Some questions for Ollie about Singing Pig ....

[Vanessa]

Hi Ollie,

I am a big advocate of Singing Pig (despite DB banning me!). I learned so much from the people on there who have more experience than me, and also made many new property friends who I value tremendously.

Seeing as how you are a trail blazer when it comes to forums, I was wondering if you would mind answering a few questions for us?

1. What gave you the idea to start SP forum seven years ago? What was your vision for it?

2. Did you have a platform custom-designed or did you use a generic one?

3. How did you generate groundswell in the early days of the forum?

4. How did you monetise the forum, or was that something that developed over time?

5. What were the biggest challenges you faced with running the forum?

6. Did being a forum owner help add credibility to your personal brand?

7. Why did you sell SP and was there anything in the timing of the sale?

8. You rarely appear on SP now. Why is that?

9. What are you doing now?

10. Do you have an opinion on the future of SP and how it has become orientated towards deals and leads selling rather than discussion?

I really take my hat off to you for creating such a vibrant community and selling it on. You must be very proud of what you have achieved.

[Ollie Cornes (Juicy Property)]

Hi Vanessa,

Thank you for your kind words. I'm happy to talk about it, here we go...

1. Much of the driver in my life has been some non-life-threatening, manageable, but chronic, challenges with my health. These things make us question our values and priorities - they are a gift if we let them be. "Rich Dad Poor Dad" led me to learn about assets, cash-flow and building businesses - although I had previously run a dotcom/VC-funded business (it failed), that book crystalised many ideas for me. I needed to meet like-minded people to share ideas and learn, and out of some meet-ups in London, and chats online, connecting with people like Lisa Orme, I set up Singing Pig as a social venture - there was no intention in the early years to build a business out of it - I just wanted mutual-sharing. In 2002 I was scouring the web to find books or courses or articles on property investment and landlording, and there was almost nothing there.

2. Technology - build-or-buy - the eternal question I've been searching for an answer to for longer than I can remember. My thinking continues to evolve, but at this point I believe that buying a software platform is likely to be better than building your own AS LONG AS the platform is extensible and open and you have ownership of the data (ability to get a copy). It's far quicker, and users benefit from a far wider range of features. Choosing a platform remains a difficult decision (it's hard to undo), hopefully it will get easier as more apps move to the cloud and interconnect. Singing Pig started on MSN Groups (to migrate away from here we had to screen-scrape the content off each page with custom software - ugly, but it worked), it then moved to a proprietary forum platform, and then moved again to another, much better platform, later on. The migrations were painful, for me at least, but I think they worked out in the end.

3. I remained active in the forums, I was interested in what others thought and were doing, I felt passionate about the community as it grew. Looking back I think there was a mutual sense that we all wanted to learn, and I listened to what people wanted from the forum and tried to deliver that. There was some luck in there too. For a while I had business cards with "Pig Daddy" on them, and it was a bit of a joke, but I did hold a kind of sense of paternalism, to encourage learning, to deter the idiots, to nurture the community.

4. I didn't press the monetisation very much, that was a side-benefit, and made sure costs were covered. If it was all about the money the ads would have been a lot more intrusive. It was about meeting people. We all know that landlords are often solitary workers - cabin-fever can set in, and lots of us (me included) relished the communication. Singing Pig was there at the right time really, Buy To Let was exploding, and there was a thirst for knowledge. To be honest if I wanted to build an income business, I wouldn't set up a content/community site, it's hard work for limited returns (as Rupert Murdoch is finding out on a larger scale). If the owner has a product/service they can promote on it, that's often a different matter...

5. The cowards who libelled people & companies behind the mask of anonymity, and the lawyers acting for their (often scumbag) clients. Mishcon de Reya had a dig once (you can probably guess who their client was) - they were so aggressive it was like being in a movie, but I had to admire their solid understanding of the law and technology (many lawyers who came at me were strangely clueless). Ironically I often felt like "piggie in the middle" - someone posts libellous comments in the forum, but the lawyers came after me - it was boring, and time-consuming.

6. Yes, I think it has, but as an (admittedly confident) introvert, that has limited appeal.

7. I sold it as I wanted to focus on other projects, I was working too hard, I was spread too thin. The timing worked for me, it took some pressure off, though I hope the new owner has benefited from it since - there were certainly days afterwards when I had mixed-feelings about the sale.

