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skyedaway · 4 years

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MY GILA BANGET WEEKEND.

Gila banget in Indonesian means "really crazy", and I would say that the phrase pretty much sums up my experience in going to Jakarta last November 2019.

From what I remember, it was a combination of impulsive decision-making, sudden seat sales from budget airlines, and just the sheer desperation of having a weekender that we found ourselves booking flights for Indonesia, in order to attend EXplOration for Loey's birthday. We had our flights, but we didn't have our concert tickets yet. Nothing would go wrong anyway in ticketing if your internet is fast and there's no pre-selling, right?

Well, we were definitely wrong. Ticketing was a total failure for us and me and my friends ended up giving up on Blibli and just hoping for the best. Reselling prices hiked up to 5 million IDR onwards that we were contemplating just not going at all, but around two weeks before the concert, we were able to purchase them. As a lesson learned, I made a mental note to remember that ticketing for EXO is never ever easy except in SG.

Alright, ticketing solved! My woes are over and all I have to do is fly to Jakarta, and return back on Monday just in time for my quiz. The problem is, my flight wasn't a direct flight. While other friends flew on the Friday evening before the concert, I had to take a Friday midnight flight to KL and then a connecting flight to Jakarta so that I can attend my evening class first. The professor cancelled the class that night, by the way.

This is my first time to experience a connecting flight, and my optimistic ass really thought things won't even go wrong. I was supposed to arrive in KL at 04:35 am on November 23, and then take the 7:00 am connecting flight to Jakarta. There are, however, things that I forgot to take into account (since I was most probably swamped with schoolwork):

a. Boarding gates will close earlier.

b. My plane to JKT is in KLIA, while my plane to KL lands in KLIA2.

c. Unprecedented changes on the flight time can happen, and if my flight to KL gets delayed, it's all fucked up from there.

Of course, being the chaotic person that I am, I only realized all of these when I was already sprinting from KLIA2 to Immigration, and then taking one of those overpriced taxis that were waiting by the arrivals so I can reach KLIA on time, just because KLIA2's train broke down. By 6:40, I was in KLIA, going for the Lion Air counter since the gates close at 6:45. And to no surprise, the monitors are flashing "GATE CLOSED" for my connecting flight! I was highkey about to cry but I still went for the counter and told the staff that I had a ticket, and they let me pass through. PHEW.

I almost died right there, and I thought that it would be smooth sailing from then on, but the struggle is not yet over.

While Dyandra originally announced that it will open the gates by 11, it made an announcement early in the morning that it was going to move the opening time by 10 am. I arrive in Jakarta at 8 am, then go through Immigration and get my SIM, and yet I have to be in ICE-BSD by 10 am. Travel time will take at least one hour without considering the traffic, and the person who I paid to line up for me was already panicking as well. By this time, I had nothing much except this sort of faith that I will arrive just before the gates open.

I speedwalked again to the arrival hall to meet Kak Anggun (@Albybe14), who was so kind for meeting me in CGK. She helped me get my SIM and brought breakfast and drinks, which was really touching (ERINAs are really another level of kind!). I was so desperate to get to the venue on time that I told her I'm going for the GrabBike, which is a CRAZY idea, but she helped me book it nonetheless. Looking back, I would have messed up if Kak wasn't there, since a number of staff in Jakarta aren't really confident speaking in English, and the language barrier would have made it difficult.

Well, after almost dying a number of times, I arrived in ICE-BSD by 9:45 am, with not a lot of sleep, but hey I survived!

It was fine for a good 20-30 minutes until the gates opened and people just kind of ran to secure a spot on the official line. Chaos, more running. I kinda got lost along the way too because the staff didn't know where the Fest E line was. ASDLKFSDLFSA. Thank God I saw it, but really, why are there staff when they aren’t acquainted with the lines...

I only really got to relax when we were already waiting inside the hall. From there, I was able to meet a few Erina friends, and also made new ones while on the line. Since it's difficult to tell among Southeast Asians, other local fans would just straight up talk to me in Bahasa and I wouldn't understand. Anyway I was so thrilled! For the first time in years, I finally met Ty (@mydancingbear88) in person. I was also able to meet Jess (@chanyeolnet) and Hana (@hannini__) who were so kind for offering their help.

When we finally got in, that was the only time that it dawned to me how so many things have happened in the course of 8 hours, but at least it's worth it! The stage was really close and the atmosphere was amazing. ERINAs are really loud, and they do their fanchants very well. Since it's been a long time since EXO had a concert in Indonesia, you can feel how excited the crowd was.

To sum up the concert experience, it was amazing.

Jongin was absolutely stunning in his blue hair. He gave me a wave and a smile, and he danced in front of us for Ohh La La La.

Chanyeol also waved hi twice, and in the second one he read my printed birthday message which basically was a greeting of happy birthday, and a thank you for making amazing music. He also got the toy snake I threw for Delle (@kyungfusing) during one of the latter stages!

AND THEN THERE'S SEHUN. It was sooooo fun because there were many Xunqis in our row! Sehun smiled so much when he saw the "Vivi appa" uchiwa. He also threw a ball in our direction which I almost caught but it bounced off my palm. I guess it's safe to say that I went home absolutely bias wrecked.

I only got to meet ate Cyndie (@hunniesoos), Delle, and Xel (@kyungseng) once the concert ended! We all agreed that it was a really nice experience, also because we got to sing Happy Birthday to Chanyeol in a crowd, and the atmosphere was really great.

We spent the next morning recollecting our experience, and discussing which of the EXOs biaswrecked us, haha!

The remainder of the trip was spent eating good food and meeting more friends and moots! We went to fx Sudirman to see the SMTOWN Office, which was unfortunately closed, and then ate at Bakso with Mel. We tried the coffee from Fore (which, in my opinion, puts watered down coffee here to shame), and then went to sightsee around the national stadium. Not gonna lie though, Jakarta kinda looked like a few places in Manila, Makati, and BGC, it felt familiar.

While my friends stayed for another day, I had to go back Sunday night so I can attend my classes the following day. It's quite a shame since I really wanted to see more, but hey, studies first!

The flight back home was delayed and I had little sleep before our quiz. I got sick that week too, due to fatigue. Moral of the story : never ever take connecting flights unless it is extremely necessary, and when you do, plan them well!

P.S. Love love love these friends for making it a much better experience, and for lowkey being my police because I had to review in the middle of it all, haha.

#ExplorationInJakarta #EXO #It was fun but I would like to go more conveniently next time!!!!

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juxtaposed-roses · 7 years

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2L OCI Advice

What’s up lawblrs?

So with OCI season for 2Ls in full swing, I figured I’d throw out some advice that may help those of you firm-hunting avoid some of the anxiety, panic, and general negativity that I endured during my OCI stint.

First off, I’ll say that I was not an ideal big-firm candidate. I went to USC, which is rankings-wise a fantastic school, but 1L was not kind to my GPA. For the first time in my life, my GPA did not start with a 3. I spent the summer after 1L externing for a federal judge and wondering whether it was worth even going back to law school with such an uphill battle ahead. My academic advisor even told me to treat OCI as a series of ‘practice interviews’ since, in his opinion, I didn’t have a shot in hell at a big-firm offer.

Well, I’m living proof that his advice was wrong.

My tips will likely be most helpful for those of you that didn’t ace the first slew of law courses thrown at you, but really they apply to anyone.

If you are sitting pretty with high 1L grades, congratulations! Seriously! My advice to you is to not let your grades go to your head. I watched with dismay as many of my friends in the top 10% got dozens of interviews, tons of callbacks, but at the end of all the wining and dining had no offers. It’s not a coincidence. From my experience, firms are looking for confident but not arrogant. They want personable but not too chatty. And most of all, they want someone who has a vision for their future legal career, but is also humble enough to admit that they don’t have it all figured out yet and are open to trying new things.

OCI Interview Tips

1. RESEARCH.

This is the easiest and for some reason the most under-utilized resource. Look, these interviewers are seeing hundreds of law students. You have to stand out from the pack. One easy way to do this is to know the firms. Cold.

