What, me crazy?
Posted on Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Filed Under Quotes
Answer me this: If I’m so “crazy,” then why did they choose me to be their spokesperson to the people of Earth? — Jim Rosenberg
Club Ruminations
permalinkNetworking: Active Links
Posted on Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Filed Under Networking
In the past four years I have lived in San Francisco, London, Princeton (New Jersey), and I am about to move to Raleigh / Durham, North Carolina. This mobility has forced me to up my game as a professional networker to the point that I now offer seminars and workshops on the topic. As a recovering introvert I have come a long way in my ability to connect with people and build a network.
I owe a great deal to Keith Ferrazzi and his wonderful book, Never Eat Alone. His clear and straightforward style helped me understand that powerful networking is not natural. It must learned. Keith is a master and his book is an invaluable primer.
As I distilled and digested Keith’s ideas, I concluded that good networking comes down to three basic principals: active links, mutually beneficial introductions, and taking the call.
Today we will explore the first principal, which hinges on the idea that my network is not the contacts themselves but the active link between us. A network is not the nodes. My network is not the number of people in my database, nor my list of contacts on LinkedIn, nor my friends list on FaceBook, nor any other static list of people.
No, a network is the active links between the nodes. My network is the active relationship I have with everyone I know. These relationships create links that are activated, rejuvenated, and strengthened each time we connect. Their strength depends on a myriad of factors that depend on the relationship.
But one thing is certain: regardless of the strength of the link, it diminishes over time. In the same way that radioactive elements have a half-life in which the element decays, networking relationships fade with time. Hence, the key to maintaining a powerful network is to constantly be rejuvenating the links. This recharge happens most intensely face-to-face but can also be accomplished with a telephone call, an email exchange or even a profile update on your favorite networking site.
Your “network”, then, is the sum total of all the active links between all of your contacts. And “networking” is the never-ending process of keeping those links fresh and alive.
Tomorrow we will look at the second principal: mutually beneficial introductions.
Growth
Posted on Monday, October 1, 2007
Filed Under Quotes
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
— Edward Abbey
Mortgage Debacle
Posted on Sunday, September 30, 2007
Filed Under Business
Gretchen Morgensen has written an insightful article in the Sunday Business Section of the New York Times. After the heartbreaking introduction of a homeowner in New Jersey who would like more than anything to keep her home, Gretchen offers the following insight:
Lenders, government officials and loan servicers, who take in borrowers’ monthly mortgage payments, contend that troubled borrowers everywhere are being helped to stay in their homes by those overseeing their loans. But neither data nor anecdotal evidence supports this view. A recent survey of 16 top subprime loan servicers by Moody’s Investors Service found that for the first six months of 2007, an average of only 1 percent of loans experiencing an interest rate adjustment, or reset, had been modified.
A few minutes of logical thought would lead one to assume that lowering the interest rate of troubled loans so that the homeowner can continue to make payments and keep the house would be the best result for all concerned. The holder of the mystical “collateralized debt obligation” would continue to receive an income stream (albeit slightly reduced), the loan servicing agency would continue to skim fees for processing the loan and tax payments and the homeowner would get to keep his / her house.
But alas, the world does not operate according to my logical expectations. Later in the article, Gretchen explains,
. . . on the billions of dollars worth of mortgage loans that have been sold to investors in the last few years, it is not the banks or lenders like Countrywide that are hit with big losses when homes go into foreclosure. It is the sea of faceless investors who own pieces of these trusts. Also, under the trusts’ pooling and servicing agreements, Countrywide and other servicers typically recoup any costs they cover in the foreclosure process, such as legal and appraisal fees.
The foreclosure process is a profit opportunity for servicers and lenders, but there is very little oversight of the fees imposed.
Now it all makes sense. The profit for the “loan originator” is not in the loan, but in the transaction. Any transaction.
Something is broken here.
Welcome to It Seems To Me (2.0)
Posted on Friday, September 28, 2007
Filed Under Announcements
After a hiatus of almost a year and a half I am thrilled to be relaunching a re-imagined and redesigned version of It Seems to Me.
It promises to be a fun place to pontificate, rant, hypothesize and share what interests me in the news and on the internets. Some of my favorite themes include market failures in free-market economies, conservation and the environment, the terrible dysfunction of our political system, and of course all things tech and gadgets.
So come on in, make yourself at home. Join in the conversation. Until I post more content here, feel free to browse the About page, my list of Favorites, or take a look at some of my favorite posts from ISTM 1.0.
Favorite posts from It Seems To Me 1.0:
Thanks for stopping by,
Heather
Samuel Adams
Posted on Thursday, September 27, 2007
Filed Under Quotes
“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”
- Samuel Adams