Thanks to Rachael and Lou at PERL Mortgage, I’m now in the know that CNBC is calling the 00’s “The Bubble Decade.” Though I think the Bubble Decade is probably a great moniker, I’m wondering if we can do better, guys. What about the iPod Decade — even better, the Clickwheel Decade? This was, really, the decade of the clickwheel. Wasn’t the iPod boom bigger than the housing boom? And the iPod’s bubble hasn’t burst; rather it transition into the iPhone. Ah, technology summaries. Japan refers to the ’90’s as the Lost Decade. Maybe the Spiraling Decade is a better term. The Dirty Jeans Decade. The Bush Years. The Decade of the 3-1-1 Liquids and Gels. Bubble’s Good. Sham-Wow’s Better.

One thing that I love about the holidays is the concept of the world going offline for a couple of days or three or four. This year, with Christmas Eve on a Thursday, it seemed as if lots of folks were softening their schedules starting on Monday, and what a delight it was. My inbox was surprisingly empty, as if the concept of the “inbox” became the Ten’s version of the freelancer’s mind / body / soul which must be periodically emptied and sharpened after times of total “crazy busy-ness.” If you’re a freelancer or if you work a few jobs, as I do, you know that there’s really little “down time” in your life of 9 to 5 freedom. Response time, speed and follow-through is often a freelancer’s best method of origination and client retention, and it’s only during times like “the holidays” that the nomads can really turn it off and breathe for a few days. It’s as if “the holidays” is becoming an annual stateside land-locked retreat opportunity, much like when you’re flying on a plan (which, if Richard Branson has his way, will soon stop becoming a 2-hour safe haven free of incoming pings). Freelancing is full of contradiction: people want to be free of the regular corporate life but require it’s existence to pay the bills. People want to work from home, yet working at home quickly blends work life and home life into one big mesh of worky-livvy jello. I wonder if the key to true productivity is to redefine what it means to be “productive” — I think it’s perfectly fine to do 3x the amount of work in a third of the time, and to spend the remaining 2/3 of that time training for the big race or planning the next “fun only” project. It’s easy to fill that remaining time with more work, especially if you’re addicted to working, because it’s (not surprisingly) fun. But forcing yourself to “not work” might make the actual work more fun — and might allow everyone to invite-in the right kind of work. And not the filler kind of work.

PERL President Ken Perlmutter joined me for the 2nd annual year in review on the PERL Mortgage Podcast. Over the past year, the mortgage industry has gone through an ocean’s worth of sea changes from tighter lending guidelines to new government-sponsored homeowner tax breaks to a pretty solid image crisis. Ken’s an innovative business owner, and he knows how to adjust his company to changes in market conditions while staying true to core values. With a new decade around the corner, we’re seeing a number of big and small business owners (some of whom are clients) work to not only “save” current business, but to quickly shore-up resources and mindshare to prepare for a new landscape of business trends and expectations. 2010 will be a year in which more people go back to banks and bigger independent lenders, not because they’re better, but because people tend to trust vaults and multiple offices and big annual volume. I think the name of the game will be reputation, trust, and bedside manners. So often, people get busy in the financial business and forget to pay attention people and to answer questions and to know that the general population doesn’t need to swim in Jargon River. Education always wins in the end. For more ep’s of the podcast, visit the PERL archives.

PERL Podcast 46 / 2009 In Review