BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Egoism in Action (page 26 of 30)

April 25, 2008

Making Nothing out of Something or Something out of Nothing

by

Mega-Producing Realtor

Author website

It doesn’t really matter what someone says they are trying to do. Or what they say their motives are. Know them by their actions.

Nothing - Something

Regardless of what anyone says, all any person is ever really doing is attempting to make something out of nothing or they are trying to make nothing out of something. Obviously, this can be accomplished in various ways. The primary effective method is by one’s thoughts. Take a relationship, for example: it exists solely because it is created and as long as it is created. Beings making something out of nothing. A business or organization that exists is an example of of something out of nothing. Sometimes we wonder why anyone would work on making something out of that? Why? Mountain out of a molehill. Not anything that anyone really wants but there it is, “created” for you. So, creation, is neither good or bad, unless one considers the creation “good” or “bad”. There are some things in life that get broad agreement as being “good”. Others that have broad agreement that they are “bad”.

On Human CharacterAll I want to look at here is what do you want? What are you trying to create? What are you attempting to make something of? What directly helps you do that? What people do you come into contact with or receive communication from that cause you to feel like you are more able to create what you want? When you are in communication with them your goals and aspirations are more real. It is easier to see yourself accomplishing them.

How about the flip side: nothing out of something? What are you trying to make nothing of? What are you attempting to reduce the effectiveness of or make smaller? Does making it less powerful or less effective help you to achieve your goals? Does working on that fully align with your stated goals?

There are those that offer advice and counsel on what you ought to be doing. Oddly enough, they haven’t ever actually done it themselves, but they can still clearly see what would be good for you to do. It isn’t really necessary Read more

April 19, 2008

Marketing performance: BloodhoundBlog is the last place crybabies should go when they need to have their boo-boos kissed, and, therefore, it is the last place to go looking for crybabies

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I want to talk about the idea of marketing performance as a disruptive strategy — but not quite yet. I’m using the term as a gerundive: Developing tools and techniques that by far eclipse your competition, then promoting that outsized commitment to excellence in your marketing. Not: “I’m the best.” Not even: “Here’s why I’m the best.” Simply this: “Here is everything you’ll get that you can’t obtain anywhere else.” This is the means by which we can flush most of the bums from the business even as we supplant the sclerotic dinosaurs who claim to be our leaders.

As a matter of general notice, it were well to take account of a couple of salient facts:

  1. This is not an alien message to the BloodhoundBlog audience. The people who come here are already committed to doing the best job they can do as Realtors, lenders, investors. We appeal to the elite of real estate professionals, and, not coincidentally, we tend to repel the crybabies, the mediocrities and the wannabe predators.
  2. In consequence, beating up on the crybabies, the mediocrities and the wannabe predators is probably a pretty poor strategy here. Most readers here would not just agree with but would joyously amend denunciations of specific bad behavior. But generalized complaints about unspecified groups of miscreants may have the opposite effect: The uncontested best of a group of people rising to the defense of the uncontested worst.

That’s as may be. There are no groups of people, there are only individuals. Defending a group is no less irrational than attacking that group, but I have no use and no time for irrationality in any flavor.

I’m interested in individual practitioners becoming so much better at the performance of their jobs, and so much better at marketing that performance, that they put themselves beyond competition. I want to put the bums in another line of work, and I want to put the dinosaurs in a museum, where they belong. To my ears, everything else is pointless noise.

I’ll deal with this all in detail, but not now: It’s Saturday, Realtor day, and I gotta go to work. Here Read more

April 18, 2008

The practical value of living by abstract principle: “I do not compromise with bullies and I would rather spend fifty thousand dollars on defense than give you a dollar of unmerited settlement funds.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Why is hewing to abstract principle, which is so often derided as being “impractical”, in fact the most practical course of action you can take? Because, when you cave in to bullies — in addition to committing a grievous injustice to your own interests — you are telling them in no uncertain terms that you’ll do it again.

I saw this passionate business letter cited at Coyote Blog the other day, but it was my friend Richard Nikoley who unearthed the gem quoted below.

I have seen Monster Cable take untenable IP positions in various different scenarios in the past, and am generally familiar with what seems to be Monster Cable’s modus operandi in these matters. I therefore think that it is important that, before closing, I make you aware of a few points.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1985, I spent nineteen years in litigation practice, with a focus upon federal litigation involving large damages and complex issues. My first seven years were spent primarily on the defense side, where I developed an intense frustration with insurance carriers who would settle meritless claims for nuisance value when the better long-term view would have been to fight against vexatious litigation as a matter of principle. In plaintiffs’ practice, likewise, I was always a strong advocate of standing upon principle and taking cases all the way to judgment, even when substantial offers of settlement were on the table. I am “uncompromising” in the most literal sense of the word. If Monster Cable proceeds with litigation against me I will pursue the same merits-driven approach; I do not compromise with bullies and I would rather spend fifty thousand dollars on defense than give you a dollar of unmerited settlement funds. As for signing a licensing agreement for intellectual property which I have not infringed: that will not happen, under any circumstances, whether it makes economic sense or not.