8. I decided back in 2007 that I wasn't prepared to continue working such long hours, and my community activities were a casualty - I focused on buying property, on building a business around that, improving the management of my properties. I continued to network, and still do, but much has been with smaller communities through people I know.

9. I'm a property guy, but I have just as much passion for technology. It was natural that I fuse the two, and so for a number of years I've managed my portfolio using a scalable software platform that I evolved specifically for that purpose - I rather over-engineered it for one landlord, but it brought me great pleasure to build what didn't seem to exist on the market. I'd been asked on quite a number of occasions why I was not making it available to others to use, but I resisted - too busy, would other landlords find it useful, how to solve the technical hurdles to re-sell, etc. But I came around eventually and so this year I'm bringing it to market - opening myself up to the views of the landlord masses. It's designed specifically for landlords (not agents - so it isn't missing essential features to manage mortgage debt, valuations, equity, cash flow, buildings insurance, leasehold etc etc) and it is a cloud-based app, so secure, easy to access, a 30day free trial, no backups, no software to install, mobile access, free upgrades, and instead of a large up-front payment, it'll just be a small monthly fee. It's not commercially available yet, there is no web site yet, the service is in a small private trial. Like Singing Pig, there will be a community element, and landlords can vote on features they'd like added - democratic software, if you like. I'd love your feedback Vanessa & Nick - if you think it might be useful to you, let me know and I'll add you to the next trial phase.

10. There was some pressure before I sold it to expand this facility, or charge for it as a service, and I admit I resisted it, but I think since I let go of the business the market has changed a great deal. One of the challenges with any community/group is that ultimately the "owner" has limited control over how people use it, and BMV became the core focus for a great number of people - that "gold-rush" changed the nature of the community. To twist the old phrase "Cash-out is vanity, cash flow is sanity" :-)

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to think through some of these questions, I've not considered some of them before. 2002 seems like a very long time ago!

Ollie

[Tony C]

How fascinating! An insight from the founder [co-founder?] of what was [in it's day] arguably the best property forum known to man kind! Superb.

I've heard it is now being sold again. Can anyone shed any light on this?



Ollie Cornes (Juicy Property) said:

Hi Vanessa,

Thank you for your kind words. I'm happy to talk about it, here we go...

1. Much of the driver in my life has been some non-life-threatening, manageable, but chronic, challenges with my health. These things make us question our values and priorities - they are a gift if we let them be. "Rich Dad Poor Dad" led me to learn about assets, cash-flow and building businesses - although I had previously run a dotcom/VC-funded business (it failed), that book crystalised many ideas for me. I needed to meet like-minded people to share ideas and learn, and out of some meet-ups in London, and chats online, connecting with people like Lisa Orme, I set up Singing Pig as a social venture - there was no intention in the early years to build a business out of it - I just wanted mutual-sharing. In 2002 I was scouring the web to find books or courses or articles on property investment and landlording, and there was almost nothing there.

2. Technology - build-or-buy - the eternal question I've been searching for an answer to for longer than I can remember. My thinking continues to evolve, but at this point I believe that buying a software platform is likely to be better than building your own AS LONG AS the platform is extensible and open and you have ownership of the data (ability to get a copy). It's far quicker, and users benefit from a far wider range of features. Choosing a platform remains a difficult decision (it's hard to undo), hopefully it will get easier as more apps move to the cloud and interconnect. Singing Pig started on MSN Groups (to migrate away from here we had to screen-scrape the content off each page with custom software - ugly, but it worked), it then moved to a proprietary forum platform, and then moved again to another, much better platform, later on. The migrations were painful, for me at least, but I think they worked out in the end.

3. I remained active in the forums, I was interested in what others thought and were doing, I felt passionate about the community as it grew. Looking back I think there was a mutual sense that we all wanted to learn, and I listened to what people wanted from the forum and tried to deliver that. There was some luck in there too. For a while I had business cards with "Pig Daddy" on them, and it was a bit of a joke, but I did hold a kind of sense of paternalism, to encourage learning, to deter the idiots, to nurture the community.

