6am: Groundhog Day. I'll assume you remember the movie. Bill Murray wakes up each day to repeat the same day over and over again. No matter what he does, he can't make any significant changes to his future...........because tomorrow he will wake up and it will be the same day all over again.

(If you have never seen this movie, stop what you are doing and immediately rent it, find it on Netflix, download it, buy it on Comcast.......do whatever you do to make sure you watch this movie.....it's a classic. I'm going to bet many of you have seen it though)

Does this sound familiar to any of you? Do you feel like each day in your real estate business you are doomed to repeat the same things over and over. In some cases, this might not be so bad. Maybe you have something working for you that you are glad to wash, rinse, repeat. But many of the things we repeat over and over in our business are not productive and can lead us to attaining results less than what we hope and plan for.

So many real estate agents reach a plateau in their business. Often, this plateau is the result of doing the same things over and over again. Heck, some of us do the same things over and over again and expect different results (you know what this is the definition of, I hope). But how do we actually attain different results?

On Thursday, February 2nd at 9am Pacific Time(yep, Groundhog Day) Ben Kinney is going to join me at ActiveRain University for a one hour class for anyone that feels like their real estate career is a bad remake of the movie Groundhog Day. We are going to discuss:

Why did your 2012 business plan hit the trash can already?

How should you allocate your time during the day?

Is your marketing making any kind of impact?

How are all these 'new agents' blowing past you?

What are the most common ruts agents get stuck in?

(click the little button above to register for the webinar)

If you read my blog, or you've joined us for any of the previous classes Ben has hosted here at ActiveRain University, you know why I love having Ben join me. He's someone that is selling a lot of real estate. In fact, his team was one of the top 100 producers in all of the country in 2011. He doesn't share things you should be doing.....he shares things he does in his business that are working for him. He's a real estate agent doing these things to have more success, not just talking about doing them.

Basically this will be one hour about the changes you can make in your business to get more done.

Ben and I would love to have you join us. This webinar is being brought to you for free by our friends at IMSD and by ActiveRain. There is only room for the first 1000 people that make it to the webinar on Feb. 2nd. Because nearly 50% of people that sign up for webinars never actually attend, the registration will be open for anyone to sign up. However, on the day of the class, only the first 1000 people to access the webinar will get in. That means you might need to show up 5-10 minutes early.

So many real estate agents reach a plateau in their business. Often, this plateau is the result of doing the same things over and over again. Heck, some of us do the same things over and over again and expect different results (you know what this is the definition of, I hope). But how do we actually attain different results?

(it's the definition of insanity and I put it in there twice to make sure you are paying attention)

We have a couple of great classes this week and next week at ActiveRain University to which I would like to draw your attention. I feel incredibly blessed that we have members that are so willing to share some of their expertise with the rest of the community. Two such members are Chris Alston and Debe Maxwell.

Pricing Your Listings Right

Chris has been a frequent contributor to ActiveRain University and his humor and presentation style make an hour with Chris fly by! This Next week, on Wednesday January 25th at 10am Pacific Time (1pm on the East Coast, 12pm Central, 11pm Mountain) Chris is presenting a class on getting your listings priced right.

If you are a listing agent, you know that getting your clients to agree to price their home at the price you suggest can be a challenge (to say the least in some cases). Are there things that you can do in your listing presentation to make sure that when you walk away with the listing it's at a price where you know the home will sell?

Overpricing a listing will lead to longer times on market, lower sold prices, headaches and eventually cancelled or expired listings. Since we work in an industry where we don't get paid until the home closes and we are putting up our own marketing dollars in advance, making sure a listing is priced right is paramount to maintaining a successful business. Come join Chris as he shares some great methods to get your clients to understand that overpricing a home can make it languish on the market. Click below to register for the class.

Creating Effective Market Reports

This will be Debe's first time joining me for an ActiveRain University class. But she is hardly a rookie when it comes to sharing great information with her peers. In fact, she has been a presenter for both a live RainCamp (our last live RainCamp in Seattle) and for one of our online RainCamps. Her class will be an encore of her RainCamp Online presentation from December.

On Thursday, January 19th at 9am Pacific Time (that's 12pm on the East Coast, 11am Central and 10am Mountain Time) Debe will be hosting an ActiveRain University class that focuses on building successful market reports and also how you can marry a wordpress blog with your existing ActiveRain blog.

Debe does a great job in her blog of creating market reports that actually demonstrate her expertise. Over the last few months, weve had a number of members creating market reports for the market report challenge. This is is the last month of the challenge, but you still have some time to get in on getting some extra points for creating your own market reports. But what do you put in them? What format can you use to make them look professional?

Debe also does a fantastic job of marrying her content on ActiveRain with her own wordpress blog. She understands that the proper combination of using both powerful marketing mediums (ActiveRain and Wordpress) can enhance your visibility online. She will be sharing how she does this to get the maximum impact for her content. Click below to register for this class.

We've slowly been stepping outside of our normal classes on ActiveRain University and inviting folks to join us who are experts (I consider anyone smarter than me to be an expert and these folks certainly qualify there) in something or other. So far it's been mostly internet marketing type stuff, Facebook, Youtube, Advanced Blogging.......and Chris, Katerina and Rich have done a great job of providing excellent content.

The last couple of weeks we had Melissa Zavala join us for a series of classes about short sales (stepping even further outside the comfort zone.....this is hard for me, believe me. Not because the content isn't great, but because I'm a creature of habit)

This week we've walked off the plank. We are completely outside the wheelhouse of what you would expect to find at ActiveRain University. Or at least what you would have expected to find in the past.

On Thursday, December 15th at 9am Pacific Time (That's Noon Eastern Time for the time challenged amongst us) I am going to have Edwin Kelly, the Director of Education for Equity Trust Company joining me at ActiveRain University. Edwin is going to be discussing how you can generate consistent commissions with real estate IRA's.