I spent hours researching the 11 firms that I got interviews with. I knew where their offices were, what types of law they practiced, whether or not they collaborated across offices, how their partnership schemes worked. There is no substitute for research and preparation.

When conducting your research, I’d suggest making a file of sorts for each firm. Note the differences between them. The big firms have so many commonalities, but the differences are key. Come up with very specific and targeted questions for each firm, that show them you spent the time researching. Once you have the information, you need to make it work for you.

I tried to make connections between my resume and the firm’s practices. It paid off. At the start of the interview, I saw the eyes of each interviewer scan my resume for my GPA, and finding 2.98, I saw many an eye glaze over. But once I showed off my meticulous research, I gained back their attention. Once I connected that research to the skills and activities demonstrated by my resume I saw many interviewers pick up my resume again for a second look. And once I laid out how my career vision fit with their firm and its culture, I went from the recycle bin to the ‘maybe’ pile.

I cannot stress the importance of preparation enough. There’s a lot of talk out there that the big firms have GPA floors. For a few, that might be the case. But, while there may be guidelines in place, if you make an impression despite your grades, they CAN and WILL bend the rules if they think it will benefit them long-term. So what if you got an offer because you’re an exception to the rule? Point is, you got the offer!

2. Hobbies

For most situations, the ‘hobbies’ section of your resume is a total throw-away. It’s usually the first thing people delete when more room is needed. In OCI-land, the ‘hobbies’ line is crucial. I wish someone had told me this before my interviews. I happen to have eclectic interests, so my hobbies line included DJ’ing, French cooking, and studying Mandarin. I cannot tell you how much these three activities were brought up in conversation. I spent all 20 minutes in my Gibson interview discussing my latest deep-house mix. I recalled tales of my summer in Beijing, speaking Mandarin to shopkeepers. My point here is this: interviewers are people too. They are people that have to sit in a stuffy hotel or conference room all day listening to law students talk about themselves. The more interesting you can make that conversation, the better your chances of being memorable.

Now, there is one cautionary bit: make sure whatever you write down is real. You can’t list ‘Russian literature’ as a hobby if you don’t actually read Russian literature. Believe me, they will ask questions about whatever you write in that section, so make sure they are hobbies you can talk about with enthusiasm! Avoid hobbies like ‘running’, ‘cooking’, or ‘music’. Be more specific. Take the time to buff up you hobbies section, and reap the rewards come interview time. Sure, firms are searching for legal talent. But they also don’t want robots! Show off your personality!

3. Questions about Grades

I think my biggest fear going into OCI was that I was going to have to defend my low grades to all the interviewers. I spent days trying to come up with answers to a question I didn’t have the slightest clue how to answer. I had taken my studies seriously. I went to class, read all of those horrid casebooks, outlined, made charts. I worked harder during 1L than I had in all my years of academia combined. So why didn’t my grades reflect that? FUCK IF I KNOW!

So I prepared some bullshit excuse about essay exam strategy and my general inability to excel on multiple choice tests, and I had it locked and loaded.

But, to my surprise, not one interviewer asked about my grades. Not one! I couldn’t believe it. But looking back on it, it makes perfect sense. The number on your resume is the past. There’s nothing to be gained by asking about it in an interview, it’s a waste of time. Because those interviewers know that law school grades are ambiguous at best, and while they’ll take note of what your GPA is, it really doesn’t carry the day. Every firm has hired students in the top 10% that have proven to be disappointing associates. Every firm has also hired students with dismal 1L grades who turn out to be fantastic lawyers. So if you give them enough reason to suspect that your grades are not an accurate reflection of your skills, you may tip the scales in your favor!

4. More Research

Let’s say you’ve made it through the interviews and you’ve managed to get a callback. Against all odds, I got two callbacks with big firms. Callbacks are the real interview. Depending on the firm, you may be scheduled alone or with a group of other hopefuls. Again, your aim is to stand out from everyone else. How do you do that with low grades? RESEARCH!

You will be given a list of all the people at the firm that you will be sitting down with during the callback. Many people scan that list and never look at it again until the day of. DO NOT BE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE.

At the very least, you need to go onto the firm’s website and look up each name, read the bios, and as a bonus, begin to place names with faces. But to really use this information to your advantage, I would suggest finding conversation starters in those firm bios. It’s a lot easier to drum up a natural conversation with an old white guy if you know you both like a certain sport’s team or went to the same undergrad. Honestly, I think that knowing names and remembering things about each of the associates and partners I met on my callbacks was my key to success. Why? Because people want to work with people they like. And people tend to like people that show a genuine interest in them and are easy to talk to. Be that person!

Aside from researching the people on that list, you should also know some basic information about the founding partners of the firm and managing partners of the office you are interviewing for. Even if those people are not on the list of interviewers. Why? Because partners will drop in sometimes if they have a free minute and know that a callback is going on that day. This happened to me during my Bryan Cave callback. The managing partner of the office popped his head into one of my scheduled interviews just to say hello. I had done my research so I knew his name and that he practiced employment law. We ended up chatting about that area of law for 15 minutes, because I was taking a labor arbitration course and seemed interested in what he had to say. You can’t BUY that type of Facetime! Had I not researched, that encounter might have been a quick ‘hello’ and I might never have gotten an offer.

But I did do my research, and that, coupled with a bit of luck, landed me a summer offer. Which led to the best summer associateship I could have ever asked for, and in the end, an offer for an associate position after graduation.

I’m not saying that conquering OCI with low 1L grades is any picnic in the park. It sucks. And many firms that I really liked tossed my resume in the garbage bin after looking at my GPA. That was tough. But there were a few firms that saw past the number and were willing to take a chance on me. And I’m happy to report that sometimes a chance is all you need.

GOOD LUCK 2Ls! You’ve got this!

#law #law school #lawyer #lawblr #advice #2L #3L #OCI #interview

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memsmedic1 · 8 years

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Myanmar! 11/25/2016

Finally I am heading into the country that I came to work in! Here are a few facts about the Republic of the Union of Myanmar:

Myanmar is the second largest country geographically in Southeast Asia after Indonesia and sits between the worlds two most populous countries, China and India. It also touches Bangladesh, Tibet Autonomous Region, Laos, and Thailand as well as the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal.

For another comparison Myanmar is slightly larger than Germany and Italy combined but slightly smaller than the great state of Texas.

Myanmar has a population of just over 51 million people (25th most populated country) which is made up of 135 ethnic groups who all have their own language.

Although incredibly rich in natural resources such as teak, crude oil, opium, rubies, sapphires, pearls, jade, and precious metals, Myanmar is one of the worlds most impoverished countries, with most of the population working as day laborers just to have enough money for food. The income gap in Myanmar is also among the widest in the world.

Over 90% of the country has absolutely no emergency medical response at all. In the areas that do have responders, patients are almost worse off than the rest of the country because responders are working with little or no training and have hardly any supplies, so they tend to use an Alpha Rescue approach to patient care.

With less then 3% of its GDP spent on healthcare, Myanmar has some of the worst hospitals in the world. Hospitals are few and far between, and are relatively expensive so many people can’t afford care at all. Doctors and nurses do their best but have hardly any medicine or supplies to work with. The waiting rooms are always full of patients laying on the floor hoping to be seen.

The same afternoon the nurse and I limped the broken truck to the mechanics shop in MaeSot I met up with a couple of team members from M-E.M.S. who were also getting ready to join the rest of the crew in Myanmar. They have been working on finding solutions to our ambulance start up challenges from the Thai side of the border and now we will see what we can figure out in Myanmar. They were driving one of our very nice customized ambulances (that we aren’t allowed to import) so there was plenty of room for all of us and our gear plus some supplies.

Because it was late in the day we decided to send some supplies over via an alternate route now, spend the night in Thailand, and cross the border in the morning to catch the once daily bus to Yangon.

On our way to the hotel we happened across a bad motor vehicle collision between a truck and a motorbike so we stopped to help even though we didn’t have any ambulance supplies with us. The Thai responders were happy for our assistance and we stayed and talked for several minutes after the pt was taken to the hospital.

The next morning after breakfast we parked the ambulance and took a songtau to the border where we had to go through Thai immigration, walk across the long Thai-Myanmar friendship bridge, and go through Myanmar immigration on the other side.

