BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Flourishing (page 7 of 38)

Thriving as only a rational animal can

April 8, 2012

From Man Alive! – “You’re in this all alone.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind.

Extract from Chapter 1. You’re in this all alone.

Each individual human being is his own first and best philosopher, like it or don’t, for this simple reason: You are not born knowing how to stay alive, and, absent some sort of cosmic-injustice machine like the Big Mother welfare state, if you don’t figure out what to do – and then do it – you will die. If you do nothing in your own behalf, you will die. If you pursue errors, your own errors or the kind that come with a tony religious or academic pedigree, you will die. If you attempt to exist as an animal does, trying to steal the values you need to survive, you will live in Squalor until one of your would-be victims catches up to you, and then you will die.

What is more, you cannot live the uniquely-human life – the fully-human life – unless you think in your own behalf, in pursuit of your own values. The philosophical or theological doctrine you have followed until now has been aimed, most likely, in the opposite direction: It sought to get you to supplant your own reason with someone else’s dogma, and to pursue that person’s values rather than your own.

Why is Western Civilization collapsing? Because you defaulted on your responsibility to defend it – by defending the values that make your life possible.

But, but, but… We’re all in this together, aren’t we? Wrong. That’s just another hustle, devised to get you to give up everything you have earned so that the person making the claim does not have to earn anything at all. This is the truth of your life, which perhaps no one has ever told you before today:

You’re in this all alone.

…continue reading here…

April 8, 2012

A celebration of me: Man Alive! is alive!

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I just traded two weeks of my life for the rest of human history. That’s what it feels like. It’s funny even to me to live at that level of hubris!

I’ve always been able to work very hard when I need to, and I’ve always loved the way I feel when I finish: It’s the ultimate best kind of soaring I get to do, a tremendous sense of enormous accomplishment that leaves me feeling everything but small. I don’t know where you might sip at your best taste of Splendor, but for me it comes from working hard, working wisely, working well, working beautifully — and getting done. I am the high-D who ate up all the d’s in the alphabet. I like to finish big jobs masterfully.

But today I swim in Splendor. Today my world is all the way won — and won my way. Today I published a book of philosophy that will change the course of human history: Man Alive! A survival manual for the human mind. The subject: Your mind and how you can save Western Civilization and make your own life more perfect by rethinking your moral philosophy.

Just that topic itself is a thing of the most perfect hubris, and yet I swear I have the outlandish effrontery to insist that this one little book will — ultimately, when enough people embrace the ideas I uphold — reverse the tide of tyranny that has overrun the Earth. It’s 78 pages, total, just 32,000 words — a third of the length of a typical novel — and yet it bears within it the seeds of a brand new kind of life for billions of human beings.

Which kind of life would that be? My kind, of course.

I have taken it upon myself to lecture everyone alive — and everyone who will ever be alive in the future — on how to manage their minds. At length. In significant detail. And without much in the way of comfort or consolation.

People who already think as I do, in the large, will love it. Not only do I confirm to them Read more

April 2, 2012

Sneezers wanted: Pre-release announcement for my new book, “Man alive! A survival manual for the human mind.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

One of my favorite jokes about the art of advertising copywriting is a matchbook cover reading, “Save the world from home in your spare time!” I don’t know if anyone still advertises on matchbook covers. I don’t even know if anyone still makes matchbooks. Presumably, by now, smokers can light their cigarettes with the fire of indignation in other peoples’ eyes.

Even so, I’ve always believed that ordinary people should be able to save the world from going to hell on a hand-truck. Our real problem is not a Hitler or a Mao or the Eric-Cartman-of-the-moment. The only real problem humanity has ever had is thoughtlessness — the mindless accession to the absurd demands of greater and lesser demagogues.

