All You Need to Do is Multitask by Al Heavens
My father was a real estate agent and broker in the early 1960s. He wasn't terribly successful at it. He did it part-time to supplement his income as an industrial engineer, which was not uncommon until recent years. His chief occupation was subject to fluctuations in the economy, and he was always one of the first executives to be laid off when slowdowns came along. In response, real estate became more full-time. He arranged co-op fees with small builders who couldn't afford a full-time sales staff. Even in the economic uncertainty of the 1960s and 1970s, people still seemed able to buy new houses. He was the definition of a multitasker. Without a full-time, high-paying job (he made $10,000 a year), he sold real estate, refinished furniture, tended bar, worked part-time in a friend's liquor store, worked 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. as a toolmaker (his trade after World War II service), and was a justice of the peace who did mass weddings in our living room. As a real estate agent, his only tools were the telephone, his car, a Polaroid camera and newspaper ads. He died in 1978, just before the explosion of the technological revolution that has defined real estate today, and I often wonder how he would have coped. I think he would have done very well, and might have found himself selling real estate full-time and thriving at it. That's because he could multitask, and was always eager to learn new things. He also persevered, and kept at it until he got it right or at least to his satisfaction. I've been working with computers since 1976, and I'm continually amazed on how far and fast they've come in just the last few years, and even more on how much society as a whole has become dependent on them. I check my e-mail a hundred times a day. I actually tracked that last Friday. I use e-mail more often than I used the telephone, because I realize that the people I deal with use e-mail communication as a "pause" during which they gather their thoughts. I ask you a question on the phone, and you have to respond almost immediately. I e-mail you a question, you have time to think and to research before you reply. Yet, you just only add a couple of minutes to the interview process. Just a few years ago, journalists were required to confirm e-mail statements from people they were interviewing by telephone, and use the attribution "in a telephone interview." Now, you see "Joe Smith said in an e-mail response ... ." That's just a small part of the picture. A few years ago, it took an extensive knowledge of computer-speak -- hypertext markup language (html) -- to design your own website. That was very specific knowledge that kept design in the hands of the professionals. I spent a couple of weekends designing my own site, alheavens.com, just to promote and sell my book, the course I teach, and, bluntly, myself in this increasingly uncertain journalistic age. It required purchase of a domain name, paying an annual hosting fee, and following step-by-step directions. It started out being slightly silly, but rethinking and redesigning it brought pretty much to where I want it, and it's easy to update. It will never replace Realty Times (there is a link from my site to theirs', in fact). It isn't designed to. It has a specific purpose -- to sell me and my book. Then, there's the blog. Everyone can blog (just about every kid does). Itsallaboutalheavens.blogspot.com doesn't cost anything, but it requires daily postings, pictures, interesting design, and links galore. It's the last thing I do before bed every night. Digital tape recorders come with computer programs that allow you to send voice clips as e-mail attachments. Digital video cameras come with programs that allow you to download the video, add titles, music and voice-overs, and then send a compressed version also as an e-mail attachment. The same can be done with the digital still camera. Every one of them is an easy tool to market you and your properties. A lot of real estate agents are still very afraid of technology. The reason, I believe, is that tech companies foisted a lot of it on agents and brokers in the mid-1990s before the Internet had fully developed and before the public was ready for it. That's no longer the case. The public has embraced technology wholeheartedly, and working with it gets simpler and cheaper. All you need to be able to do is multitask. | 
