No, I'm not talking about pay rate (though none of us gets paid enough, right?). What I am talking about I'll explain in an illustration. I am a jogger (some of you know). Sometimes I pull a muscle in my right leg and so I over compensate with my left. I exert pressure. I put more weight on it. What ends up happening is I mess up my left leg, too, along with my right. Now I can't run at all. And I guess the over compensating point I'm really wanting to make here has to do with when things go wrong. When things go wrong, we begin to do things to fix the wrong. Right? (I always like doing that.) We begin to make corrections. (At least in our mind they're corrections.) We begin to try to solve the problem. The problem with that is it's so easy to over compensate ~ where we begin to do thi... 03/01/2012

(click image to enlarge, then in new browser tab or window click again) 02/24/2012

My wife was out on a walk with my 4-year old son (he's 18 now). One minute she was talking with a neighbor. The next minute he was gone. (Can you just imagine?) They would look high and low. The neighbor got in her car and drove around. Finally, they discovered him up on a balcony. My wife said, "Don't move." Mom and son were reunited. There are a lot of things we can lose (beyond a child). We can lose our wedding ring. (I've done that.) We can lose our job. (Many are these days.) We can lose our business. (That's happening, too.) Some even lose their soul. The bottom line is there are ways of dealing with lost things and there are ways of NOT dealing with lost things. To avoid the latter, prepare yourself ahead of time for potential losses. Start with the following list... 6 Things to... 02/21/2012

  Updated eMagazine -> 02/15/2012

I've got the latest Mother Lode market numbers for you to look at today. To begin with, you'll notice the overall sales picture including all sales classes. CLICK HERE to view January 2012 compared to January 2011. You'll also want to notice the graphs including the Mother Lode Residential Unit Sales through December 2011 graph versus the previous five years (clickable picture 1 on above left) along with theMother Lode Residential Volume Sales graph versus the previous five years (clickable picture 2 on the right) and the Mother Lode Residential Average Sales Price graph versus the previous five years (clickable picture 3 on the left below), respectively. (The data used comes from the Tuolumne Multiple Listing Service and is deemed reliable, but not guaranteed.) As usual, I also have s... 02/13/2012

So you've made a mistake. You dropped the ball. You blew it / choked. You failed. (Some people have a hard time ever owning up to that last statement.) And, if you had your druthers (your own free choice or preference), you'd go back and fix your mistake. Right? You'd change what you did. You'd walk back away from that cliff  ~ of the investment you made, the direction you chose, the person you hired / fired, the chance you took ~ whatever it was. And if you had to do it all over again, you wouldn't do what you did. Right? You would do things differently. I'd like to suggest that you do things differently NOW than you did in the past to avoid making the same mistake again. (Some people need to read that last sentence a couple of times and let it sink in as a means of evaluating their l... 02/08/2012

How do you say, "I love you"? On Valentine's Day some of us say it with flowers, balloons, cards, candy, coffee mugs, candlelight dinners, overnight stays, etc. But there are more ways to say, "I love you," than these. I was brainstorming to come up with a list of words that probably aren't at the top of our minds when it comes to expressing love, but they are ways we say it, nevertheless. See if you agree with... (click image to enlarge, then in new browser tab or window click again) 02/07/2012

T A H O E from Shortt and Epic Productions on Vimeo. (If you can't see this video, click here.) 02/03/2012

(click image to enlarge, then in new browser tab or window click again) 01/31/2012

(If you can't see this video, click here.) 01/27/2012

This post is an attempt to get two birds with one stone. I want to talk about recycling old blog posts (the second part of the title). I've read a lot about doing it on other blogs. But it really wasn't until recently that I got into the recycling business myself ~ and in the following new way: via infographics. (Another term for infographic is: data visualization.) And I didn't really start noticing infographics until recently. And I've become fascinated by them. (How 'bout you?) A cool site to check out is: http://visual.ly/. There you'll find a searchable database of infographics / data visualizations, many of which offer html code so you can embed them on your own blog or website. INFOGRAPHIC "HOW TO" But I wanted to make my own infographics rather than just posting others, is real... 01/24/2012

On the mountain long ago Moses received God's law. I haven't been up to a mountain or anything, but I thought I'd use this pattern to make some points about blogging (and micro-blogging, too, if you're in to social media like Twitter). So here you go with the 10 Commandments of blogging... (click image to enlarge, then in new browser tab or window click again) (To read the original Ten Commandments of Blogging and the 100+ comments, click here.) 01/20/2012

Let's just cut to the chase. We like the old better. Right? We like how we've always done things, the patterns we've set, the routine we've got going ~ regardless of if it's working anymore (bringing in business, helping us to reach a goal, positively enriching our lives). Maybe it hasn't worked for a long, long time (or never at all)? It's just hard to do something new. Because that would mean we would have to change. We would have to learn. We would have to adapt, think, grow. And that's uncomfortable. We don't like uncomfortable. Neither do we like making mistakes (which when you're learning something new, the fact is it happens). When you make mistakes or don't look like you know what you're doing, then you get embarrassed. And we don't like embarrassed either. We don't like people... 01/17/2012

All of the information on this page has been  compiled from the Tuolumne County Board of Realtors Multiple Listing Service (MLS). These updates represent not only my listings but the listings the other cooperating Brokers of our Board.Sonora Real Estate Multiple ListingsThe 35 single family Sonora CA Homes listed for sale this week have been on the market an average of 213 days with an average list price of $253,323.18 houses in the Sonora area are in escrow with an average price of$215,410 and an average market time of 95 daysHouses in Escrow 01-11-2011Real Estate Sold in the Sonora Area this WeekAddress                                                        Asking           Sold           %      DOM11009 Race Track Road                        $219,000    $219,000  100%   65This Inform... 01/12/2012

01/12/2012

(click image to enlarge, then in new browser tab or window click again) Source: 2011 REALTORS® Technology Survey 01/06/2012

Lightning fast post meant to make you think... 10 Mistakes People Make Creating Infographics (plus 1 bonus): (what might you add to the list?) 1. Make text, graphs, etc, too small to read. 2. Don't allow for a click to enlarge. 3. Forget to study other infographics for ideas. 4. Overlook citing their sources. 5. Choose colors that clash (versus enhance). 6. Don't offer embed code. 7. Allow perfectionism to prevent publishing. 8. Forget it's a great option for recycling blog posts. 9. Don't spend the time it takes. (It will show.) 10. Neglect the KISS approach (keep it simple silly). BONUS: Save as jpg file instead of png. (Latter doesn't lose resolution.) You might also be interested in: 64 Things That Come to Mind When I Think of Christmas (infographic) A History of Real Estate (infog... 01/03/2012

12/30/2011

12 To Do's for Realtors® in 2012: 1. Touch base with past clients. 2. Invest in social media presence. 3. Schedule regular rest, refreshing, re-energizing time. 4. Know MLS inventory in your sleep. 5. Grow automatic email listing database. 6. Read (at minimum) three new industry-related and/or self-help books. 7. Partner up with another professional who you can benefit from (and he or she can benefit from you). 8. Seek out a successful real estate veteran for insight/counsel on how to better your business. 9. Determine to not neglect important relationships (family, etc) and set parameters to protect them. 10. Set a selling goal, divide it up over 12 months and map out strategy to achieve it. 11. Let go of those things that aren't adding to your bottom line. 12. Don't be so hard on you... 12/28/2011

(click image to enlarge) Source: Interesting New Year's Resolution Statistics 12/26/2011