So: I’ve written a book about that one issue: The high cost of thoughtlessness — and how to stop paying it. The title is Man alive! A survival manual for the human mind, and it weighs in at a slim 30,000 words. I’m nobody’s matchbook copywriter, and I would have made it even shorter if I could have. But the book covers everything I know about the nature of human life on Earth — what we’ve gotten wrong, until now, and how we can do better going forward.

If you have paid attention to my writing over the years, you will have seen me cover some of these ideas on Usenet or at PresenceOfMind, BloodhoundBlog or SplendorQuest. I actually can summarize my thinking very briefly. Take your pick: “Ontologically-consonant teleology” or “Love your self.” That’s the same ethical creed expressed two different ways, and everything I have ever written develops and defends that philosophy. The proud fact of my life is that it took me thirty-three years to write a short book in eight days. You can get a taste of it, if you like, in this short extract: Stop cursing the darkness by turning on your mind!

Here’s what I need: Readers. The book itself will be free. I wrote it to save the world — no kidding. But I need for people to read it in “galleys” to let me know if I have Read more

April 2, 2012

You’re A Master Cat Skinner – The Good News and The Bad News

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Are you the ‘go to’ guy/gal? Do you list a lotta property and do it well? Are you a leader? Though I’m sure many will say charisma is required, I beg to disagree. It never hurts, but in the end, the Lord created the ultimate equalizer to charisma:

Results.

Today, let’s have a serious discussion about what combination of approaches would slaughter what’s currently goin’ on in the national brokerage community. First, here’s my perception of the major ‘schools’ I see in operation.

Variations on the Agent-Centric brokerage model

Between us we can come up with a myriad variations. Let’s limit them to very high commission splits, and the desk fee approach.

As I’ve written before, not long ago, that the agent-centric (A-C) model is failing everywhere it’s been tried. It’s ability to fail at pretty much every level is becoming legendary, regardless of the Titantic-like practicianers now lookin’ to technology to save them. Listen guys, if buying ownership positions in title companies, lenders, and starting your own escrows isn’t prima facie evidence of the desperate reach for lifejackets, I don’t know what is.

Let’s directly compare the currently popular A-C model with what I’d open in today’s — or any — housing market.

But first, a word from the Disclosures Department.

My biz model, though it pains me to admit, would indeed work exceptionally well if completely buyer oriented, listing few if any homes. However, when compared to my model — Broker-Centric — the firm primarily based upon listing homes will annihilate the buyer based company. This isn’t theory, or even bias on my part. As anyone should readily be able to discern, it’s a matter of sixth grade arithmetic.

Also, I’m loosely basing my ‘virtual’ A-C company on a brokerage I know of in a northwestern state. The size, and commission split are the perfect example of the results one can expect when using this model.

End disclosures.

Let’s first construct a virtual company built upon the A-C model.

Let’s give ’em a lotta agents, but not make it a big box setup. We’ll hire 35 full time agents. None of ’em Read more

March 25, 2012

Egoism in action: The face of Splendor…

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

My friend Jim Klein fingered this video this morning:

Forget the context. It doesn’t matter. What I want for you to see is that young man’s face just as he finishes playing. This is the face of Splendor. This is egoism in action.

Gavin M. George is a virtuoso pianist in the making, and I don’t want to imply that anything of his is mine, nor mine his. I just want to celebrate his accomplishment. I am in his debt, and I am very grateful to him.

But the delight he himself takes in his playing is the thing that makes us human. No one could give him that soaring feeling, and no one can take it away from him. He shares his gift with us, but the best part of the riches he owns are his and his alone, not to be seized nor even seen by other people.

This is what we are, at our best. This is what you’re aiming for — when you are working at your best.

March 24, 2012

I Hate Bill Maher

by

Realtor, Renaissance Man

Author website

I hate Bill Maher…mostly. Hate most of the stances he takes, and over the years the manner in which he has taken them. “Never make a point when you can take a shot…Maher.” But in this short video he has me laughing, at myself and even with him. Good on ya….as Greg would say.

