THE BASIS POINT

The Basis Point Turns 10 Today

 

Today I celebrate the 10th anniversary of buying the domain for The Basis Point. Back then, the mortgage industry had gone down the tubes a few months before. In August 2007 to be specific, when one event triggered the global financial crisis (10th anniversary post of that event here).

For years until that point, I had been writing a weekly email newsletter for clients and partners. It was usually about two paragraphs, one on the major rate market topics of the week and one on deal structure or loan guideline tips. I sent it Fridays and it was designed to give real estate agents plain English talking points for the weekend, but then clients started asking for it too.

When the crisis hit in August 2007, I expanded the weekly email into a full piece for a few weeks to explain what was going on in markets. Here’s that piece from August 8, 2007 (look at the mortgage rates at that time, OMFG!). It spread at the time, and I did a few more like that in the ensuing weeks of market chaos, which also spread.

I realized people really needed concise explanations of extremely complex market matters, especially then. Until that time, CNBC very popular but was just a complicit market cheerleader, and when markets went South, the blogs were the best places for rundowns of what was going on.

So I came up with The Basis Point brand and bought the URL on this day 10 years ago, then hired my developer Alex off Craig’s list two weeks later, and got to work building the site and designing the brand.

Here is the first-ever logo draft I did with my friend and longtime creative partner Dennis Pettigrew. It started with the concept that a basis point is .01 percent so we made the oi in point into .01.

It wasn’t artistic enough for us so we went with a concept of the mathematical symbol for a basis point, which is o/ooo. But of course I had to push us to make it overly artistic, with such a huge bleed that you couldn’t even tell what it was (I have since learned the comical stupidity of my ‘screw them if they don’t get it’ attitude back then).

The current logo still bleeds off the sides but at least you can tell what it is. But the current logo will be replaced imminently as Dennis continues to refine it as The Basis Point brand grows. I always have and always will tinker with the brand. Probably more than I should. Would be better to just spend that time writing. But I genuinely enjoy working on and evolving brands, especially when I have creative partners like Dennis. The Basis Point is our own little think tank to grow our talents and evolve our artistic sensibilities.

In addition to a new logo, we’re making a few other changes to the site before the end of this year that I’m excited to share with you, and one of these changes will make it easier for The Basis Point to share other people’s work, which is a huge part of what we stand for as a brand.

We want The Basis Point to be known for finding and sharing great work people are doing in housing, mortgage, consumer finance, and tech — and how this work helps everyday people.

As for content, I used to focus on daily market commentary as our signature, but there’s a lot of great writers who do that more religiously so we’re happy to curate and share their work which enables us to focus on bigger trends.

I’ve learned a lot about what people like in the past two years from writing for Zillow and migrating my voice away from market commentary to trend commentary. And I’ve gotten so much deeper into consumer finance and lending in the past two years than I ever have, so The Basis Point should become increasingly relevant for those who like the topics we cover.

I want to offer my sincerest gratitude to everyone who reads, comments, and engages. The main goal of The Basis Point is to develop relationships, and my life and career is drastically better because of the relationships I’ve developed through The Basis Point.

And for anyone who loves to write and blog, my simple advice is: keep writing. So what if you haven’t written in ages? Write today. So what if several days or weeks go by after today? Just start again … all it takes is one post. This blog has been on and off a few times in the past 10 years for various reasons, but it’s remained the hub and compass of my professional life because eventually I always come back to it and keep writing.

And finally, let me just give two key shoutouts:

(1) Dennis Pettigrew aka ‘grewvy’, you’re one of the greats and I’m honored to be your friend and creative partner.

(2) Alex, our story of randomly connecting via Craigslist and building The Basis Point laboratory style is one for the ages, and I can’t wait to keep building with you.

 

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