Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

I have just started my series on PT Barnum’s “Art of Money Getting” and I have already changed the course of my professional life by applying the first rule that is “Don’t Mistake Your Vocation”. Looking back at my current and past activities I see that my passion is that of sharing information, for free with friends or for compensation, like when I worked in magazines or when I advise an investor about a possible deal in the US.

This is my core competency: gathering relevant information and sharing it with others and therefore this will also become the major target for my future development and the purpose of this blog. I will concentrate on giving you an international viewpoint about business and life in general and also information that you can use in your own activity.

Today I have passed my Florida license exam as a real estate professional, in this way I will be better able to competently and fully support European investors who are planning to invest in the United States. I already know that some of the work is going to be exciting, like researching and sharing information, and some is going to be boring but important, like the study of the different laws and tax regulations in the various nations.
Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I began a twenty days series of posts dedicated to the twenty golden rules on how to gain money, based on the works of PT Barnum and his book “The Art of Money Getting”. The first rule we saw yesterday was. “Don’t mistake your vocation”, not we come to the second that is “Select the Right Location”.

You can be very good at your trade and you can perform it with passion, but you won’t very far if you don’t have a public available or if you have too much competition doing the same as you do. The Web offers new ground and elbowroom for growing any business, but you must also realize that the entry barrier is very low. Anybody who can put a ridiculous amount of time in developing his skills in Internet marketing or affiliate marketing can beat you so finding a very selected niche is often one way around the problem, but that reduces also the number of people you can serve.

I was listening live to a presentation by Gary Vaynechuck one week ago, one of the most popular businessmen on the Web, and he told the story of a liquor store run by his father. The location was not optimum and particularly the trading of liquor was a very competitive market.
Read the rest of this entry »

They have been a challenging two days. For reasons which have become obvious only now, I didn’t like the idea of dealing with some specific people that had been introduced to me by a reliable source. They didn’t sound and feel right to me, but I still wanted to give them a chance. I figured that my “personal feelings” were potentially driving me away from additional business.

Yet things didn’t sound right from the very beginning, already many weeks ago, when I first heard of these people and when I had the chance of talking with them over Skype for the first time. But I didn’t want to disappoint the person that had introduced them to me and at the same time I wanted to test the waters to see if my feelings were correct or wrong.
…

…

Since my first sensation of alarm, these very people have been involved into an escalation of unpleasant situations that involved other people that were somehow connected with me. Fortunately I have been not been personally touched by them, yet the increasing wave of commotion they have created has finally reached me through the people that were associated to us both.
Read the rest of this entry »

Today I woke up and realized there had been a mistake in the update of my blog. A test article had been published while it shouldn’t and I felt a bit odd starting the new year with an error, but then again in my last year in the US I have learned to search a positive side in everything, and I have also learned that mistakes can happen and sometime they open up a totally new and better path.

So I have reviewed my work of the last two days and I noticed that I have made several other mistakes, all as the result of some business interaction I have had in the last 48 hours. None of these will have serious consequences, but there is a bell ringing and indicating there something in my world and that I am not properly recognizing.

My beautiful wife who always protects and assists me, keeping me away from major mistakes.

In my experience, when mistakes start to add up it always indicates that I am dealing with somebody, one specific person, that I should not be dealing with, and indeed in the last week I have been contacted by all kind of people presenting all kind of offers, most of them involving potentially lot of money.

And when lots of money gets on the line you can get lured into a relationship that you should stay away from. This is the time when I found it takes much more discernment on my side. Trouble often presents itself “beautifully dressed”.

I always trust my judgment but when things get fuzzy I like to get an external point of view to make sure I am not missing any important detail in the picture, and there is only one person who has the acumen and the vision to spot things when I am not fully able to see: my wife Maria.

In her previous businesses experiences, she has been managing tens of thousand of people in different continents and she has seen it all. Becoming a top networking marketing leader she has been able to live an accelerated life that gives her the incredible knack of spotting troublesome people from the first instant. She has always been able to predict with incredible accuracy the behavior of people she had just met and she never sweetened the pill in any fashion.

So now it is time for me to listen carefully to what she has to say and to cherish her advice, locating and dropping inappropriate connections with people who shouldn’t belong in my environment and capitalizing on the greatest richness I could ever have: Maria and my wonderful family. I have began the new year kissing her and this is the best start ever. She is a richness that nobody will ever be able to take away from me and that no other “richness” will be able to surpass. I wish you find the same richness for your life, this year. Happy new 2010.

Roberto Mazzoni

I have been writing about technology for a long time and I have come to understand that people want ready solutions to immediate needs or better want to get some immediate advantage, without really caring of knowing much about what they are really doing and why.

There is some definite advantage in learning tips and short cuts and gaining the direct advice of experts, but when it gets overdone then you can run into serious problems. If you know how do to a procedure or a job and you don’t know why you are doing it and what is behind those actions, you can easily get off track when something changes in the usual circumstances and now you are required to take judgment on something you now very little of.
…

…

Today, for example, a friend came to visit me and she had a problem with her computer that had been apparently infected by a virus. She couldn’t use it any more since every time she opened it up a slew of windows would come up urging her to buy a specific anti-virus software and provide credit card information for the purchase.

Fortunately she was wise not to proceed in the purchase, but while talking with her I realized that her machine had been contaminated three days before and she had been using it all that time while the bad software was spreading everywhere.
Read the rest of this entry »