 

Am I getting soft, going kookoo, or simply exposing that mostly I like to laugh rather than look at gestalt or grouse? Ah well, Maher will do himself in with me in a week or month, but for today I’m leaving work with a smile on my face. Be happy my fellow hounds….

March 20, 2012

Today’s is Teri Lussier’s fifth blogiversary on BloodhoundBlog.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here is Teri Lussier’s first post at BloodhoundBlog: Hi. I’m Teri…And I’m aghast.

Teri had to tell me that today is the first day of her sixth year writing with us. I’m not a birthdays and anniversaries kind of guy. But I am nothing but proud of the dawg she has turned out to be, and it’s fun to herald the event.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I met Teri just at the beginning of the end of the golden age of the RE.net. The Project Blogger contest was the first little bit of orchestrated hoke in the real estate weblogging world, and I had just told the mob of cliquey mediocrities the first of many truths they did not want to hear, inciting the first of many failed mass sneerspasms.

In each one of those mob actions, writers at BloodhoundBlog were assailed with entreaties to stop writing here. I think the theory was that depriving BloodhoundBlog of their voices would somehow silence my voice. These campaigns were initiated by Joe Ferrara; all of this mob-maniacal horse-shit originated with Joe Ferrara. It all came to nothing, of course, at least on my end. But a lot of agents and lenders screwed up their careers trying to recreate a kindergarten playground — Lord of the Flies with no points off for spelling errors.

This was evil, awful and wrong — not that I’ve ever made a secret of my opinion of social media and the mobs it engenders. But the whole phenomenon is interesting to me, because my thinking runs entirely the other way.

Teri Lussier has written great essays on BloodhoundBlog, and I’m very grateful for that. But I’m also very grateful to call her my friend. I don’t make friends quickly or easily, and I am very, very quick to push people away from me as soon as I realize they are not friends to me.

But I am a friend to Teri not out of loyalty to her, but out of my indivertible loyalty to principle. Teri lives up to values I admire, revere and worship, and that is the source of Read more

March 14, 2012

Making immaculate love: My new book about marital bliss, coming soon.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Way off topic for this joint, but I have a new book coming on achieving a perfect bliss in your marriage. It’s a subject I’ve addressed here, as well as at SplendorQuest.com.

The title is Come Hither, Darling: Making Immaculate Love. If your marriage isn’t everything you thought it would be, you might give the link a look.

My promise: We’ll start out with a blinding epiphany.

March 2, 2012

DocuSign graduates: The ultimate signature bot is about to become a full-blown point-of-purchase.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

What’s the real difference between a broker and a salesperson? Whatever his or her license status, the broker is one who knows the deal ain’t done until you’ve got the money. Starting in April, DocuSign is going to make a broker’s life a lot easier:

DocuSign’s upcoming April release ushers in a new era for the global standard for eSignature with the introduction of Payment Processing. Once available, you will be able to close the deal and collect the cash with DocuSign in one step to further accelerate transaction times, increase speed to revenue, reduce costs and enhance your customers’ experience.

It’s PayPal, and the charges are plausibly reversible, so it’s not perfect money. But this is document-as-storefront, a whole new way for paper-pusher to sell.

Note to the vendorslut mafia: I gain nothing by chastising you for your unbounded mediocrity, which is why I’ve stopped paying attention entirely to your artifacts of ineptitude. But take careful note: DocuSign knows how to deliver the goods. They are in a constant added-value mode, with the result that no less-motivated competitor can even come close to them. It’s not just the features, it’s how they are implemented — software-as-a-service in both directions, with a REST API coming in the new release.

February 18, 2012

Experts Smexperts – It’s About Results – Go Tear ‘Em a New One!

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

I love it when life presents an example in real time, don’t you? In pro sports, basketball included, the surprise superstar, even if it’s only potential, is fairly rare. What with video tape, computers, and sophisticated scouting systems, it’s very difficult for a player with serious game to fall through the cracks. Add so-called ‘super scouts’ to the menu, and it becomes even more unlikely.

