Every week we come to our team meeting with three things:

1. One big thing I'm working on
2. One thing I'm going to change
3. One big, "what if"

Today, Nicole proposed a really big "what if" for our team -- calculate the energy savings we could realize if we each worked from home just one day a week.

Many of us work from home from time to time, to focus on a project or figure out a problem, or just change up the pace to re-invigorate our energy. But, we've been thinking about how this can really impact our overall energy consumption and jump-start our own environmentally conscious changes.

This turned into a great discussion this morning. We’re all obsessed with "going green" and being not only good corporate citizens, but also how we can grow as individuals. We talked about how working from home can save energy: not driving to the office, not starting up the computers in the office, eating the food that's already in our fridges.

But that's not where it stopped.

We're giving Kelly a break today while she works on some great stuff about reverse mortgages. But, we'll still put her in the limelight with an email she sent the other day...

CNN: Buy, Sell or Comb-over?

In recent years, a pseudoscience has emerged around the theory that left-partedness signals leadership potential, while parting on the right suggests a little something off-kilter. Among CEOs of the 50 largest companies in the Fortune 500, only three part their hair on the right.

Here is CNN Money's  hair analysis.

What I want to know is, where is this research? CNN doesn't quote it, and a simple Google search turned up the same quote used by CNN. Whatever the research, our Chairman has got the right looks for the job.

This past weekend I was lucky enough to attend two very special fundraising events. They both made me realize that caring people are not a silent minority and that change can happen if we want it to.

The first event, the Keith Hamm Foundation's annual fundraiser, was a truly amazing night (I went this past Saturday night).  Here's a little background.

Last year I wrote about Quicken Loans VP Mark Miller being named the Michigan Lymphoma and Leukemia Society's Man of the Year for organizing the Keith Hamm Foundation, dedicated to the discovery of a cure for blood-borne cancers. Mark and his close friends created the Keith Hamm Foundation as a lasting memorial to Keith, who died of cancer last year.

This year's fundraiser was a great success and generated over $20,000 for cancer research.

Last Friday, I took the day off to participate in a Read-A-Thon at Savage Elementary, my alma mater in Belleville, Michigan.

I attended Savage about 13 years ago for my 5th grade year. Like I told the kids I read to, it was the place where I realized what I loved to do – write! The teacher who inspired me is still there – Mrs. Larabell. She was also the person who guided my particularly odd memory and encouraged me to put it to use in spelling bees. She eventually accompanied me to the spelling bee district finals for elementary schools, where I took 3rd place. It was one of my prouder moments.

I wasn't the only Quicken Loans team member there – veteran reader, one of my good friends and President’s Club Banker Jim Woodworth also read to several classes. He’s in the picture above with me. And no - I’m not that short, Jimmy is just that tall.

We got an e-mail today from our Chairman, Dan Gilbert which almost sent the majority of Quicken Loans team members hightailing it down one of the busiest roads in Michigan - 8 Mile.

The reaction heard across the 4th floor of our building was mixed - "Whaaaaaat?" "Seriously?" "Wait a minute...." until we figured out it was a day-late April Fools joke on the whole company. And I use the word "we" lightly - word is some people might have taken the e-mail a bit too seriously....

After we realized it was a joke (many indicators in the e-mail), you have to wonder - do other company's Chairmen have a sense of humor? If they do, do they use it? Does your leader make you smile? Do you work at a place where fun is frowned upon? I once heard a story about another company (which shall remain nameless) where two team members were reprimanded for high-fiving too much.  Hmmm. Not a place I'd like to be.

I consider myself (and my fellow team members) enormously fortunate to work at a place where having fun is a priority and humor is celebrated. It's this kind of stuff that makes Quicken Loans the #2 place to work in America. In fact, Web Marketing is spending tomorrow brainstorming and enjoying each other all day at an off-site at The Parade Company! I'm really looking forward to it.

