Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. — Confucius

[via Greatest Quotes of all Time]

The three great essentials to achieving anything worthwhile are; first, hard work, second, stick-to-it-iveness, and third, common sense. — Thomas Edison

[via 101 Greatest Inspirational Quotes]

I 100% agree.

Do you use Twitter and are you tired of celebrity gossip? If so, here’s a funny video posted at Mashable.

[via Tony Longo]

Matt Flannery, co-founder of Kiva.org, just tweeted an awesome quote in defense of Dr Yunnus:

I like what he’s doing a lot more than what you are not doing.

This rings so true. If people spent their time taking action rather than criticizing those doing amazing things in this world, the world would be a much better place.

If this isn’t the cutest dog ever, I don’t know what is. Okay, well maybe this one rivals it, but that’s beside the point. I’m guessing if most of you had to guess what breed this dog is, you’d say a young Siberian Husky. But nope, this dog is actually a Klee Kai and is full grown. Her name is Helga and she belongs to my buddy from college and his wife who live in Washington DC.

The main point of this post was just to post the photo, but there is a business idea in this as well. While in DC for a week as part of my recent trip, I spent a fair amount of time walking the streets of DC with Helga. It was absolutely INSANE how many people stopped to look at and pet her — or maybe it was just the DC crowd, but I’m not buying it. I’ve seriously never seen anything like it before. To me, the attention she commanded brings up a business idea for some scrappy young entrepreneur out there:

• Buy 1 or 2 Klee Kai’s
• Rent them out to guys to either walk around the city with or bring to (outside) bars
• You could charge by the hour or by the night
• I all but guarantee a guy would meet 5x or 10x the girls if they brought a Klee Kai with them. That’s worth something.

I’ve been at Zillow for just about three and a half years. I haven’t tackled accounting, but I’ve been on almost every business team we have (sales, partner relations, customer service, marketing) at one point or another since starting as an intern in September of 2005. Working at a start-up that has gone from “stealth” to 8.9 million unique users a month in 3 years has been quite a journey. Here are a few lessons I’ve learned along the way:

• Pick your battles — I’m an opinionated guy, sometimes too much so. But it’s because I’m passionate about what I do — if I wasn’t, quite frankly, I’d be doing something else. But regardless of how badly you want to, you can’t fight every battle.  Know when to push, let up, escalate, concede, etc. Know that some battles are not worth fighting. This lesson could also be “Be strategic about using your political capital – you only have so much of it”
• Don’t use social media marketing if your product sucks — If you have a crappy product, no amount of social media marketing will work regardless of how many resources you throw at it. After all, social media marketing is REAL; expect your audience to puke all over you if they don’t see value in your product.
• Persistence is key — This is a biggie. Everyone is busy, myself is included. To get things done, you have to be persistent and confident what you are advocating for is the correct decision/course of action. Follow up, follow up, follow up.
• Partnerships are like friendships — they take time and effort to nurture. If both sides aren’t willing to put in equal effort, the partnership is not going to be a success in the long run.
• Choose the right technical solution from the get-go — yes, certainly this is easier said than done, but if at all possible, make sure the technical solution you go with is right from the start. For instance, migrating Zillow Blog from typepad to wordpress was a nightmare that I would have rather not had to do (we should have just picked wordpress to start with). However, realize that sometimes the wrong decision is made initially and that’s okay. My advice in those situations is to migrate over to the correct solution as quickly as physically possible once you realize that you should be using another technical solution. The longer you wait to migrate, the more time and effort you’ll likely spend doing the migration.
• LISTEN — I can not stress the importance of this one enough. There are so many people/companies who are GREAT at talking, but horrible at listening; don’t be one of them.
• Take advantage of public speaking opportunities — If you’re given opportunities for public speaking engagements, take them. It’s such valuable experience to have in the long run that will make you a more confident person. Plus, just as blogging puts you in a spotlight that often results in unexpected opportunities to arise, public speaking will lead to opportunities in a similar fashion.

I’m sure there are a few others I’m missing, but this is a start. Maybe I’ll do a Part 2 on this topic at some point in the future.