If you are anything like me, you might be thinking......say what? (I told you already, I make sure the presenters are smarter than I am)

I'll let the guys at Equity Trust explain:

Discover proven strategy to uncover new clients that are repeat purchasers and tap into unlimited funding sources to close stalled deals (Hint: It has NOTHING to do with Banks)

A new, steady stream of commissions could be coming your way thanks to the little-known and often mis-understood strategy of Real Estate IRAs. Discover the power Real Estate IRAs could have on your earning potential from the leaders of the self-directed IRA industry, Equity Trust Company.

Join Edwin Kelly, Director of Education of Equity Trust Company, as he reveals how using RealEstate IRAs could open up a whole new source of potential clients, real estate investors, that transact multiple times a year – even multiple times a month. You’ll also learn how to close deals that get stalled by funding concerns by steering buyers to IRAs/401(k)s.

During this special event, Edwin details real estate IRA benefits, the simple ways to get started, the rules behind them, while dispelling any myths. In business since 1974, Equity Trust has more than 130,000 clients and $10 Billion in assets under custody.

Don’t miss your chance to learn how to earn more commissions with this growing strategy.

Many of your clients need this information. There are investors out there that would die to be aligned with a real estate agent that can help them open up a whole new source of funding for their real estate investments. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to your clients (and your potential clients) to get educated about some of the opportunities available in the market.

It's a FREE one hour class. I promise this won't be an hour long sales pitch. These guys don't do business unless you are doing business. There is no course to sign up for and no $99 book to buy. Edwin is going to educate you on a strategy that could differentiate you in your market. With 2012 on the horizon, differentiation is the key to a successful year.

How are you going to provide more value for your clients in 2012?

Nikesh recently wrote a post announcing that RealEstate.com is being overhauled and that ActiveRain will help to sell subscriptions for the new site.

In that post, there was some confusion over the offering and Nikesh does a superb job of detailing the specifics and addressing any concerns that folks had.

I wanted to add my two cents (or a dollar as it may end up being a tad more than $.02) to the discussion as a result of a couple of exchanges I have personally had with members of the community.

I believe part of the reason Market Leader invested heavily in ActiveRain (to the point they now own the company outright) is because of the potential of ActiveRain as a sales channel. I've never had those beliefs confirmed by Ian Morris (CEO at Market Leader) or anyone else at Market Leader, this is simply my personal belief. The beauty of ActiveRain is that it's a sales channel with a voice, not simply a sales channel void of any feedback.

Ian is a smart guy. He realizes (again, just my belief.....this is what I would be thinking if I was him) that the value of ActiveRain is in the membership. It's in their editorial voice. It's in their ability to reach consumers in their market place. It's in their ability to be candid and frank with their peers. From the day that Market Leader took a controlling interest in ActiveRain, the desire to maintain that editorial independence has been forefront. Ian has relayed this to our team through Nikesh, our CEO. Not once have we (the community team) been asked to remove a piece of content that spoke unfavorably of Market Leader.

In fact, over the years, we've helped Market Leader get better at addressing those concerns head on. We've consulted them on how to deal with negative criticism and use it as an opportunity to improve the quality of their offering. It hasn't all been bad. In fact, we've also consulted them on how to leverage the incredible feedback they get from their customers.

If Market Leader tries to sell a POS crappy product through ActiveRain, it's going to be over before it starts. In fact, if any company wanted to sell a POS product using Social Media or a community like ActiveRain, it's going to be over before it starts. Inherent in this community is the reality that you are going to get open and honest feedback. Inherent in our guiding principles (unchanged from the day we launched in May of 2006) is the ability for our members to share their perspective.

So RealEstate.com

But we are calling our top members and offering them the option of securing their market on realestate.com. I've learned over the years, no matter which way you step, when you have a community of over 200,000 people, someone is going to disagree. I have learned to sleep at night still (this took some time, trust me. I would stay awake at night in the beginning thinking about issues where someone was upset with something we did......or many people were upset).

On one hand we offer it to our members and some are annoyed or upset they were bothered. On the other hand you don't offer it and some are annoyed or upset they never had the option.

If it was up to me from a strictly business perspective, I believe it would have been more efficient to look at who was currently spending money on Google PPC and approach those people with the realestate.com offering. These are people that have proven a willingness to spend money on internet marketing in an effort to generate additional leads and build a brand online for their business.....just what realestate.com is offering. In fact, during planning I voiced that to Nikesh.

But there is a caveat in that statement, "from a strictly business perspective".

We've never looked at things from a strictly business perspective. In fact, it's my job here to make sure the interests of the business are balanced with the interests of the membership. In that vein, I felt that making the realestate.com offering available to the membership first was the best thing to do. We wanted to give you the first option to say no (or hopefully yes.......but at the very least no). We owe that to our members.

Understand, this comes with some risk. The re-launch of RealEstate.com is new and the Local Expert will be a new product.  If the offering is a POS, it will stop dead in its tracks because the community will make sure it does. I know that. It's a risk we were willing to take. It's a risk Market Leader was willing to take. 

Buying advertising online isn't for everyone. I know that. The Local Expert product on RealEstate.com is not for everyone, just like blogging and SEO is not for everyone.  But we felt we had an obligation to at least offer it to you before we went out and found the people more likely to be interested. It will take more resources to offer it to our members than it would to offer it to people willing to spend on things like Google PPC.

