Aug 05 2008
I had the pleasure of moderating a panel made up of Jim Cronin (Real Estate Tomato), Dustin Luther (4Realz.net), Daniel Rothamel (RealEstateZebra.com), and Nicole Nicolay (MyTechOpinion.com).
If you missed it, here’s the video from Inman.
Technorati Tags: blogging, Commentary, Industry News, inman
May 26 2008
My country,’ tis of thee,
sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing;
land where my fathers died,
land of the pilgrims’ pride,
from every mountainside let freedom ring!
My native country, thee,
land of the noble free, thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
thy woods and templed hills;
my heart with rapture thrills, like that above.
Let music swell the breeze,
and ring from all the trees sweet freedom’s song;
let mortal tongues awake;
let all that breathe partake;
let rocks their silence break, the sound prolong.
Our fathers’ God, to thee,
author of liberty, to thee we sing;
long may our land be bright
with freedom’s holy light;
protect us by thy might, great God, our King.
Words: Samuel F. Smith, 1808-1895
Dec 20 2007
Videoblogs, or vlogs, are relatively new to the real estate industry.
But there is a growing community of experienced videobloggers outside of the real estate industry. They make up the bulk of the users on the “by invitation only” Seesmic.com. After spending a few days on the site, my gut told me this community would be a good one to tap into to jump start a conversation around the theme of “Beyond The Written Word,” a panel I am moderating at Inman’s Bloggers Connect conference in NY.
The Bloggers Connect panel will consist of Douglas Heddings, Senior Vice President, Prudential Douglas Elliman; Rachel Natalie Klein, Founder, IntoTheBox.tv; Daniel Rothamel, Realtor, Strong Team REALTORS; Blogger, RealEstateZebra.com; and Mike Price, President, ML Broadcast.
We only have 45 minutes to discuss a very hot topic. So let’s start it early.
To help us, I asked the seasoned videobloggers on Seesmic what they might have to say about the potential upside and possible downside that video blogging and podcasting might have for real estate agents looking to use it to grow their business. This 14 minute video is an edited version of the discussion.
The goal of this video is to generate further discussion. The questions and comments you leave here will help move this discussion forward and may very well end up being part of the panel discussion in New York. So, comment away. If you’d like to add your video comment, you can upload a video anywhere you choose and include it as a link in the comments here, or you can add your video comments to the discussion the discussion video on Viddler.
Here are links to the full comments used for this video.
Jeff Turner | Real Estate Shows
Deek Deekster | DeekDeekster.com
Adam Jochum | Cafn8ed.tv
David Jacobs | TheConnectedWorld.net
Nicole Spagnuolo | NicoleSpag.com
Victor Cajiao | TypicalMacUser.com
Daniel Rothamel | RealEstateZebra.com
Andy Kaufman | MyEastBayAgent.com
As further commentary, this video took a ridiculously long time to edit. 
Nov 01 2007
I often hear REALTORS talk about themselves as professionals.
Usually they do it with a Rodney Dangerfield, “I don’t get no respect” attitude. They sound defensive and angry. “Why doesn’t the world acknowledge me as a professional? And why don’t people understand that real estate is a profession, just like medicine or law?” Almost always, the focus of their anger is external. “Why doesn’t NAR do a better job of promoting us? Why don’t people realize my skills and training and dedication? Why doesn’t somebody (not me) fix this?”
But what is a profession? Webster defines a profession as: a vocation requiring knowledge of some department of learning or science. They also define it as: any vocation or business. By the second definition all of you are hereby and forevermore designated as members of a profession. If only it was that simple.
And what is a professional? Webster’s says a professional is: someone engaged in one of the learned professions.
Those dictionary definitions of profession and professional do not connect to the real issue. The real issue; what most people want when they refer to themselves as professionals working in a profession, is status and respect.
When we shift the focus of the term professional from what we do to how we are perceived and treated, the definition and the entire concept of the designation “professional” changes.
In that context of status and respect, what exactly is a professional? I believe that a “professional” is someone who takes what they do, whatever that happens to be, and transforms it into an art form. They make the mundane look magnificent. They make seemingly impossible things look drop-dead easy. They cover all the details, all the time. They master the subtleties. They silently acknowledge that they have a gift for what they do and they give that gift to the people in their world respectfully and compassionately. They know that they have never “arrived.”