I say this because my observation has been that Monster Cable typically operates in a hit-and-run fashion. Your client threatens litigation, expecting the victim to panic and plead for mercy; and what follows is Read more

April 13, 2008

Integrity — It’s more than just a word…

by

Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

We were just assigned our seventh Team Lead since Catholic Healthcare West had outsourced me to PerotSystems. I’d been part of Perot’s Business Applications team for about sixteen months, and this seventh Team Lead was the first to come to Phoenix to look her team members into our eyes. She was brand new to the account and now had to give us our annual reviews, without the benefit of ever having viewed us. Like so many other corporations, Perot has the employee review herself, then during the annual review the employee and her direct supervisor compare reviews to come to an agreement. I’m often my own worst critic, so I was modest in ranking most of the achievements I was being measured on. But when I got to Client Satisfaction and Integrity, I gave myself the highest possible scores. Nina (pronounced Nine-ah), had seen a few of the accolades given me by clients who I supported, so she conceded the penultimate score on Client Satisfaction. But she had no way to assess my integrity. So she apologized, explained she was handling everyone on her new team the same, and gave me the average score, what would be a “C” on Cameron’s report card, for my Integrity. My reaction? This was the most honest evaluation that Nina could have given, given the circumstances. How can anyone judge another person’s integrity without evidence?

First of all, just what is integrity? I like Wikipedia’s definition:

Integrity is the basing of one’s actions on an internally consistent framework of principles. Depth of principles and adherence of each level to the next are key determining factors. One is said to have integrity to the extent that everything one does on the same core set of values. While those values may change, it is their consistency with each other and with the person’s actions that determine the person’s integrity.
(Emphasis mine.)

Words have precise meanings, and it’s the imprecise use of words that causes so many problems.

(My Mom and I had this debate yesterday: She — “I heard it on TV today… we’re definitely in a recession.” Me — “Definitely, as Read more

April 13, 2008

“It’s the difference between grabbing junk food from the drive-thru and sitting down with people you love for a leisurely and lively dinner.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

That’s Teri Lussier talking about the experience of settling in for a serious read at BloodhoundBlog, as against cruising the blogiverse.

I’m inclined to agree — and I’ve never been stingy with words. But here’s a thousand words Cathleen wrote yesterday afternoon while she was staging and preparing a house for listing:

The world is rich with Splendor. Sometimes you have to sweep a little debris out of the way to catch sight of it, that’s all.

Technorati Tags: , ,

April 11, 2008

A deeply philosophical discussion of the flame war that will not be happening at BloodhoundBlog

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Oh, good grief…

I can credit both sides of the rancorous dispute that is not going to happen.

I agree with Russell Shaw that Barry Cunningham can run roughshod over opponents in debate, and I knew without having to be told that Russ was steaming over this.

I agree with Barry on the factual prognosis for real estate. I watched it happen in the graphic arts, and I’m watching it happen in dozens of other industries.

I was laughing with Brian Brady on the phone last night that I have inadvertently introduced a second standard on ad hominem comments: Zero tolerance for everything else, but a wider latitude on Barry’s threads. I’ve stepped in when things seemed to be trending a little too flamey, but, for the most part I haven’t had huge objections.

Gentlemen, I want for you both — and for everyone reading this — to understand something that, like the oceans of air I am immersed in, is too obvious to me even to notice most of the time:

Weblogging is theater of the mind.

What we do is entertainment. It should be interesting, fact-based, persuasive — all that serious stuff. But we are competing for attention with radio and television, not Oxford University. I certainly want to talk about things that matter to me, and I have huge goals for real estate and for the world at large that I would like to see effected. But none of those things is going to happen overnight — and none of them in response to a blog post.

If Barry Cunningham paints the world with a broad brush and that makes you hot under the collar, the most interesting question is this one: Are you angry because he’s outrageously wrong — or because he might be right? When an argument is absurdly off the mark, we ignore it. Ha, ha. Who cares? It’s when things are too irritatingly right that we get irritated. Your emotional reactions tell you almost nothing about the world outside your mind — and almost everything about the world inside your mind.

But more importantly, all you need to do to defeat an erroneous Read more

April 4, 2008

Because of who I am, because I will not keep my mouth shut, I might understand better than most of us what it means to be an American

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Witness:

“Hu spread malicious rumors and committed libel in an attempt to subvert the state’s political power and socialist system,” the court verdict stated[.]

Every time you take notice that there is no gun barrel pressed to the base of your skull, you might say a prayer for the soul of George Mason.

