jonwashburn: January 2008

I am not a financial markets expert, nor a rocket scientist, so please take my observations on this post with a grain of salt.

It seems to me like the blue line (30yr fixed rate) follows the direction of the green line (Fed Discount Rate). I believe The Experts claim that the opposite is usually true, but I am not convinced.

If my hunch is correct we may be seeing the blue line go even lower since the green line just dropped to 3%.

Refi boom anyone?

(My other hunch is that I will be blasted in the comments of this post by the real experts.) 

I used to get asked all the time, "How is ActiveRain going to make money?".  However, since the HouseValues investment things have slightly changed; now everyone is eager to tell me how ActiveRain is going to make money. 

The funny thing is that most people's understanding of ActiveRain's value proposition is wrong. Most people tell me that the value of ActiveRain is in our member's content. That is false. Although the content on ActiveRain is valuable to it's members, I do not view it as a primary value to ActiveRain Corp. At least in the sense that none of our planned revenue models are dependent on utilizing our members content to make money.

Seth Godin published a post today that explains ActiveRain's business strategy perfectly, so I am going to leave you with a portion of his post instead of trying to paraphrase what he said.

"...the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build isn't an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.

It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about...

Real estate bloggers: practice diligence with what you publish on your blog! If you claim something inaccurately and it causes injury to a person, you may be sued for libel.  In response to a claim of libel, blogger Lucas Lechuga was let go by his brokerage and is currently being sued for $25 million (see CBS video).

According to the video, legal experts disagree about whether or not you can be held liable for something you post on your blog.

I believe I met Lucas in New York at Inman Connect a few weeks ago, and remember him to be a nice guy. I wish him the best in resolving this issue.

"Libel" is defined as "an untruthful statement about a person, published in writing or through broadcast media, that injures the person's reputation or standing in the community. Because libel is a tort (a civil wrong), the injured person can bring a lawsuit against the person who made the false statement."

___Follow the Story___

Lucas' Blog (Talk about great link bait!!) 

Miami Herald

4realz.net

___Related Links___

Historical blogger libel case

When we first set out to create ActiveRain, we wanted to bring the real estate industry together in a way that never existed before – a way that many thought impossible. What we imagined but never expected was the impact a community like this would have on its members. 

Since our launch in June of 2006, we have been marked by two extraordinary achievements: our exponential growth and how we accomplished it without any institutional funding. We never budged from our pledge of free membership -- which now extends to over 65,000 real estate professionals. And we’ve steadfastly maintained open access to useful real estate information to the more than 10,000,000 visitors to our network of sites.

I am proud of what ActiveRain has accomplished so far, but there’s more to do. There is more you have asked us to do. To accomplish this we needed financial resources. Which brings us to a special announcement I want to share with you. ActiveRain has accepted a minority capital investment from HouseValues designed to help us grow and become more of what we had always hoped we could be.
 
A great deal of thought and consideration went into this decision. I’d like to share some of that with you.   
 
2007 taught us a few things. The biggest perhaps is how prudent we need to be about who we do business with. Despite the many hands held out to us over the past few months, the right one had to gain a firm grip on our trust. HouseValues did that – above all others.

Financial terms were important to us, but throughout the entire process we continually asked ourselves "who understands us and our culture the best?” and “Who will help us keep our commitments to the community? HouseValues, a local company with a wealth of experience in our industry, hit the mark.

Daniel Burnham, the visionary architect from Chicago, once said, "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will themselves not be realized."

We never set out with little plans and we are going forward with big ones.  The future of this community – and this business -- rests on three pillars: ActiveRain (our professional network), Localism (our consumer destination), and our soon-to-be-released Outside Blogging platform. These things stir our blood. We hope they will stir yours.

We can barely contain our excitement over the promise that this year offers. Our community has a new member and they are committed to seeing it stay exactly as it is and becoming exactly what it desires. 

I went to Inman Connect NY this year determined to go to as many sessions as possible, gain new insights, and bring them back to the AR community. This strategy contrasted to my usual Inman experience of back-to-back deal making meetings with little time for sessions. I am sad to report that my hope of attending many of the sessions lost out to the best Inman networking experience to date! However, the good news is that all of that networking and deal making will result in some great new tools and features coming to our ActiveRain members in the future months! In fact it's Friday morning, and it's already been one week since the conference has ended and this is my first real opportunity to take a breather and write a real blog post about the experience.

