

Let’s Do Some Survivin’: 5 FREE Things To Do Right Now To Ensure You Can Survive This Here Real Estate Market.

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Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

OKAYfine.  H2s aren’t so practical, are they?   And it’s maybe vanity to have an assistant at this point, when you’re down to 20 deals a year.  Maybe it’s stupid to run that display ad in the paper, sharing space with a Realtor or Loan Officer.  But you’re committed, right?  The give and take of this grind is in your blood, and you’re gonna survive this..resurgence of the 1970’s.  

So let’s figure out how:

  1. Ruthlessly Control Your Personal Spending. Thanks to the IRS, I’ve been a low-spending guy anyway. But there was still fat in my budget.  Mint.Com quickly pointed out what I actually spent money on.   And there was tons of room to save.   About $700 bucks a month without much lifestyle change.  Each $100 you can save a month is $150 you don’t have to earn. The lower your nut is, the better equipped you’re gonna be.  Having a low cash need = low stress.
  2. Control Your Environment.  De clutter the hell out of everything.  That stack of “broker/agent” magazines?  Pitch.  Everything in your workspace is something that you have to think about and something that siphons mental energy.  Spend 40 minutes pitching damn near everything till you’re down to your computer, family pictures, a pen and paper, and maybe a cup for coffee or water.  Make your workspace look like an Apple commercial, and see what the you get done.
  3. Lead Generation = 35% of your time, minimum. Yeah, deals take longer and are more fragile then ever.  I get it.  But would you sleep better at night with six more fragile deals?   Surely SOME of your deals would close if you had more going.  And, when you learn how to ensure fragile deals are gonna close, well, when the market hits the other end of the cycle, you will be crushing your new competition.   C’mon.  Instead of calling your lender and asking for a status update every three minutes (even though they should be calling you), Read more
June 23, 2008

BHB and Real Estate’s OODA Loop.

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Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

The reason that I became a part of BHB was because BHB wants to matter most.  I don’t agree with everything Greg says or does (and he doesn’t always agree with me), but the core ethos at BHB is peerless.  It’s the same reason why I dug the Smashing Pumpkins so much.  Like him or not, Billy wanted to be the best rock band that rock and roll has ever seen.  He took title shot after title shot.  He didn’t make it, but we are all enriched for his efforts.   BHB is full of people that want to raise the bar so high that everyone benefits.  BHB wants to be the best RE blog ever, and we’re doing it, and I get to be part of it.  Oh, the fun.

But why to we have a head start?  It’s about the ideas, and it’s about the ethos of being independent, fierce, smart and fast.  Getting ideas out here quickly, with no rules, no committee is the best thing we do here.  And so, for those (few) of you that aren’t familiar with the OODA loop, I had to call it to your attention.

This is what BHB is doing doing, and it comes from a famous fighter pilot.

Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.  Repeat.

From wikipedia:

By observing and reacting to events more quickly than an opponent, you can ‘get inside,’ their decision cycle and gain advantage.

An image:

Zillow was the most obvious example. 

When you’re inside the loop, you’re disrupting others and forcing them to react to you.  Zillow got inside the NAR’s loop with the Zestimate, and changed the industry.  The NAR reacted, but now has to consider Zillow (and all transparency implications that come with free data) in everything they do.  Everyone benefits when we crash the loop of a bad actor, and we’re all in Zillow’s debt because the NAR has to get better–or else they risk being irrelevant.

We benefit when we crash anyone’s loop because once we can do that once, we can repeat the process ad infinitum, and Read more

June 17, 2008

Ultra Basic GTD (Getting Things Done) for Solo Warriors.

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Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

I’m a big fan of GTD.  More than any of the dozens of books I’ve read on goals and time management, Getting Things Done by David Allen enriched my life and changed my outcomes.   Most of the sentences in Getting Things Done can be followed by “no shit.” But, as my friend Julie Harris says, sometimes the “no shit” points are the most important.

All of us 2.0/3.0 agents here can do well to follow Jeff Brown’s stellar advice.  But execution is the key, Just…do it.

Kludges are very helpful when we’re trying to get something finished.  Worrying about if this is the ‘latest,’ productivity tool is usually a waste of time.   Having dead simple tools like dry erase boards and index executed zealously is WAY more useful than having a half ass implementation of the worlds most perfect solution.  I rock a Hipster PDA because there’s something unignorable about index cards.  You can turn a Palm/Iphone off, but if you have things to do, they will be reflected in the stack of cards you’re carrying. Is it as slick as an Iphone?  No, but since I made the damn thing it works.

