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A lot of talk on the web about today being Bill Gates’ last day at Microsoft. Here are some of my favorites.

Bill Gates and the Greatest Tech Hack Ever

My First BillG Review

Fortune


And here’s my Bill Gates story. My Dad made me take typing lessons. It was around 8th grade and I didn’t want to, because I thought typing was for girls. But as the saying goes Father knows best. Looking back now I can see that learning to type sparked my interest in computers and writing.

My Dad then bought me a computer from Radio Shack. The first time I was ever aware of Microsoft was teaching myself how to program in BASIC. One advantage I had was I knew how to type! I had a Microsoft BASIC manual that I would spend hours looking up ways to make my programs do what I wanted them to do. This was around 1983-84, and I was a Junior in High School.

I would read anything I could about him and Microsoft. I was, and still am, a big geek about the history of personal computers. To this day I sign my email’s with “gr” because I read somewhere that Bill Gates used to sign his email’s with “bg”.

The world is better place because of Microsoft. And the great part is that Bill is going to give it all back to try to make the world an even better place.

10 PRINT “THANK YOU BILL, AND GOOD LUCK!”
20 GOTO 10

gr

I was talking to Shane McCarthy today. I worked with Shane at HomeSeekers.com and eNeighborhoods. For the past couple years he has worked at VisualTour. Shane is a very natural salesperson, and great in front of an audience (agents just love him). Shane also surfs ( he would want me to post that tid bit!)

The value proposition for VisualTour is this, for $29.95 per month an agent can create and host an unlimited number of virtual tours. These tours can remain online for as long as the agent/broker pays the monthly subscription fee. They claim to host over half the virtual tours in the country.

Great company, very focused on customer service. The problem?? It’s an agent based subscription service! And we all know what a grind that can be. How many agents stay and how many leave, etc. etc. etc.

Recently VisualTour has been running television commercials on national networks such as HGTV, DIY and Fine Living.

You can see one here. You can read about it here.

I haven’t seen any other commercials, but this one is hilarious! And it struck me how clever an idea this ad campaign really is, because it really hit all cylinders on a subscription based service such as VisualTour.

1. Be aggressive.
Market be damned, lets roll! See my previous post about this here. They have over half the virtual tour business and they see this market as a perfect way to go after ALL of it!

2. Innovate.
They have also created a simple search interface where consumers can search for properties that have virtual tours. Since they have over half the tours in the country , and tours of sold properties, their search inventory is decent.

3. Sell. Sell. Sell.
In my opinion the best way to solve agent retention problem in a subscription based business is agent acquisition. Agents will leave the business no matter how great your customer service department works. You’ve got to give your sales guys better ways/tools to acquire new business.

I can just see Shane up in front on an audience of agents. Here’s how I imagine it goes…

Shane:
Consumers love virtual tours.

We are the largest and best virtual tour company.

We just started a nation wide television campaign to help real estate agents out in this tough market.

Can you think of any other real estate vendor running television commercials?

Would you like to see one of our television commercials?

[Play television commercial]

Audience: Laughter

Shane:
We take Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. The line forms to the left.

Gnarly dude!

If you haven’t checked out LORE Magazine this month you should. The magazine does a great job of letting you into the lives of the major industry players, all presented in high quality publication with great artwork, photos and layout, without sacraficing quality content. Kudos to its publisher Anne Randolph.

Lately they have been doing this interviews with 2 people that appear to have nothing in common or are fierce competitors. In May’s issue the article is “Strange Bedellows” where they interview Alex Perriello (CEO of Realogy Franchise Group) and Mark Willis (CEO of Keller Williams.) It kind of reminds me of the Iconoclasts series on Sundance Channel. Anyway in the interview Alex Perreillo gives the greatest quote…

LORE: What do you think agents and brokers should be doing?

AP: Now is absolutely the greatest time to grow your business, and we currently spend an enormous amount of time with franchises. Chandler Barton (president and CEO of CB when purchased by HFS) once said, “People have this business backwards. You need to cut expenses when the market is good because don’t need to spend the money, and you grow market share when the market is bad. So when the cycle turns, which it inevitably will, you’ve got a larger share”

Well said!

Dave Rifkin was promoted to Vice President of Agent Services for eNeighborhoods

Michael Hayes was promoted to Director of Enterprise Services for eNeighborhoods

I wanted to say a few things. Dominion Enterprises showed a lot of smarts promoting these guys. Dave Rifkin has been in the real estate technology business since the mid 90s. He’s negotiated contracts with large MLS providers, help design product and more recently started an inside sales team from scratch at eNeighborhoods. He and Andy Woolley were the two biggest forces driving growth and my first company IRIS, LLC. IRIS would not have been a success without Dave.

Rick Sherwood, also an IRIS alum, is the whole package. Rick is very smart, has a great feel for the game, a good eye for product functionality design, and very tenacious. Rick lasted through (survived) all the bullshit at what began as Moore Data and is now FNRES MLS. You don’t go through that experience without being an A player and having a deep understanding of the MLS real estate technology industry.

Michael Hayes, a Wyldfyre alum, is another A player in the game. It’s a well known fact that Michael’s charisma can be tracked from space. People in the International Space Station see two things when look down at earth, the great wall of China and a bright white light coming from Los Gatos, California. When eNeighborhoods acquired WyldFyre Technologies from HomeStore (Move), we realized right away that the best thing we could do is give a smart and creative guy like Michael anything he needed. And what he has accomplished has been amazing.

