Folding jeans… maybe some of us need a lesson.
It was 12 years ago for those of you wondering. No. This is not one of those blogs where I am going to talk about how much easier life was at 16. Or how I miss those days. Because it wasn’t and I don’t. I would rather poke my eye out with a fork than go back to high school. I am going to talk about the job I had when I was 16. That’s right. WORK.
I was a sophomore in high school. Played sports so I was busy, and I had a job at the local Levis store. I made crap money, I worked crap hours, and my boss hated me. None of these things were working in my favor. I mean seriously. I would be in school every day by 7am, ball practice in 100* weather until 5, work from 6-10:30. I worked every Friday night. Most Saturdays and Sundays. I would go into work after a day of ball practice and I had no car, so I had to get a ride from someone if my parents were not home that night. Then I would work for about an hour, the store would be slow so I would get sent home.
At first I was overjoyed to get sent home. “Awesome. Now I can go be a teenager. WORK SUCKS” – then I realized that as tough as it was for me to find a ride to work, it was even harder to find a ride home. I was broke because I only worked an hour. And to top it off I soon realized my boss sent me home not as a reward, but because I wasn’t good at my job and wasn’t worth it to keep around. I know. Its hard to believe. But I like most 16 year olds thought I knew everything and that I could get away with avoiding work while at work. As a matter of fact, I know many adults that still do this today. So what was the outcome. I would exhaust more effort, had higher stress, made less money and was inconvenienced more by AVOIDING working while at work than if I actually just did my job well.
LIGHT BULB! 
It was a magical day the day I decided to actually do my job at work. Time flew by! I felt accomplished. My boss was impressed. The following chain of events was great. I got better at my job so it got easier. I got more hours because I was good at it (which meant more $ to me!). I got a raise! I got a promotion several months later. I ended up being promoted to a supervisor by the time I reached 17. At 18 I was making better money than any other high school kid I knew, and many adults. I had an understanding of business, profit and loss statements, working with and leading people, etc. Not to mention, I can fold a mean pair of jeans.
Why did this happen? BECAUSE I ACTUALLY DID MY JOB! I spent so much time and energy avoiding my job the first 2 months I had it that I am almost ashamed to admit it. Obviously I changed that.
My simple point is this. And I am going to capitalize it because I want this message to be clear to everyone. STOP AVOIDING THE PARTS OF YOUR JOB THAT MAKE YOU SUCCESSFUL AND GET YOUR BUTT TO WORK! For some of you that means paperwork, for some it means lead generating, for some it means just working at all at anything.
My promise to you is this. If you actually work. If you actually do what you are supposed to. Your stress levels will go down, your income will go up, and the ease of your job will increase. Give it a try, the avoidance isn’t worth it.
If you think you’re job is tough. If you think its thankless. Do me a favor. It is the holiday season. Go to your local retail shop and get a part time job through the new year. There is no hell quite as special as working retail in the holidays.
LL
1 Hour Business Consultation with Ben Kinney – Yes, you could win it!
Lets get straight to the point! You’ve got a chance to win a FREE 1 hour coaching session with Ben Kinney!
How you ask? Simple! Anyone who signs up for MAPS Mastery Technology Coaching during #KWMC is entered to win. ONE, yes ONE lucky person will get a one hour business session with Ben!
For the rest of you we’ve got something for you too! Any agent that signs up for a MAPS Tech Group Coaching session during #KWMC will be entered to win one of three 1 hour coaching sessions with one of our other tech coaches! They would be me, @ChadHyams and @ChrisMcnamara!
Registrations for group can be online OR at the MAPS Booth! MASTERY Registrations must be done in person at the MAPS booth. All registrations must be in by Friday to be eligible. Don’t wait, space is fillng up quick!
If you reallllllllllly want to do MASTERY Tech Coaching to enter for Bens time please Facebook MSG me and we can make arrangements.
Follow the Tweeters #KWMC
As many of us are just 5 days away from touching down in Austin, TX for KW Mega Camp the twitter streams and status updates will be overflowing with #KWMC information!
To make life a little bit easier on you I’ve compiled a list of some of the most active tweeters that will be updating live from the event. Feel free to follow each of these tweeps or the public twitter list I’ve put them on!
