Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

Yesterday I have understood a simple and yet very powerful concept that I had heard repeated many times but that I probably was not ready to embrace fully, yet. During a telephone call with my friend and partner Daniele we were going over him imminent departure, he is returning to Italy after 3 months in the USA, and we were planning our work for the next future. We know we will be very distant one from another, but the Web can do miracles in closing the distances and allowing us to continue our conversations as if we were next door even if an ocean will be between us. He was concerned about me being “alone” here for three months before he will come back and I understood that he really meant that he wished he could help me more in establishing myself here, in feeling that I was not far away from home and that he was really concerned about me as a person, rather than me as a business partner. We both know that business can be all right, but we are in the business of living a life in the first place and it all too easy to end up living just for your work.

The short video of the meeting between me and Daniele in front of the railway station in Milan: where it all “officially” started.

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Then while we were talking about the best way to move forward he gave me one concept that really opened up my viewpoint. So far I have focused on gaining the knowledge necessary to do well the various steps of my work and find people that could help me with that. I had the idea that I needed to muster the process for then making sure that everybody I was hiring was performing correctly, as it is unfortunately pretty common to find people that simply don’t care enough or that pretend they know more than they actually do. Yet this approach required from me a massive study effort, while at the same time I had to produce and coordinate something that is quite new. That is, the way we are conducting our business across two continents is new in itself.

Daniele brought me to understand that right now it is more important for me to focus on the knowledge required to select the best people for every single type of activity rather than becoming myself a specialist in them. That selection knowledge naturally entails that I know enough of the job the people are supposed to do and that I am willing to do it myself, but when we come to real estate, Internet Marketing and offline promotion combined you are dealing with subjects that change daily and that contain in themselves so many moving parts that nobody can individually master them all and still stay current. So the best approach would be to find the right people and put them in charge of a specific sector focusing on our own personal skills: that of networking and bringing people together. Then, while the specialists are doing their job, we can learn the important components of the “trade” and still maintain an overview that allows us to have the bigger picture. And since the bigger picture keeps getting bigger (just yesterday we added another line of business to our activities) keeping track with it will give me already enough challenges and rewards.

I don’t regret the work done so far since my arrival last July: I had to learn how to run a business in the US (including accounting and taxes), how to operate in the mail fields of real estate investing (bank owned properties, vacant land, motivated sellers, lease options, you name it). Actually I spent most of my time in the first 6 months coming to grips with the very complex and obscure immigration regulations that are in use in this country (definitely the most challenging in the world). I had to become familiar with the methods that are now prevalent in the USA for promoting yourself on the Web. This is all well, but now it is time to shift gears for me. Time to enjoy my family more while also creating a bigger team of people that will help us in our project, and focusing on developing our network in the US using the same powerful concepts that have been used very successfully in Europe. Specialized knowledge is important, but it is nothing if you miss the whole picture and the knowledge on how to build a network is more important because when you are able to do it you will always find a better specialist if you need to. And the competition is fierce out there for who is the better in any specific field. So yesterday the decision was taken: I will start looking for someone who is very professional and motivated in developing new ways of selling real estate, someone who is very able in keeping track with numbers and balance sheets, someone who can become the best hunter of investment properties. I have already found the perfect rehab specialist so I know it can be done. As Daniele keeps repeating: when you do it once you can do it many times. They will all have to be Americans because I want people who can merge perfectly with the local culture and help me also understand it more and more as we move along. It is going to be challenging and exciting at the same time. But it is never going to be the same. I owe it to myself, to my family and to all the people I am and will be working with.

Roberto Mazzoni