Here is the e-mail from Dan (Chairman/Chief Prankster) in it's entirety -

After you work with a company, what do you do? Forget about them; maybe tell a friend if you had a good experience? Do they ever offer you discounts, free advice, educational materials, news, magazine or anything just for being a client? Probably not.

Well, that’s not how we do it here at Quicken Loans. We love our clients and now we have an amazing new way of showing it - Quicken Loans Qtopia! It’s a new, interactive site where all Quicken Loans clients can "live" after they’ve closed on their loan.

We've created a virtual community (you know we're always utilizing our cutting-edge technology) with a ton of different "places" you can visit and use:

Some might say community theatre is a dying American institution. I’m here today to tell you it is alive and well.

My Sunday afternoon was spent at the North Rosedale Park Community House enjoying an ice cream social and DIFF Master Clay C in a lively performance of Smokey Joe’s Café. It was a musical revue with nearly 50 songs including: Jailhouse Rock, Don Juan, Stand by Me and Love Potion #9. The video above showcases Clay in all his glory as he adeptly demonstrates that he can both sing and clap on beat.

In honor of our #2 spot on FORTUNE Magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For," we had a bona fide Spirit Week last week at all our locations across the country - Michigan, Ohio, Arizona and our new partners in Cali, One Reverse Mortgage.

Each day had a different theme and team members dressed up to compete for the prize of lunch for the whole team! There are tons of pictures, so here's a few to recap the week -

That's right, you heard it here first.

Quizzle, the coolest and newest site on the web about your home and your finances is LIVE.

It's been a long time coming, baby. And it's ready to roll!

Instead of me rewriting an entire post about Quizzle and how great it is, I'll simply reprint a few paragraphs from Ann-Marie's entry on the Quizzle blog and then invite you to go check it out for yourself. 

This is big folks. You are gonna love Quizzle.

I moved from Michigan to South Carolina last year. While my family is dealing with the usual adjustment issues, I’m also confronted with lots of stereotypes – Yankees, Southerners, dialects, and who eats what. It’s been an experience with a lot of surprises. I’m really enjoying watching all these nasty assumptions fall apart. Really, it’s for the best that they do.

According to Infoplease.com:

It took 15 years to create the federal Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday. Congressman John Conyers, Democrat from Michigan, first introduced legislation for a commemorative holiday four days after King was assassinated in 1968.

Michigan. Yeah. That makes me proud.

What makes me not-so-proud:

2005: South Carolina becomes the last state to make MLK Day a paid holiday for all state employees. Until now, employees could choose between celebrating it or one of three Confederate-related holidays.

Lots of people think coming in second place is a bad thing.

You aren't the best. You lost. You came in second.

Not me.

I'm thrilled. We are #2 baby! 

That's right.  FORTUNE released its "100 Best Companies to Work For" list today and guess what? Quicken Loans is #2 this year. 

Last year we were #17, which is pretty darn good in itself. Over 1500 companies compete to be on the list.  But to be #2?  Wow.  Nice.

And the only thing standing in our way to being the best place to work in the country??? THE GOOGLE! (I can live with that, I guess).

I didn't want to write this post. I've known for a few weeks I would have to, but I couldn't even start it.

My coworker and my friend – in fact he was one of the coolest guys I've ever known – died Wednesday afternoon after a long battle with cancer.  He was 44. That's way too young.

Jarrett "Spiderman" Knyal (or Jarrett "Cockroach" Knyal – depending on what day you talked to him) was one of the most inspirational people I've had the pleasure of working with.  He understood me when I said "I can't eat at P.F. Chang's, since no Chinese people eat there."  My other coworkers usually stare at me with blank faces when I say stuff like that, but Jarrett understood.

Well, anyway, to do a tribute for such a great person, to try to put in words what he meant to me and the impact he had on me, where do I start?

I guess when I first met him.

It's the goodbye blog posts that always make me the saddest. 

This one goes out to Melissa Morrison, who has decided to change her focus in life and become...a mom!

Man, I'll miss Melissa.

It's not just because she was a great person with a ton of knowledge about web marketing.

