February 2008

Notice my sidebar?  It’s dummy data for now, but it is dynamic; it works, and it’s reasonably fast.  It’s uploading information based on what I have in a Google Doc, and looks OK in my sidebar.  (Width: 178 in lieu of Google’s 500 standard).

This means that I can use Google Docs to track my personal goals pretty easily.  I’ll get into How I did that soon–as I near completion of the project.  I’ll talk a little about WHAT I am doing, and WHERE I want to be.

I like the mortgage business.  I like a lot of the business a whole lot.  It’s entrepreneurial, it’s fun, there’s a ton of upside.  As a mortgage broker the market {sill} allows us to make $3600-3700 per deal (based on a 180k average, and price it as good and better than the banks. But–here’s the but–there’s nothing in being a loan officer that I have to do.  There’s nothing in doing it that is a ‘must do’ for me, and that is something that I can’t live without.

I’m passionate about helping people…but being a loan officer is a conduit to that, and not an outlet.

I’m passionate about marketing, learning, and watching something grow; and doing this job is a good canvas, but there are many other jobs I could and would do. 

Right now, though, I need the six figure income that I have been earning in real estate to support the leap to another job. 

Track Your Goals With Google Docs

So, if I want to cut down on the time I spend as a loan officer, and increase my contributions in business where I’m really passionate.  I’m not passionate about being a coach–that job to me has many, many built in conflicts (i.e. a coach’s job should be to get the client through and move ‘em on, and not have an ongoing relationship).   What I really want to do is to help companies leverage current tools (i.e CRM). 

So getting focused [oh, and I'll get to why in a second post]

My income goal for the rest of the year is $150,000 in the loan business.   I want to work no more than 25 hours in any particular week, and I want to cut this down to 10 hours/week of Chris time by the end of the year. 

Oh, and I want to provide the industry’s best service, and take 5 weeks off this year, five weeks all the way off. 

If a closing nets me on average of 2500 buck–after all is said and done–then this means I need 60 of those puppies to have the year that  I want.  That means–that all I need to do–is to have March-December average 6 closings per month.  1.5 per week. 

There are a lot of numbers I really don’t know: contacts to aps, aps to closings.  I know what I want them to be and what I think that they are. But I don’t know the rest of it.

Anyway–I can track things, and I’m going to keep them in the sidebar.  The public Accountability will help me stick to what I’m doing; I have roughly 100 readers–they will keep me in line.

I’ll track:

1. Hours Prospected
2. Hours Worked
3. Realtor Contacts
4. Other Contacts
5. Consumer Contacts
6. New Leads
7. Leads To Follow Up.
8. Purchase Aps Taken
9. Refi Aps Taken
10. Total Applications Taken
11. Submissions Made
12. Deals in Process (a different type of goal)
13. Closings
14. Gross Fee
15. Volume
16. Quality Contacts in Database  (A quality contact is someone that might know me)
17. Mailers Out (?)
18. Cancellations
19. Turndowns
20. Gross Fallout %

One spreadsheet page, updated when needed, should be all I need.  I should be able to total everything and have one that keeps the formatting I dig.

I don’t think of anything else that I should be tracking ‘top of my head,’ and even with 25 things I may be tracking too many.  Usability means we must use it, right?  Units, Fee and Volume are the important part of my business.

Now: In the effort to be 100% transparent, I’m going to track some other things. 

• Total Debt
• Charitable Giving
• Weight
• Money in our checkbook (The IRS has us hard core hammered, but the deal is: you it’s a metric, you gotta know)
• Books (or pages) read
• Cardio Done (minutes?)
• Resistance Done
• Blogging Done  (Get to, not have to).

Google Docs has all of the database features that Excel has, more or lesss, for those people like me that use Excel Docs for what a Database would be more suited for.  Plus, I can probably set it up so I can convert it later. But for now, keeping track, measuring and charting this stuff is going to help reign me and my often useless flights of fancy.

Buy Why Am I doing this?  Cutting my Job Down, Etc?

Look–the real why is a bigger post.  It’s important.  My life’s work isn’t going to be a mortgage loan originator.  I’m here to give something more than that to everyone.  I’m here to help with more than that.   That’s not to say that when I’m spending time as an LO there’s any excuse for listless narcissistic disengagement that people get when they are too good for their jobs.  I’m not too good for the job; the job has qualities that aren’t for me.  Being an originator is the career of many high quality people, and it’s a good destination.  It’s just not mine, and I see that clearly.  I don’t think I’m leaving this year, but I do think that I need to establish boundaries, and having an income/hours goal does that nicely.