They are never content with their present body of knowledge. They live with a constant, silent fear of becoming obsolete and irrelevant. They address that fear by continuously learning and growing and changing. They remain their own harshest critics, always looking for ways to be and to do and to deliver something better. They are consciously aware of their Values and they always strive to live them.
Becoming and remaining a “professional” is not bestowed on someone by virtue of a degree or a certificate. “Look at me, I took these courses, I spent this impressive number of hours learning all this stuff and I have this piece of paper to prove it. That makes me a professional. Bow to that.” No. That’s not how it works.
In the course of my life, I have known professional mail carriers, trash collectors, gardeners, housekeepers and baby sitters. And I have known amateur doctors, dentists, attorneys, judges and accountants. I bet, if you take a moment to think about it, so have you.
Because being a true “professional” is a purely personal pursuit, I believe that there are no “professions.” What we conventionally call professions, such as medicine, law, or accounting, are businesses with an extra layer of self-governance. Some of the people who practice them are professionals; some are not.
Designating a field of endeavor as a “profession” (in the context of conveying status and respect) is, to me, two things:
But you might argue: Wait. Professions have tests and standards and rules and by-laws and continuing education requirements and licensing and self-policing and other neat stuff that sets them apart from, say, auto mechanics.
That’s true in theory. But do you know how often an attorney has to dangerously screw up before he or she can be disbarred, or how many trials a judge must sleep through to lose his office or how many people a doctor has to maim or kill before he or she can lose his/her license? The professional standards set forth in the rules and regulations sound fine, but the performance bars for enforcement are set so low that a warm cadaver could easily maintain a license. We are a society that sometimes elects dead people to Congress. We treat our “professions” with equally tough oversight.
So being a true “professional” is an individual choice. Taking some courses, passing a State licensing test and joining NAR cannot make you a “professional.” You don’t get that designation by posting your credentials and declaring yourself a “professional” on your web site or business card. Clever tag lines in your ads don’t get you there. But all those tactics can fool people for a time.
The measure and stature of one’s professionalism is defined by behavior and Values – the ones you live by; the real ones. Anyone can set their performance bar at the height he/she chooses. You don’t need a society or a licensing body to tell you how to behave or what it means to be a professional.
It’s a matter of personal choice.
Oct 26 2007
The truth is worth digging for, even if the ground is hard and your shovel is dull.
Late last night I put up a post entitled, “Craigslist Delivers Viewers In Large Numbers.” It was based on server data that I collected over a week ago and I had been staring at ever since. The numbers indicated more incoming links from Craigslist than Realtor.com and Trulia and other Web 2.0 search portals. The numbers were so cartoonishly disproportionate that they left me scratching my head and asking a lot of questions.
So I decided to put the numbers up and ask the questions in public.
The answers, in part, were staring me right in the face and I was just too close to the data to see them. Jeff Weir, from Tour The Triad, pointed out what is now obvious about the numbers. The way Craiglsist displays information automatically generates a referring link, because all of the information is being pulled from our servers. This is not true of Realtor.com or Trulia. They provide a good deal of information about a home that is coming from their servers, not ours.
So I pulled the post down.
I’m not interested in sensationalism or jumping to conclusions based on opinions. And I’m definitely not interested in making false claims about anything. The numbers, interpreted incorrectly, could have cast a bad light on Realtor.com, Trulia and others. I’ve never pulled a post down before, but I want to be accurate. Even if I look stupid (like a dull shovel) in the process.
The way Craigslist pulls data from our servers doesn’t answer all of the questions, however. For example, why are the number of referring hits so low for Trulia and other Web 2.0 portals? But more importantly, the questions that need to be answered may never be answered by looking at anyone’s server logs, let alone ours. They can only be answered by you, the real estate agent.
If one website generates more traffic than another, what does that mean?
I’d love to find out. For that, I’m going to need some help.
If you post listings to all of the above, Realtor.com, Craigslist, Trulia, etc., I’d like to hear from you. Which sites are moving the needle for you? Tell us what is working and what is not working and why. I think the information is worth digging for.
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