BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Flourishing (page 16 of 38)

Thriving as only a rational animal can

November 29, 2010

I ran today for the first time in sixteen years…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

If you’ve seen me in real life, you that know I walk with an ugly limp. I walk fast, but I don’t walk pretty. I was in a car accident in October of 1994, and one of my injuries was the severing of the nerves that control my left foot. Looks normal, works okay, but I can’t push off with that foot, nor curl my toes toward my nose, nor elevate that foot when it’s hanging in mid-air.

I have nothing to complain about. I had truly great doctors, including eight hours under the lights with orthopedic surgeon Dr. Stuart Kozinn, a consistent favorite in Phoenix magazine’s “Best Doctors” feature.

And, since then, my legs have always been very strong. Dr. Kozinn and I were both determined that I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair, so I did everything I could to get my legs back under me. I can ride my bike for miles and miles at top speed in the desert heat, because that’s how I got my stride back.

But: I could not run. You have to be able to push off to run, because your toes can’t be dragging on the ground as you are swinging your leg forward. That would hurt — even before you tripped and fell on your face.

I loved to run before the accident. I never cared about exercise when I was young, but I never needed to: I was a high-D in a red-hot hurry. I ran everywhere. I loped everywhere, sailing through the air in nine-yard strides.

So when I couldn’t run any longer, I really missed it. I dream about running, and I love to go to the supermarket so I can run through the aisles, supporting my upper body on the shopping cart.

And all that changed today. Cathleen has been on my case for a while to buy Skechers Shape-Ups shoes. The marketing promise is better fitness, a workout while you walk, but the reality is pretty dramatic. There is so much up-thrust from the heels of those shoes that they replicate the effect of a strong Read more

November 29, 2010

Plan B – The World Doesn’t Need To Know

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

How many times have we given thought to a list of outcomes we’d love to make real in our lives? It frequently seems a never-ending process, almost against our will. Once an outcome morphs itself into a goal-worthy project, we apply our energy towards its attainment. Most goals people set aren’t met. Either they didn’t have sufficient desire, or if they did, the strategy invoked was ill equipped or mis-applied, the result being equally dissatisfying.

Assuming sufficient desire, and that the strategy itself was faulty, not its application, a new approach is required.

Plan B

This isn’t about what Plan B is or isn’t. It’s about us deciding whether or not to broadcast it to the world. There are some outcomes and/or strategies almost guaranteed to work better, or more bluntly put, work at all, when kept under the radar. It could simply be that you’d rather keep the desired outcome to yourself. Or, it could be the strategy you wish to keep undercover. The reasons don’t matter. You have your own. We all do, right?

A case in point.

In the early 80’s I knew a nice woman who was dangerously over weight. It’d been that way since early childhood. One day it dawned on me I hadn’t seen or heard from her in awhile. I called, but her number had been disconnected. Almost two years later I was dumbfounded, as there she was at a Christmas gathering. She’d lost well over 100 pounds. Nobody except her grandparents had known what she was up to or where she was. (She’d moved to live with them as part of her Plan B.)

We’d been relatively close, so she confided in me. Everyone insisted on making a huge deal of her weight, whether she was gaining or losing. It’d been emotionally debilitating. She’d resolved to lose the weight, but away from pryin’ eyes. Nobody could’ve interrupted her strategic process if they were unaware of its existence.

You can’t argue with success, though some insist on trying.

There are some outcomes, some strategies, for which public knowledge is counterproductive. That judgment is for each of us to make, not Read more

November 25, 2010

“Thanksgiving was a holiday established by productive people to celebrate the success of their work.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

That’s Ayn Rand, from Atlas Shrugged. I love that quotation and I love this holiday, second only to Independence Day. I’m working today, because that’s what I do, but I’m celebrating, too, because I have worked so hard and so well.

Here’s to the dogs — to the people who write, comment and read here. Living anywhere near my world can be a disquieting thing, I know, but I hope you never doubt my gratitude.

And here’s to another year of hard work — and to the Splendor that comes from working wisely and well.

November 16, 2010

Looking for a Realtor designation that really means something? How about this? “Too Outspoken For Redfin.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Redfin.com is in the long, slow process of firing us from their referral partnership program. I’ve known this was going to happen since last Tuesday. It’s what I was writing about in my most influential voice in the on-line world of real estate post:

  • They piss and moan to each other about me behind my back.
  • They campaign with each other to try to damage my interests.
  • They pester contributors here to try get them to abandon BloodhoundBlog.

The actual coup de grâce hasn’t happened yet, but Glenn Kelman placed a sweet call to me last night to apologize to me, as a friend, for not countermanding the bold policy initiatives of his middle managers.