If you are planning on following all the news during Mega Camp you should also be sure not only to follow these folks, but to follow the #KWMC hashtag. It is the official tag of the event. Don’t know how to follow a hashtag? No worries, I’ve got this handy dandy video right here to show you. 
5 Reasons to KEEP Your LinkedIn Profile
It has been brought to my recent attention that there is a (surprisingly) large group of people who are thinking about deleting their
LinkedIn profiles. I had no idea about this epidemic. I was completely caught by surprise and I felt as if I needed to throw my friends a life vest before they drown in the waters of their own decisions. Luckily… this is not life or death. I will advise you though to KEEP your LinkedIn profile. And if you don’t have one, set one up.
1. LinkedIn has GREAT search engine optimization results and will show up if a potential client searches for you.
2. The boardroom of social media. This site is not for socializing. It is for networking and professionalism.
3. They had an $8Billion IPO in May and shares are selling for over $100 each. Clearly, the business community see’s value here.
4. They just introduced the “APPLY” button for job seekers.
5. You may want to expand your business and search others profiles (aka – their online resume) for recruiting. Vise versa – you may need a job if you don’t do your prospecting.
So what I am saying here is that although LinkedIn is not the worlds most bustling social network they do indeed have their place. And they are important to have up, running and UPDATED.
LL
Because size does matter…
Stop your dirty thinking! I am referring to the size of your database! I know I tend to stick to the cool new things in my blogs and speaking like social media and internet; however today we are going to kick it old school. Sort of.
Do me a favor and think about your database. How many contacts do you have in it? Now ask yourself this. How many of them are likely to do business with you? Above I said we are going to kick it old school. Well the reason it is followed by a “sort of” is because in recent years our database’s tend to become more like phone books than ever before. The main problem for this is the internet. Yes, I just said the internet is causing problems. However it is not the Internets fault. It is ours. Because we are improperly managing it.
Lets look at what is happening. Our databases are supposed to be people who are likely to do business with us based on past and current relationships. With internet lead generation we tend to get a lot of looky loo’s and tire kickers who register either with limited information, or fake all together. Yes, fake. Mickey Mouse is not really interested in buying that lake front home. I promise. So what do we do? We filter, label and top grade our leads. Having a database of 8,000 people does you no good if you’ve never connected with them. Ever. We have the false belief that our large database of 8,000 people will produce us business simply because of its size. This is not accurate. My recommendation is to use labels to differentiate who really is in your “database” and simply who’s data you are storing and mass emailing. Don’t get me wrong. I am NOT saying to delete all of those 5,000 emails you have. Yes, some of them may need to go. However its probably not costing you anything to do business with them and there are ways to pull them back in to convert them (but that is a different topic). I want you to clean up your database for tracking and conversion purposes. The size of your database (your TRUE database) will directly influence the size of your business. Manage your database well and you’ll thrive in business. Oh yeah, be sure to add your true SOI on your social platforms. It makes relationship building as easy as pie… or cake depending on your sweet tooth
LL
Waking Up In Vegas… with MAPS Technology!!
For those of you who missed our late night announcement from MAPS Agent Masterminds in Las Vegas Monday here is a recap for you!
We have exciting news! After months of preparation MAPS announces the launch of a large Technology Division! As many of you know this has been an area that has been much-needed in our industry and we plan on making waves… quickly! Program is being led and developed by none other than the amazing Ben Kinney. With your newest MAPS coaches in place powering this epic undertaking being myself, Chad Hyams, Chris McNamara and existing MAPS Coach Beth Torrence.
The quick program overview will consist of the following.
- BOLDTech – This is will be a one day traveling program designed to help you grow your real estate business with what? Technology of course!
- Mastery Coaching – For those of you who are serious about holding yourselves accountable to your business with a high tech focus.
- A la carte Consulting- For existing MAPS clients that need just a sporadic consultation on big tech decisions.
- In House Consultation – For offices and teams that are looking for a full business analysis and adding a large portion of business based around technology and internet lead generation.