Unfortunately there was a problem at Thai immigration that put us behind schedule. As soon as we were free to go we hustled our way across the bridge, sweated our way through Immigration again and then made a run for the bus stop several blocks down the road. We were a good 20 minutes late but one of our other teammates had went on ahead and “persuaded” the bus driver to wait for us.

After we were in our seats the bus started on the 10 hour drive to Yangon. That’s right! 10 hours to drive 256 miles!The reason it takes this long to travel such a short distance is the twisty winding nature of the road, and its incredible narrowness; our bus took up its entire width! Whenever two vehicles need to pass each other (as in pass each other coming from opposite directions) one of us has to pull off onto the extremely narrow shoulder so there’s enough room for the other one to make it by. Usually the buses get preference and don’t have to come to a complete stop but they still have to slow way down from an already slow speed to make sure their mirror doesn’t hit the other vehicle’s especially if it’s also a big rig.

Several things are noticeably different between Thailand and Myanmar right off the bat. We are back to driving on the righthand side of the road for one. However, any benefits that this may offer is completely offset by the next observation; Burmese drivers are crazy drivers. As soon as you cross the border the speed of non-bus traffic picks up with drivers swerving, driving on both sides of the road, honking like it’s going out of style, and disregarding all common rules of the road.

For all that though the general pace of the rest of the country is much slower than Thailand, with ox drawn carts, elephants, and manual labor still common and holding their own against encroaching mechanization. For example, all the roads in Myanmar are built completely by hand. Workers can be seen hammering rocks into appropriately sized gravel along the side of the road. At the construction site other workers clear trees, smooth the ground and lay down sand. Then they boil tar in the 55 gallon drums it’s sold in and pour it on top of the sand and gravel to make the asphalt road surface (this could be part of the reason why the road is so narrow lol).

Buddhism is also incredibly central to life in Myanmar, where the peaceful sound of monks chanting in ancient Bali can often be heard playing on loudspeakers along the road in towns and villages and on the bus. There are so many temples and pagodas that it is hard to drive anywhere and not be able to see at least one, leading to Myanmar’s nickname “The Golden Land”.

Once we finally arrived in downtown Yangon we hired a couple taxis and after stowing all of our supplies we proceeded with fantastic speed to our company headquarters where we spent the night.

In Myanmar you have to let the local authorities know where you are staying within 24 hours of arrival, and as a regular tourist you can’t simply stay with a friend or anywhere you want, you have to stay in a government approved guest house. However, our business visas allow us a lot more leeway to be able to sleep in an apartment or building associated with our company (M-E.M.S.)

Well once the landlord of the apartment complex that our company address goes to found out that 2 foreigners were staying in her not-approved-for-tourists building she had a conniption. We explained the law and assured her that everything was fine but we were unable to mollify her. After the second night she had us kicked out and told our team members who live there full time that they would not be able to renew their rent contract once it expires.

So for the next few days we had to stay in a hotel and in addition to meeting with the rest of our team and various officials and other people who may be able to assist us with our ambulance and lodging challenges we also had to look for a new office location. Once we finally found one we then had to move all the boxes and crates of gear and medical supplies down four flights of stairs, across town, and up another 4 sets of stairs!

Something else we were focusing lots of time and energy on was our ambulance problem: Namely, we felt strongly that we needed an ambulance in order to operate an ambulance service!!

After looking around and weighing our options we decided to get a Land Cruiser series 70 and have it modded into an ambulance that would be rugged enough for the mountains we will be operating in. Many hours were spent drawing up plans for how we wanted it to look and how the patient care area would be laid out.

After 5 whirlwind days in Yangon we drove back to the bus station on Thursday, December 1, to make a trip to the northern state capital to meet with a first responder organization who wants us to give them additional training. As we settled into our seats for the 24 hour journey we looked forward to the main perks of bus travel in Myanmar: blaring, terribly made movies whenever the Buddhist chanting is not being played, ice cold AC, and frequent unscheduled stops so the bus crew can pick up bootleg passengers and make some extra money on the side.

Every few hours we had scheduled 30 minute stops at little roadside restaurants where there was also bathrooms and street vendors selling fruits and snacks. These stops were great because they gave us the opportunity to get the blood in our legs moving again and warm back up to a life sustaining temperature before continuing on!

After all day and all night we arrived in town and after going to our guest house and getting settled we walked around and were able to visit a cultural museum and the market to unwind and relax.

The rest of the weekend we had meetings with Rest In Peace Department first responders and other groups. There are many eager young responders here who volunteer to go on calls and take patients to the hospital in one of their three hearses, but they have from zero to two days worth of medical training because until now they have mainly focused on extrication and transportation of bodies. We met with them several times and scheduled an 8 day first responder course for them in January.

Monday morning we were back on the bus headed south, and by the time we arrived back in Yangon on Tuesday we had been on the bus for a total of 52 hours!

Even though we were exhausted from our journey we spent the rest of the day meeting with a Ferno medical equipment importer and distributor representative discussing various options for outfitting our new ambulance and other supplies we would need for our January training. Then we went back to our new office/apartment where we organized all our supplies and packed our backpacks with everything we would need for the next couple weeks in Thailand as well as the upcoming expedition in India. Then we went to bed!

The next evening on the 7th a couple of us took the night bus back to MaeSot where we spent the next day contracting out our ambulance modifications to Thai businesses willing to cross the border to do the work since Thai materials and fabrication are of better quality. Afterwards we picked up our original ambulance and headed south to Kanchanaburi where four other team members had already gone to prepare for India!

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rebeccahpedersen · 6 years

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Should The Feds Introduce Shared Equity Mortgages?

TorontoRealtyBlog

I absolutely hate doing things twice in life.

But alas, here I am, re-writing this blog, and it hurts twice as bad to know I was all set to get out ahead of this.

I wrote two blogs on the weekend: one for Monday and one for Wednesday. The first was about debt, and just how much conversation there was last week around the subject, and the second was about something that was on absolutely nobody’s radar: shared equity mortgages.

An article ran in the Toronto Star last week, and it was the first time I had heard anybody talk about shared equity mortgages in quite some time. With respect to the federal budget, and what could be “on the table” in terms of helping first-time buyers and/or millennials when the budget was announced this week, these were the most talked about ideas coming into the week:

1) Extending the CMHC-insured mortgage amortization from 25 years to 30 years for first-time buyers. 2) Increasing the amount a first-time buyer can borrow from their RRSP from $25,000 to anywhere from $30-$50K. 3) Reducing the mortgage stress test from 2.0% as far down as 0.75%.

That’s it.

Those were the three big ideas.

Sure, some other ideas had been batted around, but do you know which idea was not discussed?

Shared-equity mortgages.

Go ahead, be a liar and say that you saw Tuesday’s announcement coming.

Because only one person that I saw, wrote about this before it came out, and that was Economics Columnist Heather Scoffield of the Toronto Star, who delivered this on Saturday:

“Are Liberals Ready To Take On The Risk Of Shared Equity Mortgages?”

Now there’s another person out there that did have this on the radar: me. Thanks to Heather Scoffield’s article, of course!

I had this blog post ready to go for Wednesday, all about how the idea of “shared equity mortgages” is the logical next step for an illogical government who was looking to re-heat the housing market in an election year. It would have been such an amazing blog, the day after the government introduced other measures to help address housing affordability, since the readers would have commented in droves, “You’re nuts. Shared equity mortgages will never happen.”

But then it DID!

And it ruined my blog.

So let me start over…

Before last week, I hadn’t heard about shared equity mortgages in years.

Literally years.

I had to think back to the last time I read an article, or had a discussion about the idea, and I think it has to have been five or six years.

I receive odd emails all the time about a variety of subjects (having 2,000+ blog posts floating around on Google will do that), ranging from people looking to “buy distressed properties at auctions” (which of course doesn’t exist in the hot Toronto market), or “rent-to-own” programs which aren’t exactly in abundance, and last but not least, “shared equity mortgages.”

The last time I conversed with somebody who had emailed me from the blog, about shared equity mortgages, it underscored what I already knew going into the conversation: the person didn’t know how these things worked.

