Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

An impromptu meeting spurred by family needs will probably change the course of events for the months to come. Many crucial business matters are sometimes defined at the kitchen table during unexpected events that occur at the right moment in the right place. This is what happened to me today. I was planning to have a day with my family when my business associate Daniele Bogiatto called asking for assistance for his kids who have been coughing for a few days now, after their arrival in Florida.
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So I volunteered to get some natural healing products at a local store and deliver them to Daniele’s house, about 20 miles away from my place. When I arrived in the late afternoon, we set down at the table in the kitchen with Daniele and his wife Jenny and began chatting about their experiences in the US after they arrived from Italy one week ago and we pretty soon ended up talking about Daniele’s new blog and the extensive research and development efforts that has been put into its development during the last 3 months, involving many people.
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It took five hours of very intense meeting and a very detailed review of the all the plans but I was surprised how much in the last two days I was able to build on the relationship and training work done in the previous months to achieve the start of an incredible project that will involve two key people that have working tightly with me in the last three months: Daniele Bogiatto, my business associate in Italy and who now is in Florida with me, and Mark Jackson, a remarkable real estate investor and coach who teaches students nationwide from his comfortable base in Atlanta.

The Double Tree Suites hotel in Tampa where we have set the plan for the new project.

The project we are putting together is an evolution of a Web business consulting and coaching business that has been working like clockwork in Europe now for some time and that we will now bring to the US by adding the flavor and the ingredients that will make it extremely successful here.

What I most like about the project is that it will be addressed specifically to people who have no technical knowledge of the web and who will become true experts in helping businesses succeed online by learning what really matters and not having to know a single piece of technology except the very basic knowledge that is required out of any user.

This is not utopia, it is an already working system that is being implemented daily in Europe by professional consultants that have become highly respected even by the “geeks” and that have brought many businesses to success following a well defined path and leveraging only their communication and networking abilities and the knowledge of what really matters (which is not technology per se).

It is exciting to see that the future of online business belongs to entrepreneurs just like me and you, and not to the specialized technologist who can of course contribute and have a nice share of it, but doesn’t have the communication skills to actually bring about the needed results.

Daniele, my associate and close friend, is considered now the “true evangelist” for new European businesses looking to expand online or to integrate online and offline activities. He is a real genius and has briefed me fully on this system that he has been applying over and over and over with predictable results to many types of different businesses, big an small, new and old.

I can’t wait to put into action with the help of Mark who has proven to be a great teacher and an excellent marketer and communicator. Mark has just returned from Europe where he has seen the system in action in many different locations and situations and now will be the voice bringing it over to the US together with me. Exciting.

Roberto Mazzoni

My professional and personal life has probably changed more deeply in the last three days than in the last three years combined. In the first place my wife Maria has decided to join forces with me also in my business activity. She has been giving invaluable advice and support so far, but now she is ready to jump into the fight with me and make 2010 the most surprising year ever.

Me and Mark working on our new project for 2010.

Then my business associate Daniele Bogiatto has returned to the US after three very full months during which we have developed our respective side of the business on the two sides of the Atlantic. It has been like meeting after three years and we discovered that the changes we have created in our working life have also deeply affected our personal relationship that now is even stronger and can bring us to a whole new level of expansion and cooperation.

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In the last couple of days I have been preparing the planning for the new year with my business associate Daniele Bogiatto and I can see it is going to be an explosive progression. Tomorrow I will have a strategic meeting in Tampa with a person that will play a very definite role in the expansion of our projects in the US, Mark Jackson. I will unfold this extraordinary adventure on my blog as we will execute it, but I today I want to borrow some words from Seth Godin, a very famous author, blogger and speaker. He has just published an eBook titled “What matters now”. I suggest you get a copy of it, but I want to quote it’s first page, written by Godin himself.

The title is “Generosity” and I quote: “When the economy tanks, it’s natural to think of yourself first. You have a family to feed and a mortgage to pay. Getting more appears to be the order of business”.

You see it at every turn: people trying to get a second job, to get more money out of the job they already have or engaging in any kind of selling activity that could bring them some financial release and stability. The first question they ask of themselves is: “What is in it for me?”

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Today was a very intense day. I had an inspection on one of the properties I am rehabbing and it looks like I have inherited some problem left by the previous owner, so I had to resort to all my diplomacy skills while dealing with the city officials, negotiating what actually needs to be fixed and what can stay. Then I had a very interesting meeting with my business partner from Italy, Daniele Bogiatto.

The house I am selling with the cookies.

This was the first in-person meeting after three months and we decided to have it outside of a smoothies shop while we were drinking our smoothie and looking at the main street of Clearwater. It is quite challenging running a business across an ocean but we were amazed by the results achieved so far and the plans we have for the future. But we also realized that communication is paramount and that we will have to find better ways to exchange visions and feelings in addition to just project data. The development of such systems is going to be our focus for the next four weeks before he goes back to Italy.

But the very surprise came in the evening when I received am e-mail from a Realtor I know very well because she just helped me selling one of the property I have rehabbed. She came to visit another property that has just been finished and listed with another Realtor, and this time she was bringing a buyer. It would be quite mazing that she helps me selling two houses in two months, the first as a listing agent and the second as a buyer’s agent.

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