It's not just because she was a member of the DIFF team and helped out tremendously with planning and launching the blog.

It's because she was such a darn good project manager. I mean it. She really had the project management stuff down. Down pat.

By Paul J. Pickett

If you know what the DIFF is all about, you don’t have to like sports to like Natalie Sitto. And even if you don’t like blogs, you’ve gotta give her props for what she’s been able to accomplish in a few short years out in the blogosphere: a meteoric rise from relatively unknown sports fan to Pistons blogstress extraordinaire. Recently, Natalie was kind enough to share with me some personal reflections concerning her site, www.Need4Sheed.com, named after her favorite Detroit player, Rasheed Wallace (though the blog is about all things Pistons).

Natalie on how it all got started:

“I originally started Need4Sheed to offer Pistons information, videos and computer graphics to Pistons fans like myself. I just wanted to offer something that I was out there searching for, but never found.

If you build it they will come right? Well they really did, beyond my wildest dreams for that matter. What started as simply a hobby has taken the site, and me along with it, on a wonderful ride.”

Every day I come into work begs the question – what would I do without Wikipedia? Ahhhh, the all encompassing, ever changing site turned American institution is celebrating a birthday!

According to the “Wikipedia” entry on Wikipedia, the site began as a fledgling of Nupedia, another encyclopedia project. The precious gems that are Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales are credited with founding the site on January 10, 2001. It became its own project just 5 days later. The most fantastic part about Wikipedia (if you didn’t already know) is that anyone can edit virtually any entry. It’s a collaboration of any and everyone who cares.

As of December 2007, Wikipedia had approximately 9,250,000 articles on it in 253 languages – quite a feat. It’s also the 8th most visited site in the world and the only one in the top 10 which is a non-profit.

An e-mail came in this morning from Matt Cardwell, our former Web Marketing Director. I say former because the e-mail was entailing a challenge to re-name our jobs/careers/positions. Convention and traditional job titles died this morning. Matt’s new title is now Idea Salesman, Energy Focuser and People Unleasher.

And unleash he did. The e-mails have been flying around all day. Some of my favorites include:

Royal Storyteller
Supreme Challenger of the Status Quo & Wicked Web Site Innovator
Innovation Maven and Revenue Raiser
Mastermind of Possibilities, Visual Linguist, and Czar of the High Fiber Revolution
Art Juggler
Flasher (?)
Idea Launcher
Conceptologist (no one said it had to be an actual word)
Head Brother In Charge of Chat
Reality Check Provider
Sentence-smoother-outer with an Ad Girl twist
Pixelardo da Vinci

You all may know from previous posts that we do some work answering questions as a Knowledge Partner for Yahoo! Answers. Up until last week, it was just us spewing out our mortgage knowledge…we really were only answering questions, not asking them.

Anyhow, one of my favorite sections is the Detroit section. There seems to be a core group of people who answer the Detroit related questions, yet they’re very knowledgeable and VERY loyal to their city. Sometimes people go in there trying to trash the city and promptly get some very firm lectures on why the Asker should get the hell out (of town & Yahoo!).

With Quicken’s impending move downtown, it crossed my mind that we should poll the people on which site would be better for our new location – old Hudson’s building or the Statler site in Grand Circus Park. Figured we’d show the D a little love, get a couple opinions and call it a day.

By Matt Cardwell

Today marks Clayton Closson’s two year anniversary with Quicken Loans. Before I spend the next 10 lines telling you about all of the great things Clay has done since joining the team in 2006, I thought I’d share a quick story (blogger style, of course) about the first time I met Clayton.

At the time, Clayton was interviewing not for a writers job, but for a position on the search team. While I would love to say it was Clayton’s stellar resume building skills and impeccable experience (including a stint at the City of Detroit, which couldn’t have been easy) that got him the initial interview, it was actually something far more superficial that made us pick up the phone: His name.

Anyone named “Clayton Closson” had to be an interesting dude. I had never met a “Clayton” before, nor do I think I ever even knew anyone with “Clayton” as a name. So I told our recruiter I had to meet this guy.