For those who don’t follow me on Twitter, I’m now back in Seattle after a 3 week stint on the road. I got to see 4 new cities – Philadelphia, Washington DC, Boston, and Chicago – and spend a week in Manhattan as well. The trip began in Philly for RE BarCamp anda classic Philly cheesecake. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to see much of the city or do any sightseeing given it was a quick in and out. I then hitched a ride with Matt Wilkins to Washington DC, where I stayed in the Adams Morgan neighborhood with a friend from college for a week. I loved the atmosphere in DC, more specifically DuPont Circle and Adams Morgan. While there, I of course did some sight seeing and had the chance to see the Capital Mall, Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and the Holocaust Museum — though my legs were certainly beat after walking 7+ miles two straight days. Oh yea, and the cutest dog on the planet resides in DC (but she needs to stay away from my Keens from now on).

Following a week in DC, I spent another week in NYC working from Zillow’s NY office, and met up with a few locals like Rob Hahn and Doug Heddings.

Then it was off to Boston for the Boston RE BarCamp, which took place in space provided by CondoDomain’s. One of the funnest nights of the trip was certainly the Yankees – Red Sox game I attended at Fenway with Pierre, Ebounce (can you say coolest nickname ever?), and Tony. I hate the Yankees, so seeing Boston beat them in a great game was something I wouldn’t have missed for the world.

I finished up my trip in Chicago, which I must say, is one of my new favorite cities in the US. Great vibe, food, people, and sights. RE BarCamp Chicago was a great event at NAR headquarters organized by Dan Green and Todd Carpenter (props on a job well done), and I had the chance to spend some time with a number of friends from the RE.net (too many to name).

The trip was a needed extended break from Seattle. Don’t get me wrong, I love Seattle, but traveling to new cities and hanging out with awesome people is always a good time. I wish I could name all the great people I met for the first time and those existing friends who I got the chance to spend more time with — but since I know I’d forget to include a few folks, I’ll just say “thanks to everyone” who made the trip awesome.

I know the city summaries seemed to get shorter by the city. My apologies.

Ok, so this is totally random – but here are a few nicknames I’ve come across recently that I think are awesome:

“Ebounce”
“Hammer”

What’s your nickname (mine has been “Money” since freshman year of high school)? Is it worthy of joining this list? If so, please leave a comment. What’s your all time favorite nickname?

Thanks to Sue Adler, who I had the pleasure to meet at the Philly RE BarCamp a few weeks ago, for tweeting a link to this blog post (which contained the video embedded below). Sure, it may sound a bit corny, but the core message is dead on.

Don’t worry if you will fail or succeed. Pursue YOUR dreams. What people think of you is none of your business. The time is now for YOU to get on the path and to step UP and be all you can be. It is a long road…

Take a look at this funny video that my friend just sent me.

For those who don’t follow my writing on Geek Estate Blog, the real estate technology blog that I manage as part of my day job at Zillow.com, I wrote a post the other night that is relevant to both my personal and business life that you may find interesting –Personal Business, Business Personality, and Social Media.

For those who have not blogged for a good cause, I’ll be the first to say you should (see here). For those like me who love both blogging and philanthropy, there’s not much better than blogging to help raise funds for a great cause — and I was alerted to the fact that I could do just that by writing a short blog post to help promote Wokai.org. I couldn’t resist, for three reasons:

1. It helps raise awareness for Wokai
2. Increases the chances that Wokai will win the $1,200 from “Blogging for a Cause“
3. I met Casey Wilson, the CEO and co-founder of Wokai, a few weeks ago for lunch and am convinced she is going to bring microfinance to China in a big way

For those unfamiliar with Wokai, here is some more info:

What is Wokai?

Wokai delivers an internet microfinance platform that allows individuals to provide Chinese microentrepreneurs with loan capital.  Our organization acts as an intermediary in this process, transferring funds from contributors abroad to microentrepreneurs in China through our field partners.

Who does Wokai support?

A typical Wokai microentrepeneur is a female rural inhabitant, living on less than $1/day.  Her microfinance loan, ranging from $150-$300 dollars, provides her with the capital to start a small business.  Her business varies by location, raising sheep in a rural grassland or operating a small fruit stand in a city center.

With her income, she accumulates savings, which allows her to allocate money towards long-term investments like education and health. By the end of her loan cycle, she has experienced increased financial independence, bolstered self-confidence, and a strengthened sense of community.

Learn more and contribute today at http://www.wokai.org.

This blog post is part of Zemanta’s “Blogging For a Cause” campaign to raise awareness and funds for worthy causes that bloggers care about.

Now, what are you waiting for? Blog for your favorite cause (or just blog about Wokai!) — only 5 days left in the competition!