Of course, very few people wait by their phones for that next sales call. Why would they? Sales people will use fear of loss and other hard selling tactics to get you to buy. Have ours done that so far? Yes, in some instances they have, and in many other instances they approached the product and the  member appropriately. Are we working to train those who fell short of our standards on exemplifying sales calls  and in the culture of ActiveRain? Yes we are. Do we know that moving forward you will be dealt with in a manner that is consistent with what we expect of every employee at ActiveRain? Yes we do. Our messaging is being tweaked. Hopefully when you have the opportunity to speak with someone about securing your city on RealEstate.com it will be a positive experience whether you choose to buy or not. That is our goal.

I currently have one DVD at my house, The Karate Kid. I think the other 100 DVD's I own were left behind at my brother's house when I moved to Michigan. One trip back to WA I grabbed my 10 or 12 favorites to bring back with me, but they ended up at my in-laws lake house.

No matter what I do, it seems that I always end up with only that one movie here. I've forgotten to take a few RedBox videos back, for which I've been charged $500 (or something ridiculously more than their replacement cost) and yet none of those seem to be around the house anywhere.

Don't feel bad for me, my wife and I usually fall asleep to something from Netflix, which we watch through the X-Box. However, on occassion, for a variety of reasons, we will end up going to bed without the X-Box in the bedroom and it's always The Karate Kid that I throw on...........because, well, it's the only movie here, remember?

(I know, it's probably not the best idea tha I have to have something on TV to fall asleep......just too much activity in my brain, it has be quieted at some point)

Last night, when Christa had drifted off to sleep, I decided I have watched The Karate Kid at least 100 times and that I was going to figure out what lessons a real estate agent could learn from this movie. So here goes..........(hopefully this will come out on the keyboard as cool as it was in my head last night)

Find a Mentor

I think there are a ton of things that the real estate industry could do to have a better image. We routinely rank near the bottom whenever some firm decides to poll random folks about their perception of professionalism. If you are a brand new agent, what are your options for learning the business? You have the same options that Daniel had trying to learn karate. You could read it in a book, you could take lessons at the local Y, you could seek out a school or class.......or you could find a mentor.

The opportunities to mentor under someone that knows the business are certainly out there. I doubt it's going to be your maintenance man at your apartment complex, like it was for Daniel, but someone in your market has so much business they can't keep up with it all, I promise you. Some companies offer a team structure where you have the support not only of your broker, but also of your team leader. Daniel was getting his butt kicked all over San Fernando Valley until he found his mentor.

Most people will jump into real estate on their own versus joining a team or working under a mentor because they don't want to give up any commission. In the long run, having a mentor is going to result in a lot more commission because you'll learn to do the right things early on instead of having to learn them on the fly (while potentially missing out on additional commissions that wouldn't be available without your mentor). Success breeds success. In some industries you have to apprentice before they will let you anywhere near the clients on your own. We should be doing the same thing in this industry.

"No Such Thing as Bad Student, Only Bad Teacher"

Mr. Miyagi says this after Daniel tells him that the teacher at the Cobra Kai Dojo is teaching his students to use karate for more than just self defense (I've literally seen this movie a 100 times and the teachers name is slipping my mind....do they say it in the first movie, or not until the second? or maybe not ever?). In this industry there are no shortage of ways to get more business. Around every corner and behind many web links are the answers to your prayers, how to earn more business. If I have one piece of advice for anyone considering paying to learn something in this industry, it would be: consider the success of the source.

Can someone really teach you to how to convert web leads into real estate transactions if they've never done it themselves? Can they show you how to be a great agent if they've never been one? Maybe the answer is yes. In fact, I'm sure the answer is yes. There are people that can teach you how to do it without never having done it themselves. But if they've done it themselves using what they are teaching you, you know it works. If they've never done it......you might want to check with their past clients. Those people are going to give you the straight answer on whether or not it was worth what they paid. I'll bet you someone has even written a blog post on ActiveRain about the class, product, company that you are thinking about working with. Do your due diligence. You can waste a lot of money in this business in the name of 'getting more business'.

(I should add, the saying above is not actually completely true. There are bad students. If someone takes the time to teach you something and you choose to do nothing with it, that would make you a bad student. Save yourself the time and money if you never intend to use what you learn.....)

Perfect the Basics

I promise you, Daniel was in no way interested in waxing Mr. Miyagi's cars, painting his fence and sanding his floors. Those scenes, in a movie today, would have people calling in CPS and the labor police (is there such a thing? I think there is). "Paint the fence", "wax on, wax off", "sand the floor". Of course, Daniel didn't know it at the time, but Mr. Miyagi was really teaching him the fundamentals of karate. He couldn't be expected to learn how to punch of kick until he knew the basics.

(by the way, if there are any karate experts out there, I have no idea if those scenes are accurate in terms of teaching you the basics of karate, but let's just pretend they are. I took two karate classes when I was about 8 and threw in the towel after my teacher made me do knuckle push ups. Yep, just like the the Cobra Kai had to do when they got out of line).

In real estate, there are some basics. Some things you are going to need to understand in order to be successful. Lead generation, time management, understanding contracts and addendums and a bunch of other things are fundamental to being successful in real estate. Some of these things you never stop perfecting. I'll bet Daniel Larusa (if he were real) would still be incorporating those basic techniques in his training every day. Even if you understand that generating leads is paramount for your business, you can still continue to perfect how you do it.

Develop a 'Go-to' Move

In tournament karate it would be called a finishing move. In real estate we'd call it a niche.

Ahhh, the crane kick. Emulated by kids the world over, at least if you grew up when I did. If you are between 30-40 and a male and you claim to have never tried to do the crane kick at least once, then we have absolutely nothing in common, not one single thing. This is the all time greatest finishing move. Sure, WWF wrestllng (now called WWE, but I'm sticking with what it was called when I watched as a.......oh, who cares when I stopped watching?) has a few signature moves, the Hulk Hogan leg drop, Macho Man Randy Savage off the top rope with an elbow, but none as emulated as the crane kick.