4. I didn't press the monetisation very much, that was a side-benefit, and made sure costs were covered. If it was all about the money the ads would have been a lot more intrusive. It was about meeting people. We all know that landlords are often solitary workers - cabin-fever can set in, and lots of us (me included) relished the communication. Singing Pig was there at the right time really, Buy To Let was exploding, and there was a thirst for knowledge. To be honest if I wanted to build an income business, I wouldn't set up a content/community site, it's hard work for limited returns (as Rupert Murdoch is finding out on a larger scale). If the owner has a product/service they can promote on it, that's often a different matter...

5. The cowards who libelled people & companies behind the mask of anonymity, and the lawyers acting for their (often scumbag) clients. Mishcon de Reya had a dig once (you can probably guess who their client was) - they were so aggressive it was like being in a movie, but I had to admire their solid understanding of the law and technology (many lawyers who came at me were strangely clueless). Ironically I often felt like "piggie in the middle" - someone posts libellous comments in the forum, but the lawyers came after me - it was boring, and time-consuming.

6. Yes, I think it has, but as an (admittedly confident) introvert, that has limited appeal.

7. I sold it as I wanted to focus on other projects, I was working too hard, I was spread too thin. The timing worked for me, it took some pressure off, though I hope the new owner has benefited from it since - there were certainly days afterwards when I had mixed-feelings about the sale.

8. I decided back in 2007 that I wasn't prepared to continue working such long hours, and my community activities were a casualty - I focused on buying property, on building a business around that, improving the management of my properties. I continued to network, and still do, but much has been with smaller communities through people I know.

9. I'm a property guy, but I have just as much passion for technology. It was natural that I fuse the two, and so for a number of years I've managed my portfolio using a scalable software platform that I evolved specifically for that purpose - I rather over-engineered it for one landlord, but it brought me great pleasure to build what didn't seem to exist on the market. I'd been asked on quite a number of occasions why I was not making it available to others to use, but I resisted - too busy, would other landlords find it useful, how to solve the technical hurdles to re-sell, etc. But I came around eventually and so this year I'm bringing it to market - opening myself up to the views of the landlord masses. It's designed specifically for landlords (not agents - so it isn't missing essential features to manage mortgage debt, valuations, equity, cash flow, buildings insurance, leasehold etc etc) and it is a cloud-based app, so secure, easy to access, a 30day free trial, no backups, no software to install, mobile access, free upgrades, and instead of a large up-front payment, it'll just be a small monthly fee. It's not commercially available yet, there is no web site yet, the service is in a small private trial. Like Singing Pig, there will be a community element, and landlords can vote on features they'd like added - democratic software, if you like. I'd love your feedback Vanessa & Nick - if you think it might be useful to you, let me know and I'll add you to the next trial phase.

10. There was some pressure before I sold it to expand this facility, or charge for it as a service, and I admit I resisted it, but I think since I let go of the business the market has changed a great deal. One of the challenges with any community/group is that ultimately the "owner" has limited control over how people use it, and BMV became the core focus for a great number of people - that "gold-rush" changed the nature of the community. To twist the old phrase "Cash-out is vanity, cash flow is sanity" :-)

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to think through some of these questions, I've not considered some of them before. 2002 seems like a very long time ago!

Ollie

[Marcus]

Ollie: Agree with Tony, great read and very insightful. Thanks for taking the time to share, much appreciated.

Tony: Assuming the time stamp on your post is correct then you must have posted this around 3am. What's that about? I’m picturing you strung out on excessive amounts of stimulants while listening to Marvin Gaye’s:

♫ I Heard It Through the Grapevine ♫

Very impressive if you’re right concerning Singing Pig, you connected so and so you.

Marcus

[Vanessa]

Ollie, thank you so much for taking the time to give such indepth and considered answers. As Tony says, it's fascinating!
"Cash-out is vanity, cash flow is sanity" - LOVE IT! Says it all.

It seems to me that a lot of people have used SP (for selling) and not contributed anything back to the community by way of discussion or conversation. It is getting quieter by the day as the "gold rush" is over and people are gradually realising that NMD is dead in the water. I think that SP had become known (after you sold it) as the NMD forum.

I'll be in touch privately as Nick and I would love to meet up with you and find out more about your new venture.

[REI]

No idea if SingingPig is being sold. Based on some system failures and a lack of support I think they are having their problems. It almost feels like no one is running the site so it is just drifting.