I've come to savor the relationships rekindled at Brad Inman's Real Estate Connect conferences, held in San Fransisco in the summer and Manhattan in the winter. My first Inman conference was not as successful, despite my hopes; I aspired to meet with the "higher ups" to pitch the idea for ActiveRain and raise financial support. In reality, that first conference was quite the growth opportunity. I drove to San Francisco alone, and when I got there knew absolutely no one. I approached people who's name I recognized, introduced myself, and attempted to secure meetings. Needless to say, I ate every meal by myself during my three days in San Francisco and drove home just a little poorer than when I had arrived.

The first conference is the hardest to "crash", so to speak, but by the second, and certainly by the third, I found myself knowing more and more people. Now after my fourth conference I would guess that I know 1/3 of the attendants on a first name basis! 

I managed to sneak into parts of a several sessions, and here were some of my takeaways:

Charlie Young, COO of Coldwell Banker, banished the old "listings as commodity" argument with his emphasis on putting listings everywhere.

Marc Davison of 1000Watt Consulting stressed taking the temperature of the market and giving more transparency.

Sherry Chris, CEO of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate twirled people on their heads, stating, "Consider non-business application as business applications". Twitter, YouTube, etc.

Kevin Boer discussed using outside companies for your web components, opensource software, etc, as a way to make real estate blogging and technology affordable. Why reinvent the wheel? 

Trulia announced their new motto of "when your product becomes a commodity, commoditize your business" and the launch of their new white label listing product. (I personally believe that this is perhaps one of the most important milestones in the real estate industry in the last 10 years. I will try to post more on that thought soon.)

FrontDoor made their big appearance.  They are definitely a player, and should be watched!

Pretty much every expert said that the real estate market is doing very badly, and it most likely won't recover for another couple of years (except for a few locations, such as New York city, which are booming). 

The general theme left little doubt of the impact of conventional marketing as a has-been in our current marketplace. Exemplified by Pamela Liebman, President and CEO of the Corcoran Group, her company has done away with all print advertising, except to promote open houses. If agents are hesitant, she shared, track and share where closed sales originate. The numbers will speak for themselves, and agents will switch right away!

Drew Meyers just announced that Zillow will be offering up all of their neighborhood boundary data through a Creative Commons license. From a technology provider this is pretty swanky cool news.  Don't be surprised if the new Localism redesign taps into some of this data.

I didn't apply to college mostly because I didn't like the idea of the acceptance of my admissions being outside of my control.

As a real estate agent I was limited in my success because I could not bare the disappointment of losing out when competing for a listing.

I also had a difficult time working leads because I became discouraged if my close ratio was not 100%.

I am not afraid of failure. I am afraid of not being perfect.

In some ways this fear has propelled me to succeed in areas where I might otherwise have failed. But in most cases it has held me back. I have a suspicion that many others are affected by the fear of not being perfect, and I hope that this post helps them.

I am working on being comfortable with my true self; working on accepting myself where I am at right now. Being content with who God made me to be.

Ironically I have turned to Donald Trump to help me on this journey. ;) I have bookmarked a page in Trump's book, "Think big and kick ass" that has had a surprisingly profound impact on me: 

"A truly positive mental attitude is when you are good at what you do and you are prepared for every possibility, both positive and negative. You can boost your positive mental attitude by being thoroughly prepared. You cannot expect to be successful 100 percent of the time no matter whether you are in business, finance, real estate, management, medicine, or science. If you are not prepared for a negative result, a few minor setbacks, the loss of a promotion, or a deal falling through, such an experience will cause you an unnecessary amount of confusion and doubt. Both a positive mental attitude and a good work ethic are important in creating your own luck, but you cannot rely solely on them.

The real-life truth is that deals do not always close, you do not always land the new account, you do not always win the lawsuit, you do not always get the promotion, your patients do not always recover, and the people you deal with are not always honest. There always circumstances beyond your control. The only way to guard against having your confidence shattered is to come to grips with the stark reality that negative things can and do happen. Count on it. Be prepared for it. Realize that it is life, and that it has nothing to do with you or your abilities. Do not let it shake your self-confidence one iota!"

I guess I just need someone to tell me that it is alright to fail. 