The guy basically asked me if I could help him “partner” with the government, or a not-for-profit, to help him purchase a home. He was looking to me to “set up meetings with a few prospective partners” so that we could spot the best “deal” to be had.

As you would assume, he had zero money to bring to the table. But through his “research” online, he deduced that he could offer this partner a “cut” of the appreciation on the property as a financial incentive for providing the down payment, and paying some of the mortgage and taxes along the way.

Back in the day, I didn’t mind having 15-20 minute conversations with people like this, partially to help them, but also to learn more about the human psyche. Since then, I’ve learned my time is better spent, but I also get frustrated and a little depressed when I engage them.

I asked the guy, “If a company with financial means was interested in making money through real estate, don’t you think there are other vehicles available to them?”

He asked for an explanation, so I told him, “What I’m saying is that if you an entity to provide you with $25,000 for a down payment on a $500,000 condo, and effectively partner with you, as you describe, why wouldn’t they invest this $25,000 in a REIT, or lend the money on a standard mortgage?”

He said, “Because they should want to be involved at a grassroots level.”

Here’s where he lost me, if he hadn’t done so already. When anybody in life explains what somebody else “should” do, or think, or want, then that person is simply projecting their own wants on others.

“How else are people like me expected to get into the market?”

Good question.

Enter the federal government’s announcement on Tuesday, and we now know.

The federal government unveiled their long-awaited budget on Tuesday, and as was expected, during an election year, and after the SNC Lavalin scandal, the budget was all about spending, and trying to appease every single voter with some sort of promise.

Pertaining to housing, they released their “strategy” which looked absolutely nothing like what was expected.

Here’s what the government released:

Budget 2019 – An Affordable Place To Call Home

As for the three expected policy changes/announcements:

1) Extending the CMHC-insured mortgage amortization from 25 years to 30 years for first-time buyers – NOT IMPLEMENTED 2) Increasing the amount a first-time buyer can borrow from their RRSP from $25,000 to anywhere from $30-$50K – INCREASED TO $35,000 3) Reducing the mortgage stress test from 2.0% as far down as 0.75% – NOT IMPLEMENTED

What else did the government implement?

This is what everybody is going to be talking about:

To help make homeownership more affordable for first-time home buyers, Budget 2019 introduces the First-Time Home Buyer Incentive.

The Incentive would allow eligible first-time home buyers who have the minimum down payment for an insured mortgage to apply to finance a portion of their home purchase through a shared equity mortgage with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).

It is expected that approximately 100,000 first-time home buyers would be able to benefit from the Incentive over the next three years.

Since no ongoing payments would be required with the Incentive, Canadian families would have lower monthly mortgage payments. For example, if a borrower purchases a new $400,000 home with a 5 per cent down payment and a 10 per cent CMHC shared equity mortgage ($40,000), the borrower’s total mortgage size would be reduced from $380,000 to $340,000, reducing the borrower’s monthly mortgage costs by as much as $228 per month. Terms and conditions for the First-Time Home Buyer Incentive would be released by CMHC.

CMHC would offer qualified first-time home buyers a 10 per cent shared equity mortgage for a newly constructed home or a 5 per cent shared equity mortgage for an existing home. This larger shared equity mortgage for newly constructed homes could help encourage the home construction needed to address some of the housing supply shortages in Canada, particularly in our largest cities.

The First-Time Home Buyer Incentive would include eligibility criteria to ensure that the program helps those with legitimate needs while ensuring that participants are able to afford the homes they purchase. The Incentive would be available to first-time home buyers with household incomes under $120,000 per year. At the same time, participants’ insured mortgage and the Incentive amount cannot be greater than four times the participants’ annual household incomes.

Well, it finally happened.

The federal government finally went crazy.

I have so many thoughts on this that I almost resorted back to a child-like state, and took a Grade Two approach to this blog, by writing down ideas on different pieces of paper, then gluing them to a slab of bristol board, and ordering them to then be hand-written onto lined paper. Yes, that’s what we did in the 80’s instead of simply opening MS Word and typing something we could edit later on…

Let me start with the obvious: this First Time Buyer Incentive is about votes, and nothing more.

Nothing more, because there’s nothing there!

Read the fourth point above, folks. This only applies to properties with a combined “incentive amount” and mortgage amount that’s four times a household income, and that household income has to be below $120,000 in order to qualify for the program.

So…………where are all the $499,000 houses in Toronto and Vancouver?

Smoke and mirrors. That’s what this announcement is.

But as I’ve said before on many occasions, people are too short-sighted to notice. If young people today are willing to judge candidates for dating and or/marriage by spending 1/16th of a second on a single photo on an iPhone app before swiping right, then how hard do you think they’re going to scrutinize this budget announcement? Do you think with the same expediency of dating, which is far, far more interesting and important? Me thinks, yes.

The headlines will read “LIBERAL GOVERNMENT TO HELP BUYERS” and that’s about as far as most people will look into the matter, before getting back to photos of salads on Instagram.

So in my opinion, the vote-buying will work. Good job, Liberals!

Now as for the actual plan itself, I’m troubled by this in so many ways.

For starters, didn’t the government spend the last two years trying to cool the housing market? Why are they now trying to light it on fire again?

Oh, right, the election. I forgot. And I already mentioned that above, but doesn’t this concern anybody? Are we to believe that the government really has a plan with how to tackle the housing market when their policies in 2019 completely contradict their policies in 2018 and 2017?

The bigger problem with the idea of a shared equity mortgage, of course, is that the government will be buying houses with people! That’s basically what this boils down to. The government, who had been bearish on real estate for two years, is now going to enter the housing market, hand-in-hand with the lowest-income buyers in the country.

What are the implications of this?

Well, for those of you that don’t like the mere existence of the CMHC, and the idea that a Crown Corporation is insuring banks’ mortgages, on the backs of taxpayers, then you will definitely not like this announcement!

Because now not only is the CMHC insuring mortgages, they’re giving people money for down payments!

Yes, I know, the proponents of this plan (are there any??) will note that the CMHC is going to take a portion of the profits down the line, as is the case with any shared equity mortgage, but what if, oh my, oh wow, I can’t believe I’m saying this (gasp!) the market goes…….down?

Then what?

Because there’s an argument to be made that the government will just eat the debt.

Impossible, right?

Except that in February of 2018, the federal government waived over $200 Million in student loans, marking the third time in four years that it had done so.

This government is great at spending money, even better at taxing, but not so good at collecting money owed.

What in the world is the government thinking – deciding to partner with buyers in the purchase of real estate? As if the CMHC wasn’t already a large enough burden?

Far too often, we refer to the 2008 financial crisis in the United States without really explaining what happened. For the casual blog reader, or for those who were not of age during that time period, let me take a moment to point out something important.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are names that many people know, without actually knowing who they are, and/or what they do.

These two entities, created in 1938 and 1970 respectively, were formed in order to “stabilize” the U.S. residential mortgage market and to provide opportunities for home ownership throughout the country. How they did that was quite interesting. They purchased home loans from lenders (ie. banks) so that the banks could effectively offload their existing loans, and use the sale proceeds to make new loans to borrowers.

True, there are underwriting standards, but in 2008, both entities simply weren’t equipped to deal with the expected losses (they had guaranteed over $5 Trillion in mortgages, combined), resulting from the sub-prime mortgage rates that banks were offering.

And we know what happened then…

…Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, and Steve Carell made a movie together.

I bring this up because I think it’s important to differentiate between Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac and the CMHC, but also to be weary of lessons learned.

The CMHC insures mortgages provided by the banks, providing protection in the event of default.

Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac purchased mortgages from the banks to package and re-sell to investors.

There is a difference, and a big one.

But if the Canadian government is now going to step in and effectively purchase a small piece of the mortgage for buyers involved in the First Time Buyer Incentive program, then we are that much closer to what happened in the United States in 2008.

Feel free to tell me if you think I’m making a leap here, but I do believe that those of you who think the CMHC is already overburdened will agree.

Now for the last nugget, the government has yet to really explain how any of this is going to work.

Oh, that is sooooooooooooo government!

Make an announcement, and then when somebody asks how you’re going to implement the new policy, just say, “We’ll get back to you on that.”