This is nothing to me, for a lot of reasons. I grew up hiding from my poor long-suffering mother, so she wouldn’t have the opportunity to tell me what to do and not do. I spent the first half of my working life hiding from my employers, doing truly remarkable work, like a cobbler’s elf, after the bosses went home. This is why I don’t have a job now, and haven’t had one for decades. I know from experience that if I have anything that looks at all like a job, sooner or later, my fated role will be to serve as the rag doll in someone else’s self-destructive fit. I actually felt that gloomy foreboding twice, on the way into Redfin’s referral plan, so it’s not as if I can claim to have been taken by surprise.

It’s a stupid thing to do, of course, but, while I’ve been fired several times in my life, I’ve never been fired for a good reason. Cathleen and I responded rapidly to every inquiry Redfin sent us, even though many of the referrals they passed along were from loosely motivated, suspicious folks with serious qualification issues. I tried to explain to them that, even though I sell a lot of cheap houses, I’m selling most of them to millionaires, while Cathleen almost always works with very well-heeled homeowners. That entreaty hit a corporate policy wall, with the result that any financially well-qualified buyers Redfin Read more

November 15, 2010

One Lucky Son of a Bitch

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

What I like so much about BloodhoundBlog, is that as a general rule all points of view are welcome. However, along with that welcome mat comes a price. Those harboring contrary beliefs tend to make themselves heard, and more in ways reminiscent of the streets of 1880’s Tombstone than Mayberry. 🙂 Frankly, I prefer the Mayberry approach. Others opt for the OK Corral.

To each their own, which is also a Bloodhound policy.

It’s always fascinated me the way some insist others who are successful with a capital ‘S’ are merely beneficiaries of more bountiful injections of luck than the next guy.

It was a hard life-lesson for me coming to terms with the reality that regardless of my best efforts, there were others who could produce superior results. Realizing I was never gonna be a Hall of Fame baseball player was traumatic. There’s always a faster runner, etc.

Does luck have a part in our lives? Of course. Is it the deciding factor? Sometimes. You just won $200 Million in the lottery? I’m thinkin’ talent wasn’t part of the equation, and luck was the only factor. You’re worth eight figures, and it wasn’t inherited? It’s my contention and core belief that you earned your wealth, and that luck wasn’t a huge component.

Yet there are many, albeit a minority who will ascribe the creation of that wealth to luck. Many will go further, believing that sans luck, those who’ve succeeded on a grand scale, (however they define that) not only wouldn’t have achieved that level of success, but literally couldn’t have.

Luck, as Grandma taught me, is often the last gasp excuse for some who’re unable or unwilling to acknowledge others’ superior results. They literally cannot allow the concept of superiority through merit to become reality. She followed this up by saying that even though Sandy Koufax will always be an infinitely better pitcher than even I could even dream of, it would never mean he was a better person.

Throughout my life I’ve been exceedingly blessed by having rubbed shoulders with, and/or having direct access to, some very successful men Read more

November 14, 2010

The politics of dancing: Mothertongue and the art of negotiation.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I could argue that much of what goes on in the social sciences consists of pseudo-scientific “proofs” that the human mind is nothing special. Sure, volitional-conceptuality — the ability to engage in mental self-reference by means of abstraction and the ability to act upon those abstractions as a free moral agent — is unprecedented in the animal kingdom, but this dolphin has learned four of the first five letters of the Roman alphabet, and that chimp can stack three boxes on top of one another to steal a cookie. If that ain’t human, they don’t know what is!

Here’s what’s funny: They don’t know what animals are, either!

Monkeys don’t need to do a charmingly poor job at deploying human tools to survive, and cetaceans are perfectly adept at communicating with each other without a notation system — without what I would call fathertongue.

When I’m showing real estate, I’m careful to teach people, especially children, what a dog is doing with his tail. Up and wagging? Take it slow, but the dog is friendly. Straight down? Proceed with caution. Between the legs? Back off. The tail is a dog’s primary signaling device. That’s why people who want dogs to fight bob their tails.

But that wagging tail tells such a tale: “Hi, there!” the dog seems to say. “I am thrilled to make your acquaintance. As you can see by my wagging tail, I’m eager to make new friends. Might I have permission to sniff your anus? Full reciprocity, of course. Really, I’d be put out if you didn’t give mine at least a little sniff, too.”

That’s mothertongue, a complex initiation of negotiations expressed entirely in bodily signaling, with zero conceptual content — with no fathertongue. Animals are perfect the way they are. They are not somehow “better” if they master what are, to them, ontologically-useless parlor tricks. Moreover, human beings are exalted, not diminished, by dancing bears: The vast chasm between emulating human behavior and actually living it is only made more obvious when we see how pitiable that emulation actually is.