Though I’m open to your take, in my lifetime, the biggest ‘miss’ in pro sports has been recently retired Major League Baseball catcher Mike Piazza. The only reason he was drafted at all was cuz his Godfather, Tommy Lasorda, as a favor to Mike’s dad, called his name in the 62nd round of the 1988 Amateur Draft. Apparently ALL of baseball’s vaunted experts, including their super scouts, deemed the 1,389 players taken before him as having superior potential.

How wrong were they?

He retired in May of ’08 after having hit more homers than any MLB catcher who ever wore a uniform. More than Yogi Berra. More than Johnny Bench. More than Carlton Fisk. More than all of ’em. There’ve been just 10 players in the history of Major League Baseball who’ve hit 400 home runs while sportin’ a lifetime batting average over .300 — while never striking out more than 100 times in a season. Piazza’s a member of that wicked elite group.

The Captain Obvious statement of the year is that he’s a slam dunk first ballot Hall of Famer when his name comes up in the next year or two.

He was drafted as a favor. Baseball’s brain trust appraised his talent as virtually without value. Think about it. Every single MLB team drafted over 40 players they thought had more potential to at least reach the Bigs than did Mike Piazza.

So much for reliable talent evaluation. ‘Course, there are the excuse makers who now say, in their defense, that he never showed the incredible talent he demonstrated so soon thereafter. We’ve all heard of late bloomers. Shoot, I are one. But a sure first ballot Hall of Famer never shows even one scout Read more

February 13, 2012

Those Entering the Arena Daily Know the Secret To Skinnin’ Cats – And It Ain’t About Tryin’ Really Really Hard

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

What I love about our business is that there’re no points awarded for effort. With rare exceptions, it’s a heartless, merit based culture. Trying really really hard is for first time T-Ballers. Real estate owners don’t sign contracts promising to pay us for our efforts. They agree to pay when we produce 100% of the results outlined in that contract. 99% = go fish, no paycheck. The rest qualifies as ‘the dog ate my homework’ crappola. Coincidentally, this is why the vast majority of new agents make like steam and disappear in their first year or two. They found out the hard way, that in the real world, the world refusing to pay for anything less than the bargained for results, attempting never equals achievement.

Apparently, to buyers and sellers of real estate, results matter — they matter big time.

I write this post to those agents who’ve been workin’ like dogs, without much reward. Been there, lived that. I sympathize and empathize. You’ve already demonstrated what’s most lacking in our industry, a consistently OldSchool work ethic. Allow me to gently redirect your energy.

Join the Brother/Sisterhood of Gladiators — enter the arena of those who value achievement, read: results, over the culture of ‘Participation Trophies’.

There are two kinds of licensees. Those who enter the arena daily, and those who work their asses off to avoid the arena at all costs. The former generally make an excellent to elite living. The latter either struggle from year to year, or find what we often refer to as a W-2 job. The key factor in the new career is that they get paid whether they produce optimum results or not. There’s no arena involved.

In real estate, we’re more or less bounty hunters. No skinned cat, no paycheck. No exceptions.

We’re almost at the halfway point of 2012’s first quarter. If you’re able to look at your activities since January 1st in written form, do so. What percentage of your time were you either prospecting, belly to belly with a prospective client, or, like one of my mentors used to say, ‘out among ’em, talking’? Read more

February 9, 2012

Two years ago, when the iPad was introduced, I said: “Google and MicroSoft can’t even copy genius.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Vide licet:

With the iPad and its closed software universe, has Steve Jobs committed an unforced error — unnecessarily created an obvious opening for Google and MicroSoft to compete?

Today, Google says: “If you throw enough crap at the wall, sooner or later something’s gotta stick.”

Today, Microsoft says: “Pigs will eat anything.”

The revolution is not the technology.

This is the revolution: The consumer is now in charge.

Learn to love it — or get liquidated. PT Barnum’s day in the marketplace is done.

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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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