Unclear at this point is how the government expects to be repaid, and how much they expect to be repaid. And what restrictions would apply to your sale? Can you sell at any time, at any price? Can you deduct your land transfer tax and real estate fees from the profit? This will all be explained “in the coming months” as was noted in several media reports.

In another media report, I saw that “full details won’t come out until the fall.”

The fall.

That’s when the election is, right?

So if the Liberals don’t win, then we never get to hear their grand plan for all of this?

Maybe they didn’t actually have a plan to begin with?

Maybe this is just politicking at it’s finest?

Let’s review. The government that spent two years trying to cool the market, is now implementing programs that will re-heat the market, whereby they will take on even greater exposure and risk on the backs of taxpayers, but only for properties at price points that don’t exist in major Canadian markets, and hasn’t explained how they intend to do this.

Is that about right?

Well, this post is actually better than the one I had originally penned. I believe there’s a direct correlation between dripping-off-the-page cynicism and quality of work, so allow me to pat myself on the back in the same way that Bill Morneau et al did today.

Oh – the government is also creating four new “dedicated real estate audit teams” at Canada Revenue Agency, at a cost of $50 Million, to try to track down more tax money. Get ready for them to meet you at the cemetary the moment your grandmother kicks so they can dispute the stated value of her estate. Think I’m joking? Just you wait…

The post Should The Feds Introduce Shared Equity Mortgages? appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

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thrashermaxey · 6 years

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Ramblings: Rangers/Hurricanes, Slumping Goal Scorers (Feb 9)

Yeah, we’re in that weird part of the schedule now. Just one game on Friday night after 14 were played on Thursday night and 14 are about to be played on Saturday night. While it is imbalanced like that, fantasy owners would be wise to look for teams that play on so-called “off nights.” You can check out my Ramblings from a week ago for the full schedule, but two of the top three teams when it comes to off nights from February 2 to 16 faced each other in the NHL’s lone game on Friday night.

These “off nights”, which result in the Rangers playing on slow days again on Sunday this week and on Friday and Sunday next week, should generate additional interest in the likes of Mats Zuccarello and Kevin Hayes and even onetime keeper stash Anthony DeAngelo. On the Canes’ side, I added Jaccob Slavin and Petr Mrazek for Friday’s game (along with Hayes, who I picked up earlier in the week). I added Mrazek simply because I desperately need goalie help this week, a move that paid off (more on that shortly). I added Slavin because he entered Friday’s game with seven points in his last seven games.

Before I get into the Hurricanes/Rangers highlights, the off-night teams to target from this Sunday to next Sunday are the aforementioned Rangers, Buffalo, New Jersey, Minnesota, Pittsburgh, and Anaheim (the traditional king of off-nights), who each play three times on off-nights. For more on planning your schedule, be sure to check out this week’s Looking Ahead, a column that appears every Friday.

Okay, so now let’s discuss that lone game on Friday night: the Hurricanes and the Rangers. It looked like there wasn’t going to be anything to talk about scoring-wise until the third period, when Warren Foegele scored the eventual game winner at 6:43. Andrei Svechnikov and Brock McGinn scored empty-netters to ice a 3-0 victory for the Hurricanes. McGinn ended the game with two points, giving him five points in his last five games and seven points in his last eight games. Svechnikov’s goal was his 14th of the season, which gives him four points in his last three games. He now sits in second among NHL rookies in goals, “just” 11 behind leader Elias Pettersson.

Mrazek turned out to be the star of Friday’s game, stopping all 27 shots he faced in earning a 3-0 shutout win. Mrazek gave way to Curtis McElhinney for the previous two games, but the shutout win might earn him another start on Sunday against a struggling Devils squad. Mrazek entered this game with just one quality start in his past six games, and I’d still expect him to split starts with McElhinney the rest of the way.

Slavin didn’t finish with any points, but he did finish the game with a plus-3 and three blocked shots. Since January 20 he is a plus-8 to go with the seven points in his last eight games. I still think he’s a better real-life option than a fantasy option, but no one on the Canes logs more minutes than Slavin (23:02 TOI).

Because of the shutout, Zuccarello’s point streak ended at nine games. He has logged at least 20 minutes of icetime in each of his last seven games. If he is traded at the deadline, I wouldn’t expect him to reach that number on a nightly basis with his new team.

Neal Pionk, the Rangers’ leading scorer among defensemen, was a healthy scratch for the second consecutive game. Pionk has just one assist since December 23, a span of 14 games. Pionk has been slowed by a lower-body injury that resulted from blocking a shot in a game just after Christmas (New York Post), but he was having a fine season before that with 19 points over his first 32 games. The recent struggles of Pionk combined with the underachieving Kevin Shattenkirk have resulted in the Rangers trying a five-forward power play at one point this season.

Artemi Panarin has decided to change agents, opting for the same agent as Sergei Bobrovsky. Panarin has also decided that he would like to become a free agent this summer, regardless of whether a team trades for him at the deadline. The only prediction I’ll make when it comes to Panarin is that he’ll be playing for a different team next season. Seems like a safe bet, doesn’t it?

We’ve covered the trials and tribulations of Patrik Laine’s lack of goal scoring recently (more on Laine in the most recent Frozen Tools Forensics). Laine’s season total of 25 goals is about what we would expect as a whole, but his recent slump of just two goals in his last 22 games (dating back to mid-December) seems especially concerning. Yet he’s hardly the only scorer owned in most fantasy leagues that is having trouble turning on the red light. Here are three more forwards that are stuck in the same rut at the moment.

Mikael Granlund

Would you consider Granlund hot or cold at the moment? If you value assists, you’d consider him hot, as he has five of those in the last five games. Bruce Boudreau doesn’t seem to care, though, as he identified Granlund as ice cold with two goals in his past 37 games. During Granlund’s breakout two seasons ago, I suspected that he had experienced some good luck in the shooting percentage department with a near-15 percent shooting accuracy. This season Granlund is shooting more in line with career average of 10 percent while his current goal total (12) puts him on pace to finish under 20 goals for the first time in three seasons.

Don’t panic if you’re in a roto league, though. For starters, Granlund may experience better puck luck soon. In addition, both his 32 assists and 15 power-play points lead the Wild, and his current shot total (124) puts him on pace to finish with around the same number of shots he took over the previous two seasons. This is a case of a coach expressing frustration over his team’s inability to rise above the pack of teams that are drifting aimlessly around the wild-card spots in the Western Conference. Besides, Granlund’s career assist total is over double his career goal total. Hopefully you understood that ratio when you drafted him.

If you’re wondering about how Mikko Koivu’s season-ending injury might affect Granlund, 34 percent of Granlund’s even-strength icetime has been spent with Koivu. Yet only 18 percent of Granlund’s even-strength points have been with Koivu on the ice. Eric Staal has been Granlund’s preferred center this season, so Granlund’s production shouldn’t be impacted much by Koivu’s absence unless Staal is moved onto another line. Unless the Wild suddenly plummet in the standings and thus decide to become sellers, I can’t see a scenario where Staal is traded.

Bo Horvat

Like Granlund, Horvat is a widely owned fantasy forward mired in a goal-scoring slump. The Canucks’ two-way center has hit the twine just once in his last 17 games. Injuries to Jay Beagle and Brandon Sutter have thrust Horvat into defensive roles at times this season. For a player who is expected to take on a significant role in the Canucks’ scoring attack, Horvat’s offensive zone starts (40.6%) seem quite low. In fact, the Canucks lean on Horvat so much that he leads the entire NHL in both faceoffs and faceoffs won.

Horvat’s season shooting percentage (11.1%) isn’t far off from his career percentage, but he has been taking more shots over the last ten games (3.8 per game) than he has over the first half of the season (2.76 per game). Both Sutter and Beagle are back in the lineup, so Horvat can assume a role on the second line again, since we can safely assume that Elias Pettersson is the Canucks’ first-line center. That might mean the likes of Antoine Roussel and Jake Virtanen are his regular wingers, but it could be worse if you consider the Canucks’ massive stockpile of bottom-6 forwards. It’s best to be patient with Horvat, but perhaps limit your expectations fantasy-wise.

