One of the things that has occurred to me about this is that one acquires a certain reputation from doing it.  The rep is that I am a positive guy.  I tweet blessings.  I’m constantly looking for blessings, for positive things to communicate to the world.  I am doing this in what I lovingly call Channel Three, which is the most public of all the ways to communicate.  I am globally declaring that I have blessings and that I notice those blessings.  I am going to do this for two weeks, but the reality is that once I start doing this it is likely that I will continue, unless it absolutely does not work at all, and it’s already a bit late for that to be the case.

I will be encouraged to continue because I have staked out some ground here.  Nobody else that I know is doing anything like this; at least, the #blessing hashtag is not what you’d call overused, and nobody else on earth is numbering them off every day to keep track (at least not on Twitter).   I confess I would like to be known for being a positive person.  Therefore the odds are that this will become my thing, my schtick, my modus operandi.

Today is every bit as good as day 4.  It is officially a trend.  Time will tell if it is a pattern, or possibly even a system.  But I’m hopeful.

Change takes work.  If you want to change yourself, you have to work at it.  You have to spend time with the books and the people that are in the place that you want to go.  If I want to be positive and cheerful, regardless of the interesting stuff going on around me (and really, when is there NO interesting stuff going on around us?), then I have to do the work to keep looking at the bright side of things.  Because there is always a bright side.

And that leads me to the next two weeks.  I’m trying an experiment.  Since I spend a lot of time on Twitter, I am going to use that to focus on blessings.  I will be tweeting every time I notice a blessing in my life, which is probably going to explode my volume of tweets, so you might want to put me on stun for a couple weeks.  Although, you know, it might be interesting for you, too.  I have some quirky blessings to mention already.

Because this is a research project, an experiment in raising my base level of happiness, I will be periodically reporting the results in this space.  My hypothesis is that it will do wonders for me psychically, but also that it will increase the success of my physical-world ventures, which could do with some increasing, let me tell you.

Let’s get started.

P.S. If you’re into that sort of thing, you can follow me on Twitter, @cjlehi.  My tweets do not cross-post to Facebook, in case you were wondering.

On the other hand, since according to Mortgage Strategy only 19% of the real-estate industry is even kind of using social media (this from a tweet this morning), and from experience I can testify that 90% of that 19% is using it badly and doing harm to itself, I thought I might at least give my opinions about how social media might be used well in a real-estate context.  I am certainly using these tools better than most in my industry, and that has translated into gigs at Zillow and the Daily Herald Newspaper, so apparently my ideas do not entirely suck.  Take them for what they are worth.

Here’s how I got to writing this:

From Seth Jenson, a really good Realtor in Colorado: “Chris, what do you think about Twitter vs. Facebook? Do you think I need to be on both?”

Seth-

Whoo.  What a question.

Facebook is a terrific way for people to connect.  I’m no huge FB-er; I have about 400 friends, which is not a big number by any stretch of the imagination.  I don’t spend a lot of time trying to find friends on FB, or I likely could have a couple hundred more.  And maybe I ought to do that.  Probably I ought to do that.  But it depends on what I’m using Facebook for.

If I’m using Facebook to keep tabs on people I know – my family, my close friends here in town, a few of the guys I went to HS with – then I’m doing it the right way.  You can’t possibly keep track of the doings of 1000 people every day.  Impossible.  However, if one of the reasons for you to be on Facebook is that you want people to remember YOU, well, then you might want a few more friends.  You’d want to update your status at least once a day, and probably more than once.  These wouldn’t all be real-estate updates.  In fact, most of them would be about anything except real estate, and would be only for the purpose of strengthening relationships.  It is those relationships that bring the referrals that make you successful, and coincidentally, it is those relationships that make your life richer and more rewarding, so that’s a happy thing.  Facebook makes strengthening those relationships easier than ever, so I would definitely be on Facebook.

Twitter is very different.  I love Twitter, myself.  I like Twitter better than Facebook.  Where I post or comment about 5x a day on Facebook, I do that twice as much – or more – on Twitter.  Twitter is a research tool as much as it is a communications network.  I get a lot of my news from Twitter, most of my reading material, and have most of my online conversations there, even more than email.  Now, again, it depends on what you’re using the tool for.  Twitter can be a huge and pointless waste of your time.  It can also do you harm, I think.  But if you use it with respect, I think it has the potential to be incredibly valuable.