Gettin’ Geeky With It – May 25
Those of us that fall into the category of “geek” tend to wear it proudly. Why? Because we don’t care what anyone else has to say about
it and, well, frankly…. because we can
This morning I received an email from my favorites at IMSD about May 25th being “GEEKY Day” and inside of it were the Top 10 Rights to Being a Geek. I had to share!
Here are the Top 10 Rights of a Geek! (note #10)
-The right to not leave your house.
-The right to not like football or any other sport.
-The right to associate with other nerds.
-The right to have few friends (or none at all).
-The right to have as many geeky friends as you want.
-The right to be out of style.
-The right to be overweight and near-sighted.
-The right to show off your geekiness.
-The right to take over the world.
Invite friends and join us on our bonus webinar on May 25th as we celebrate Geek Day!
Found: Random Travel/Training Shots
Many of you follow my escapades from airport to airport, class to class, hotel to hotel via my personal FB profile. Well, honestly there is still a lot that you never get to see. I am a photo junky. That’s right. I love pictures. I visually document most of my life and rarely do you get to see the whole thing. Yesterday I was going through and cleaning up some space on my iPhone and realized that although none of you want to see ALL of the pics that I take through my trips, some of you may find it fascinating if they were all just easily located in a blog roll and NOT flooding your FB streams. So here you go…. This was April. Enjoy.
We start in Denver (actually… this was mid March, but you get the point) Then.. lets take a quick jump through a few more airports and make a stop in Cary NC and then my favorite city… Austin TX.
Stik.com – The Real Estate Referral End of Things
The story continues with Stik.com – As many of you have been following the updates since my original post (Blocking Stik.com – Easier than you think!) venting about agents overuse and spam our Facebook wall with their “recommend me” tool you may be interested to know that the referral end of Stik.com has responded. Response below.
Liz, my name is Philip and I am Broker of Record for the real estate referral arm of Stik.com. This is still in alpha phase, so it will be some time before this reaches wide spread access. We are sharing this advance peek with your readers to offer an incentive to *not* block the stik.com messages.
We have been testing functionality that allows brokers to refer leads to those they are connected to via Facebook. We recently sent an actual buyer referral to 6 brokers in Portland, OR, and only 1 responded. 2 more responded when we followed up with direct email messages, saying they assumed the original message was spam. The other 3 never even knew that they missed a qualified buyer referral who has since submitted an offer.
As a broker myself, I am very dialed into the prolific claims around ‘lead generation’, and we are working VERY hard to provide a high quality and lucrative experience for members of the Stik network. Stik has failed at times to avoid pitfalls, and there is still much work to be done.
However, blocking all messages from Stik will prevent you from receiving referrals through the network once it is up and running. For your readers who may choose to block the referral request messages, please check back periodically on the status of the referral network capabilities, as these are leads coming from fellow brokers in your network.
Finally, please feel free to contact Nathan (who posted above) or me (philip@stik.com) with any suggestions on how to make the experience better. We are working hard on the areas that we know, and are always open to new ideas.
Regards,
So I pose this to my friends and followers who have been having issues with Stik.com. Will this, along with the other updates that Nathan spoke about in his response cause you to unblock the tool and give it a second try?
Stik.com Replies to Complaints
On March 24th I wrote a 2 minute blog (seriously… took 2 minutes) out of sheer frustration for Stik.com. As I stated in the blog, I
have nothing against the product and it’s not a bad concept. However, it is a SPAM MACHINE! Well, after several hundred shares and RT’s to match… last night Stik.com has finally reached out and responded. Here is their response from one of their founders, Nathan Labenz. Which I think we will all be happy to hear. Thanks Nathan.
Hi Liz,
My name is Nathan Labenz and I’m one of the founders of Stik.com. I just wanted to comment here to let you know that I’ve read your feedback and that we are taking it seriously. We are planning to introduce upgrades to the site tomorrow that will make recommendation requests more personal and meaningful.
I also wanted to make clear that we are not automatically sending these requests. Our users have full control over whether or not to send requests, and to whom. We have been surprised by how many requests some people send and are considering imposing a limit in order to avoid annoying people like yourself.
Have a great day and let me know if you have any other feedback for us.
Best,
Nathan Labenz