The big review is coming.

It’s not perfect (needs easily taggable contacts), but it is my CRM–and I love it.

$9/month first user $4/month after.

Full review coming.  I’ve seen: Zoho, Sugar, Heap, Highrise CRM,  SimpleCrm, FreeCrm, and more. This is the one–by far–that wins.

http://heap.wbpsystems.com/?referral=tendayteam

Audio blog post, transcription unavailable listen

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So it’s come to this. I’ve got a problem. It’s totally solvable. I’m nearly 32, and I’m in TERRIBLE shape. Not Terrible when compared to an American male that’s in his 30’s but terrible by any other standard.

That’s going to change. As soon as possible. This is project transparency part I, entitled “Getting my fat ass to the gym.” This is begins 2/13/2008, and ends 6/30/2008. This is an absolutely everyday challenge, and EVERYONE who catches me screwing up will get $5.00 if they comment.

The Rules:

I have to be at the gym, and prove it, every Monday through Friday by 9:15AM EST, or I pay out $5.00 for the first offense, per person, $10.00 for the second offense, per person, and $25.00 for each subsequent offense. I must maintain an average of 95% or better monday-throguh-friday. This can get seriously expensive, folks. I want my wife on my side with this–throwing my ass out of the house.

No excuses. Not sickness. Nothing.

How do I prove it? Simple. I JOTT TO BLOG + Hand the phone to the front desk. The receptionist at the Westerville Athletic Club must prove I’m there.

If not–everyone that sends an email to: fatchris@tendayteam.com by 1pm…OR comments on the blogpost…

…gets $5, $10 or $25 bucks. Everyone. Period.

The thing is, kiddies, I can’t afford that. Not with the fact that I’m still paying for 2003’s taxes (good year, bad judgement). Not with the fact that my (to be posted about) listlessness has produced.

Caveat: If there as a bona fide error in the part of Jott (and I’ll be honest), then bets are off. I gotta prove that though; that I tried to make the Jott. That’s the only “out” that I have, and I’ll probably

This doesn’t control if I work out–so I’ll get a control in place iff I fail that.

Later on?

Looking seriously at HEAP CRM.

This is the test to show that the blogging works and that everything is going just swimmingly. listen

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Right now, my life isn’t quite the way I want it to be.  There are massively cool parts (Jack, Heather, the new projects I’m on) but…I have more weight, less money, and less peace than I want.  No doubt there are tons of people in that category.  I’ve wanted massive change for a long time, yet my efforts have been tepid and intermittent.   But the great hope of life isn’t to look back, it’s that our future is gonna be better than our present.  I want to get better, leaner, meaner.  We all do.  And so it’s a new page with this blog.

I have some big hairy audacious goals [bhags]–and I’m going to focus here on the ones that are of ‘em are tangible|touchable.  I also have some ’spiritual’ goals, not just giving money to charity, but also I want to help myself and help others achieve their goals.  The mechanism is radical transparency–and online accountability.   Inspired by Make Love, Not Debt, I’m opening up more to you.  I’ve got to share what I’m doing right, what I’m doing wrong, how my ‘numbers’ look.  YTD income, Loans Closed, WEight Lost, other goals.  You name it.  Google Docs has some slick embedding functions for charts and graphs, so it’s time to make a /progress page to show what I’m doing and where I’m at.

Change Isn’t Comfortable: “Safe” Little Changes Never Really Are

Doing something with just an intention isn’t going to produce results.  You have to set yourself up for painful consequences if you fail.  We all know that I can go to the gym every day.  We all know that I have the time, and that I have the ability to–no matter what–wake up in the morning.   And truthfully?  If I miss a day it’s not the end of the world.  Except that it erodes my psyche.  Except that that justification can be used every day.

So one day matters.  And I need some pain–and that’s where you come in.

Seriously.  I’m going to set up a mechanism to prove that I was @ the gym, to prove that I did my minimum actions by 11am every day that I’m supposed to.  And if I don’t?  All of my registered subscribers will get $5.00 sent to them.  That will get expensive very quickly–and I’m going to need to PROVE that I was at the gym.  How?  The front desk people + JOTT.COM.   (IF I don’t do that, then all readers that have commented, or emailed me….or feedburner subscribers get $5.00).  First it’s gonna be behavior based: I need to get to the gym, avoid fast food, etc.

Iff that doesn’t work, it becomes results based.  I have to drop this much weight…etc. 

Come join me.  Seriously. 

Get to Vs. Have To.