The higher animals communicate by mothertongue, and all but one species is Read more

November 12, 2010

All Things Being Equal… You’re Not Even Close

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

I was working with a group of agents this week on their 2011 business plan.  We were going through various forms of marketing and the expected returns when one spoke up and said: “The problem is, I hate calling people.  I can send letters and even emails, but I don’t want to call anyone.”  She is a very good agent as far as real estate agent activities go: she works well with clients, she shows homes well, she negotiates well and so forth.  She just doesn’t want to call people.  At all.  

“Okay,” I told her, “that’s not the end of the world.  If you’re not willing to call clients you can still be an agent, you just need to join a team that provides the clients or partner up with someone who has more clients than they can handle.”  That’s where the conversation got interesting.

Turns out this agent has tried my suggestion in the past and is looking for the right relationship right now.  “But,” she says, “the agents I’ve found so far are all so greedy.  They want a big piece of the commission.  All they do is hand me the name and then I do all the work.  I’m trying to meet an agent that understands our roles are different, but we both equally are growing the business.”

This is the problem with many self-employed people and real estate agents in particular.  They seem to think their value is tied to their time.  “All you did was give me the client’s name.  I did all the work so I think we should split 30/70 my way.”  This couldn’t be further from the truth and the faster you understand “value” in an open market economy, the smoother your business life will become.  Your value is not tied to the time you contribute.  It’s tied to the value you bring.  Hmmm, your value is tied to your value.  Can I get a big “Duh” from the Jeff Brown camp?

Apparently this comes as a surprise to some agents, but you are not all equal.  As a matter of fact, I’d estimate that 5% to 20% of you (and I’m Read more

November 10, 2010

I’m a time-waster. How about you?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here’s the point: My name is Greg Swann, and I am a time-waster. My next closing is Wednesday, November 17th, 2010.

It’s news that is my special poison, a quick check of major news and opinion sites several times a day. Stir that in with email, some of it work, some of it work-ish, some of it just more time-wasting. And blend all of that with lots of tiny little brief chores done for clients at various stages of “the process.”

That’s a half-productive day. I start at six, finish at six or nine or one — the next day. And if I spin in place like that all day, I can get half as much done as I should have.

It’s not that I’m working from home. I’ve worked from home for almost twenty years, and I’ve always been able to get a lot done when I need to.

And it’s not the internet as such — duh! I’ve worked on the internet for most of my life.

And I’m not even really a bad, bad boy. It’s just checking this for a minute and that other thing for a couple more, all while taking care of business, yes-sir-ee-boss. By the end of the hour, I’ve rarely wasted more than 20 minutes, so what’s the beef?

The beef would be the stuff that’s missing between these two slices of bread, as it turns out.

I don’t care for the example being set by prominent members of the RE.net on social media sites, but I also don’t care if their seemingly-constant TwitBooking helps or hurts them.

This is what I care about: Hundreds and thousands of ordinary working stiffs are mimicking those poor examples, in the mistaken belief that scrupulously documenting every burp and bowel movement will make them successful.

But, from my own corpus: “Egovangelist, motivate thyself!” It’s all one thing, and the way to help other people get good at getting things right is to get good at getting things right. I love to think of myself as a hugely productive being, and the job that matters most to me is not scolding other people for being Read more

November 10, 2010

Realtor Prayer for Veterans

by

Realtor, Renaissance Man

Author website

The National Association of Realtors Code of Ethics starts with this:

“Under all is the land……..”

Today, on the 235th birthday of the U.S. Marines, and in anticipation of tomorrow, Veteran’s Day, I suggest that every Realtor, every American, and every freedom loving citizen of the world stop to consider the cost of that freedom. I dedicate once again this article that is reprinted from a 2007 post. I was lucky enough then to work with a young Marine and his wife to help them buy a home here in Oceanside. Meeting them moved me. Hopefully reading about them will move you as well. I’m dedicating this post and calling it….

Under All are the Graves….

Saturday, December 8, 2007
It’s Hardly An EOD

I took a young couple out looking for homes today. First time we had met, and our initial introduction had been through my web site and a couple of emails.In the course of our meeting I engaged in my usual convivial chatter, finding out in small snippets where they were from, what they were dreaming, and of course, what they “did for a living.” Now an old philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, once wrote “if you label me, you negate me”, and being not quite that old, but old enough to remember and revere the 60’s, I always ask “what do you do” hoping it creates something that really takes me to the core of that person, not just to the superficial meaning of his or her life as labeled by a job.