I’m a huge fan of social networking with sites like Facebook and MySpace. It allows me to keep in touch with and share with my friends and family. We’ve even embraced it as a company with our Yahoo! Answers profile, the blog and multiple profiles on those sites.

But I’ve never seen a site with more of a conscience than Caring Bridge. Caring Bridge is a social web service that connects family and friends during critical illnesses, treatment or recovery.

I was introduced to it by a very good friend of mine whose family member was dealing with cancer. Her name is Joyce. By just providing my e-mail, I was able to log-on to Joyce’s page and get updates from her journal or leave a note of encouragement in the guestbook. You can also share photos or links. Caring Bridge is a great way to keep in touch with a large amount of people, because when you are sick, you may not feel up to phone calls or visitors.

The kind hearts & culinary minds of one of our IT teams has filled the bellies of Quicken Loans team members with a massive bake sale.

Scrumptious brownies, cookies, muffins, cupcakes, fudge and even whole cakes and pies were available for purchase (as if Thanksgiving wasn't enough to put me in a food coma). For the heartier appetite, they even served hot dogs and chili dogs. Not hungry? You can't pass up a 50/50 raffle and a raffle for Pistons tickets. They thought of everything.

The money raised is going to help less fortunate families the teams have adopted by fulfilling their holiday wish lists by providing food, clothes, toys and basic essentials. Overall, the Lakewood team here at Quicken Loans raised $1,650 from their bake sale alone to help these families out this holiday season.

And a warning to your sweet tooth, stomach and wallet - it's been promised there will be more generous teams of gourmet chefs providing tantalizing treats next week to ensure a happy holiday for some additional adopted families. Stay tuned....yum!

This holiday season, Xerox is doing something that will change the holidays for the troops over in Iraq. When you visit this Web site, www.LetsSayThanks.com, you can choose a thank you card, then select the message you want the card to include, or you can create your own personal message, and Xerox will print out the card and send it to a soldier in Iraq. This is a totally free service and it only takes a few seconds to do.

Whether you are for or against the war, the reality is our soldiers are in Iraq, away from their families and loved ones for one of the most memory making holidays of the year. They need to know we support them as they continue to dedicate themselves unselfishly to make this world a better place. 2 minutes of your day today is all it will take to help create a warm holiday memory for a soldier this year. Click here to send your warm wishes.

Not only does Quicken Loans have a mini-celebrity with her own Free Press article, we’ve got an incredible, inspirational woman who spends her precious free time running a literature group called Color Online.

LaTonya, a Vendor Analyst here at Quicken Loans, started the group in 2005 which is committed to the “promotion, empowerment and political awakening of young women.” She heads an online community for book discussion and a message board for the young women to share their own writing.

Color Online has a library at Alternatives For Girls, a non-profit organization in Southwest Detroit which has been serving homeless and high risk girls and young women since 1987. They’ll even mail books to girls who don’t have the means to make it to the library. LaTonya collects returnables here at our offices to make sure the library stays stocked. She’s also started a Wish List on Amazon so that supporters can know the types of books the library needs. They also welcome gift cards and tickets to local events.

By Mark Messing

When I was in the 6th grade, I remember going to a library session where everyone in the class was taught how to effectively use search engines. They had a list of about 20 at the time.  And while the preference was still Google, it was far less of a landslide. In fact, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and a site called Mamma Search all shared equal usage from various children in the session. I remember the librarian telling us why she had put together the session that everyone in the school would eventually take.

"This is going to be the future of research," she proclaimed.

When I was in 9th grade a fellow student came to class with the first iPod I had ever seen. He explained how he had spent $400 on it, and how it was going to be the future of music. "I can’t believe you haven’t heard of these yet," he told me, "Some day they are going to be smaller, and hold more songs.  If you ever get the chance, you should buy their stock."

Last night, I read an article about Kent Hodgson. He is a 22 year-old inventor.

By Clayton Closson

The king has left the building.