Tyler Johnson

Here’s a player who hasn’t recorded a point in eight games (let alone a goal) and has a shooting percentage that is several points higher than his career average. How did that happen? Johnson scored 18 goals over his first 38 games, but he has not been able to score a goal over his last 14 games. His lack of goal scoring recently can be attributed to a lack of shots – just 14 shots over his last 11 games.

If the last paragraph painted a bleak picture, then this paragraph will predict a more positive outlook. Johnson has recently been lining up with Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point, both of whom occupy spots in the top 10 of NHL scoring. Johnson has logged 52 percent of his even-strength minutes and 60 percent of his even-strength point totals with this duo, while the Kucherov/Point duo has been more productive even-strength with Johnson on their line than without. So I’d expect Johnson to stay there, which should mean that he’ll break out of his goal-scoring slump sooner rather than later.

By the way, you can check out hot and cold players at Frozen Tools, under the Recent Trends menu. It’s just one of many tools over there.

For more fantasy hockey information, you can follow me on Twitter @Ian_Gooding.

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-rangershurricanes-slumping-goal-scorers-feb-9/

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salesevolution · 7 years

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Maximizing Your Sales

onwardmag.com interview with Tibor Shanto

This article is “back to basics” but when is the last time you slowed down to go faster? Some good reminders in here; check it out.

Technology. It’s supposed to make everything in your life easier, right? Technological advances have saved us time in our daily toasting of bread or just in staying in touch with high school classmates. But in today’s world, salespeople need to be focusing on leveraging the new technology to save them time and make their sales efforts more efficient.

That is where Tibor Shanto steps in to help. Shanto has spent his whole working life in sales and risen from selling door-to-door to breaking down barriers to help sales professionals increase efficiency and exceed their goals.

As the Chief Sales Officer of Renbor Sales Solutions, Shanto works with leading B2B sales organizations to develop a customized plan to get the most out of their sales opportunities. Even amongst all the changes in how you can sell with today’s technology, his point of view never loses sight of the reasons why your customers are looking for solutions to improve their business.

Shanto will walk you through his expert advice on how to maximize your prospecting effort, increase your close ratios, and how to structure a truly healthy sales funnel.

Tell me a little about your experience. It looks like you’ve done a lot of interesting things so far.

The bulk of my professional life has been spent in sales, primarily front-line selling. I started out being a tele-sales person or as some people would like to call it a telemarketer. I have sold door-to-door and have sold complex solutions for many B2B organizations. For the last 10 years I have been running this company calledRenbor, which is a professional development company dealing with B2B salespeople exclusively and the goal is, as the URL implies, to help them sell better and achieve their objectives.

What can sales people do to maximize their selling time?

One of the things they can do is to change the way they look at time because time is really the only non-renewable resource that we have. Salespeople need to focus on how they should be allocating their time. What are the high-value activities that contribute to their success (on a very generic level)? Prospecting would be one of them.

One of the things that we teach sales people is to step back and think about the key activities that need to be done over the course of the entire buying cycle. And then allocate the required time it will take to complete each of these activities. And it will vary; you might be a really good prospector, so you would need less time to prospect than I would.

There is no standard. It’s driven by your metrics and your specifics. But you need to be aware of what those key activities are.

The next thing to think about is how to manage your activities within those time frames. The idea is if I am going to allocate an hour to prospecting, how can I ensure that I make the most out of that hour and keep it to an hour?

This means, if somebody says to you “Let’s go grab a cup of coffee,” and you happen to have had that time allocated to prospecting, and you don’t like prospecting, you’ll probably say, “Yeah, I’ll go with you and grab that coffee,” but that is now 20 minutes that you would never be able to get back.

Another notion that we get salespeople to realize is that time is an investment capital. In the United States, on average you have about 1,760 selling hours. Think about those as investment capital.

You have to invest that in a way to get the maximum return (i.e. hitting or exceeding your quota). Much like a wealth manager would potentially allocate 10% to equity, 20% to debt and leave 30% in cash, some to derivatives and so on you can begin to get a sense of how you need to allocate time to certain tasks.

Put your activities into 2 areas: one called primetime, those things that you have to do within that 9-5 timeframe. News flash: Most customers will want to see you between 9-5.

Somebody once taught me this notion of discretionary time. That doesn’t mean it’s the activity that is discretionary, but when you choose to do it, that is discretionary. I can do a proposal at 6 in the evening just as effectively I could at 2 in the afternoon, but chances are I will be in a position to see more clients at 2 in the afternoon than 6 in the evening so that’s how I choose my prime time.

How long of a sales cycle do you recommend?

It really varies. I think this is one of those things that starts off for the right reason, but they take a wrong turn somewhere.

Yes, you want to optimize the sales cycle, but there is this belief that the shorter the sales cycle the better…which I think is false. There is an optimal sales cycle based on your product, your customers, and a couple of other factors.

For example, you may find that the optimal time for your product is 16 weeks. If you are selling in 20 weeks, clearly you want to get it down to 16. But there comes a point of diminishing return, meaning there will be no benefit seen by you in making the cycle shorter.

At a certain point you will actually begin to work against yourself because you actually need the full 16 weeks. Trying to get it down to 12 weeks will most likely involve skipping a couple of steps or rushing through a couple of steps that need to happen to get the sale.

The question isn’t really how short a cycle should be or what it should be. It is figuring out what is optimal for you, and then looking for ways to reduce other factors that could be to your benefit.

That is the way I would look at it – it is what is optimal rather than what is the shortest.

So all it really takes is crunching a few numbers to figure out where your sweet spot is?

One of the things people should get in the habit of is reviewing why the deal turned out the way it did. Some people will tell you to just review the deals that you win, but I think the risk of that is you will develop tunnel vision very quickly.

If you can look at why you are winning deals, why you are losing deals, and why some deals just don’t go to decision, then trends become rather evident. Once you review 20-30 deals, it is relatively easy to put in on a chart what the commonalities are and the anomalies are. I think it is about getting in a good habit you can stick to consistently.

Your closing ratio is also important. Let’s say for every 5 prospects I meet, I close one. Can I make that a 4:1 closing ratio? Can I change the way that I interact with customers that will help me close more customers than before? That way I don’t have to worry about shortening the cycle because I can gain efficiency by having to sell to less people.

What are some tactics that you use to prospect?

There is a wide range available to people out there, especially now with some of the social outlets.

I use a combination of things; I believe that picking up the phone and dialing somebody and saying something intelligent and compelling is still very effective. I know that there is a big trend out there against cold calling, and I know amongst younger people with a different relationship with the phone they don’t view it as practical, but I think it is still part of mix.

Using social media could generate leads that can be nurtured. Before you pick up the phone, you might want to soften the ground using some social media. I have had success reaching out to people that way.

Also, I have used a combination of snail mail and email. Because think about it, the pendulum has swung to the point now where if you get something in the mail, something that you can hold in an envelope is going to catch your attention.

I have had people who have given me the appointment just because it was different. It got past their administrator, so the traditional sort of barrier to entry was bypassed because they thought it was a personal note. I have also used texts to approach people because you are trying to reach somebody that is on the go. Texting can end up being more efficient than any other means.

Think about what combination of things will get you to that initial discussion. More and more studies are showing that it takes anywhere from 8-12 touch points before a prospect actually engages with you. Think of your personal daily schedule; you are busy. If the salesperson doesn’t come back and reach out to you again, you may well forget.

Could you talk a bit about continuously prospecting?

It needs to be a consistent activity. What tends to happen is, you will have a couple of leads and a couple of prospects and you will get focused on the sales process. Things are looking good because we have this live customer, and we can see the finish line so we neglect prospecting for a while.

You may get that sale, but come Monday morning you won’t have anyone to talk with. If you can do the exercise around allocating time and consistently prospecting day in and day out, you are always going to have the next opportunity to move onto.

What do you think a healthy sales funnel looks like and how do you get there?

It is totally driven by a metrics.

One of the things we do with our customers is we have a calculator that starts with your target goal. Let’s say your goal is a $1.2 million a year. The obvious implication would come out to roughly $100,000 a month.