Here’s the story from our friends at RIS Media.

eNeighborhoods Announces Promotions in Enterprise, Agent Services Divisions

RISMEDIA, May 19, 2008-eNeighborhoods, a division of Dominion Enterprises, announced the promotions of key staff members to further the company’s real estate technology and marketing initiatives. eNeighborhoods, says the company, delivers real estate technology to more than 400,000 desktops around the world.

Peter Ill, president of Dominion Enterprises real estate businesses, announced the promotion of David Rifkin to vice president of eNeighborhoods Agent Services. Rifkin’s new role includes agent sales and marketing as well as working with multiple listing services (MLS) organizations.

Joining Rifkin’s team as manager of Dominion Data Services is Wendy McDaniel. McDaniel will be responsible for the continued growth of the company’s Internet Data Exchange (IDX) program, and maintaining relationships with MLS organizations. eNeighborhoods operates the industry’s largest network of IDX websites, compiling more than 3.8 million IDX listings from over 450 MLS organizations on behalf of their broker and agent customers.

“The growth in our Agent Services division continues moving forward under Dave Rifkin’s leadership,” Ill said. “These actions will ensure that we continue to deliver relevant products and services for agents competing in today’s tough markets. Dave Rifkin is a real estate industry and eNeighborhoods veteran. We’re happy to welcome him to the senior management team, and to bring Wendy McDaniel aboard to manage Data Services.”

eNeighborhoods Vice President of Enterprise Services Andy Woolley also announced the promotions of Michael Hayes and Rick Sherwood. Both Hayes and Sherwood will become directors in eNeighborhoods’ Enterprise Services division.

“eNeighborhoods delivers marketing, lead generation, and data-sharing tools to leading MLS and broker organizations in the United States, Canada, and Australia,” Woolley said. “Few people have the marketing, technology and real estate industry expertise that Michael and Rick bring to the team in supporting our large enterprise customers.”

More fill in the blanks fun for your reading pleasure!

Are _____ and ______ freaking crazy for leaving their fat gigs at _________________?

Did you hear that _____ _________ is going to buy an NHL franchise?

Is it a requirement to be over 6ft tall to work for _______?

How does _____ get all these women to fetch him drinks and sit on his lap?

What’s up with _______ doesn’t he get enough _______ in Texas?

Was that Dave ______? I haven’t seen him at Mid-year in over 5 years.

________ thinks she’s so hot. If this was any other industry she’d be a “not”.

The Real Estate Channel? Archive? What kind of ______ is _______ smoking?

Greg Robertson and Dan Woolley leave eNeighborhoods.

You can read it all here.

Thanks for all the great comments and good wishes, keep ‘em coming, Dan and I will need all the encouragement/love/help/karma we can get!

I’m in D.C. at the NAR Midyear show. I’ve reactivated my twitter account, twitter.com/VendorAlley

See you there!

They give me inspiration!

“Howard Roark laughed. He stood naked at the edge of a cliff. The lake lay far below him. A frozen explosion of granite burst in flight to the sky over motionless water. The water seemed immovable, the stone flowing. The stone had the stillness of one brief moment in battle when thrust meets thrust and the currents are held in a pause more dynamic than motion. The stone glowed, wet with sunrays.

The lake below was only a thin steel ring that cut the rocks in half. The rocks went on into the depth, unchanged. They began and ended in the sky. So that the world seemed suspended in space, an island floating on nothing, anchored to the feet of the man on the cliff…

He laughed at the thing which had happened to him that morning and at the things which now lay ahead.

He knew that the days ahead would be difficult. There were questions to be faced and a plan of action to be prepared.

He knew that he should think about it. He knew also that he would not think, because everything was clear to him already, because the plan had been set long ago, and because he wanted to laugh.”

The Fountainhead, (Page 1)
Ayn Rand

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish
“I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle….
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”


Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple

Stanford University June 12, 2005

Commencement Address

“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”
Groucho Marx

This just came to me as I was posting.

But doesn’t Alan Dalton look like an older Shaun White? Or maybe Shaun is Alan’s lovechild?

You be the judge…

Alan Dalton
Move.com

The Flying Tomato

Got a few reports from vendors who participated in the Keller Williams show this week in Atlanta. Attendance was at 6,000, which was way down from Las Vegas. The drop in turn out was expected since previous annual “Family Reunions” were held in Las Vegas. The convention staff at KW has always been very vendor friendly, and does their best to make sure everyone has a good show.

Crowds were enthusiastic (gotta love those KW agents!), and most vendors I spoke to reached about 85% + of their sales targets for the show.

Also, we got some big shows coming up

Realogy- Gaylord Palms: Orlando, FL

Coldwell Banker
February 21-24

ERA
February 25-28

Century 21
February 28 – March 2

RE/MAX International Convention: Las Vegas, NV
March 3-6

Prudential Sales Convention: New Orleans, LA
March 16-18

Last year these shows were really set the tone for the year. It will be interesting to see what the vibe is out there. Good luck everyone!

Here’s another submission from one of our readers….

Brad Inman
Founder of Inman News

Kelsey Grammer
Actor