Here are some examples.  I am not a big noise on Twitter.  I have fewer than 200 followers.  I’m following only about 100 people.  I determined when I got involved that I wouldn’t try to amass a gigantic following until I had some idea what I was doing it for.  I didn’t know enough about Twitter to know what I was doing, so I figured I’d start by following some people that DID know, namely, those that have good blogs about social media.  So I followed Amber Naslund, Olivier Blanchard, Beth Harte, and some others, and learned about what Twitter could do, and more importantly, what I should NOT do on Twitter.

Then I started using the search functions of TweetDeck – TweetDeck is an indispensable tool for using Twitter – to follow mortgage news.  There were some interesting conversations that came out of that, which resulted in my following Tyler Osby, Dan Green, and Agentopolis and a few others.  They are doing most of the blogging and commenting about what’s going on in the mortgage industry.  There were two or three other topics that I thought would be good (hobbies, etc.) so I started running searches on those as well.  I’ve acquired my 160 or so followers through conversations, not spam.  In fact, most of those that are following me would unfollow if I used Twitter to promote myself ad-style.  But because I blog, many of them are reading what I write, and following them allows me to read what they write, get smarter, and engage them in conversation.  Again, for me it is about the relationships.  It’s made me better at mortgages, even though I haven’t spent a great deal of time on Twitter talking about mortgages per se.

Bottom line?  Yes, you should be on Facebook and on Twitter.  Figure out what you want these tools to do for you, and design a strategy to get them to do that.  Expect it to take time.  If you do it right, it will take a lot of it, and a fair amount of work as well.  Farming does.

Good luck.  Follow me at @chrisjoneslehi, and I’ll follow back.  You can friend me at www.facebook.com/chrisjoneslehi.

Cj

P.S. I’m thinking of changing my legal name to “Chris Jones Lehi”.  It’s just so dang much easier for people to find me that way.

Just kidding, Dad.

P.P.S. I’ll have Volume 2 of this post next week, with examples of what to do and what not to do on Facebook and Twitter, and how I think Realtors and mortgage agents can use those tools most successfully.  Stay tuned.  And for Heaven’s sake, get the opinions of some of those above that really know what they’re talking about.

Silly.

Let me parenthetically add that I love Twitter, permanently have TweetDeck open and running, tweet about 10-15 times a day, and have met some of the most interesting and affable people in the world thanks to this great little piece of social media technology.  I like Twitter better than Facebook, though for different reasons. So it’s not like I’m a social mediaphobe, or that I can’t get into the technology, despite being 41 years old in 48 hours.

But TWITTER?  Geesh, it’s like a name my 7-year-old thought up.  I seriously think that the name itself is stunting its growth, and making it the butt of jokes.  A couple days ago, the US Secretary of State joked that she “wouldn’t know a twitter from a tweeter”, and this was not only acceptable, it was funny.  Ha ha.  The most important communications medium of the nascent (and apparently declining) Iranian Revolution, and the US Secy of State thinks it’s funny to joke about how she doesn’t know anything about it.  This is like “M” joking that she never reads any of the gobbledygook in the intelligence reports.

I bet you $10 that if it were called “Zip”, and we were all “zipping” because we are “zippers”, or something a bit less…kindergarteny…than “Twitter”…there would be far fewer jokes about it and more people taking it seriously.  How seriously can you take “tweeting”?  I mean, I’m an evangelist for this technology, and even I feel silly when I’m explaining it to people.

Okay, so “doomed” is a bit harsh.  I think Twitter has a long life ahead of it, despite Internet gurus pronouncing it moribund because it doesn’t have a 100% participation rate.  I think it’s a fantastic business tool, and I’ll keep using it no matter what it’s called, and I will not be alone.

But part of me will always wonder how much the name of the thing is cooling its growth.

@TylerOsby asked a question this morning on Twitter – “how long do you work every day?”  Apropos of this, I also read an article this morning by Tim Ferriss, who wrote The 4-Hour Work Week, about how he works, um, 4 hours a week.  Obviously.  But anyway, what I found was that I could not give a straight answer to Tyler’s question.  I’ve had trouble with this for a while, and it’s getting worse.

On the surface, it seems simple.  You work when you’re working, and you aren’t working when you’re not working.  Oh, if only.  Here’s an example: right now, am I working?