Now let’s say that your average deal size is approximately $25,000. The implication is that you are going to need four deals a month in order to at least deliver if not exceed your quota. Then the next question is, in order to get one deal (forget the four for the moment) how many real proposals (and I emphasize real) do you need to present in order to get that one deal.

Let’s say it is 2:1, for every two proposals you present, one will close. The next question becomes, how many real prospects will I have to engage with to put myself in a position to present a real offer, a real proposal? Let’s again use 2:1. So now I know that in order to get two proposals, I will need to go out and find four real prospects. In order to do that, how many real appointments do I need to have? Again let’s use 2:1. Then the implication would be that I need to see eight appointments to get four real prospects to get two real proposals to get that one deal.

You can now plug that into the time allocation piece as well because now I know where I need to concentrate my time based on my particular ratios. I recommend starting with working backwards from your goal. There is a piece on my website people can reference about this topic called Working Backwards from Your Goaland it goes toward this notion.

And again the thing I would emphasize is that it is not the same for everybody. Depending on your conversion rates, it will look differently for you than it may look for me.

How do you stay in front of prospects throughout the sales cycle? Do you have any tricks or any automation that you use?

There are automations for sure, and again we go back to the same tools that we use to prospect them, so there is social media. If I know that somebody is active on LinkedIn, I’ll sprinkle some messaging there. If you know they are active on Twitter, then you can do specific searches on Twitter to see what they are talking about or use specific hashtags to make sure that they are aware of you.

And there is still that thing that I know is going out of fashion called the telephone. Voicemail is very effective. It will let the prospect know that I followed through. I did what I committed to do, you are going to see some value in my ability to keep my word and I didn’t really even talk to you.

There is email as well. I use a monthly newsletter, which is another way that 6,000 people will see my name when they receive it. How they interact with it will give me an idea on how I should reach out to them, but this is a passive way for me to stay in front of them.

Obviously selling is a numbers game. You have got to get in front of enough people to get success. But there must be some strategies that you use to increase your closing percentages. Can you share any of those with us?

I think the simplest one, and one that a lot of salespeople are afraid to implement, is working on disqualifying. Everybody in sales talks about qualifying, but if your close ratio is 4:1 that means 3 out of the 4 people that you are talking to are not buying from you. The quicker you can disqualify those people, the more time, energy, and focus you can place on the one that is going to close. Salespeople have this obsession on having a lot of stuff in the pipeline because it makes them feel good, but they need to think of it as an artery that is clogged up and not allowing the good stuff get through.

One of the most efficient things, but not easy for sales people to do, is to disqualify opportunities early on. The reality is that you are going to be presenting less proposals because you are getting rid of the weak ones early (the ones that aren’t going to convert or even take your proposal), but you are going to be left with the good stuff and free from the distractions of those weak ones.

How has the sales process changed over the last 5 years?

It has changed in a number of ways, but also it hasn’t. Looking at marketing automations, sales automations, and things like the social outlets that we have access to that are being utilized more and more, proves that how we sell has definitely changed. Five years ago, not many people were talking about LinkedIn. Now I don’t think you can talk in the business world without it coming up. And that is a mechanism that has shifted, and it has dramatically changed the way we coach, the way we manage and so on.

I think what hasn’t changed is why people buy. The way that we sell and the way that they buy may have changed, but the why of that initial decision to buy or look and what it is that is driving them to actually consider purchasing hasn’t changed that much over the last 5 years. Or even over the last 50 years because most decisions come from our need to make some change in the business that will help us achieve our objectives.

Look at some of the changes and ask how this is going to help me and help my customer through their objectives. You need to think about how you can leverage all the positive changes that have taken place without ever losing sight of why the customer wants to buy in the first place.

Onward Magazine – “Marketing & Sales Strategies That Actually Get Results”

#Sales #Sales Tips

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rebeccahpedersen · 6 years

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Should The Feds Introduce Shared Equity Mortgages?

TorontoRealtyBlog

I absolutely hate doing things twice in life.

But alas, here I am, re-writing this blog, and it hurts twice as bad to know I was all set to get out ahead of this.

That’s it.

Those were the three big ideas.

Sure, some other ideas had been batted around, but do you know which idea was not discussed?

Shared-equity mortgages.

Go ahead, be a liar and say that you saw Tuesday’s announcement coming.

Because only one person that I saw, wrote about this before it came out, and that was Economics Columnist Heather Scoffield of the Toronto Star, who delivered this on Saturday:

“Are Liberals Ready To Take On The Risk Of Shared Equity Mortgages?”

Now there’s another person out there that did have this on the radar: me. Thanks to Heather Scoffield’s article, of course!

But then it DID!

And it ruined my blog.

So let me start over…

Before last week, I hadn’t heard about shared equity mortgages in years.

Literally years.

I had to think back to the last time I read an article, or had a discussion about the idea, and I think it has to have been five or six years.

I asked the guy, “If a company with financial means was interested in making money through real estate, don’t you think there are other vehicles available to them?”

He said, “Because they should want to be involved at a grassroots level.”

“How else are people like me expected to get into the market?”

Good question.

Enter the federal government’s announcement on Tuesday, and we now know.

Pertaining to housing, they released their “strategy” which looked absolutely nothing like what was expected.

Here’s what the government released:

Budget 2019 – An Affordable Place To Call Home

As for the three expected policy changes/announcements:

What else did the government implement?

This is what everybody is going to be talking about:

To help make homeownership more affordable for first-time home buyers, Budget 2019 introduces the First-Time Home Buyer Incentive.

It is expected that approximately 100,000 first-time home buyers would be able to benefit from the Incentive over the next three years.

Well, it finally happened.

The federal government finally went crazy.

Let me start with the obvious: this First Time Buyer Incentive is about votes, and nothing more.

Nothing more, because there’s nothing there!

So…………where are all the $499,000 houses in Toronto and Vancouver?

Smoke and mirrors. That’s what this announcement is.

The headlines will read “LIBERAL GOVERNMENT TO HELP BUYERS” and that’s about as far as most people will look into the matter, before getting back to photos of salads on Instagram.

So in my opinion, the vote-buying will work. Good job, Liberals!

Now as for the actual plan itself, I’m troubled by this in so many ways.

For starters, didn’t the government spend the last two years trying to cool the housing market? Why are they now trying to light it on fire again?

What are the implications of this?

Because now not only is the CMHC insuring mortgages, they’re giving people money for down payments!

Then what?

Because there’s an argument to be made that the government will just eat the debt.

Impossible, right?

Except that in February of 2018, the federal government waived over $200 Million in student loans, marking the third time in four years that it had done so.

This government is great at spending money, even better at taxing, but not so good at collecting money owed.

What in the world is the government thinking – deciding to partner with buyers in the purchase of real estate? As if the CMHC wasn’t already a large enough burden?

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are names that many people know, without actually knowing who they are, and/or what they do.

And we know what happened then…

…Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, and Steve Carell made a movie together.

I bring this up because I think it’s important to differentiate between Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac and the CMHC, but also to be weary of lessons learned.

The CMHC insures mortgages provided by the banks, providing protection in the event of default.

Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac purchased mortgages from the banks to package and re-sell to investors.

There is a difference, and a big one.

Feel free to tell me if you think I’m making a leap here, but I do believe that those of you who think the CMHC is already overburdened will agree.

Now for the last nugget, the government has yet to really explain how any of this is going to work.

Oh, that is sooooooooooooo government!

Make an announcement, and then when somebody asks how you’re going to implement the new policy, just say, “We’ll get back to you on that.”

In another media report, I saw that “full details won’t come out until the fall.”

The fall.

That’s when the election is, right?

So if the Liberals don’t win, then we never get to hear their grand plan for all of this?

Maybe they didn’t actually have a plan to begin with?

Maybe this is just politicking at it’s finest?

Is that about right?

The post Should The Feds Introduce Shared Equity Mortgages? appeared first on Toronto Realty Blog.

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thrashermaxey · 6 years

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Ramblings: Happy Draft Day!, Ottawa, Lehner, Hornqvist, Trocheck – June 22

Happy Draft day!