If anyone knows better speak up. My account was changed, blocked or corrupted about 4 weeks ago. No warning, no replies from support of David Beard. Hard to say what exactly happened. Given prior weeks of problems with other aspects of the site something is up.

John Corey
Follow me on Twitter -> www.twitter.com/john_corey
www.ChelseaPrivateEquity.com/blog

Tony C said:

How fascinating! An insight from the founder [co-founder?] of what was [in it's day] arguably the best property forum known to man kind! Superb.

I've heard it is now being sold again. Can anyone shed any light on this?

[Ollie Cornes (Juicy Property)]

Thanks all for kind words, glad my ramble was interesting. One of the big blessings in my work life was to have a spectacular business failure, it was a great leveller for me - it puts get-rich-quick in perspective. It's sad in some ways that as the market has turned (and BMV became more difficult) that it changes communities. I seem to remember warren buffet made a comment about how when the tide goes out you find out who's wearing swimming costumes, and really creating a supportive, nurturing, growing community is much easier in a bubble of blind-excitement than it is when things are tough. In its early days I nearly signed up with Inside Track, I certainly got carried along by the excitement as much as others. Another quote I saw recently referred to women in particular but seems universally applicable - people are like teabags - we find out how strong they are when put in hot water!

Nick, Vanessa, would be great to meet up.

Ollie

PS Not sure what's going on with SP, though perhaps DB is just on holiday.

[Vanessa]

With Ollie's permission, I posted this interview as a blog on the business networking site ecademy this morning.

A lovely lady by the name of Lisa Bakker commented on the blog, and I thought her insights so valuable that I wanted to share them with the Tribe.

You can read the ecademy comment here.

Hi Vanessa,

Thanks for putting this up, very inspirational...

these are the points for me of tremendous value:

@Much of the driver in my life has been some non-life-threatening, manageable, but chronic, challenges with my health.
Accepting & acknowledging his physical condition freed the way to allow his creativity to be ignited. (my take on it)

@ I just wanted mutual-sharing.
the foundation of the new economy ..soooo cool

@but at this point I believe that buying a software platform is likely to be better than building your own AS LONG AS the platform is extensible and open and you have ownership of the data (ability to get a copy)
The major reason for economic worldwide war; ownership of data/codes....but there's a new opponent entering the field... already on track, moving forward..
the Establishement, is doing everything to conserve their status quo of power...won't work..Forces are from within THE PEOPLE....1,574 million internet users....the biggest "consumer" group ever in the history of mankind!!!


@to migrate away from here we had to screen-scrape the content off each page with custom software - ugly, but it worked
Dilligence is the way forward in the new economy....Ollie shows one of the basics: overruling the procedure-centric approach moving towards the client centric approach...
he's shown it can be done, other show it can be done...this is the (emotion) fuel needed for the millions to catch on and moving in the direction of the tipping point


@The cowards who libelled people & companies behind the mask of anonymity
The players on the battlefield of the war on economic conservatism.....defend and ye shall........
ultimately be left behind ......

@Looking back I think there was a mutual sense that we all wanted to learn, and I listened to what people wanted from the forum and tried to deliver that
The other camp, the (co) creators. Ditch the rules, nurture the relationships. Stop issuing orders, start asking questions.
No longer a contest/conquest, but the 3 C's communication, conversation and Co-creation

And about learning:
survival comes from destructing the old models of fitting in and being trained to obey and follow the norm. Huge price we've paid, this is the wake up call for excellence, we want to learn, because that's the only food of the brain AND the HEART

@I was interested in what others thought and were doing.
the new paradigm....fed up with bein taught to color inside the lines.....care is a heart thing, not a mind-model.. people are catching on

@One of the challenges with any community/group is that ultimately the "owner" has limited control over how people use it
A call to focus on creating and fascilitating leadership instead of obedient sheeple.

tnx again Vanessa (and Ollie )

[Ollie Cornes (Juicy Property)]

Interesting responses. I also get very excited about the opportunities for the Internet. In 1991 I got my first email address and I wondered why everyone didn't have one, but people told me I was just a geek and to go be geeky somewhere else! Now, I see something similar with Twitter and other media, though to be fair these newer tools are a little harder to get to grips with. In particular it has been suggested the reason the young-uns don't use Twitter much is because it takes patience and time to build a network and value with it. It's actually quite boring tweeting to no-one at the start.