Technorati Tags: , ,

April 1, 2008

State-mandated licensing of interior designers is our only possible protection from life-threatening color clashes

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Via Coyote Blog, Clark Neily of the Institute for Justice argues against occupational licensing for interior designers in the Wall Street Journal:

Imagine you were a state legislator and some folks asked you to pass a law making it a crime to give advice about paint colors and throw pillows without a license. And imagine they told you that the only people qualified to place large pieces of furniture in a room are those who have gotten a college degree in interior design, completed a two-year apprenticeship, and passed a national licensing exam. And by the way, it is criminally misleading for people who practice interior design to use that term without government permission.

You might stare at them incredulously for a moment, then look down at your calendar and say, “Oh, I get it — April Fool!” Right? Wrong.

These folks represent the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), an industry group whose members have waged a 30-year, multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign to legislate their competitors out of business. And those absurd restrictions on advice about paint selection, throw pillows and furniture placement represent the actual fruits of lobbying in places like Alabama, Nevada and Illinois, where ASID and its local affiliates have peddled their snake-oil mantra that “Every decision an interior designer makes affects life safety and quality of life.”

Legislative analysis by a half-dozen states that rebuffed ASID’s attempts to cartelize interior design — including Colorado, Washington and South Carolina — has failed to support ASID’s claim that the location of your couch or the color of your bedroom walls is literally a matter of life and death. As the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies put it, there is “no evidence of physical or financial harm being caused to . . . consumers by the unregulated practice of interior designers.”

Lacking any factual support for its sweeping public welfare claims, ASID and its supporters often resort to fear-mongering.[…]

If there were any credible evidence that unregulated interior design presents a genuine risk to consumers, ASID would certainly have found it by now. They have had plenty of time (more than three decades), resources (dues for Read more

April 1, 2008

Automated Valuation Models – My New Favorite

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

The quest for automated valuation is a thirst unquenched, a fire that cannot be extinguished and seeming itch that cannot be scratched. Man is forever curious about the worth of an asset. Whether it is one’s home or one’s home on the web, curiosity slays its share of felines and we all have satisfied our secret urge to automatically valuate a time or two.

Did I mention that this Automated Valuation Model is for websites? (grin). Someone at REW pointed it out to me in their blog…here’s the link to it.

OK, ready for some fun? I took a look at some interesting sites to see their automated valuation as of today.

EriconSearch.com – My SEO blog VALUATION: $135,000 and change. Huh? (Think maybe the Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World contest skewed things a bit?) Methinks that is the case. I am officially willing to sell!

HomesinLouisville.com – Our brokerage Real Estate site… VALUATION $64,000 and change. Huh? Not on your life! This site is worth MULTIPLES of that! It generated many multiples of that in commission last year alone.

BloodhoundRealty.com – $553,807! Way to go, Greg.

TheBrickRanch.com – $71,307! Whaddya say, Teri? Deal or No Deal

Sean– is $10,500 and change fair for a website that POPS??

NOW FOR THE FUN ONE:

REALTOR.com Valued at 5.7MM

SO THAT’S IT PEOPLE I AM PASSING THE PLATE. Let’s take up a collection and buy REALTOR.com out once and for all!

By the way, if you are laughing at the ridiculous automated valuations of your website right now, or maybe you are angry, or maybe you just think it is stupid. What do you think homeowners are doing when they look at AVMs like ZIllow et al?

The REAL Valuation of a REAL Valuation– Priceless.

March 31, 2008

Black Pearl Marketing Minute: A sneak peek at a BloodhoundBlog Unchained promotional radio spot

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Barry Cunningham asked me to make a 60 second promotional spot for BloodhoundBlog Unchained, to be used in the regular rotation on Real Estate Radio USA. What can one say except, “Hell, yeah!”

Even so, I’m just not that comfortable in the do-what’s-expected waxed fruit world, so I came at the thing from my own angle. I made a podcasty kind of in-your-face kind of commercial. Who knows if it will pass muster.

Anyway, you can have a sneak peek by clicking on the podcast link below.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

March 22, 2008

SplendorQuest: Jesus Christ Superstar

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

[I wrote this at Easter in 2003, just short of five years ago. –GSS]

Tomorrow is Easter, and all good Catholics will go to Mass. In our parish, every Mass will be packed, and there will be overflow Masses in the school cafeteria. But Catholic or not, Easter calls our attention to Jesus Christ Superstar, one of the best of the rock operas, and certainly the best of the filmed rock operas.

Director Norman Jewison delivers what is very self-consciously a film, with elaborate use of long lenses, slow-motion and stop-action photography. The central character is Judas Iscariot, played by Carl Anderson, with the Nazarene cast in the role of a loud foil, always the reactor, never the actor. This cannot be pleasing to doctrinaire Christians, but it is very effective in the film. In the same way, the turmoil of Annas and Caiphus, of Pontius Pilatus, and of Mary Magdalene and Simon Peter add drama.

