Hope you all have nice plans with your family this long week-end; don't forget what the holiday is all about!

I've been working on our next CD Mortgage Lesson "Commercial in a Nutshell" pretty much all week, and finishing up our June 1st free Secret! University newsletter as well. Considering how slow things have been - I've been able to devote plenty of time to both. I don't think our May tuition revenue will end up as poor as April, but it's going to be a close call. My other friends in the training sector are having a difficult time also, as is the entire industry - if only industry personnel realized we ARE our Brother's Keeper and need to do all things possible to influence others to live up to a high ethical standard, and maintain their integrity in the face of potential big commissions, we all wouldn't be facing this terrible business slow-down.

I had a great experience earlier this week with a small/medium sized mortgage brokerage operation out of Madison WI. We were first contacted by one of the senior partner/owners about mortgage professional certification (our CMP Program) for he, his partner, and their sales manager. He had explained they had hunted the Internet and found only those which were fluff, and was hoping ours had substance. Well Bingo - it sure does I explained to him!

I told him on the phone we provide lesson materials to cover the range of subjects that a true CMP would/should know, then we TEST the candidates to determine if they understood the material covered and can score 80% or higher score on a one hour timed e-mailed test.

What made the experience delightful for me, was that he was first - scored a Home Run 100%! Next his sales manager took the exam, and he was eager to see how his score stacked up againt the other two, both in actual score percentage and answer quality! A real competitor that one.

Turns out all three passed and did quite well - I only told my initial contact (the senior partner) how everybody else did, so he can tell them if he wants -- their Certificates should arrive at their office in the morning, so they can hang them in their lobbby. Today their website already shows our CMP designation by the names of all three of them!

Great job guys!

I know I have previously mentioned my oldest boy (who's gonna be 40 years old on the 19th), works at Dreamworks. He gave me this screen shot from the upcoming SHREK 3 ... I guess he's now going to be famous.














Thought you might like to see a picture of him as well.

Well, all the festivities are finally done and over; yesterday was my Birthday - Thank You for the kind calls and e-mails I received from some of you. I also got several from friends and family, was taken to dinner and a Dodger game, taken to lunch and Spiderman 3, received some lovely flowers for my coffee table, got a nice framed photo of my brother, our Dad, and me (it's about 12 years old - Dad would be 100 May 22nd!) - had a great birthday! Then last night my brother comes over and brings me a 20" flat screen TV, which he plops atop my entertainment center (just above my main DirecTV and hooks up an inside antenna - rabbit ears!). Over at his house, he's got one of those 60" screens (or maybe it's 72"?)and 4 or five other TVs all in his entertainment center wall unit. He frequently has them ALL going while he watches a half dozen sporting events at once, yep he's a koook!

Anyhow, seems like the subprime wholesalers explosions are losing some steam, probably only a handful left to implode - business continues to be sloooooow out there with only pockets of 'mild' activity. Most wholesale funding source survivers are moving away from loan products that were always foolish to offer customers in the first place; Thank heavens!

We've got a new Mentor/Teacher (who's an actual legend over at Mortgage Grapevine), going to add his BIO and Resume to our Mentor page this week - I expect 'MAC' will bring in some good traffic to our site and hopefully some students to him (since he lost his AE job last week). I met him (and Old Hand - AKA Al Gore) 3 Summer's ago, when I held a Live Class in Atlanta. Both real nice guys and pretty sharp too!

So there I was, driving to pick up my Brother at the Queen Mary (where he has a couple of retail businesses) then on to the Dodger game (nearby just beyond downtown Los Angeles) - a short 50+ mile one way trip in rush hour traffic! Game time 7:10pm.

We're listening to Rick Monday (Dodger radio announcer and former Dodger outfielder) on the car radio, as he tells us - after we have been in the several blocks long line before you get to enter the parking lot - that the Game is SOLD OUT! We of course were going to buy our tickets at the Gate and ya know what? There was only ONE GUY selling tickets on the street and he was 10 blocks back! So we drove down the hill to Phillipe's (the 100 year old restaurant where french dip sandwich's were invented)had some dinner (my 900th time to go there) then on home, all the while the Terrible pitcher WOLFE (who the team touts as one of the new starters this year and a good one) proceeds to give up 6 runs and 10 hits, all the while the manager leaves him in 5+ innings! As I'm SCREAMING AT THE RADIO IN THE CAR TO TAKE HIM OUT! This year that pither, and the first string third baseman Wilsom Betemet BOTH need to be dumped dowm to AAA ball - what's the phrase? Oh yea, they SUCK! We've got a hotshot named Valdez who's great both on offense AND defense - who has out shined Betemet every single time they've played him ... my thinking is both Wolf and Betemet must have 'something' on someone higher up in the Dodger organization, who is protecting their jobs!

We're gonna go to the afternoon game tomorrow instead (to celebrate Siete de Mayo - my upcoming birthday)... now that WOLFE knocked us out of first place.

Our May newsletter got out this morning and I've just finished my review of our website's April stats ... after a lot of SEO done in April, our unique visitor numbers were up more than 20% in April! I liked that.