In real estate, this would be developing a niche. Daniel didn't need to learn every karate move in the book. Just like you don't need to sell houses to every single person capable of buying in your market. Daniel (through his mentor, Mr. Miyagi) knew that if he could perfect one finishing move, it would be unstoppable. If you were the only person in your market to sell homes to single moms, you could be unstoppable. If you were the only person in your market to sell homes on the golf course, you could become unstoppable. Find a niche. Just do it. What do you like about the business? Who have you dealt with in the past that made you walk away thinking 'wow, I would love to work with people just like that every time'?

My wife has found a nice little niche with selling homes to residents moving in to start their residency at the University of Michigan hospital and Mott's Children's Hospital here in Ann Arbor. It's not the only thing she does, but it's a niche that has served her very well in the last few years. She can count on that niche to get her business. A few other folks around here work in this same niche, but we're going to crane kick them to the sidelines in no time (if anyone reading this sells homes to residents in Ann Arbor, it stinks to be you.......find another niche).

I'm certain I had some more analogies last night........maybe I'll watch it again tonight and remember............

Nikesh recently forwarded me the NAR Member Profile 2011. This is the results of a study performed by the National Association of REALTORS® in January of 2011. The results were published in June of 2011.

I'm sure many of you have seen this report. Your dues go to pay for it so I would hope you at least took a minute to browse through the report and see how you stack up against the 'typical REALTOR®' as reported by your trade association.

There are a number of interesting results in the study, heck it's 84 pages long with lots of pretty graphs so there was bound to be something interesting, right? As I was reading through (and I'm not done, this particular stat forced me over to my blog because it was so shocking) something immediately jumped off the page for me.

On page 24, the NAR reports that:

"The typical member brought in 3 inquiries and 3% of their business from their website"

WHAT? Really? In 2010 the 'typical member' of NAR only had 3 inquiries from their website and as a result, that's where 3% of their business came from? This is jaw-dropping to me. I can't even begin to understand this number. I'm searching my brain for an explanation. Maybe someone else has one for me?

We all know that we can make statistics say anything we want and most studies should be observed with a cautious approach, but those numbers border on pathetic in my opinion. Previously in the report, the NAR says that the median number of transactions an agent did in 2010 was 8. It's been 18 years since I took a statistics class, but if memory serves me, the median is the point at which half of the respondents were above the number and half were below the number. So half of NAR members did over 8 transactions in 2010 and half of NAR members did under 8 transactions. They use the same measure when reporting on website inquiries and business from a members website, median.

Which means half of REALTORS® got over 3 inquiries (now we're getting somewhere) and half got under 3 inquiries (yikes!). Then half of REALTORS® got over 3% of their business from their website and half got less than 3% from their website.

So let's look at that 'typical REALTOR®' in terms of how often they generate a transaction because of their website. If the 'typical REALTOR®' does 8 deals a year, that would mean 3% of 8 would be .24 deals per year as a result of your website.....or, one deal from your website every 4 years. If you are a 'typical REALTOR®' I pray that you get a ton of referrals or repeat business because your website is doing you a major disservice.

I have a few guesses at why the 'typical REALTOR®' website is generating only 3 inquiries per year for it's owner.

• You do absolutely nothing to drive traffic there. Your website is a billboard in the desert.
• Once consumers do land on your site, you have no way of converting that traffic into an 'inquiry'. You give them so much information they have no reason to reach out and contact you.
• Your 'mousetraps' (the ways we get them to give us a name, email address and/or phone number) are non-existent.
• It could be that your website is invisible to the search engines.......or at least the listings on your website are invisible.
• It's probable that you are not investing anything in driving traffic to your website. I'm convinced the 'typical REALTOR' spend $0 on marketing their website via Google Adwords or any other paid traffic sources.
• The 'typical REALTOR®' is not using a blog to drive traffic to their website, and if they are, they aren't doing it in the correct fashion. 

I swear we already had this webinar on the agenda (for a survey ActiveRain is releasing this week) when I got this NAR report in my hands, but if you are anywhere near the 'typical REALTOR®' you need to join me to discuss the importance of a strong IDX website for your business and more importantly how to select an IDX to meet your online marketing needs. I promise you, not all real estate websites are created equal.

Of course, we all know that ActiveRain members are not your 'typical REALTOR®' but I bet a few of you still could use some help upgrading your website so that it's an important part of how you generate and close business. 80+% of consumers are going online to find homes for sale, yet very few of them find the 'typical REALTOR' when they do.

It's not all bad though, the 'typical REALTOR®' seems to do a pretty good job with lead conversion. In four years (the amount of time it takes the 'typical REALTOR' to close one deal from their website) the 'typical REALTOR®' would have gotten 12 inquiries. Converting 1 in 12 leads is decent in terms of internet lead conversion. That being said, I'm sure they would just as soon get 12 inquiries per month and make their website a real source of business not just an afterthought.

My brother-in-law was killed in a car accident recently. This is my first day back to work since the accident. I have to say that I'm not that into it. More than anything I'm worried about my wife. Her and her brother Jamie were really tight. She misses him terribly. I'll miss him, but nowhere near as much as my wife will. Makes sense, I had the gift of Jamie in my life for four years, she had him for 27. (Do yourself a favor and click that link. It's Jamie performing a song that he wrote on the piano......super powerful stuff)

The outpouring of support and prayers from the real estate community was unbelievable. I guess I'm spoiled in some ways.....when I get someone wishing me a happy birthday on my Facebook wall I don't put enough effort into being thankful for the time they spent to do it. But the outpouring of support the last two weeks has really forced me to realize that we are incredibly blessed. Each prayer and every well wish, in some small way, helped. There is still a ton of grieving to be done in my family. There will still be holidays and football games and days at the lake house in the summer where the pain of missing Jaime will seem insurmountable. That's what I worry about the most for my wife and her family. When everyone else goes back to their normal life and you know that yours will never be normal again, that's really hard.

