Watch Out Below!

While I-pods are a great way to catch up on the numerous webinars posted during working hours, they can be a bit dangerous when the listener removes themselves from the world around them. Let me give you a little example of what I mean by this.

Last weekend, my son and his pregnant (yes, I’m proud!) wife needed my husband’s (Randy) assistance updating his 1/2 bath prior to listing his home for sale.  Here’s the setup: 2 story bungalow with a basement. 2nd story bathroom directly above main floor bath using same waste pipe that drain straight down into waste pipe in basement floor. Becuase 2nd floor bath had pvc pipe and basement had the old cast iron, the best thing to do was replace the whole pipe at the same time. So, of course, they pulled the waste pipe out of the main floor bath, disconnecting the 2nd story bath from the waste pipe in the basement. All’s well and Randy is getting ready to reinstall from the 2nd floor waste to the basement by handing the pipe down to son Ryan in the basement. [photopress:ryan_and_randy_in_the_shit_hole.jpg,thumb,alignright]Great great plan, all is going well, but my lecture was over, I removed my headphones, and ran up the stairs to use the only operating bathroom in the house except that, you guessed it, one flush and whoosh, down thru the 1st floor bath directly into the face of my darling son Ryan, bounced off him and onto his computer and everything on the desk that he was working on!

 The moral of the story is: Don’t visit your son! 

Amazing Access

My husband was helping our son remodel in Portland this weekend. I had alot of work to do, keeping up with new classwork and working on business. I was going to stay home but decided it was lovely weather and I’d travel along with him so I could see my kids, too. 

Having been in college when learning programming meant using keypunch cards, (A key punch is a device for entering data into punch cards by precisely punching holes at a designated locations :)).I have to constantly remind myself to remember how mobile my work now is.  There was nothing that I had to do at the office that I couldn’t do sitting in the car with my computer on my lap, including this post!

I remember the first time I left the office with my cell phone and talked to a customer in Nordstrom.  I pretended I was in the office and that I had time to talk. I remember the feeling that I could really do almost anything as long as I had my cell phone with me and no one would even know I wasn’t at work.

The craziest was when I got an offer on a listing about 10 minutes before pulling out of Miami on a cruise. The deal came together, the seller never did know I was not in town and I handled the whole thing from the ship’s computers.  I don’t turn my business over to an associate unless I have to, and I don’t tell my clients where I am unless it’s necessary. So for a work-a-holic like me, It’s amazing how much free time I have now with mobile phones and now, the mobile office.

[photopress:Copy_of_P1010174.JPG,thumb,alignleft]So, Randy is waiting for me to get back on the road where I can get back to listening to my lecture series online and typing a blog on my laptop plugged in to the battery with my really slick sprint card.  I’ve already answered several emails, searched for a handyman in Vaughn for a client, done a CMA for another client and emailed all the results, while driving up I-5!

It may be that I never really get away from the office, but at least by bringing the office along with me, I can now even enjoy the hours I put in on the job.

BTW, my son is moving from his 1910 bungalow 2100 sq ft home in NE Portland worth $600,000 to a 3600 sf ft new home in Vancouver on 1/2 acre with more bells and whistles than I knew exsisted for $650,000. And it’s only 20 minutes away. Location, location, location.

Teaching Effective Blogging to Realtors?

One of the great things about real estate blogging is that we’re all making this up as we go along… What is the “right” way to blog? I really have no idea but I like to think that the contributors on Rain City Guide are on the right track…

Recognizing that we might be onto something, Russ Cofano approached me a few months ago with the idea of creating a “Bloginar” where we would travel the country teaching real estate professionals how to blog (This is before I accepted a position at Move). With his experience giving seminars to real estate professionals and our combined experience with blogging, the timing seemed right and we quickly put together an outline for our idea. Russ ran this outline past some of his contacts in the industry and the results is that we quickly signed up a few organizations to host our seminars. Our first similar was today in Portland, and for those interested, here is a high-level outline of our presentation:

Understanding Blogs

  • History
  • Anatomy
  • Motivations

Basics of Blogging

  • Creating a Blog
  • Posting Content
  • Creating Links
  • Writing Comments

Increasing Your Business With Blogging

  • Current Internet Real Estate Tools Suck
  • High Search Engine Ranking
  • High Conversion Rates
  • Long-Term Benefits
  • Low Monetary Costs

Effective Blogging Techniques

  • Linkation
  • Content
  • Complementary Tools

It is a full three-hour presentation so you can imagine that we go into a lot of detail on each of these topics!

There are a couple of things that I know are missing from our presentation… I’d really like to spent more time on how to host a blog as well as how to incorporate photos/podcasts/videos into blogs. With that said, we only had three hours so we tried to hit the “sweat-spot” of giving enough information to new bloggers without overloading them on some of the more advanced stuff. My hope is that each and every person that walks out of our seminars feels equipped (and excited!) enough to start an effective real estate blog that evening.

If you’re interested in scheduling this seminar for your organization, please contact Russ (His blog is Realty Objectives [link removed] and his site includes some more information on our seminars [link removed]). You’ll definitely want to sign up soon because with my full-time job at Move, I can only commit to a handful of presentations each month (and we’re already booked-up through July!).

Also, if you are one of the people who attended the seminar, please consider leaving a comment below with your take on our presentation (along with a link to your new blog! 😉 )