ActiveRain Community Evangelist......What the heck is that?

Glad you asked :-). My job here is to make sure that your experience is second to none when getting started or becoming deeply engaged on (or it is 'in'?) ActiveRain. If you'd have told me when I graduated from college with a Business Finance degree that I would be helping real estate agents makes sense of blogging and social media, I would have asked 'What the heck is blogging and social media?'.

I'm right on the cusp of having grown up with a computer. I was born in 1977. We had one in our home from the time I was in about 7th or 8th grade but it was a novelty; something to be used for games, or to get on prodigy and talk to nameless, faceless people around the country. Even in high school, my school only had a few computers, in the library. I think the extent of my use of them included 'Oregon Trail' and 'Risk'. I kicked ass in 'Risk' by the way!

But, I learned how to type on a typewriter.

After college, I would soon hook up with ActiveRain Co-founder Jonathan Washburn through my college roommates. My first experience with Jon was building out a referral network in Southern California for a website that we ran, Briorealty.com. We got really good at generating leads online, to the tune of a few hundred a day at one point. These were all people looking for homes to buy and it was my job to find and train real estate agents on the finer points of lead conversion. Lead conversion is one of those things that can be super time consuming, but it's fundamental if you want to be successful online. We didn't have Facebook yet, or Twitter, or even blogging. In those days lead conversion was about being tenacious on the phone and creative with your email. Of course, that's still a fundamental component of lead generation.

We would soon after open our own real estate company in the Seattle area. At our height, our company had about 150 agents and it was my job to oversee that operation. Never again I told myself will I manage real estate agents where their livelihood depends on our company. And then came ActiveRain...........

The idea for ActiveRain, as you know it today, came from a failed attempt by us to build a transaction management piece for our business. In 2004 we already had a lead management tool that would still rival many products you will find on the market today. Sure, some bells and whistles have been added over the years, but our system still gave the consumers what they wanted, new and fresh listings, and it still drove them back to our agents. If you know lead generation, you know this is as important today as it was in 2004.

Once we stumbled into the idea for the community of ActiveRain, I would stay behind for another year and run our real estate company to help pay the bills at ActiveRain. In those days, everything on ActiveRain was free and something had to pay the bills. In 2008 I finally made the move to full time ActiveRain and we've done an amazing job (if I do say so myself) of building one of the most supportive, engaging, friendly communities on the internet.

Jonathan, our CEO, had the mantra to 'wow one person every

day'. If everyone in our company could do that, we knew that we could build something special. It's still our mantra and each of our employees attempts to completely wow at least one person a day. I'd love the chance to wow you today!

I tell you all this because I want you to know that we came from the real estate industry and we set out to make a special place where the real estate industry could come together and help each other to make our entire industry better.

Connect with Me Outside ActiveRain

I had no idea that this community and this company would come to be such a fundamental part of my life. I'm not going to lie, by the time I left running Brio Realty and came on to ActiveRain, I was burned out by helping real estate agents. And because I'm a glutton for punishment, that would become my primary role at the company......helping our members have success with ActiveRain.

But the joys I have experienced over the years are almost unbelievable. I met my wife because of ActiveRain. I made some of my best friends because of ActiveRain. There are people in every corner of this country that I now consider among my closest friends.......all because of ActiveRain.

Never am I more humbled or more excited than when someone I meet for the first time in person says to me "ActiveRain saved my business and allowed me to provide for my family". I can't tell you how many times I've heard that over the years. It literally shakes you to your core. To know that we created something that has touched so many people brings a lump to my throat every time I think about it.

This community will change you. This community will make you a better real estate professional. This community will teach you things you never knew you needed. This community will teach you things you knew you needed but you didn't know how to find the answers. This community will support you in your business when ask for support. This community will reach out to you and support you even when you don't ask for support.

The only thing stopping this from happening for you if it's not already is you! Jump in and get engaged, you will be a better real estate professional because of it.......and if you don't be careful, a better person :-)

A little bit about me personally. I have a son and a wife that I absolutely adore. They are the reason I get up in the morning. They are the reason I push myself to be a better person each day. They are the reason I live.

My wife is Christa. She's way out of my league. I have no idea how I convinced her to marry me. I really don't. She's an amazing step mom to my son, she's a dynamite real estate agent. I would put her on the phones against anyone and she will convert more leads in her sleep than most people can on their best day. She's ridiculously beautiful (like I said, WAY out of my league). She's passionate, fun, smart and within 5 minutes of meeting her she had told me more about Michigan football than even the best national college football analyst would hope to know. It was then that I decided I would do whatever it took to make her my wife :-)

My son is Kelan. I only have him for one week every month (and more time in the Summer). He lives with his mother in Seattle. I live in Ann Arbor where I moved after getting married in July of 2010. It was the hardest decision I've ever made, to move away from my son. I spend 8 days every month in Seattle with my son. Every single month (except in the Summer when he comes here) I fly back to Seattle and Kelan and I stay with my mom. He is an absolute joy to be around. Terrible twos? Never heard of them with this kid. He's always smiling and now, at age 4 he loves guns, cars, and sports. He's definitely my son!! My wife has brainwashed him into being a Michigan Football fan and he will literally start booing if you say the words "Ohio State".

I like to golf. I suck......bad. But I still like it. Alright, I'm not that bad. On a good day I've gone under 90. On a bad day I'll hit over 100. Most days I'm somewhere in the middle. The reason I like it so much can best be defined by hitting a tee shot on a par 3 to inside 10 feet. Or smashing a drive off the tee that goes 270 yards. Since I can do these things (usually at least once a round) I know that it's possible for me to do them consistently. So I keep coming back.

I love my sports teams. I was a season ticket holder for the Seahawks before I moved to Ann Arbor. Now my wife and I are season ticket holders for the Michigan Wolverines. If you are planning on needing help with ActiveRain on a Saturday in the fall, your only shot is to track me down on the golf course next to the Big House. That's where I'll be tailgating. My wife has converted me to a Michigan fan, but my teams are and will always be the Seahawks, Mariners, Huskies and my alma mater, the Eastern Washington University Eagles.