If you had had the chance to attend the service, I think you would have been blown away. Here is a family that lost their son and their brother at the very premature age of 27 and somehow they found an inner strength to push forward that only God can provide. My mother-in-law is someone in whom I have a tremendous amount of pride. This lady is nothing short of absolutely amazing. I saw her comforting other mothers, who were overcome with the thought of losing their own children, in the midst of just having lost her own. I saw both my mother and father-in-law make decisions that no parents should have to make about their children and be able to put their faith in God and believe in His divine plan. I saw my wife and her brothers get up in front of a huge crowd and tell stories of their brother that had people laughing and crying in the same breath. I couldn't be more proud of them all. I have heard some things come out of my wife's mouth in the last two weeks that send a shiver up my spine because of their poignancy and depth. After each time, she looks up and gives a sheepish little "That wasn't me talking, that was God".  I am forever changed.

I just want you to know, if you reached out to me and I didn't get a chance to respond, I am super grateful. It was literally an onslaught. I could spend the next two weeks responding to everyone and I probably still wouldn't be able to respond to you all. Please know that I read every comment and email and I have absolutely no way to let you know how much it meant to me and my family.

I just finished going over some pretty cool survey data from the ActiveRain member survey we did a few months ago. We will be publishing some of the results coming up soon and they show an interesting contrast between the practices of agents making over 100K a year and those making under 35K. If you fall into either of these groups or you'd like to fall in the first group, make sure you keep your eyes peeled for our release of that report.

(Was that the most ridiculous transition in a blog post you've ever seen? It's certainly the most ridiculous transition I've ever made in my random thought posts this year. No question about it. I'll miss you Jamie and I promise that I'll live up to what I told you the last time we spent time alone.)

Please tell me that you don't post spammy stuff on other people's Facebook fan pages while operating as your own fan page? We have a little over 11,500 fans on our ActiveRain Facebook page and at least twice a day we get some other page dropping by to post their listing or a link to some service. Are these folks really that self centered that they think this behavior is alright? At first I would just remove the content if it had no widespread value (as judged by me, haha). After a while it got so bad that I had to start blocking the people that left it. So now, if you leave something on the ActiveRain wall that only has value to you, expect it to be the last thing you leave on the wall.

I just noticed an ad running on ActiveRain that has the title 'shocking video'. It says "99% of all realtors have websites that lose money, destroy their reputations and ruin their business. Watch this controversial video to see if yours if one of them". I have absolutely no idea who the advertiser is, but I'm clicking on the ad when I'm done writing this post. 99% is a pretty bold statistic no matter how you use it. Are you bold in your own marketing? Look at all the marketing you did for your last listing and decide for yourself if you did anything that was bold. My guess is you probably didn't. If you did, then you are ahead of 99% of the rest of the agents (get it?).

Don't lie, how many of you will turn all the lights off and hide in your house tonight to avoid trick or treaters?

Do you work internet leads? Does your website generate them? Would you be willing to share with me the process you go through in an attempt to convert an internet lead to a client and a transaction? You do have a repeatable process right? I think I smell an upcoming challenge.......or maybe that's just me since I haven't showered in two days. At what point does how many times per week you shower factor into whether or not you are experiencing minor depression? (see that? I went random in the same paragraph........I'm losing my mind, I'm convinced of it!)

What constitutes a holiday? I'm sure I could Google it and try to find a definition but I don't want to. I kept hearing the football announcers this weekend talking about this being a holiday weekend. At one point I looked at my wife and said 'what holiday?'. Of course, they meant Halloween but for me a holiday means I don't have to work and we already established I'm back to work today for the first time in a while. So dear TV commentator, it's not a holiday unless I have the day off!

(Jamie is the one on the far right in the pic above)

Redfin is causing quite a stir when they decided to start showing sales stats for agents in some of the markets where they do business......and not just their own agents, any agent that is a member of that MLS. Of course, it didn't go off without a hitch and we had posts on ActiveRain (and everywhere on the RE.net) that landed on both sides of the fence regarding whether they supported this move by Redfin. The main problem seems to be that the data they are pulling from the participating MLS's doesn't seem to be complete (or accurate?) I know in the NWMLS back when we were a member, there was no data for which agent worked with the buyer. You could find info on what company worked with the buyer, but not which specific agent. Throw in teams, new construction listings, REO's and a host of other things that happen without a solid trail and this has the makings of a mess. Don't get me wrong, I love their moxy. In fact, I think this should force the real estate industry to get a better handle on tracking sales statistics. Right now, it seems a little disjointed at best. Consumers should be able to understand how capable their real estate agent is before engaging them to handle the largest financial transaction of their lives. Heck, if they could get the stats on loan officers, I'd love to see those as well (fat chance, I know.....but still).

We've all seen marketing that twists the numbers to a dizzying degree. Claims of '#1' and 'Top Agent here and there' are everywhere in this industry. Good for Redfin for trying to push the envelope and give consumers a shoddy? look at the statistics to verify these claims they see every day in our marketing. Granted, they are doing it because they certainly have complete data for their agents and stacking up that complete data against the MLS data looks pretty good for them. But as Jay Thompson writes, if the MLS continues to be garbage in, we should expect companies like Redfin to spew garbage out on the other side.