I don’t know.

The blog, in general, is a marketing vehicle to let people know that I have a certain level of expertise in mortgages.  I do.  In fact, I’m very good at them.  I’ve been doing them a long time, in several capacities, and I understand them well from many sides.  But the part of this blog that establishes that credibility is primarily the RateWatch segment, which I love, but which this post is not.  So is this post work or not?

Um.

There’s so much more.  In 20 minutes, I’m meeting with Nathan Larsen from Classic Books and Gifts to talk about a really innovative book contest we’re putting together.  There is practically no chance that this contest will pay me any money, though it is about 90% certain that I’m going to be headmanning it.  It will take volumes of time and some money.  Is the meeting work?  It will be benefitting the bookstore.  It will employ (eventually) many people.  It has lots of outgrowth possibilities that could make many of the people I know better off.  It’s also fun.  So what is this meeting?  Work?

I’m going out to garden at some point today.  Is that work?  I spent half an hour reading articles this morning and some of those led to this post.  Was that work?

I know there’s all this fancy talk about balance these days, how to balance your professional and personal life, how to balance family with work, how to keep your different compartments separate and weighing about the same.  Perhaps it’s just me, but I find that philosophy so stupid my eyes cross.  I can’t for one second separate all the different parts of my life.  Practically no activity that I engage in has no spiritual component.  Practically every activity has some family aspect.  When I’m with my family, much of the time, my phone is on and on my hip.  Am I working?  I’m on call.  Isn’t that working?  On the other hand, when I’m sitting in the office, often I’m discussing the Jazz with my brother.  Is that working?

Much of what I do every day produces no direct financial benefit.  Nearly everything I do EVERY day produces some indirect financial benefit, and the part that doesn’t produces other kinds of benefits in friendships, quality of life, larger vegetables, and suchlike.  It’s not a job, that’s for sure.  But isn’t “work” the thing you add to the universe to stop it from going straight to crap?  Am I not ALWAYS working?

I need help here, obviously.

So I told Tyler that my first communication with the outside world happens between 6:30 and 7am, and my last communication between 6pm and 11pm, depending on the day, which was true but not what he asked.  He responded that that was a long day.  I replied that everyone’s day is that long; mine just has more in it than most people’s.  I got the sense, though, that that wasn’t very satisfying to him.  It wasn’t all the way for me, either.

Can you help?

Those of you that read regularly know that I get criticized here.  You probably suspect, if you follow the comments section, that I allow pretty much any comment, no matter how critical.  And you would be right.  I have gotten heat for it from “professionals” that have told me that my blog should be relentlessly positive and cheerful if it’s to be a good marketing vehicle, and for all I know, they’re right.  But I can’t be that way.  I am a positive person, and I have faith that things are going to be okay.  But when I’m sad, I’m sad.  When I screw up, and someone calls me on it, I put that out there with everything else.

Maybe this makes me some sort of hero.  I doubt it.  That’s certainly not the intent.

I tend to be motivated by connection and community, and I believe that those connections cannot come about except in the presence of authenticity.  If I am not willing to be who I really am, then my connections will be false.  This is as true on Twitter as it is at the corner bookstore.  I don’t want people to think that I am perfect.  But, no, that’s not quite right.

I don’t want to present a false image of myself in order to get people to think I am one thing or another.  That’s better.  What they do think of me I want to be their decision based on real things, not my attempt to appear to be something.  This holds, I believe, for my company as well as myself.

In order to do this correctly, there are things I cannot present.  I have strong views on Coke.  I have opinions on the Red Wings.  I occasionally get red-faced discussing Hungarian domestic policy.  Some of those things are not good things to display to the general public, for a number of reasons, but mostly, I think, because that’s not a level of transparency I grant to everyone.  I restrict some things.  We all do.  This can be just fine – depending.

Depends on why.

If you restrict the fact that you’ve had an affair with your married staffer, John Ensign, because it harms your position as a vocal proponent of marital fidelity, then that is pretty much lying.  That’s inauthentic.  You are pretending to be something you’re not.  If you restrict the fact that you think abortion is murder, for another example, but you do so because you know that this is a debate that cannot be had without a level of trust among the debaters, this is not inauthenticity, it is opacity.  Opacity is not necessarily inauthentic.