Events in Iran, and others (covered well in Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody) make it quite clear that this new era of open, real-time communication will change far more than just the music industry. Try and control as much as you like Mr Geffen, but ultimately control fails in a new Internet-based democracy where people are much more tuned into REAL value. It should be no surprise that the clued up bands - Madonna, U2, etc are staging these enormous shows, they realise that will become their primary income source as CDs and downloads generate less revenue.

I always tried to listen carefully to what was requested of Singing Pig (which incidentally has a full-page ad on the back of the latest Your Property Network mag) but ultimately someone has to lead, and any organisation run entirely by committee will end up creating a monster, but it's the ability to listen, communicate and learn together that is so powerful. My upcoming property-management system has a section called "Ideas" which is a kind of noticeboard for people to make suggestions for improvements, and they can be voted upon. I think this kind of Democratic Software will become far more common - Starbucks is doing it, Dell is doing it, and many others through Twitter. Perhaps a little less need for focus groups now to see what people want, just listen in on the constant social media chatter, iterate the product, and go back to market with something better.

With any chance there are downsides though, and I admit concern at the loss of privacy. It's quite possible now to meet someone and know rather a lot about them beforehand simply by looking them up on social networking sites. It puts us at a little more risk of identity theft (if we're not careful) and is an enormous shift in how we humans live and interact, but overall I feel optimistic about the changes. As Spiderman's Dad said, "with great power, comes great responsibility" :-)

[LisaOrme]

The Ecademy thread dropped into our Google alerts yesterday – isn’t the web amazing!

I just wanted to add to this story and reinforce the whole power of the web thing; Ollie and I actually met on Robert Kiyosaki’s forum! Remember Ollie?

There wasn’t any forums in the Uk at the time and Ollie and I both had the same idea to check out RK’s website and forum after reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad. This is where the SP name originates from too.

I remember saying to Ollie we could do with something like this but UK based and before I knew it Singing Pig was born on MSN. I’m proud to say that other than Ollie’s first post of ‘test’ that I put the first post on SP! I think it was about wraps or how bad off plan deals were – one or the other!

I kept it in my favourites folder long after we migrated as there were some fab posts on there. It is such a shame that MSN closed the old forums – even if you can’t post its shame we can’t see all that valuable content as the market we all entered back then wasn’t a million miles from the one we are in now. Finance wasn’t as easy to come by, deals were harder to find and creative strategies were much needed. What a shame the people new to today’s market can’t see all that valuable information. But time moves on.

Other forums like Streetwise and a few others were around by now but SP was the main forum for property investors and Ollie will always be the one who gave a lot of people a head start in their property careers whatever they are.

You’re a star Ollie!

By the way how’s your dog? Every time I see a dog with 3 legs I think of you and that wonderful post you put on the AQS forum – you should repeat it here if you have it. Vanessa would love it.

Kindest regards, Lisa x

[Ollie Cornes (Juicy Property)]

Hey Lisa!

Yes, I do remember we originally talked on richdad.com, and SP was really to continue conversations like we were having, and to make them more UK-focused. I needed somewhere to hang out where people didn't bang on about assumed mortgages!

I did migrate the posts from the old forum to the new one, but there were a lot, it's quite possible some where missed. I had a quick look and the oldest posts I can see are 2003 http://www.singingpig.co.uk/forums/21/ShowForum.aspx?PageIndex=112&... It does look like the MSN ones either didn't come across, or are somewhere else in SP. The mists of time...

Oh, my gorgeous old dog, sweet of you to mention him. Sad to say he passed along last year, the poor thing was only three and a half, but he had a good life (a true dog's life!) and he brought enormous pleasure. Probably the most personally satisfying "return" on any of my property activities - free wonderful dog with house purchase. Buddy the three-legged weimaraner will always be missed - these furry creatures really do get into our hearts. I had a look for the post but can't find it for some reason. He was always a reminder to me of the simple things in life, the free ones, the ones that often bring the greatest pleasures.

Ollie

[LisaOrme]

Oh Ollie I'm so sorry to hear about Buddy. He'll be bounding around that big beach in the sky no doubt :-) Our pets don't judge us and don't care if you're carrying a few extra pounds or have spots! They love us anyway... if only humans were the same...

LOL re assumed mortgages - maybe one day...

KR, Lisa