Brian Doelle, Quicken Loans most highest defender of all things search, has decided to move on to new adventures. Trust me when I say this – HE WILL BE MISSED!

Brian pretty much built today’s Quicken Loans search programs (both organic and paid) from the ground up and man did he do it well. When he joined Quicken Loans, you couldn’t find us in search engine results anywhere. Our site did terribly in organic search and our paid program was a fraction of what it is today. That ain’t how it is today. We do search well at Quicken Loans and Brian is to thank for that.

He’s one of the best marketers I’ve ever met. Part artist, part number cruncher, part writer, part strategist, Brian does it all. He taught me EVERYTHING I know about search engine optimization. I mean everything.

Ever since Dan showcased the sweet moves of Governor Granholm and Mayor Kilpatrick at the Quicken Loans press conference on Tuesday, we've had tons of requests to see them hit the dance floor again. The dance video is now available in its entirety exclusively here on the DIFF. Enjoy!

A press conference for Dan Gilbert with Governor Granholm and then Diff-Master Clayton Closson is in the newspaper? Something big is going on at Quicken Loans.

Though it will likely be a few years before we pack up in Livonia and start cruising down Woodward, today was an incredibly exciting day for all of us at Quicken Loans and for the great city of Detroit. It was confirmed that the months of speculation were right - we are headed downtown.

As a young career person, I couldn't be more excited to think about the opportunities Detroit will bring me and other Quicken Loans team members. As a life-long Michigander, I'm ecstatic that Detroit is on the road to revival.

People who run marathons and other long endurance races are very high on the wow-factor list for me. My father ran one marathon in 1992 and my brother ran a few marathons too, promising his legacy is not through: he insists he will run again.

I admire them for their perseverance and strength. I don’t remember my father's plight very well, but I remember my brother’s races. It took a lot out of him and was pretty amazing to witness.

My father has been a dedicated runner for as long as I can remember. He's kept running journals over the years and even pushed through a few injuries he encountered while out on the road. He bought a treadmill a few years ago and can typically still be heard on it well before what I would consider the crack of dawn.

Being environmentally friendly was always a trait I thought I possessed, but I was lying to myself all along. I recently discovered my carbon footprint - a calculation that helps you measure how much carbon dioxide we emit through the burning of fossil fuels in our lives.

Well, my carbon footprint outmeasures my real size 9's. It seems like a simple quiz on how you live your life - asking me about the gas & energy bills for my house, my car, my air travel and even how much I shower. Then the results - I use 10.06 tons of carbon dioxide per year!! It even gave me tips at the end to help me conserve that were tailored to how I answered the questions. Most of mine had to do with the lack of recycling, which is something I've resolved to amend by researching recycling facilities where I live.

I was prompted to do this by my old buddy Matt Lauer. Matt and I go way back - I've been waking up to his kind face for years. NBC and some other companies have been advocating a "Green is Universal" campaign recently and I decided to check it out. That's how I found out that I (and most of you, apparently) am not very environmentally friendly.

When I was a kid – still shiny and new – my best friend, "Small Paul" I called him, once bopped me on the head as I was giving him a funny face (one of my best facial talents was my ability to pick my nose with my tongue, but somehow that lost it's cuteness as I aged). I shot Small Paul my signature sassy look and asked him, "What was that for?"

"I was just trying to help you," he said as he pulled up his classic cotton knee socks with the colored rings around the top. "If you hold a funny face too long, your face will freeze that way."

It didn't take me too long to figure out that this act of consideration, albeit odd, was based on a false premise. Your face will not, in fact, freeze up if you hold a funny pose for too long. While Small Paul was wrong in this case, he said something else not too long after this first piece of advice that has some actual basis in science: "Smile. It's good for you."

Oh yeah. We won a WOMMIE!

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association picked Quicken Loans as a winner of a 2007 WOMMIE award (four awards were given from a field of over 50 entries).  We were up against some pretty heavy hitters, so it's a great feeling to be recognized for our word of mouth efforts.