My wife and her friends and family are on a dizzying sports ride right now. Michigan Football is 5-0 and ranked #12 in one poll. The Detroit Lions are 4-0 and looking very strong after two straight 20+ second half comebacks and the Detroit Tigers are up 2-1 in the divisional series against the (hated!) Yankees. In one span of about five minutes on Sunday, Miguel Cabrera hit a go ahead home run that was sandwiched between two Lion's interception returns for touchdowns. It was quite the dramatic five minutes. It's fun to watch people get really excited about sports. I don't have any plans to be super excited about the Tigers and Lions. For now, adopting one team (Michigan Football) is all I can handle. Given the history of the Lions, they are bound to lose a heart breaker in the playoffs and I already have a professional team that crushes my heart year in and year out. Who needs two? Maybe I should be thankful my wife is turning Kelan into a Michigan fan.......in the long run it's probably better than rooting for (and having your heart crushed by) the Seahawks and the Mariners.

Has anybody played with the new Facebook Timeline yet? It's only open to Facebook 'developers' right now, but there are a ton of easy to follow tutorials that will allow you to set yours up in advance and play around with it a little bit ahead of the public launch of 'Timelines'. Timelines will become your new profile on Facebook so if you are resistant to change, tough $#!&, it's coming again. Facebook has been moving the target a little bit on the actual release date after a few court cases over some privacy issues (shocker, right?) But you can rest assured that timelines will be here sooner rather than or later so you might as well get used to the idea. Remember, Mark Zuckerberg is way smarter than the rest of us, so if he says we will like 'Timelines', we eventually will.......or you could always jump back over to MySpace (tried to find a link but couldn't.....haha).

Do you work internet leads? If you do, how do you determine which lead(s) you are going to work today? Do you have everything scheduled and each leads gets a certain action each day? Do you only try to contact them the first couple of days after they hit your website? Does your website (in conjunction with your CRM) tell you who was on the site yesterday (or right now) and do you start with those people? Do you sit back and only work them when they raise their hand and say they need something? Try this way and see if you have what it takes to become a true lead conversion star. Just think, if you currently convert 2% of all your leads and you could get that number up to 4% you could add a ton of commission to your bottom line. Most agents think internet leads suck.......and many do. But understanding it's a numbers game and having a repeatable plan of attack is the only way you are going to convert internet leads with any sustained success. (If you clicked that link and you end up getting the 'Ten Days of Pain' just remember it's called that because it's as hard for you to do it as it is the for the consumer to receive it.)

Don't forget, consumers have a fascination with Fall things during the Fall......dumbfounding, isn't it? What kind of things conjure up 'Fall' in your mind? For me it's Football and crisp weather......then after that it's Pumpkin Patches, Corn Mazes, Haunted Houses, Cider Farms, Hayrides, and good neighborhoods to trick or treat. These are things consumer are searching for in the fall. Make sure you are writing about them in a fashion that allows people to find your posts. Our SEO class at ActiveRain University will help make sure you know what is that fashion. As I look back at last years analytics, it's amazing how many of the posts that were found were information from previous years. This traffic will most likely not help you sell a house. However, it will lead a ton of people in your community to discover your blog. Since blogging is a long term marketing approach, the more people you can get in front of, the better your chances of success.

Now that we have ActiveRain University up and easily accessible (look for the link in the blue bar at the top of 99% of AR pages) what kind of training would you like to see? Be careful, if you give me a suggestion I might just call you up and discuss it with you so be ready to back it up :-). Give me some topic ideas and I'll go out and find the best experts to educate us about them.

I've never been a huge fan of Halloween. When I was a kid, I was a fan I suppose. But it was simply a matter of how much candy could I collect. I was never much for dressing up. As an adult, I can now buy a whole bag of candy at the store any time of the year (and surprisingly I do this much less frequently than I would have bet when I was 8. Given an over/under of 5 bags of candy per week to be purchased at age 34, the 8 year old me would have bet my life savings on the over). As an adult, Halloween is really only about dressing up. I don't think I've done it since college (and even then it was an uninspired effort at best). Christa and I made some new friends recently who we've become very close with and they are 'Halloween People'. You know the type, full out costumes that are really cool. Alysa, the wife, is working pretty hard on Christa (who shares my philosophy on Halloween) to get her into 'Halloween People' mode............I can only hope I don't end up dressed up as Grimace or the Cookie Monster.

Christa and I are taking the train this weekend to Chicago for the Michigan Northwestern Football game. We are going with our friends Bob and Sherrie. It's going to be a blast! My wife, the die hard, and I made a little pact when we got married......one away Michigan game each year until we hit every stadium in the Big Ten. So this year it's Ryan Field in Evanston IL. I pray Michigan wins or the train ride home is going to be the most miserable experience ever! I promise that you don't want to hang with my wife in a confined space for a few hours after a Michigan loss......not a pretty site!

Have you picked a niche yet for your business? What are you waiting for? Seriously, what are you waiting for? Your niche could be a neighborhood. Your niche could be demographic. Your niche could be selling homes to dog lovers. Doesn't matter what it is, once you pick a niche, your marketing efforts are going to be amplified. Right now, it's most likely you are broadcasting your marketing message (if you have one) to anyone and everyone that will listen (and probably, more likley, to people that have no interest in listening). Wouldn't it make sense to market to people that would actually be interested in your message (assuming of course that you actually have a marketing message). Big fish in a small pond or small fish in a huge ocean? It's your call.

I think I found my new victory dance if my teams ever decide to win anything.........

Christa (my wife) and I have had my parents in town for the last week. They came to join us for the season opener of the Michigan Wolverines and they are staying through this weekend for the Notre Dame game. I'm really excited they get to see the first game under the lights in the history of the Big House. The game is expected to break the official record for the most people ever to attend a college football game. Being in a stadium with over 113,000 people is pretty cool, I'm glad they'll get to see it. Last weekend at the game we got POURED ON. In fact the game got called because of lightning. We stayed the whole time which in hindsight was pretty dumb as lightning and metal seats don't mix so well.......but the lightning was never that close. I think UofM officials were just being cautious from the recent Indiana State Fair incident. Can't wait for this Saturday!