The allure of ActiveRain is two-fold. The first, to connect, have fun, relax, and receive support. The second, to make money through business generation. This post is to teach you how to yield greater results from your business generating time on ActiveRain.

First we need to establish Rule #1: When you write for business, you are writing to persuade.

Yes, you heard me right. That is exactly what I said; You are here to sell! The end goal is for your readers to take action.

Rule #2: Writing with the end goal of persuading someone to do something is most effective when you are being genuine and transparent.

But isn't selling and being transparent an oxymoron?

No! I don't know exactly when or how it happened, but at some point our society began equating selling with lying. Sure, some people lie when they sell, but the best salespeople also have the most genuine concern for the people they are selling to.

So what exactly does persuasive writing mean?

Rule #3: Writing is persuasive when readers are willing to act on, or comment on, what you have written.

The goal is to strike a nerve with your reader. But don't strike it so hard that you lose them.

Rule #4: Your readers will only respond with as much passion as you put forward.

Don't be afraid to take a stand and be passionate about the position you are taking! Being wishy-washy is easiest way to guarantee non-action to what you are writing.

Rule #5: Write with authority.

Coming from the ultra polite and low-key Northwest, I have an inherent fear of coming across as conceited, and so I struggle with this rule. But I have realized that writing from a position of authority, and using declarative statements, is absolutely critical if I want my readers to understand exactly what I am trying to say. Humbleness does not work in business writing.

Rule #6: Make grammar secondary to getting your point across.

Since I never learned how to write using proper grammar in the first place, this rule is easy for me to follow. But for those of you "edumacated" folks out there, stop caring so much about grammar. The most important thing to consider when writing is whether or not the reader "gets it". Start off just writing what you think. Then after you get all of your thoughts on paper, go back and read out loud what you have just written. Put commas, hyphens, colons, and semi-colons, wherever necessary so that your reader has the easiest time following your ideas, allowing your message to carry the most impact.

Rule #6: Your perceived value is only as great as the information that you provide.

Nobody cares that you are a CRS, ABA, PhD, AB, MBA, or even that you are the nicest girl in the world. What they do care about is the information that you are giving them.

What about Localism?

It's true, most Localism posts are not intended to be persuasive, and they are better left that way. Keep your Localism posts informative; use them to help establish credibility for your persuasive posts.

Take home test:

Review all of your marketing material, both online and on paper, look for stuff you've written that your readers will find so valuable that they will want to save it or pass it onto others. You know you are failing as a persuasive writer if what you find instead is self-serving fluff.

This post was inspired by the book: Jeffrey Gitomer's Little Green Book of Getting Your Way

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in communicating their point of view to others.

I am extremely pleased to welcome Rich as a new member of the ActiveRain team on a full time basis! He will be taking on the role of a Community Builder.

Rich's addition to our team is very positive news for the AR community. Rich has been a member of ActiveRain since August of 2006, when the network was still only just a few months old! He has delivered very valuable and relevant blog posts, and has earned over 200k points, making him the top member in Washington state!

As a Community Builder, Rich will work very closely with Bob Stewart and Nicole Rae to support our members both on an individual basis and the community on the whole. We also look forward to him showing off some of his public speaking skills at various industry conferences and training events over the next year.

As I type this Rich is working with Bob learning how to use the "God Console" and how "not to break things"; It would be quite a PR disaster if Rich accidentally smited Lenn Harley... However, I would expect a post from him sometime today about the big news as soon as he finishes with his training.  

Please check out some of Rich's earlier posts:

Fruitology 101: "What the HECK is a Lychee?"

"Slow Down and Smell the Crabs!"

"On Being a Groupie!"

"The ActiveTrain that Could!"

Frequent Comment Rewards Program

"My 100th Blog on ActiveRain"

Are You tired of "Half-a-Kraft?"

"Profile Pictures on ActiveRain" - When the Most Obvious is the Most Overlooked

ActiveRain becomes "ActiveRich!"

ActiveRain Addiction: "It could happen to YOU!"

"Disconnected-Rain" - Is it Just Me?

"BLOG, or Get Off the Pot!"

Turning Your ActiveRaindrops into a Tidal Wave! (A Newbie Tutorial) 

Givers and Takers among the Rain

Counterfeit Blogging - "What's in Your Blog?"

One-Way Traffic Jams on the ActiveRain Blogway

A Welcomed Reminder