I have been messing with a new camera in the last few weeks, trying to work out how all the functionality works rather than just pointing and shooting, and I have made a discovery, rather startling for me too. Usually I go out, take pictures and upload them into a property and when putting out pictures of Valencia I also just upload them into Flickr or Facebook. Last night I had a play with them and made my discovery.
Today has been a total feeding frenzy. I am tempted to call the end of the recession but one, or rather two, swallows do not a summer make.
Firstly the madness in the English football market meant that the recession was temporarily forgotten. My club Liverpool ere the biggest culprits there making deals worth 58 million pounds so far. In Spain there were much bigger deals being done but on a micro level and in a shop not in the football boardroom.
Travelling through France I was taught one major lesson by my daughter. The French didn’t invent the croissant apparently (although she couldn’t tell me who did). She remembered who didn’t invent it but not the actual inventors. I was reminded at this at literally almost every turn in France as I became aware of how the country had changed since the last time I drove through about ten years ago.
Living in Spain is rather strange at times. I have said before in these pages that Spanish life is rather conformist, what one person does successfully everybody else follows in general. Successful estate agents beget copycat models, and the same can be said of academies, theme bars, delicatessens and a huge etcetera. Google is the absolute killer in this area though because people started to use it and everybody else followed. Loads copied but none got traction. In fact just like in English there is a phrase which says “Look for it in Google”, ie Google it.
In Spanish the term in social media circles is “Desvirtualizar” and last night I did just that. What it means is to meet people in real life that you know in virtual reality, or rather online.
So last night I went out with my other half to meet a group of people some of whom I already knew online but only two of whom I had previously met in the flesh.
If you haven’t heard of check move theory then join the club, as long as we are still in 2008. I hadn’t but once I heard this it just made so much sense. I immediately opened up an aweber account and got myself an autoresponder and the results since then have been stunning.
Last year I wrote a post which became quite popular about 51 things I learnt selling Spanish property in 2011. You can read it here. This year I decided to repeat it. However I thought I would only do 25 this year as I might not have learnt so much. Nevertheless, when I got round to writing it (Actually dictating it into Siri then sending it to myself) I found that the lessons just kept on flowing. So instead of [...]
My writing varies from the awful (You may well have noticed) to the sublime in my not so very humble opinion (You may well not have noticed). It is opinionated and the grammar although usually Ok sometimes leaves a little to be desired. However I make sure that I get it out there and as a result there is a lot of content that goes on to this blog and others. However writing is not the only content that I make. I make newsletters, audios, video, photo galleries and a whole lot more with the idea of getting better at all of them.
Being a small businessman (That means having a small business not being under five foot tall) means that there is often a temptation to continually work. Unfortunately I succumb to that temptation, I generally work. One of the places that I often do work is in the car. Now I am not sending e-mails. I am not texting, although I have been known to do it at traffic lights for example. What I tend to do is to listen to podcasts.
Having an iPhone means that I can put the podcast on in the car and from that I can listen to whichever one I want. One of my most listened ones is by Dom Goucher and Pete Williams and is called Preneurcast.
When you are faced with a technological challenge for a couple of weeks and you are also in the middle of a huge upgrade of your website which involves uploading a whole database of properties individually onto a new site taking 10 – 15 minutes each property you really need to make the most use of your time.
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