From the minute you meet Joey McCune Moore you are smiling.  She is a bundle of energy and enthusiasm!  I pulled out my short book, “Wise Words for Real Estate Agents” and you could literally hear her gears clicking.  She had a book in her that was dying to get out.  In the span of a week writing into the middle of the night hidden away from the kids, she wrote this book, “Short Sale Diva” on the challenges of working with a closing short sale transactions.  I laughed out loud because anyone in the real estate business knows the obstacles we face working with banks to close transactions.

In her introduction, Joey tells the reader 5 suggestions if they are going to negotiation their way through a short sale.    1.  have a sense of humor        2.  get someone to keep your organized if you can’t       3.  have a large supply of pain killer for those days you think you’re getting a paycheck… and you arent.     4.  “grow a pair.”  She prepares you for the rest of the book!  She writes just like she is chatting away.

There is some powerful information you will need to know if you are a seller thinking of asking the bank to agree to a short sale, or if you are an agent who is working on them.  So learn what you can from Seattle’s “Short Sale Diva” Joey McCune Moore.

It’s available on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Short-Sale-DIVA-Proclaimed-Surviving/dp/1461072816

I sat in the audience listening to Rich Jacobson, Windermere agent and blogger extraordinaire, speak about the importance of being authentic and learning to give and not focusing on receiving.  I admire him for practicing or living his message whenever he speaks.  One of his slides and a key thread in his talk focused on “The Go Giver” by Bob Burg and John David Mann.  I took notes and planned to order the book.

The next day I sat in the office of Rob Beckner, a loan officer with Legacy Group listening to his positive messages, excitement about getting certified to teach clockhours to real estate agents, and the challenges that got him to where he is today.  He is a survivor in this economic slump.  He points to his bookshelf, and there is a stack of these books, “The Go-Giver”  and he tells me to take one and read it….. which I did right away.  It was an afternoon read.  The book is a story, like a parable, about a young man who is craving success and the secret to the route to get there.  The story made me smile and also my eyes welled up.  And, I loved how it came full circle.

I know the secret to success is in what you give.  But, in our daily crazy, busy, lives we are trying to keep from losing what we have and make enough money to keep the machine running.  This book does remind us and give us good reason why giving will bring us success.  Ergo, Rob Beckner gave me the book, “The Go-Giver” and I will, in turn, give the book and anything I can daily to others.

“One Thousand Gifts” is a gift itself. When I went to the website, sweet music played and I could feel the music playing as I read the book by Ann Voskamp.   I am grateful for my life.  When the sun sets each night I feel loved by my family and friends. When the sun rises in the morning, I go forward to do the best I can with what I have been given.  But, it is not always “easy.” So, for some reason, I came across this book last month and I was interested in her story.

Ann Voskamp questions her faith and God and why tragedy falls on each side of her.  She takes us on her journey to discover what grace, gratefulness and giving thanks mean to her and how she finds her way through the words in the Bible. We forget to look at the blessings around us as we rush through our lives.  She encourages all of us to start a Grateful Journal and record the blessings or gifts in our lives as simple as the sun setting behind the trees to the blink of a child”s eye.  She lets us into her grief and her imperfections and you can feel the tears and questions as we have all experienced grief and her challenges as we have all had the kids throw toast at each other.

I wanted a bit more of “her” in the book because some of her stories were barely told.  Though I grew up with a Catholic background and have a strong faith, today, I learn from different religions, spiritual writers and leaders.  This book gave me quite a peek into her journey, which I appreciated.  I learned from so many of her quotes… the one that rings over was about how we can only “experience one emotion at a time.”   That made me think.  It made me realize the power of gratefulness!  I also learned that “life is not an emergency.”  If you are a Christian Mom, I can see you hugging this book after you read it.  I am sincerely thankful that Ann Voskamp wrote “One Thousand Gifts” and I stumbled upon it on Amazon!

http://onethousandgifts.com/

Gary Vaynerchuk, who is famous for his book, Crush It, about the power of video for your business… wrote a book, The Thank You Economy, and included video clips in each chapter!

If you have an iPad, you MUST download the “enhanced version” of the book.  This was fascinating for me!  It could be the future of all books!  OH my… there are videos and audio clips in every chapter!  So you read the chapter and there is a video that you can click on with Gary speaking about the chapter.  This is not the author reading the chapter, but a professional video with backgrounds and clips about the information that was just covered.  So more than the information presented in the book, the format just blew me away.

Ok, the premise of the book is that we need to thank and value each customer.  The value of every customer is higher than we admit.  There are too many choices out there in our economy for the consumer, so the best way to keep your business growing is not to keep trying to fish, but to treat the fish you have caught with respect and value!  They are the ones feeding you!  We need to “care” about our customers and instill a culture of caring into our business.  We need to use social media to connect with the customers not to just throw advertising at them.

