Month: April 2017

The Evolution Of Everett 

Carl Setzer

Funny ol’ Everett. When I was a kid, I didn’t too highly of the town. Downtown felt so run down, south was over cluttered with bad signage. Not am interesting nor inspiring place. Well, it was fun to come up on the weekends and cruise. Yes, it was me and my cohort that got the cities of Everett and Edmonds to institute cruising bans. 

Today I was in the northern part of town. I now love those old homes, even with their crazy, quirky problems. 

But the town has changed, well since my teen years. That should be expected over a couple of decades. Id argue that it’s for the better. Personally, I believe Everett’s Navy Homeport is the root. Also there’s been serious effort to bring up the buildings in the downtown core. 

Seems that it’s a much more dynamic and interesting city now. Maybe not as funky and hip as parts of Seattle. And it’s a rather quiet place, especially after normal business hours. 

As I noted earlier, I think Everett has a lot of potential. There are a number of challenges ahead, but I think the city is well suited to not only “weather” them, but to thrive. 

Technology Woes: Containing Them To The Computer

Carl Setzer

A challenge for the computer savvy amongst us: managing expectations.

An acquaintance was dealing with someone with a burned out motherboard, and they wanted to (maybe) just replace “a part” until their new computer arrived.

As some of you may know, a motherboard is pretty substantial piece of the computer. Not an easy swap…pretty much replacing the computer’s heart and lung’s.

So, when your friendly computer tech tries to gently explain such things, don’t get too grumpy. It’s just the nature of the beast, so to speak.

If you’re email marketing, don’t ever do this

Carl Setzer

With 7 years working in Real Estate, I’m on tons of email lists. I don’t mind this much, as I get to see what’s going on out in the market. Today, though, got one that violates all my marketing skills, understanding and wisdom.

  1. It was a jpg dropped into an email. I’m not a fan (mea culpa: I’ve done that in the past, mainly out of time, or, sadly, that’s all I had to work with).
  2. In the jpg were several urls. Note: I don’t say “links”. The links were NOT CLICKABLE! Simply text in the jpg.
  3. As I was interested in the property in question, I manually typed the links into a browser. Nope! No worky. Not even the bit.ly one. Not a single link worked.
  4. I saw the project name in the email addresses in the “contact us” section. That was the right URL.
  5. The creme de la creme, the piece de resistance (insert cliche of your choice here): there was no address. No city. Not even a state, region…nothing. When I finally made a url work, I could see that it was on the Washington Coast. Please note: this was for a new real estate development. “Location, Location, Location”?

It seemed like the creator of this campaign worked really hard to ensure I not only didn’t connect, but actually ended up annoyed with them. Amazing how well it violated every tenet I have for effective email communication.

So, do:

  1. Location. Events: have a date, location (address, venue…at least a city), and times. Drives me nuts to get an email for a property that looks interesting, or an event that looks really cool and, well, sorry, it’s it Atlanta. And it’s not until I’m in the registration section that I find that out? Geez!
  2. If you can at all help it, don’t just email jpgs. FYI, spam filters hate them.
  3. Links. Oh. My. Gawd! Making me TYPE your link…from an email?
  4. Links, part ii: Links MUST WORK. Test them! Most people won’t do anywhere near what I did. I was curious at that point and choose to dig. They may have got a click, but they didn’t get a sale.
  5. Segment your market and sell accordingly. I’m not working the Washington Coast market. It’s hours of driving away!
  6. Your main call to action cannot fail. If clicking on the link takes you to a Google page saying “sorry, sparky, no frickin idea what website you’re trying to find”, every erg of energy expended was wasted. Your goal is sales, right? Customers gotta get to your page. Gotta!

Keep your eyes on the prize, folks. Sales pitches to the right people, in the right way, is a splendid thing. Spam? Yeah, no.

Go forth and do great things!

Current Career Iteration: Q1 Complete

Carl Setzer

Currently, I’m working in the residential construction sector. At the first of the year, I shifted over from real estate. It’s been fascinating to apply my project management skills in this setting. Now, it’s only been a few months, and I’m only just getting my feet under me.

It’s been great to see several of my interests align. Some of my work at Starbucks encompassed green building, and here’s an opportunity to take that to a different level. Technology and the tools therein there have some powerful implications, opportunities that I don’t see leveraged well in this industry…yet.

Finance within this sector has been one of my learning that I didn’t expect. The was money moves is a bit different than with larger companies. And within other sectors.

I really appreciate the opportunity to take in something so dramatically different. Yes, there’s a lot of layering my old learnings, lots of synergies. But this sorts of shifts really provide an opportunity to grow.

I’m looking forward to getting to grow past learning and into making a difference, into effective leadership. It’ll continue to be a hoot.