Instead of having calendared reminders, I took a sheet of paper, and made a basic table: 

Monday Tuesday Wednesday
Blog Post

Call 20 Past Clients

 Post to Facebook Groups

5 LinkedIn Questions answered.

Blog Post

contact 10 financial planners

contact 10 attorneys
send e-zine

…and so on.  Click for a full version. Both 1.0 and 2.0 activities are on the list.  If you’ve got a solid plan, it’s one of the easiest ways to force yourself to execute.  If I’m behind, I have a VISUAL reminder.  What’s hard is setting a realistic schedule and trusting it…that’s another post altogether.  (And yes, I have a monthly version and a quarterly version, too…this has kept me from needing an assistant because I have my tasks laid out in a linear fashion.)

My page It’s laminated #70 card stock so it has some weight. I use a  Vis a Vis wet erase marker to mark things Read more

June 10, 2008

You Control Way More Than You Think

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Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

If you are an enemy of agents working hard, you are an enemy of mine.  If you make it socially acceptable to fail in this market, you–personally–are as bad as the media that has made it socially acceptable to walk away from your house.  I have said to just walk away from failure enablers, but I have to fight back. 

I read a post yesterday that made me again question WHY I read RE blogs.  The poster had some closings that were going sideways It occurred to me that this mighta been their fault.  I mentioned this.   This agent was using the ‘best lender, best systems and best procedures,’ to  watch their deals go sideways, and then use the best blog to yell at the echo chamber…I was quickly shouted down by the chorus of failure fanatics. 

If Your Systems Are Failing, By Definition, They Ain’t The Best!

Lemme tell ya something.  There are people doing great (and easy) business in this market.  I know a buyer’s agent here Columbus that has 7 houses under contract every month like a machine.  That’s because the month before he sends 15 people up for loan approval, and won’t be satisfied with a non approved loan, and asks me brutal questions.  Generates his own leads, doesn’t take listings, and is in 100% control.  Stuff happens, but it’s never on more than 1/10th of his business.  OH, this agent sells everyone two houses.  His buyers write an ethical and fully disclosed second house offer in case the first house fails to get the short sale processes moving at two places so he’s guaranteed a check.  And with his deals, he runs the short sale unless it’s a listing agent he knows.  He’s taken responsibility for way more work.  

It’s More Comfortable to Be and to Manufacture Victims

It’s infinitely more comfortable to think that something else was the author of our failure, isn’t it?  It makes us all feel better when we don’t have to realize that we effed it up, because the (choose one) [Buyer/broker/builder/lender/other agent/title Read more

June 3, 2008

Real Estate Video: My Love Hate Relationship

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Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

Video is coming, it’s here, it’s real, and it’s not going away.   It makes me happy that there is some high quality content being created for Agents, and tools to enhance communication.  What I don’t like about video is it’s non-interactive nature, and the sluggish pace that it churns out information.  It’s great for some things (some tutorials, house tours, testamonils), and for those things there’s no equivalent.

But, for a lot of things (other tutorials, deep analysis, and even advocating positions), the format is such that you can’t quickly extract the content YOU want.  There’s got a 1-2 minute investment in whatever your watching to see if you’re going to learn what you want–compared with the speed of glancing at a stack of RSSfeeds  and quickly seeing if it’s valuable.    This is a function of the format and an inherent limitation  of video itself.  I continually find my attention wandering and myself perpetually on the verge of hitting alt-f4 to shut the video up.   For every good example, of what Video can do to enhance the consumer experience there are countless bad examples (with preroll credits and more crap).

I’m BRAND new at messing with video. I’ll get real good at it real soon.   It’s a communication tool, and I am getting over my inherent dislike of it.  I’m not yet  expert, but I’ve made some promises to myself as to what all of my videos are gonna be like,  in true  Bloodhound fashion, I submit it for your criticism and review.

  • Content Dense: If it’s in video, it’s gotta deliver on the promise of being content dense.  That doesn’t always mean talking fast.  It means ensuring that there is content.
  • Quick Preview: spend the first 5 seconds previewing what you’re gonna give ’em, not on some insipid preroll liner.   People will relax, or change the channel.
  • Deliver the content as fast as it can be effectively communicated.  Similar to content density, we want to make sure we know that video is grabbing attention.  No filler.  Read more
May 11, 2008

Put Voicemail Testimonials On Your Blog Or Website: Audio Editing For SalesPeople.

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

Social proof.  It’s what people need to do business with you.  They may not say it consciously, but they need it.  One of my (many) websites, at Ten Day Team, I’ve put up some significant testimonials.  Realtors are always afraid that several things will happen:  The lender won’t return his calls, the lender won’t get the job done, there will be endless delays, and they won’t get paid. They had that fear since time immemorial.  I like consumer business, I love agent-referred business.  So I have to use some artillery to soften them up.  What better than a parade of agents and customers affirming that I, Chris Johnson, do a good job?