For me, it’s like this – if you’re trying to be as real as possible within the bounds of what discussion you’re having, then you’re fine.  If you’re covering things up because they undermine your position, then you’re not fine.  In one binary check: is it about you, or about the community?

Authentic is about the community.  In fact, community can only exist among those that are authentic with one another.  A certain level of transparency is required as well, of course, and the more transparent the members of a community are, the deeper and more powerful will be the connections in that community.  But true transparency isn’t required for community formation.  If it were, we would all live in glass houses.  That part of the house that is glass, though, needs to be pretty clean, or the distorted view will eventually break the community apart.

P.S. This means you, buttkissers.  Authenticity doesn’t mean constant sunshine.  It does mean a willingness to tell the truth even when that truth will be hard for someone you care about to hear it.  You can be eccentric, even abrasive, and still be a part of a vibrant community as long as the eccentricity and abrasiveness is authentic – really a part of you – rather than just an attempt to get attention.  We’re not stupid.  We’ll be able to tell.

Well, I sold those loans.  I GOT one of those loans.  I wouldn’t be living in my house (5 years now) had I not got one.  And that leads me to my question: would I be better off if I had kept renting?  Would most people be better off if they had kept renting instead of buying a house?

I used to be sure that the answer to this question was no.  As I chat with people out there, though, I start to wonder.  Do a Google of “ruined lives” and “foreclosure”.  I got more than 3000 hits for that combination.  It appears, then, that being foreclosed on ruins your life.  This is something I wish I’d known before I made that (in retrospect) silly investment in Payson.

The funny part is, I don’t feel like my life is ruined.  I’m not volunteering to lose my home, here, to prove a point, but my personal toxic mortgage, which has just re-set to a much larger payment, may make it impossible for us to stay here.  I don’t think it will come to that, but it could.  Much of this is my fault, because we did what a lot of people did when we refinanced and took equity out of the home.  We had good reasons (we all do).  It’s true that even if I had that equity I couldn’t refinance, though, because I’m self-employed and report piddly to Uncle Sam on my taxes, as most self-employed people do.  So I’m stuck.

I’m a victim.

And I’d still rather, and my wife would still rather, and all my children would still rather have lived here for the last five years than have stayed in the two rental houses we lived in before this.  This is better.

Hence my question: isn’t it better to have bought and lost than never to have bought at all? Is my life “ruined” if I get foreclosed on?  Is anyone’s life ruined by this?

I’m serious.  What do you think?

One of the things I love about it is the ability to monitor the conversation about my company, and respond quickly when someone has a problem.  Okay, not MY company, because frankly, nobody on Twitter is talking about us.  But my industry, yes.  There is a LOT of complaining going on about mortgage people, companies, brokers, all of that.

I didn’t really have any idea.  Most of the time when people come to me they’re not complaining.  Afraid, yes.  Worried that things are bad and not going to get better.  But they don’t come into my office and say “you never explain anything, your service sucks, and the entire mortgage process makes me feel faintly nauseous.”

This is, however, how they feel.  And I didn’t know it.

I had a short back-and-forth with @mototom (Tom Parker), in which he said, in part, “Same old — daily auto-dialer calls with pre-recorded voicemail messages. Crap follow-up once you’re working with them.”  And this was worse: “But it may be impossible to humanize it. No matter what, doesn’t it still come down to numbers plugged into a machine?”

Oh.  My.

Now I admit in this space all the time that I am not perfect.  I am far from as disciplined as I would like to be, and that lack of discipline shows up most often in communication, where I don’t do as well as I should at keeping my clients apprised of what is going on.  But I hope – I pray – that my clients don’t feel that they’re not human to us.

I guess I had better ask.

No, Tom, you are not a couple numbers plugged into a machine.  You should not be treated that way.  You should never feel that way at all, ever, at any point in the process.  That you do feel that way is a terrible indictment of mortgage brokers and loan officers, and on behalf of the entire industry, let me offer you a sincere apology, and my personal commitment to do things better in the future.

So that even if we never work together, your willingness to speak out will have helped someone.

Then I read this, and I have to say, if you’re considering Twitter or any one of another dozen or so social media, please read this first.

I’m adding Daily Axioms to my reading list, and I’m following Drew Gneiser.  I can learn a lot from this man.