Gary uses some fantastic examples and as I read it I want to go back to my own business and see how I can be better at connecting with my customers… the agents that take continuing ed… clockhours… from my school.  Because, though I know I need to be better at showing it… I do care about the business that they send me.

This is probably one of the best basic social media books on the market, today!  When I teach classes including “Get Connected,”  “Blogging Basics,” and “Twenty Questions on Twitter”  to real estate agents I have been teaching almost all the same concepts. Many people are watching and waiting for the “right”  time to get a presence online.  The book, Sociable!,  covers the top networking sites, how to blog, the uses of micro blogging, rules of engagement, and etiquette.  There are great stories and examples that we can all relate to.

The authors encourage the reader to be authentic and real and to bring the relationships from the computer to offline.  As a reader, I felt that the authors, themselves, were authentic.   I am connected to Stephen Jagger on Facebook and read all his posts.

Most importantly, the book will help you take your marketing to another level using tools that are primarily free to you!

If you have any questions about social media or you are an entrepreneur who wants to build your business, this is the book you need to follow step by step.

Perfect timing.  Sometimes there is a book that literally jumps off the shelf, newspaper, or blog that you have to pick up and read.  I was given a coupon for a local yoga studio, BalaYoga.com in Kirkland because my back was aching. I knew nothing about yoga and feared chanting and meditating… I like to talk!  But, I went and in the first week of many classes my back stopped hurting. So I started going every other day on average for the past 3 months.  And there was this book!

Memoirs fascinate me and Yoga is a mystery.  Claire is a middle aged Mom who names each chapter after a yoga pose as she invites us into her life as a mother, wife, daughter and friend. The writing is as if it was translated from a conversation with her. The descriptions are concise and imaginable, the humor is just real life.  She has a mother who was a hippie, a husband working from the house, and a baby she brings to a co-op in a Seattle neighborhood that she describes as if it is a cult in itself.  And in every chapter, I discovered more about the yoga I was practicing almost daily.  I didn’t want the book to end.

I met her briefly at a book signing at Third Place Books in January.  I bought the book for friends as it was one of the first books I read on my iPad… and having her sign that just didn’t work.  She read passages from the book and I smiled the whole time as I felt like we knew each other listening to her voice.  I am thankful that she wrote the book as it makes me think about my own life…and still wonder where she came up with the number 23.

What motivates us? What motivates you?
My first job after college was in management in a retail department store. I had up to 40 employees to schedule, motivate and review. Winnie had worked in the store for over 20 years. Money … a raise would not motivate her, yet the manager of the store insisted that all people were motivated by money. I gave Winnie a title and a long term responsibility doing something that she liked and was proud of. She managed the men’s sock wall. Her attitude improved, more was accomplished in shorter time, and the department was seeing better numbers.

But what about goals? I have personally never been motivated by goals. They seem to set me up for failure.  I never wanted to go after someone elses goals.  Setting goals for someone else can backfire. Instead of doing better, they might find short cuts. They might meet some goal and not feel fulfilled. Carrots and sticks do not really work to motivate us in the new world. Better pay or some punishment will not necessarily get employees or even our kids to be more successful.

So what does 40 years of research on human motivation show? Daniel Pink shows 3 key elements of motivation: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Intrinsic motivation can lead to more success and happiness. For those of you that are self employed and/or in the real estate industry, you probably chose the profession because of your desire for freedom and autonomy.
Do you think you will ever attain mastery? Is intelligence something you have predetermined or do you think it is something you continually can increase? Do you feel like you are growing? In one study, researchers found that “perseverance and passion for long term goals” is one of the best predictors of success.
Purpose… over 100 baby boomers turn sixty every 13 minutes. It won’t be long before I hit that mark. We are all going to live longer on average and many of us are looking at a long term purpose.  Along with autonomy and mastery comes a greater purpose for your life.

I went to hear Daniel Pink discuss his book last year shortly after it was published. it was a fascinating look at what gets us (me) going every day. It made me think about my greater purpose in life especially as my role as a Mom has drastically changed now that my kids are on their own. The stories punctuated his research and results.  He lists top authors and some business thinkers “who get it.”  There are questions and ideas to keep you thinking after reading the book.  It was a good read!

It is so easy to turn on the television every evening.   Believe me… I do it waaaaay too often.  There are books out there that can change the way you view your own world.  They can teach, inspire, and motivate you!   I surround myself with books.  They are all over my house, in my car and in my boat.  Just like dinner… there are times I don’t finish them, they don’t read as well as they look, and their weight scares me off.  But, I find some morsel to savor in just about every book I hold.  Since I know many of you may not be able to read from my library, this blog will give you a little taste of what I learned from some of the books on the shelves.