So today I asked “what do you both do?” She said, “I’m ex-military, and he’s still on active duty.”

“What branch?”, I asked.

“I was in the Air Force”, she said, “and he’s in the Marines.”

We’re here in Oceanside, California, home of Camp Pendleton, and some of the finest young men and women in the whole world. I myself served as a Marine many years ago, but continue to find that meeting and interacting with young service people always makes me glad I live in the San Diego area where so many opportunities arise to do so.

“What do you do Read more

November 9, 2010

Attention Brad Inman: I don’t want your dipshit “most influential” citation again this year, either, but it is beyond obvious that I am by far the most influential voice in the on-line world of real estate.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Let’s start with some music, just to set the mood:

So: If you run in the wrong circles, these are the kind of “arguments” you can expect to hear about me:

  • Greg Swann is mean.
  • Greg Swann is rude.
  • Greg Swann is vulgar.
  • Greg Swann is angry.
  • Greg Swann is cynical.

Here is an argument you won’t hear anywhere, except possibly at BloodhoundBlog:

  • Greg Swann is wrong, and here’s why…

You won’t hear the latter argument for two reasons: I don’t take positions I can’t defend with an impervious impenetrable invulnerability. And: If I should happen to discover that I have been wrong, generally I will be the first person to figure that out and I will announce my error to the world immediately.

What explains all the ad hominem arguments cited among the first set? You figure it out.

These are the kinds of games that some folks are running while making these persuasively useless claims about my character:

  • They piss and moan to each other about me behind my back.
  • They campaign with each other to try to damage my interests.
  • They pester contributors here to try get them to abandon BloodhoundBlog.

In each of these cases, I think they’re doing me favors — which assertion will probably just piss them off more. People who run in mobs don’t like me, and I don’t like them. Anything dominating personalities can do to recruit those folks to their own side of the table can only save me time in the long run.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this song summarizes my position on this kind of behavior — along with every other kind of behavior:

Recent events have made it more than obvious that I am by far the most influential person in the wired world of real estate. People are wasting irreplaceable hours and days of their lives obsessing over me, topping each other with tales of how ardently they don’t pay any attention to me.

Why would this be so? Again, you have to figure this out on your own, but my take is that they know I’m right and yet they don’t want to be right.

Witness:

November 8, 2010

Tête-à-tête in Tombstone

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

When the shadow blocked the doorway of Johnny Ringo’s, everyone in the bar looked up. The door was propped open and traffic was brisk. The glare of the late afternoon sun fought the gloom of the little taproom to a draw. But then gloom captured the turf enduringly, and we all looked up to see why.

The stranger leaning against the doorjamb was long and lean and very relaxed. He wore black wool trousers pegged at the ankles over ornately-tooled snakeskin boots. His dove-grey top coat fit him like a glove. Beneath it he wore a rich brocade waistcoat and a white linen shirt open at the collar. He had eyes the color of coal and flowing brown hair that spilled halfway down his back. His handlebar moustache was trimmed and combed and waxed to perfection. A red silk cravat finished the ensemble, that and two nickel-plated Colt 45s with carved ivory grips. The sidearms were mounted high, at his ribs, and a double-barreled shotgun, breech open, was slung across his left arm.

And even though Johnny Ringo’s is the tourist trap for the sophisticated tourist, still everyone gawked. Everyone except one man in the corner at the end of the bar, a man nearly perfectly concealed by the gloom. He looked up at the stranger in the doorway and there was genuine fear in his eyes.

The stranger was looking right at him. Looking right through him. He didn’t stare, he glared, and the room fell deathly silent — not a nervous cough, not a stolen breath. The fearful man tried to the hold the stranger’s gaze but couldn’t. He looked down at the drink before him on the table then looked up again quickly, something furtive in his eyes. The stranger nodded slowly and said, “I’m your huckleberry.”

Some moron guffawed in recognition but this didn’t relieve the tension, it added to it.

The stranger stood up straight and snapped the breech of the shotgun closed. He hefted it high in the air and the bartender snagged it with two hands. He mounted it on two pegs over the back-bar. Read more

November 7, 2010

What is Splendor? For me it’s exuberance and indomitability.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Start here: I’m not trying to piss you off. If you don’t want to read what I have to say, don’t. There are thousands of essays on this site, many recent and eye-opening, others older but canonical. You can find what you want here — or you can seek elsewhere. You have no reason to endure something you don’t want to read. You don’t have to, and I don’t want you to.