I had almost forgotten about my mother's obsession with laundry. When we were kids there was never a shortage of laundry to be done in our house. I have three brothers and if there is anyone out there with four kids, you know how much laundry they produce. My mom was a laundry machine. I highly doubt she liked doing it, but she was a machine nonetheless. She would come into my room in the early evening (or really track you down anywhere in the house) and demand that you basically remove every piece of washable clothing right down to your underwear. If I had a friend staying the night, they weren't likely to escape the laundry machine either. Needless to say, 20+ years later and there isn't a single piece of dirty laundry in our house this week.

Our RainCamp had a pretty major hiccup. Gotowebinar maxed us out at 500 attendees (for the first session) when we were suppose to be set up for 1000. So yesterday, at about 9:01am Pacific Time, there were hundreds of people left out in the cold (well not really the cold, since it's a webinar they were probably left in their recliner or office chair). I'm really sorry if you were one of them. We sent out an email to everyone suggesting that you get there early as we were already over capacity on registrations. Why would we do that to begin with? Because we've been doing webinars for quite some time and it's very standard that only 50% of the people that register will actually show up. I get it, this is a business where a lot of times you have to move when you have to move. Things come up all the time. So in order to make sure we get 1000 people there, we allow 2000 to register. If you get there on time, you get in. In fact, this time, at exactly 9:00 there were 490 people there.......and at 9:00 and 30 seconds there were 500....and then the onslaught started on my screen. Every time someone tries to get in and they can't, gotowebinar serves up this little pop up letting you know someone tried to access and it was over capacity. In a matter of one minute I must have had 100 of those windows pop up. It wasn't pretty. (I finally figured out to stop them from attacking me) I'm surprised it didn't crash my computer. Oh well, you live and you learn. If you were one of the folks who missed Ben, don't worry, we have it recorded and you'll get it early next week.

Make sure you are starting to gear up to write about the community events going on during the Fall in your area. Based on stats from previous years, people are really interested in corn mazes, haunted houses, pumpkin patches and cider farms during the fall. Really any kind of Fall local event that people in your area attend, they are going online to get information about it. Your blog becomes a great way for you to provide that information, potentially pick up new readers, and get a ton of 30 second commercials for yourself as the local expert.

September is REALTOR® safety month. Later this month we are going to have the director of safety for NAR on a webinar to discuss some of the things REALTORS® can do to make sure you are safe during the course of business. We'll have a post with all the details in the ActiveRain blog next week so make sure to keep an eye out for that. Our friends at Moby have put together a great REALTOR® Safety Toolkit that you download for free at the link I provided above. Just do it, your family will thank you.

I think this is the longest amount of time I've had my parents staying with me since I moved out on my own. Wow, did I marry my mother!! My wife and my mom are so much alike! My wife is super tidy. Our house is spotless, which is great considering most of the month I work from home. One of the things my mom instilled in us growing up was that even if you aren't rich, doesn't mean you can't take pride in the stuff you do have. She always trained me and my brothers to keep kept a clean house. This is a lady who can't eat dinner before the dishes are done. How she was able to do that when we were young and she was a single mom is well beyond my comprehension. In my eyes she wears a cape......and so does my wife. I'm incredibly blessed to have such amazing women in my life!

We held a Craigslist webinar earlier this week at ActiveRain University with our friends at IMSD. Based on a few emails I received, the class was really great. I wasn't able to make it so I can't confirm, but I think all the IMSD webinars at ActiveRain University are great so you can take the word of the folks that emailed me instead. If you didn't have a chance to catch it, here is the recording. Craigslist is a great way to generate free leads, you just have to know how to market there. Almost every large online venue has little nuances that really allow you to maximize your return. Craigslist is no exception. There is a vicious rumor out there that all you get when you advertise on Craigslist is spam...........I'm here to tell you that's not true. I have a number of friends around the country having tremendous success using Craigslist to generate free leads for their business. And who doesn't like free leads?

Would you like to see how a real estate agent can create a business page on Facebook that engages the community in which they work? This is one of the best examples I've seen. This is a community page created by my friend Ben Kinney. He has over 7400 likes on this community page. It's a great piece of guerrilla marketing. Most of the page focuses on what's going on in the community. They get great interaction from their fans. Very seldom does he use it to market his business, but when he does, it has great impact because people are willing to listen based on the fact the page provides great info about the community. Pay attention to how they engage their fans with questions and center the discussions on living in the area. I suppose you could have a business page for yourself.....but how many people care about what you are doing in your business besides you? Any other great examples of business pages on Facebook you would like to share?

I'm not sure if it's Murphy's law, but there is a law out there that says 'If you buy a new driver for your golf game, your old driver will immediately start to perform better'. I just bought a new driver on Craigslist for $35. It's a really sweet Big Bertha. New, it was a $400 club. It's about three years old. That's just fine for me. So right after I buy it, I take it out to the driving range and I was CRUSHING it. If you'd ever seen me golf, you'd know that it was absolutely the driver, not my swing. So just to make sure it was the driver and not my swing that had miraculously improved, I took out my old driver for a few swings. Now mind you, this is a driver that has landed in the fairway for me about 1% of the time that I've had it in my bag the last three years. I have no shot at getting this thing to go straight. Wouldn't you know it? On the first swing with that old driver, I sent it sailing 280 yards straight down the middle. It was almost as if I could hear the driver saying to me 'please don't get rid of me, I'll change my ways. I can be just as good as that crappy Big Bertha'. It was short lived, the second shot was a solid duck hook. Sayounara Titleist G5.

