Posts Tagged ‘business’

Monday Mojo: What would you do with $86,400 a day?

By Tom Tognoli | January 17th, 2011 1 Comment

If you received $86,400 every day of your life and you had to spend it or lose it by the end of each day, what would you do? Would you let the $86,400 just slip through your fingers and not worry about it if you did not spend it all? Would you invest it wisely? Would you give some to charity or your church, to your family, to your friends? Would you invest it in your F-5…your Faith, Family, Friends, Fitness, Finance/Business? Would you become a fanatic about putting together your plan RIGHT NOW to make sure you did not waste a single cent? Of course we all would not waste one red cent, would we?

So that is what we would do with money. What about your time? We all have 86,400 seconds in everyday. How are you spending it? Have you been a fanatic about putting together your plan and executing on it so you don’t waste a second? Remember, every day we are either going to use it or we are going to lose it. Put together your plan and execute on making sure you are investing every second of your life in your F-5. Just as important, remember we all only have 86,400 seconds in a day, so respect other people’s time as well…don’t waste a second of their time either.

Cheers,

Here is a great song from Chris Allen that drives it home:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBjSxo2JGxI

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Monday Mojo: Are you a marathon runner or are you a sprinter?

By Tom Tognoli | June 28th, 2010 0 Comments

Before we can get to work on accomplishing anything significant in business or life, we need to figure this one out. Then set up our plan accordingly.

For example, I personally have two speeds – HIGH and off. I am a sprinter. There are many others who are marathon runners. They never really get up to full speed, but they never really totally shut it down either. We are all different and both speeds can work, but if you are a marathon runner and try to set up your plan to be like me, you are not going to get anything accomplished and you are going to be frustrated. On the other hand, if you are a sprinter and think you will be able to keep up the pace without resting you are going to crash and burn.

Now, before you go putting together your plan, most people tend to like the idea of being a sprinter, because they like the rest idea.  Don’t kid yourself when you put together your plan. Be honest with yourself. Perhaps ask those closest to you which one they think you are. The biggest mistake I see most people making is living their life like a sprinter, but really being a marathon runner…BIG MISTAKE! Now, if you want to switch the metaphorical event you compete in (sprints or marathons), you can, but you need to make sure you are training accordingly. We all can change as long as we want it bad enough and are willing to put in the work to accomplish it.

So, when you are putting your plan together at whatever it is in life, ask yourself that question: “Am I a sprinter or am I a marathon runner”.  Then build your plan, your schedule and your life accordingly…then CRUSH IT!!!

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Cool Apps: Get A Handle On The Soc-Med Game with Postling

By John Thompson | May 21st, 2010 0 Comments

There are lots of opinions on Social Media and how it can be employed to promote business and engage with our customers. One thing upon which we can all agree, however, is that it can be enormously time-consuming. A time-suck, if you will.

Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. Yelp. FourSquare. YouTube. Tumblr. Flickr. How are we supposed to stay on top of it all and still, you know, do our jobs?

Postling is here to help.

Postling saves you time and frustration. Period. Postling endeavors to help you make social media engagement more efficient. It monitors your presence, and provides you one hub through which you can update your WordPress blog, Facebook fan (or profile) pages, Twitter…you name it. No longer do you need to log into different social media sites every day. Postling does all the work for you. In two simple steps, publish your blog post to your blog(s), then update your Twitter and Facebook status with a link and custom message.

Postling offers unrivaled information curation.

Now partnered with Collecta, Postling will give small businesses a way to track search terms and see its mentions on blogs, in mainstream media, and on social media sites. In addition, they’ve created a custom RSS feed reader, so that you can monitor competitors or blogs that are of interest to you and your business. From Postling, you’ll be able to tweet, comment or post to your blog.

And all of this will happen in real time. Pretty cool, right?

Some of the best features of Postling are the ability to monitor as many different accounts as you like, as well as a great community support feature, to which you can turn for advice when you really need it.

You want to know what people are saying about your business. You want to know what they’re saying right away. Postling will help you listen.

Postling is the tool for small businesses to get a handle on their social media usage. It’s not built for the big boys, it’s built for you and me. Check it out today!

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Have You Landed On An iPad?

By John Thompson | May 14th, 2010 3 Comments

Love it or hate it, the iPad, Apple’s latest shiny technogadget, has taken the world not just by storm, but by virtual F5 tornado.

For most of the folks snatching them off shelves like they were loaves of bread in Russia, circa-1980, they’re just awesome, hyper-beautiful, super-slick … toys. But for REALTORS? The iPad holds a wealth of creative new ideas and opportunities to provide new services for customers and clients.

For starters, the iPad’s display is absolutely gorgeous. Really. It’s second-to-none. Imagine taking your clients on showing appointments and presenting them with splashy, hi-res, full-color photos on it. If you’re out and about and they suddenly decide that there are other properties they’d like to see, you can show them right on the iPad. No more carting around that heavy, cumbersome laptop. With it, you’ve also got a terrific way to take notes as you go with them from house-to-house, or with which to give a listing presentation the likes of which they’ve never seen.