Now then:

This is funny: I live in a state of fairly continuous delight. It’s not always the case, but I would paint my state of mind most of the time — and especially when I’m working at something I love — as exuberance. It can be hugely external, and I know I sometimes wear my wife out when I’m playing with ideas out loud. But it can also be almost searingly apollonian — as here, as it happens — and I can sustain a kind of frenzied concentration for hours on end.

Why is it funny — to me, at least? Because it’s just excellent comedy, the radical juxtaposition of two opposites — the expectation that I simply must be angry or dour or cynical and the actual experience of being, for me and for people who spend time with me. I am having fun — deeply satisfying fun — almost all of the time. So much so that I don’t even think about it, except when I consciously direct myself to think about it. And that, thinking about the way my mind functions, is a delight for me just by itself.

Delight, exuberance, searing concentration — these are mothertongue ideas, and this is the job that art does for us: Poets and painters and playwrights and novelists use abstractions in ways that induce us to see not mere words or images but the essence of being itself. We know we are complicit in an illusion — not real life, just a simulation — but we surrender ourselves to it and live it from the inside, at least in imagination.

I have written hundreds of thousands of words in my life, but I Read more

November 5, 2010

Swallow Hard — Make It Happen — Or Get Out

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

For the most part, it’s human nature to have a love/hate relationship with the results that have our name attached to them. I’ve failed far more often than I’ve succeeded. It’s not even close. Name a category in which I’ve endured the ignominy of defeat, and my hand is more likely than not be in the air.

Baseball is useful here, as it’s a game based on failure. Hall of Famers are players who failed somewhat less than their peers. Major leaguer hitters as a group, fail at a rate of roughly 75%. Those who fail a ‘mere’ 65-70% of the time often end up earning $1 Mil a month or so. Think that’s a thin margin separating average from excellent? Try this — The difference between a .250 and a .300 hitter? One measly hit a week. Really.

Ponder this.

In San Diego’s market, one extra skinned cat monthly at the median price, about $375,000 or so, would create additional GCI of — wait for it — $135,000. Median price in your market is $150,000? That’s an additional $54,000 or so. One more deal a month. Would that make the difference for your family? Would those results keep you in the business? Would you then stop making pathetic excuses for your failure to do what produces spendable results?

If you can honestly say that’s within your reach by quietly tweakin’ your effort a bit, super. Do it now. I’ll expect a Christmas card next year.

However, if you’re already killin’ yourself 25 hours a day, eight days a week, you may wanna consider doin’ something different so as to generate better results. How’s that for an original thought? Explaining an anemic bank account to those counting on you at home is not a Kodak moment, a truth to which I can effectively testify.

It was one of those moments when the phrase, ‘Winners don’t make excuses, they make it happen’ became real to me.

Adapting is really code tellin’ us to stop doin’ what ain’t workin’ and start doin’ things that do. Again — there are those who tell us Read more

November 4, 2010

If you can’t sell, teach. And if you can’t teach? Teach e-Pro!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I don’t pay close attention to this crap, because — well — it’s crap. But you may have heard that the NAR’s most-idiotic designation, e-Pro, has been taken over by a confederacy of dunces super-nice people from Agent Shortbus (where they “pour” over everything, especially maple syrup over waffles) called SMMI.

You have to read between the lines in this press release, but my take is that the swamis from SMMI are going to teach you how to waste your days on TwitBook just like the cool kids. You might think that this is a suicidal strategy for working Realtors to pursue, but as has been discussed here lately, apparently the notion of working is one the cool kids are trying to get away from altogether.

Like this: I am told that the e-Pro trainer-training event held by the smarmies at NARdigras drew a thick slice of the most-prominent twitwits. I don’t know if they’re going to stop officially selling real estate — how would one know the difference? — in order to become full-time carriers of the TwitBook virus. The one thing we can hope is that the long-standing stench of e-Pro will arouse working agents from their TwitBook-induced stupor before they go completely broke.

And if they don’t? Crush them like bugs. This business isn’t for everyone. TwitBook is just the new bullpen, the new water-cooler around which losers can gather as they gripe themselves out of the real estate business.

Looked at that way, the e-Pro trainers in training could be doing all of us a favor: Isolating the people who won’t make it and teaching them How To Succeed At Failure.

I’ll leave you with two thoughts:

First, if you are deeply offended at seeing pompous, blustering, sputtering, know-nothing jackasses being skewered in public, please just go away. I don’t care, and I cannot imagine how anyone over the mental age of nine even could care.

Second, if you don’t want to go down the toilet in a very amusing public display of TwitBooked indolence, get your nose to the grindstone, your shoulder to the wheel and stop pretending that schmoozing with losers and Read more

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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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