It's game week for college football! I'm super excited. My friend Jeff is flying in for the opener as are my mom and step-dad. We'll have a full house for the weekend. Fall is a great time of year here in Ann Arbor. The students are back, the weather is beautiful and Saturday's at the Big House are nothing short of amazing. Even if you're not a die hard football fan it's hard to walk into a stadium with 110,000+ people and miss the electricity in the air.

I just signed up for Empire Avenue. It's another social network that you probably don't have time for. Especially because at first glance, it seems like it could be a little addicting. Essentially you can buy stock in people and then that stock trades and you attempt to amass the biggest fortune based on investing in the right people. I've had a ton of invites over the past few months but I just signed up today to see what we can learn from how they do things. Feel free to invest in me, I promise to try not to let you down. Within minutes of signing up I had a few people investing in me already. I don't even know who these people are, but if they are dumb enough willing to invest in me then they must be pretty stinking smart risk takers :-P (and I like risk takers........but I'm not really one myself......although I did invest in 200 shares of Brad Andersohn, so maybe I'm spreading my wings a little.....)

If you could get unique, good quality blog content written for you for an affordable price would you consider it? I know the blogging purists would shiver at the mere thought of buying content for their blog. I understand the reasons. However, I also understand that quality content is a commodity.....as is time. So maybe it makes sense to consider how you can leverage your time better. I've written about this before in my random thoughts. Do you know the value of one hour of your time? If you know your time is worth $70/hour and it takes you one hour to write a blog post, does it make sense to pay someone $20 to write a post for you? I'll let you decide the answer.......

Am I the only one that catches a glimpse of my own hands from time to time and thinks 'Wow, my hands are starting to look old'? It's not all the time. In fact, most times that I look at my hands I don't give them a second thought and they look like I've always remembered them. But every now and then, I will look down and have this overwhelming sense that my hands look old. Thank goodness as I type this, now is not one of those times.

Life is not fair. I think the first time I remember realizing this it actually worked in my favor. Truth be told, I've probably blocked out in my mind all the times prior to that where it didn't work in my favor. I was the oldest of four boys. My mom was a single mom for much of my formative years, so my aunt would watch us in the summers. She had two boys, my cousins, and one of them, Eddie, had muscular dystrophy. Eddie and I were very close even though he was 7 years my senior. I learned to play chess with my cousin Eddie. I would read the dictionary with my cousin Eddie. I would watch Jeopardy with my cousin Eddie. He is almost solely responsible for my penchant for reading and subsequently most of my desire to learn that I would carry throughout the rest of my life. He passed away when I was 9 or 10. During those summers where my aunt would watch us, the younger kids would have to play outside during the day......all day. But I would get to play inside if I wanted with my cousin Eddie. The other kids used to bitch and moan about it......."why does Bobby get to play inside with Eddie and we have to play outside?" It was then that I realized life isn't fair. Heck, my cousin was going to die from a disease that didn't discriminate and would soon take this brilliant kid from our midst. How is that fair?

I bring this up because I recently green lighted a contest where real estate agents can get 3000 points for writing market reports during the month of September. I've had quite a few people who think this isn't fair because if you're not a real estate agent you can't participate. Sorry folks, life isn't fair. However, I'm one of those people that tries to keep things as fair as possible, so if someone has a good idea of a challenge for our non-agent members, I'm all ears.

(after I wrote this, it was brought to my attention that Donna has added a way for other members to get involved......so life is more fair than I would have thought.....but it's still not fair!!)

Have you ever thought about using your blog as a reinforcement of any efforts you do to farm a neighborhood? Here are some ideas that could really get the neighbors talking if you decided to focus on a small farm each week/month.

• Best Flower Garden in (name of your farm)
• Best Deck in (name of your farm)
• Best Garage in (name of your farm)
• Best front door in (name of your farm)
• Best Kept Yard in (name of your farm)
• Most friendly neighbor in (name of your farm)
• Best street for Halloween Candy in (name of your farm)

Any of the people in your farm would love to see their name in lights on your blog.......unless of course you award them 'Biggest jerk in (name of your farm)' or 'Longest Grass in (name of your farm)'. You can probably come up with better ideas than I just did for both 'Best' and 'Worst' categories.

Forgive me if I mention college football many many times throughout the fall in these random posts. I can't help myself. I have two teams, the University of Washington and the University of Michigan. Washington was born and bred into me. I adopted Michigan after marrying the craziest most die-hard Michigan Wolverines fan you will ever come across. Plus we have season tickets at the Big House and watching a game with almost 110,000 people is really freaking cool. God watch over our household on the day Washington and Michigan meet in the Rose Bowl...........it will not be pretty!

IDX IDX IDX IDX IDX IDX IDX. It's the number one reason your business will have enough internet leads to thrive. It can't be understated. Your blog will benefit wildly from a strong IDX. Your lead conversion rates will be much higher with a strong IDX/CRM system. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building ours back when we had our real estate company prior to ActiveRain. Today you can get very similar systems to what we built for around $100/month. Maybe the class I do about linking will help shed some light on how effective your IDX website is for your business. I'd love if you can join me on Wednesday.

 What do you think of the new ads running on ActiveRain? I think they look much cleaner and professional. I hope you agree.

The picture above is from the recent airshow down the road from Ann Arbor. If I can give you one piece of advice about attending an airshow, it would be; do it with an enthusiast! I went with my father-in-law. This guy LOVES airplanes, absolutely loves them. And he knows more about airplanes than I know about anything (and maybe everything). It was really cool to spend the day with my father-in-law, he's a great guy........but even cooler was to get to spend a day with him that was something he enjoys so much. Having an enthusiast along lets you really understand how amazing the airplanes are. I've seen the Blue Angels before from a boat in the middle of Lake Washington for Seafair. One of the things about Seafair is that you don't get to see them takeoff. For this show, you saw them from start to finish and......WOW! (that's about all I have to say about that!)