Seth Godin made an fantastic point this week–that you GET TO do the blog, the other stuff vs. Have to.  For me?  There are lots of things that I need to do (prospecting+ working out + eating right).  What an opportunity.  Seriously.  I have the opportunity to work out till my eyes pop out, and feel adrenaline.  I get to prospect for new business.  I get to write on this blog, and share my stats.  And, you know?  I get to do this stuff publicly.  I’ve got the skills to make an absurd amount of money–and I’ve got the ability to change my fate altogether.   

And you get to help.  You’ll get the details and contest rules this afternoon.

…

[Aside: I am keeping this theme indefinitely.  I'm not keeping this header--it's better than nothing, but *just* barely. That was my 2nd or 3rd Photoshop project (though my first one turned out better) Anyone want to make me one?  I'd be forever grateful.]

Oh, in case you missed it:

Power tips for Gmail  (A LH post.  I can’t resist linking them)

Low Tech Marketing that Rocks (Duct Tape Marketing)

Heap CRM  I found ‘em on Duct Tape, and they are wicked cool. 

I Could Do Worse Than to Get Stuck With Zoho, But Zoho Could Do Better, Too.

It’s got some slick features.  I haven’t talked myself out of it yet.  There are some serious annoyances that may cause me to not use it; it’s certainly ready for prime time. I’ll start with what it does right:

Speed:  On my dad’s crappy gateway with a slow Verizon 2GW network, it was usable.  I wouldn’t say fast, but certainly as fast as Google Docs on a bad day.  The speed wasn’t a problem; it’s not quite desktop speed, and it’s not quite Highrise speed.  But it’s faster than say, FreeCrm (which would sell more software if they designed it better).  Anyway–speed is acceptable.

Ease of Use:  I’m going out on a limb.  It’s got a different ethos than 37 Signals’ stuff, but it’s certainly usable.  Doing what it wants you to do is managable, but there are some (again) stupid kludges that should be unacceptable.  I’ll get to those in a minute.   Entering in a contact, setting workflow rules, assigning tasks, emailing a contact, importing emails all worked well.  It worked with my google documents (not my google aps).

Getting to your data:   You can grab reports of 2-3k people at a time–and while you have to cut and paste into Excel using a paste-as-text utility (or use notepad), it’s got the feature to check it off.  You can make reports like ACT based on Last Activity, Date Created, and more.  It doesn’t have all of the legacy interface problems that ACT has–meaning that it’s clean, and the interface is not too busy.

Working With Teams:  There are too many clicks–which indicates a lack of thought.  But you can set up and manage workflow rules on the first try without hating it.  A new Realtor can get an 8×8 campaign.  A new client can be given the Loan In Process steps.   This is where Zoho talks about it:   http://zohocrm.wiki.zoho.com/Managing-Workflow.html

Cases:  There are neigh unlimited ‘cases’ for use with this thing; which means that you can have trouble tickets, etc.

Price:  Free for three users.  Has intelligent (but not 37 Signals Simple) rules for that sort of thing.

Accounts/Tracking:  Haven’t dug deep, but it’s got some robust account/tracking rules and things that I can certainly get be

Upgrades:  You have the Zoho Platform which has sprung up as muchrooms on a spring day, doing everything that MS office does, or the critical 90% of what MS office does and sharing in an “easy as hell” way.   Projects looks promising (I’m going to take marlowe’s advice and really, really try basecamp first), but this projects software looks promising, and has a good balance (or mushy middle) between being corporate and 2.0.

What I Don’t Like About Zoho CRM:

There are lots of things I don’t like about it.  First of all, it doesn’t use Zoho’s Docs suite to do mail merges; it again doesn’t spit out letters.  Part of my marketing is inundating new people with mail.  But seriously–I send and fax out a lot of in process messages and it doesn’t give me what I need.  It needs an ACT Style way of writing letters; I can work in OO or Word, but I don’t want to have to; it’s again a kludge that I’m having a hard time digging.

It also should be a “google aps” substitute.  I guess servee may get us to where we intend to go, but I’m not sure yet.

I’m going to give FRee CRM Another look before I circle back.  I might give sugar CRM a look as well.

The criteria (unweighted-failing in one area probably means ultimately failing)

-ease to enter contract

-ease to enter workflow

-speed.

-part-of-a-group

Oh, and By the Way:  I’m looking for a Wigetized version of this theme: 3 Column Pressrow.  I want to do some cool things with it, so if you know of a wigetized version, that would be vv fabulous.  

