I first arrived at ActiveRain by a very strange method. I took a class in Atlanta and an agent there who picked up a card from me sent me an email and had a link to her ActiveRain profile. So I popped on and started reading a few posts of hers. And though... .heck what a great idea. So I set up a profile and the next day wrote my first post. They had a questions section at the time and I was in the middle of a "real estate first" and if you're in real estate you know new problems happen ALL the time.
I posted that I needed a contact at a lender (a bosses' bosses' boss) to help me with a problem and bam in 5 minutes I had a phone number and an email address and the help I needed.
And once upon a time I had a problem with AT&T, and it was a disaster and $4000 kind of problem and I had spent hours on the phone with them and gotten no where. It just so happened at the time that the CEO of AR knew the CEO of AT&T and gave me his personal email. I wrote an email and explained what had happened and his administrative assistant called me and my problem was solved.
And once upon a time I had a brand new washing machine and Sears wanted me to wait 15 days for a service appointment, my AR friends took to twitter and tagging Sears and bam, I had service in two days.
So there's all of that, which I all consider almost miraculous.
Then of course there is ... I learned the best ways to handle short sales here, I learned about the use of escalation clauses here, I learned about embedding maps here, I learned the importance of neighborhood posts here and I learned about lots of best places to share my posts here. I've made thousands of dollars because of what I learned here over the years.
Then the most important thing... the friendships. I've met A LOT of AR peeps in person. I'd guestimate around 200 in total. I've visited folks in California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana and even had lunch in California with a peep from Oregon who was visiting her son while I was visiting my mom in law. I've attended Rain Camp and RETSO with AR peeps and been involved in several groups that have met both virtually and in person to share our knowledge and information that helped grow my business. Many of those people I consider among my closest friends today.
I have had visitors in my office from AR from Alaska, Florida and North Carolina and New York. And the back porch always will welcome any peep from ActiveRain to stop and sit a spell. And of course there will always be a beverage offered. Maybe even a meal if I have advance warning.
I have gratitude for the friendships, the information that helped my business and platform that gave me my first "blogging voice" to reach clients and the founders of the platform and those who still maintain it today.
Comments(20)