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How to Help Senior Real Estate Clients Use the Internet
When people my age complain about using the internet, I like to point out that this Sacramento real estate agent has been online for 23 years, having first signed up for a Bulletin Board in 1991, at which time my first sentence ever composed online was swiped from Steve Martin: I was born a poor black child. That experience prepared me for eWorld in 1994 using my very own 900-baud dial-up modem. I was so excited. I wasn’t using the internet much for my real estate business back then, it was much more a network of people, unlike the spam and mass product marketing of today.
It takes a while for some older people to become comfortable using a computer. Of course, I can recall when we had no computers. And then in the 1980s when only secretaries used computers, which forced us Type A personalities to say, oh, crap, just give it to me and I’ll do it. I bought my first IBM clone in 1988 and promptly took the computer apart to examine its hard drive, and then put it back together again. I read the DOS Bible at night to understand how they worked.
I used one of the first voice mail systems to run a pet recovery business on the side, called Pet Crisis Hotline. But I didn’t use a computer for real estate.
When Apple pulled the plug on eWorld and shut it down, I was devastated. Completely crushed. That happened, I believe, around 1995 – 1996. We knew it was coming because Apple informed us of that impending doom. It meant eWorld users would have to switch over to AOL, which would cost twice as much and we didn’t know anybody at AOL. Waahh. It was a strange new land.
I try to use my former experiences when I work with senior real estate clients who struggle with the computer. They don’t know how easy they have it because they don’t know how hard it used to be. Before Xtree came along, we had to use DOS all of the time. That was like slumping through the mud in a Goldie Hawn GI uniform, crying in the rain. Real misery. I have known real misery, and I never want my clients to know it.
When I first introduce my senior real estate clients to DocuSign, for example, I upload a one page form I created entitled TEST, with their name on it; it’s personalized to make it friendly. I walk them through how to set up a signature and sign that initial test page. Then, when we get an offer, their information is already in the DocuSign system and it’s easy-peasy for them. There is no heart attack panic to get it signed or computer crash concerns.
If you’re looking for a Sacramento real estate agent who shows compassion, even if her senior clients are not tech savvy, you’ve come to the right place. Let my experience guide you. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
Assholes, Steve Jobs and the Smiley Face Mac
Because I don’t preplan my Sacramento real estate blogs and write fresh every morning, yesterday was the first day in almost a decade that I did not write a blog, and you know what –no kickback about it, no consequences and nobody cared. That shows how significant my words in a daily blog are — nobody gives a crap. This real estate agent could have dropped dead, and someday will, and the first clue will be no blog that day.
The problem began when I slept in and therefore overslept. Then my phone started ringing at 7:30 AM and did not stop all day. I recharged it twice. I’m up late most nights reading Steve Jobs, the biography by Walter Isaacson. It’s such an enthralling book and not because Jobs was an asshole. I deal with enough of those types in real estate, and Jobs was a level above those guys because he’s also had charisma on top of being a genius. He got kicked out and rose again, like a Phoenix. Most real assholes I run into through my business are assholes to the core, simple guys, but Jobs seemed more complex. Like his asshole-ness was so completely integrated into his personality that it was more easily forgiven.
But I’m not reading the book because I’m fascinated by Steve Jobs; I’m reading it because I have been an Apple customer for more than 25 years, and it’s like reading my own history.
Ah, with fond memories I recall the Macintosh, the PowerMac, and the G3. Some of them are sitting in my garage. I can’t bear to destroy or wipe the hard drives, so I can’t give them away. The will probably sit in my garage until they rust. They are relics already. They will never turn into an antique. Even now I smile thinking about the days of a smiley Mac face and how that image appearing on my computer monitor meant everything was all right with the world. No frowny faces. Plus, one can always depend on a Mac. You can’t say that about Windows.
Between house renovations and in the midst of my real estate endeavors in the 1990s, I worked on the side for a few years as a communications director at a nonprofit in Minnesota for the second largest industry in Minnesota: printing. I outfitted that nonprofit with Macs. Networked the computers myself. Signed up all of the employees for AOL. Even when the president who is now long dead subscribed to DSL (to track internet activity, among other reasons), I still kept a modem under my desk and used it with muted sound for personal activities.
Today, I own iPads, an iPod, iShuffle, iPhone, a desktop Power Mac, a PowerBook with state-of-the-hard drive drive, and I’m an iTunes customer. Do you know that Apple does not make its own product to transfer music between all of your devices and one has to pay a third-party vendor for that service? This is what happens when Steve Job dies.