And it’s a pretty cool tool outside of client interaction, too!

Some of the great tools that are available to enhance your business are:

  1. Evernote. We’ve talked about this fantastic app before, but the version that’s available for the iPad is fantastic. The app itself is free, and basic memberships to Evernote are free, with upgrade options that, at their most expensive, are a minimal $45 annually.
  2. iWork. Apple’s answer to MSOffice, iWork is a suite of tools — Pages, Keynote, and Numbers — that is incredibly easy, incredibly intuitive. Pages (iWork’s word processor) is a breeze to use, and the iPad version is really slick. Keynote simply blows PowerPoint out of the water in terms of the quality of presentation it produces. Numbers, which is similar to Excel, doesn’t have quite the juice as its Microsoft counterpart, but it’s still off to a pretty good start.
  3. Things. Hands-down, this is the best organizational software out there. It’s a little pricey in terms of apps (most people are still used to paying $1 for things from the AppStore) at $19.99, but it’s worth every penny. If you’re a Mac user, this is a must-have.

There are tons of new apps being added each and every day, so be sure to check back for your favorites.

The iPad isn’t for everyone, but for us? For REALTORS? The iPad’s going to provide a very happy landing.

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Cool Apps: What Do You Like?

By John Thompson | April 30th, 2010 0 Comments

It’s official. Facebook is taking over the world.

A couple of weeks ago, they made a subtle change. You may have noticed that where you once became a “fan” of a particular page, you suddenly “liked” it. At first, this didn’t seem like a big deal. But it was. And it is. BIG.

Last week at its F8 developers’ conference, Facebook announced some changes that will dramatically change the way that people interact online. The biggest part of the changes is something that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO, calls “Open Graph”. Open Graph is a new platform that will allow websites to blend their users’ social experiences. They’ll take the information that they have about your likes and dislikes, and make a customized online experience for you.

For example, if you have a Facebook profile and you visit Pandora.com, a popular music service, you’ll find that they are able to recommend playlists for you, based on artists that you’ve “liked” on Facebook. Similarly, if you visit CNN.com, you’ll see if any of your friends have visited the site and recommended news stories that they’ve found helpful. When you click the “like” button on these pages, that activity will be posted to your Facebook profile. It’s pretty nifty.

Now, what this means for each of us, personally, is a big question. Whether to opt in or out of the instant personalization functionality — deciding what you do and do not want to share — is a personal choice, and an important one.

What it means for businesses, however, is, as I said earlier, big.

The “like” button, which you’ll see popping up on sites all over the place (if you haven’t already), is exceedingly simple to add to your own website (if you have someone manage your website, they can make the addition in about 5 minutes’ time). It’s a simple addition that has the power to expose your site or business to vast numbers of people who mightn’t have been aware of it before.

When one of your Facebook friends “likes” any of your blog posts (or any other items to which you’ve added the “like” button), that activity will be posted on their personal profiles and in the news feeds of their friends.

This new functionality is controversial, make no mistake, but the possibilities that it opens for businesses are myriad and fascinating.

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Thursday Thoughts on Leadership: Measure leadership by those who follow you

By Gino Blefari | February 4th, 2010 0 Comments

Every true leader understands the value in measuring the caliber of people in their organization. It doesn’t matter what kind of group or organization you are leading, or the size; the caliber of people you lead speaks volumes about you, your organization, and your direction.  As Dennis Peer put it, “One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you.”

There is a great relationship that is developed within a great organization, the leader motivates, and guides, but eventually the group matches the challenge and catches up, and now they push the leader forward so that the whole company can grow. Against that push, the leader must strive to find new objectives, new models and new goals in order to once again bring the organization forward in its development. The French diplomat Tallyerand, once said “I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion, than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep.”

At the 2007 NAR Conference & Expo Bob Moles and I were recognized and awarded the prestigious RISMedia National Home Ownership Award for “outstanding achievements among residential real estate’s most influential and charismatic leaders.”  Often, as President of Intero, I accept such awards, but these awards are truly achieved because of the team that I lead. The Intero team of agents, staff and management are the highest caliber in the business, and I have the privilege of leading them.

Soon, it will be time to turn the spotlight back on those who push me every day to be a better leader by once again recognizing the best within our group through the Intero Achievement Awards. Every year it is a nice benchmark for where we stand as a company and as individual members of the whole.

It has been demonstrated that people’s motivation to increase their productivity only increases when they have a challenging goal and receive feedback on their progress. The awards are a very public way to give that feedback. It lets us know if we are still climbing, and it lets me know how much more I need to do to meet the challenge.  As described above, the leader pulls the group forward, and the group rises to the challenge and pushes the leader to still greater achievements, the group’s momentum never stops.

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