 And In Case You Missed It:

The Ubiquitous Fast Company article on “Is the Tipping Point Toast”  You kids had your chance to miss it last week.  Now it’s found you again, so read it.

The Positivity Blog on Michael Jordan’s Guide To Success

Totally off the wall article I loved on Using CL for Blog Promotion

OK….that’s enough.  (I’ve got a good sized backlog of things I intend to link to–one of the things you can count on with me is a minimum of 3 interesting articles tagged on to the end of each article I do.  I am just curious about this…Fiona came on…and we’re steady goin’ nowhere).

Man, if there was ever unusable software that showed more promise–and thus–was more frustrating, I can’t imagine it.  37 Signals Highrise CRM is ultimately useable as a place to store contacts and contact information.   It’s got some rudimentary TODO features…but it lacks so much that makes it frustrating.

What it does right–is a DEAD simple interface.  It’s got an intuitive and easy-to-learn|use|do vibe.  It has a zero-learning curve bias, and it’s seriously cool.  I want them to upgrade it so I can start using it.  It’s got taggable contacts, a good amount of info you can put in, notes, privacy settings (dead simple), and other features.

It’s got a concept called cases where you can add contacts to a case based on what’s going on; and assign tasks and share info with a case. I can imagine that that would be helpful to keep realtors abreast of what’s going on with deals, but man-oh-man does it suck.

It is easier than Facebook–no–it’s what Facebook should be. 

What Highrise Doesn’t Do Well:

Iterative work: processing loans requires certain steps that happen on every deal (i.e. order title, appraisal, VOE/VOM/VOD etc).    There’s no "activity series" that you can schedule for one or many contacts.   Marketing campaigns are the same way; there’s no functionality for this process–you can use tags as a crude kludge, but it’s not ready for any kind of workflow or rules or customization.

This is based on the "free" version; if the "paid version adds any of these features (and it doesn’t appear to), correct me so I can become a raving fan.

The bottom line is that this has the coolest interface and most promise of almost anything that I’ve seen, but it’s a few features away from being useful.  The balance they have to strike is depth vs. speed.   Compared to Zoho and Free CRM, it was WAY faster. 

Right now I’m leaning towards using Zoho’s docs.

OH…By the way.

The Net was abuzz this week with the addition of forms to the spreadsheets, but I’m really more excited about the fact that you can now lock COLUMNS as well as rows; this makes it much more useful to work with Google Docs.  Now I’m off to find some stuff that I’ve missed.

And in case you missed it:

LH on adding work life balance to your GTD weekly review

Copyblogger on the Rule of 3

The Positivity Blog gives us Confucius

Salesforce is a darling all around.  They have exciting stuff, good user interfaces, apparently. I’ll never know.  Why?

Because in a world of transparency, glastnost, openness…their website doesn’t give you pricing details.  30 days is not long enough to try out a CRM.  It’s long enough to learn some of the features of a CRM, but not long enough to learn the actual CRM.   When you go to "Enterprise Edition," and click tell me more?

You don’t get the info.

You can’t shop.

You don’t get price info (which we work backwards from: X per month, and oh, what features does it have?" 

You get this link:

http://www.salesforce.com/products/editions-pricing/professional-edition/

And it has no informaiton about pricing.  None damn it.

Now I know it’s 4475/month.  And @ 900 a year it’s not outrageous, really.  But– I won’t do business with a company that takes pains to conceal it’s pricing.  The ethos that they have is so alien to me: Try it for30 days THEN we’ll give you the price. It’s a crack dealer’s mentality.

Yet it claims to be $12/month. 

The way that they sell indicate that they will be a most unpleasant company to deal with, and the way that they do business is against the Gitomer Ethos: people love to buy/hate to be sold.  

So screw them.

On to the hunt:

I want a SIMPLE CRM that:

–> has hot key contact insertions (like ACT!–hitting INS to insert a contact kicks ass)

–>allows me to fetch my data however I want it  and do whatever I want with it (look up contacts: created between 6/2/01 and 6/30/05…export…or append the phrase: old).

–>Has workflow rules.

–>Will kick out mail merges to word.

–> can be adapted to do ecommerce/web form entry & set it and forget it drip mail campaigns.

–>has groups.

–>works like ACT 6.0 could have. (Oh, ACT, you’ve become such a disaster).

Not all of these things are vital; i loathe using the mouse to add something because it is poor planning; i like tabbing through.

The candidates:

zoho

freecrm.com

sugarcrm

Are there more I should check out?  Am I doing something wrong? I don’t need all of my features…just some.