To prove that I’m an OK guy, I’ve gotten a few people to say good things about me.  I didn’t edit MUCH of the testimonial content, generally limiting myself to shortening pauses and deleting "ums" that were bookended by pauses.  Edits are easy enough to spot, people have acute BS detectors, and an edited testimonial does more harm than good.  Every website I do in the future will have customer testimonials–in this fashion, because it’s so easy. 

The entire process–start to finish–including learning how, took two hours.  Aside: One of the keys to life is to presume that you can quickly figure out how to do something because someone has had the same problem before and has posted about it.   This is posted for WordPress, but I’ve done this stuff on other blogs and sites.  Email me, and I’ll help if I can, and walk you through doing it on a non WordPress site.

Step 1: Get Some Audio.  Here is the letter I sent out to my clients:

Dear {name}

Thanks for the opportunity to serve you.  One of the things that is important to my practice is the ability to continue to win and keep the trust of my clients.  It would honor me a great deal if you could simply leave me a voicemail message at my phone number,614-839-4850 telling me how I helped you.   Read more

April 28, 2008

The Real Definition of Insanity In This Market

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Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

Remember when Enron was still everyone’s darling?  Remember when they were a high flying company that could do no wrong?

Remember when AOL was high flying and had the audacity to buy Time Warner?

Or even Bear Stearns?  Kmart, Qwest, MCI/Worldcom,  Lucent Technology, Arthur Andersen, all were at one time ‘highly regarded’ companies that lost a huge percent of their value.   That’s a ‘top of head,’ list without considering the Airlines.

There are countless more examples of big companies getting wiped out in a day.  People’s pensions are inevitably the big story.  Middle class families get wiped out because they had all of their ducks in one basket.   Employees sue the company because senior executives didn’t tell them that there were risks inherent in the stock.   The media has their normal pity party.  But the real shame?  Nobody stops to think for a second: no matter how good the company, is it sane to put all of your money in one place?

When I get on someone about blogging (un artfully), the real message was meant to be this: if you only have one widget for getting money, you’re nuts, and you’ll be destroyed someday.   Maybe not soon, but someday.  It might, temporarily, be a most efficient to do what works, and chase a single source of leads.  How was business done 15 years ago?   We didn’t predict the nature of today’s changes.  Blogging is great, and it might last a long time.  But you cant operate with the assumption that it’s going to be here.  That leads to complacency and obsolescence.

To have a healthy business, you have to have many sources of income and leads, so if one of ’em dries up, you’re not on the streets.  Because…no matter how good the widget, no matter how efficient the model, you MUST have several great sources for your business.  It’s a baseline survival requirement for this new market. 

What would happen to you if the top 2 sources of leads dried up in a short time.  Even if ROI Read more

April 21, 2008

Eye On The Ball, Folks…Hug Your CPA Today…

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Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

We’ll keep this first post short, sweet, and incredibly practical.  We all want that magic bullet.  That thing that gets us four more work free "deals" this quarter, right?  Well, it doesn’t exist.  So instead of whining about marketing, let’s look to the calendar for a drop dead simple, 1.0 way to get a little bit of scratch this month.

We all know what happened last Tuesday, right?  It was tax day. 

Lots of people thought about their finances, lots of people talked to their local CPAs.  Loads of CPAs saw lots of financial statements, heard why people were freeing up cash, maybe a few even heard the sugar-sweet phrase ‘1031,’ just days ago. 

And you know what?  Betcha a Starbucks they don’t all have trustworthy referral partners to work with. 

Betcha that if you grabbed a list of CPAs–now that the CPAs aren’t in tax season–and reached out via ANY authentic method (post cards, friendly calls, offering lunch, whatever you’re comfortable with that gets measurable results), and authentically offered yourself as a trustworthy person to help navigate these turbulent waters…

You’d get solid referrals in days and weeks-not months.

There are dozens of "scripts" you can use, but why not do it in a sentence:

The more direct and more honest, the better.  I’ve called CPAs (and financial planners) and uttered a run on sentence: "Hi, I’m Chris Johnson, with ____________.  I wanted to reach out and let you know that if you had clients buying a property, I would be honored to help them, and help you make sure it was congruent with their long term goals. Do you have anyone in that category?"  

Now, I’ve never once had someone jump through the phone to send me a client.  But, I’ve made (too) few of these calls to CPAs.  And every time I do, within a couple of hours, I meet someone I connect with, I want to help, and that sends people to me because I reached out.  I’m still closing loans from CPAs I Read more

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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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