“Where can you possibly find the time to be online reading, blogging, chatting?”  Hardly a day goes by that I don’t hear a comment like that.  And, yes, we are all “busy.”  I don’t remember my parents ever being as busy as we are on a daily busy.  They were busy prompting the kids to clean the house or getting ready for guests to arrive at dinner.  It seems today that we are all so busy. Do we have free time and what do we do with it?  What is our generation doing with “free time?” (cognitive surplus)

Clay Shirky, author of Cognitive Surplus, made me think about the amount of free time we fill with television over the past half century and how the only effort we make is to just sit and change the channel.  (I’m guilty of it… and have episodes of Gilligan’s Island and That Girl and Partridge family floating in my brain along with Grey’s Anatomy.)  Digital technology and media have exploded over these decades and we have gone from just consumers of information to collaborators…. from watching to interacting.  That energy expended has changed our world.

The internet and computer has affected me in that instead of just sitting and watching, now I interact and in a small way create and contribute and connect with the world with this keyboard.  Millions of people have devoted millions of hours to creating everything from code to comedy online and most have been without strong organizational structure.  Our lives have changed because of those without compensation volunteering their brainpower to the internet.  In addition, the connecting online has brought together the most diverse groups imaginable for everything from hobbies, people with similar diseases and political activists. Instead of passive sitting and watching, our generation is working together as part of a web to transform our digital world.

Clay Shirkey’s examples, stories and research kept my attention.  It is so interesting to see how a facebook group, for example, have such a political impact in a country I didn’t picture being as wired and connected.

My life, my career, my relationships are all affected by this keyboard in front of me.  I’m using a template for my blog that was probably designed by someone without getting paid.  The blog is hosted for free.  You will find it probably from a free link off my website.  You probably found my website using a search engine that was free.  I will get no compensation or even kudos or any kind of awards for my efforts because I get internal intrinsic enjoyment chatting on my blog.

I hear so many complaints by people that the younger generation can’t communicate well anymore, that they spend all their time online and have no relationships and that they are lazy just sitting at a keyboard.  People constantly say there is so much garbage on the internet and even that Wikipedia is flawed.

But, this generation often communicates faster and with more clarity than their grandparents and with more people. They have more relationships and belong to more groups than their grandparents and will be connected in some way with just about every person they ever met in school.  They are busy creating online and contributing to society in some cases creating something without cultural significance to content that is powerful.

One of my friends has a 4 year old granddaughter that picks up her iPhone and recognizes the apps that are for her.  She is learning her alphabet from an app with photos and pronunciation.  She is read books with videos. She can send tweets phonetically to relatives.  She interacts with media unlike we were able when as 4 year olds we watched television.  She will keep interacting and creating and contributing.

Now, not only can authors chosen by the press or publishers be the ones we are exposed to.  Today, anyone with a keyboard can influence and contribute and collaborate in some way using the internet.

I saw Clay Shirky speak in July 2010 in Seattle at Town Hall.  Though he doesn’t really share predictions as to how the internet will change our lives in the future, his stories made me try to just imagine a mere fraction of what could be ahead of us.

I enjoyed this interview from Wired Magazine with Clay Shirkey and Daniel Pink author of Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us.  I also have been at a talk by Daniel Pink in Seattle earlier this year and read his book.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/ff_pink_shirky/

When I started Professional Direction as a real estate school over 17 years ago I made an effort to get some good press to let real estate agents know that I existed!  I was quoted in articles and on television saying, “The hardest thing about starting my business is the advice I get that I never need and the advice I need but never get!”

I used to meet regularly with a group of other business owners in Kirkland almost on a weekly.. but mostly monthly basis to discuss how our businesses were going, ways to build business, events that we could participate in, how we are budgeting, and stories of our recent successes.

In this book by Terri, she talks about the importance of starting a “Go! Group.”  I learned why it is important and how the Go! Group has worked for other business associates of Terri’s.  If you are a business owner or self employed (like in real estate) it is important to put together and meet regularly with others who you can share feedback, marketing, and successes.  If you tell your fellow group members that you are thinking of stepping out to so something … then when you meet again you have not only a sounding board but also you are accountable to taking that step.  There is someone interested in your progress.  I relied on my fellow business owners that I met with as a new company.  Even after almost 20 years, I still have a core group of people from two that helped me start the business to a few that I work with regularly that I rely on for business advice and feedback.

The appendix of the book which includes 11 brief thoughts from “Mentors” to “Saying No” each could  be the start of another book.  Addendum “D” is called “Write your book Now!”  I sat down with Terri several years ago and encouraged her to write her first book “The Staircase Principle” with the same information that she writes in the addendum.  She did it and the book went through more than one printing!  GO! Terri!

The book is available through her website at www.wincourage.com and I’d encourage you to get a copy for yourself!