But the moments of highest drama are reserved for the Nazarene. First, on Palm Sunday, the massed disciples sing, “Hey, J.C., J.C., would you die for me?” Jewison freezes for just a second on actor Ted Neely’s horrified expression. Later, on Maundy Thursday, the prayer of the Nazarene from Gethsemane is excruciating, no pun intended, all but unbearable.

But the star of this movie is always the music. There are places where the lyrics clunk, a curse of rock opera, but the rock is hard and convincing, and the voices, particularly Anderson and Neely, are fantastic.

Inter alia, apparently Jewison had some kind of anti-Vietnam message in mind when he made the film, but for the life of me I can’t see it now.

For an alternate take on the same material, you might pick up Jesus Christ Superstar–A Resurrection. This is a studio-recorded double-CD crafted by a cadre of Georgia musicians who love the rock opera and wanted to make a rock recording from it. Indigo Girls Amy Ray and Emily Saliers sing the parts of the Nazarene and Mary Magdalene, respectively. The voices come and go, but the instrumentation is inspired.

In the Passion, Saint John bends over backwards to Read more

March 15, 2008

Announcing my Obama Rodham McCain universal bumper sticker

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I could make Barack Obama jokes all day. Like this: “Bill Clinton might have been the America’s first black president, but Barack Obama is the nation’s first black Kennedy.” From this you should not surmise that I am for John McCain. I find all three of our current maladies to be just about equally repellent.

But: I did hit upon an idea for a universal Barack Obama bumper sticker.

Writing a workable bumper sticker is the hardest copywriting job there is. Writing at my voluminous length is easy. All you need are ideas and a vocabulary. Writing poetry is hard, because that economy of words is hard. Writing a matchbook or a billboard is even harder.

Here is my best-ever matchbook:

“Save the world from home in your spare time!”

But a bumper sticker… That’s a real writing challenge…

It’s almost typographic iconography: The message has to be brief enough to be big, short enough to be readable in a glance, and yet it must convey a virtual book’s worth of message. Very rare to see it done well.

And I make no claim for this bumper sticker except that it is universal. Whether you are for Barack Obama or against him, you can display this bumper sticker with pride:

my official Barack Obama universal bumper sticker

If someone wants to pony up the dough for printing — heavy vinyl and UV inks, please — I’ll provide a PDF file. ObamaNation.com is already owned, alas.

March 14, 2008

Arrogance vs Confidence

by

Real Estate Broker

Author website

The company or individual that doesn’t understand competition and the power of imagination is already slipping into obscurity. Power in a competitive world is double-edged, one edge used by those on the throne, the other edge being sharpened by an idea that time adores. Who is so ignorant as to proclaim the end rests in this position? Every Google came from nowhere, or so it seems. Competition comes from the blind side, the side of arrogance.

Confidence is another story and no man or woman should see the need for constant bowing before power, nor do any in power need to cower in gratitude to avoid the unseemly posture of confidence. If one is good, then confidence is a natural reaction and state of mind, but….

But, realization of what supports power is critical to sustaining power — once a person or company thinks powers derives from an intrinsic source that transcends all other sources and is not granted by those who can take it away, it’s over. But if the realization that power exists only through the satisfaction of those who bestow power, then a person or company can ride success for a long, profitable journey.

In the service industry, power derives from consumers finding greater value in your service than in your competitors – the danger is once you rise to a successful position the temptation is to think it’s a permanent state, and then you are vulnerable to the corruption of power. Confidence tells a wise man or woman that whatever it takes, I’ve got it, but to keep it I must diligently satisfy the consumers’ ever-changing needs; Arrogance tells a foolish man or woman that they created power out of nothing and consumers are under their control.

Every day a small competitor is thinking of new ways to deliver something unique – if you aren’t thinking right along with them, and if you think you have it locked because the gods of commerce have smiled and favored you, then you might as well buckle up for a bumpy downhill ride. Confidence is a gift we give ourselves for staying in touch, honoring the achievement of excellence; arrogance is spitting Read more

March 13, 2008

Wow… Life stinks when you’ve got your head up your… community…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Notice anything missing?

In a world without middlemen, no one can prevent you from discovering anything you want to know. That’s a freedom more complete than humanity has ever known, until now.

The counter-proposition is that no one can protect you from derision, if you insist on trying to communicate with your head up your “community.”

All of the dinosaurs are extinct.

 
Update: Todd Carpenter has a hammer:

This is beside my point, but now the whole of our little world is watching.

Technorati Tags: , ,

« Older posts Newer posts »

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.

Media Contacts