Earlier this week, Scott Forcino, Joe Ferrara’s close friend and business partner told me that Joe is very sick. Joe has an aggressive malignant brain tumor. He is in a hospital ICU undergoing treatment, chemo/radiation and he has a speech pathologist. I think the symptoms became more serious in the past month.

Although I am married to a cancer survivor I still only have a small inkling of how tough this must be for Joe and his family.

Join Friends of Joe Ferrara

It took me a few days to collect my thoughts on Joe. A lot has been written about this unfortunate situation over the past week – which is completely awesome and shows how much we love Joe – its all been said better than I ever could. A special thanks to Jay Thompson for leading the effort to get the word out to help Joe and his family.

Donate to Joe’s Medical Expense Fund!

Right now we can all help Joe by donating what you can to help out his family from the incredible medical costs they are facing. Please help.

I will only think positive thoughts about his health and his future.

I first ran into Joe back in the prehistoric days of real estate blogging circa 2005-2006 when I started. A formally trained lawyer, he was a fountain of ideas in the social media space and along with Rudy Bachraty, they co-founded Sellsius Real Estate and began cranking out content on their Sellius Blog. He embellished a bit too.

My first interaction with Joe was after he made a presentation in Atlantic City, I blogged about their real estate concept here on Matrix and quipped that the bad link on their logo was probably a good sign of their focus on content quality rather than bells and whistles. Joe sent me a nice note commenting on how the bad link had been fixed and the relationship began.

He has been a fixture at Inman conferences and other social media gatherings, genuinely happy to help people find their way in an easygoing style.

I have to chuckle about his Blog USA tour back in 2007. I was the first stop on his cross country RV trip from Boston via New York to the San Francisco/Inman Connect conference. He and Rudy were supposed to arrive at my house at 9pm but didn’t get there until much later, 2am I think – they didn’t want to wake me so they slept in the RV in my driveway. We did a 6:30am video interview of me walking around my house – a bit surreal but fun. Next door to my house the movie Revolutionary Road was being filmed and we asked the film crew on the way out where Kate and Leonardo were – LOL. We took the RV from Connecticut to Manhattan – right to the front door of my office building – Joe promised door-to-door service – and then took off for California (the long way). A month later – as I walked into the Inman Conference in San Francisco – I happened to walk next to their famous Blog Tour USA RV and smiled in amazement – they made it!

Last October I interviewed Joe for my podcast, The Housing Helix. It was a fun conversation – and as usual, he was full of ideas. Please have a listen.

We’re pulling for you Joe!