For a lot of people, this is the culmination of months and sometimes years of work. They don’t just start following a player in his draft year, it starts years prior. It takes hundreds of hours of scouting, reading, reviewing game notes, creating spreadsheets and databases, and more. Congratulations to all those, specifically our writers and editors here at Dobber Prospects, on another year in the books.

We have Dobber Hockey’s own Cam Robinson and Peter Harling down in Texas for the Draft. You can follow their thoughts on Twitter through those links and there will be lots written at both Dobber Hockey and Dobber Prospects in the coming days. I will also be around on draft night discussing any relevant trades that go down. Don’t worry, fantasy hockey fans. We’ll have you covered.

Just a few things to watch on draft day, outside of the actual draft picks:

Carolina may be busy dealing significant roster players

There is lots of talk about Montreal and Buffalo making some sort of substantial deal

Peter Chiarelli seems poised to trade his first rounder again.

There’s been chatter on both Wayne Simmonds and Artemi Panarin though just by my personal feeling the former seems much more likely than the latter.

Of course, Erik Karlsson seems to already have one foot out the door.

There are other minor deals to consider like Los Angeles looking for a scoring winger, the Rangers looking to gather more young pieces, and more. Keep it locked here on Dobber Hockey.

For those who missed it, I wrote on Barry Trotz being hired by the Islanders on Thursday. You can read these thoughts here.

Ottawa GM Pierre Dorion spoke to reporters on Thursday and said, among other things, that the team is likely to keep their draft pick this year. Remember, they owe Colorado their first pick either this year or next year as part of the Matt Duchene trade. If they hold this year’s pick, they have to give their first pick next draft to the Avalanche. If they keep stripping parts off, there’s a good chance they have a lot of lottery balls in 2019. Seems like a dangerous game to play, but then again, not much is making sense from Ottawa these days.

Bob McKenzie says that the Sabres do not appear to be re-signing Robin Lehner this summer which would make him an unrestricted free agent. Linus Ullmark is the heir apparent, but they will also be bringing someone in. What makes sense to me, and it’s just my own personal hunch, but Philipp Grubauer being available from Washington would make sense. He could get a chance to start with Ullmark as a safety net. Just thinking out loud here.

We here in the fantasy hockey community throw the term “peripheral” stats around a lot. I’ve written already this offseason – well, during the postseason mostly – about different peripheral stats targets. There was also a Ramblings on baseline production for goals, assists, and shots that should be read. I recommend reading the sections in both those Ramblings for more detail on figuring out the average production for fantasy-relevant players. They go through how targets have changed over the years and what we should be looking for from each position. To recap, the average targets in a 12-team league that rosters 13 total forwards and 6 total defencemen are:

Forwards: 50 blocks, 128 hits, 52 PIMs, 201 shots

Defencemen: 144 blocks, 151 hits, 54 PIMs, 173 shots

Just how hard is it for a forward to reach each of those marks? And remember: these are average marks for fantasy-relevant forwards in a 12-team league. These aren’t the top-end marks.

There were precisely two forwards who managed at least 50 blocked shots, 128 hits, 52 PIMs, and 201 shots.

Patric Hornqvist – 247 shots, 58 PIMs, 137 hits, 64 blocked shots

It seems like fantasy owners have been waiting forever for Hornqvist to have one of *those* seasons. You know the type of season I mean. The type of season where everything breaks right and he just has monster fantasy production. Consider this: since the start of his first full year in 2009-10, Hornqvist has posted at least 220 shots in every 82-game campaign. And yet, despite eight straight seasons with 220+ shots on goal, he has one 30-goal campaign, and it was exactly 30 goals, and it was his first year of 2009-10. Since, he has seven straight seasons of 220+ shots and under 30 goals, the only player to do so, with Evander Kane and Blake Wheeler managing those marks in five out of seven seasons.

Part of that is health, of course. He had 29 goals in 2017-18 but missed 12 games. He had a 25-goal season in 2014-15 but missed 18 games. Anywhere close to full seasons in either of those and he probably breaks 30.

It’s not necessarily his production that he’s drafted for in roto leagues, however. Since donning the Pittsburgh uniform, he’s been a stats beast. Remember that he wasn’t a big contributor in the hits category back in Nashville. In fact, his four highest hit-total seasons are all with the Penguins. He had more hits in 2016-17 than he had in the three seasons from 2009-2012 combined.

The concerns are two-fold.

The first is health. He’s proven he can still put up very stout totals even with just 70 or so games played but a net-front, grinding type of player going into his age-32 season is a worry. Until we see the decline, though, I wouldn’t worry about him missing 8-10 games.

Second is the power play. When he missed time last year, Jake Guentzel was the one who stepped up. Now, it’s nothing to do with Hornqvist’s performance on the PP. He was exceptional. But if he misses 10 games again and Guentzel keeps firing PP tallies, does Hornqvist get his job back? It’s not something I’m overly worried with right now, just something to keep in mind.

As long as fantasy owners are fine with 70 games for Hornqvist, I don’t see much reason to expect a drop-off in performance. Draft him as you normally would.

Vincent Trocheck – 287 shots on goal, 54 PIMs, 145 hits, 55 blocked shots

The evolution of Trocheck’s fantasy value is really something. He was a third-round pick in 2011 who spent four years in the OHL and parts of two seasons in the AHL. None of his numbers at any level screamed 30 goals and 70 points in the NHL. And yet, here we are in June of 2018 with Trocheck having reached both of those marks.

I remember a few years ago after his 50-game season that he split with the AHL some people in the Dobber forums glowing about his potential real-time stat value. I did not see it and boy was I wrong. He now has three straight seasons of at least 125 hits, 40 blocked shots, and 40 PIMs. Those numbers will play in multi-cat leagues.

It’s the shots that are really something to behold. He’s nearly doubled his shots per game from 2014-15 (1.78) to 2017-18 (3.50). His TOI per game going up 50 percent is certainly a part of that but he’s increased his shots/60 at five-on-five every season as well. It’s just been a natural progression of a player who was unheralded just getting better and better every year.

If I have one concern it’s the TOI. I would assume that the coaching staff prefer not to have to play their top two centres 22 minutes a night. The addition of Mike Hoffman could allow them to lengthen the lineup as Jared McCann turns into a viable third-line centre. Trocheck should still be a big minutes guy, but maybe it’s 20 a night instead of 21:30? It would hurt his numbers across the board, but not enough to avoid him.

Even if the production falls off a bit to, say, 25 goals and 40 assists, there is more than enough production in other categories for Trocheck to remain one of the elite forwards in multi-cat leagues.

Conversely, just how hard is it for a defenceman to reach each of the marks outlined above? There was exactly one defenceman to manage each of those targets.

Darnell Nurse – 194 shots on goal, 67 PIMs, 161 hits, 153 blocked shots

It took a couple years and some development for Nurse to get there, but man did he have a very good season. Not only by our fantasy measurements, but look how well he performed in the sample below (about a third of the season) compared to another Alberta defenceman considered to be among the top puck-movers in the NHL in terms of zone entries, exits, and other metrics (viz from CJ Turtoro):

Just as an aside, it makes me wonder if the Oilers know what they have in their defencemen. Nurse was excellent this year. Oscar Klefbom had a down year but he played hurt all season and generally grades out every well. Adam Larsson will forever be linked to Taylor Hall but he’s fine as a second-pair guy. Andrej Sekera just needs to stay healthy. Go get some good third-pair guys and see what they can do. And yet they are looking to trade a top-10 pick for another defenceman. Curious indeed.

Aside from all that, I have no worries about Nurse being able to replicate what he did this year. His underlying metrics are too strong for him to fall off the map. The concern would be progression because they seem determined not to hand over the team to he and Klefbom. In that sense, I don’t think we see a point production explosion from Nurse anytime soon. Can he be a 30-point guy? Sure. 40 points? Not so sure.

With his peripheral production, though, it doesn’t matter. As long as he stays physical and keeps doing what he did by his metrics in 2017-18, he’ll be just fine in multi-cat leagues. I will never help but wonder what he could do if he actually got the chance to run a power-play unit though. They should at least see if he can handle it before parting with more valuable assets.

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-happy-draft-day-ottawa-lehner-hornqvist-trocheck-june-22/

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