Meta Monday: Site Redesign

Being fortunate enough to have a weekend without open houses or clients to take out, I canceled all social obligations and hid from the heat wave in my apartment. It gave me the time and mental energy to do something I’ve been postponing for ages: organize my website.

Over the past year and a half I have written 80 posts and published one guest submission, which took me completely by surprise when I actually went through it all. But nothing was organized, and my site was mostly used as a catch-all for links that I shared via social or newsletters. This weekend I went through each post to add tags and categories; separated out my site into resources for Tenants (and, to a lesser extent, landlords), Buyers, and Sellers; answered FAQ’s for each aforementioned group for easy reference; added an Events page; updated my contact, bio, and testimonials; and set up an index (by topic) and archive (by date). Jury’s still out on how best to include my recent transactions, but that’s coming….eventually.

Going through everything also allowed me to assess where I need more content and think about the scope of annaklenkar.com going forward. This site is not a 100% “how to” guide, so I’ve tried to answer most basic questions up front, then pointed interested parties to further reading related to (but not directly answering) each question. Because I want this to be helpful if you’re looking for a quick answer, but also enjoyable if you want to read something random about my feelings towards Amazon and LIC or what the Gateway program is. Think of it as a combination of the Real Estate and Opinion sections of the NY Times (but with no editors or oversight and I’m not an NYT-level writer).

If you have any feedback, other additions you’d like to see, or want to scold me for spending 18 hours on my computer on a sunny day, you know I always want to hear from you.

Now go exploring!

xo

Anna

Meta Monday - No Trash Policy

I've now been in this business for nearly two months, and in that time I've done my first deal, sent out my first newsletter, had my first listing presentation, gotten my first buy-side client, and learned so much more than I expected by this point in the game. I've also been given a lot of excellent advice from other Compass agents, including one who asked me what my niche is, and recommended that I find some way to specialize, whether that means specific neighborhoods, price points, or something else.

Of course I went with "something else." 

As a longtime resident of Harlem, I'm obviously familiar with that neighborhood, but I love BK and LES and Chinatown and would never want to limit myself to one neighborhood. I'm currently working on low-to-mid-budget tenant-side rentals, but am also in talks to buy and sell at a $2 million price point; I don't want to give up either side of this and limit myself to only working with one type of property.

But after firing my first client and then immediately having a wonderful experience with my first deal, I started thinking. I have worked a lot of client and customer service jobs, and it often involves dealing with people who think that because they are paying they are entitled to treating you like garbage. I've been screamed at, insulted, threatened, and harassed, with zero recourse. When it hit me that I no longer have to tolerate any of that, because I am my own boss now and make the ultimate decision whether or not to work with someone, I realized what my niche could be. 

I'm not in this business to make $500 million dollars a year. I'm in this business to help people find their homes and have control over my own work/life balance. Taking on a client who is mean, disrespectful, or lies (haven't had this experience yet thankfully!) just because they have money would be unfair to my other clients, because it would take a disproportionate amount of my energy, and would be thinking transactionally rather than long-term. 

I already knew that I was going to be a low-paper-waste agent, because every time I get a flyer or unwanted magazine in the mail I am furious at the wasted resources that went into sending me pre-garbage. In my humble opinion, the ROI on mailers will never be high enough to justify spending trees on physical spam. I also knew that people reacted very positively to the picture of my lying in garbage and #Garbougie tag. So saying "I won't bullshit you if you don't bullshit me," and only working with people who agree to this relationship, is the final piece of the no-trash puzzle. 

<3

Anna