Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

Recently I was at a dinner with a group of visiting European businessmen and my wife commented about the gaming habits of some friends she had connected with on Facebook. After she mentioned a particular name, one of the guests, who sitting right in front of us, because green in the face and realized that one of his key employees was actually spending substantial production time playing on his computer.

People like to reveal to all the world what they are doing.

The name of the “suspect” was so unique that there was no mistake about him and then we because absolute certain of his identity when my wife mentioned some additional information about this guy. The funny thing about it is that this very person, who lives and works in Europe, had been complaining with his boss about how much he had to do and how he was not being able to keep the pace with all the requirements that his boss was sending from the US.

A very funny situation and we had a very good laugh, but our guest had suddenly come to see another aspect of social media power. He had not been familiar with Facebook until few months ago and he had never thought of connecting his own staff to himself: in the end he knew them already and had other communication channels already with them. But now he was going to connect with just everybody in his office and was going to keep an eye on everybody’s activity.

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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

You can’t be successful anywhere unless you feel at ease where you are and doing what you do. It is all right stepping out of the comfort zone in order to achieve some change or some important progress in your life, but you should still be able to find a new comfort zone after the change is accomplished otherwise the results won’t be stable.

This at least has been my experience and also what I have observed of several people around me. When you feel uncomfortable in a particular location or place, you will not accomplish much and you will definitely not build for the future. Everything will have the tendency to be makeshift or temporary and even the people you’ll meet or that you will partner with will not stick with you.
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You will attract the things and people that best suite your attitude, so this will further develop your feeling of not belonging in that place. But there are a few tools that I found helped me a lot in feeling at home even when I arrived here in the US, a totally new place for me. I used the Web to keep in contact with people that still live in my own town and country of origin, while developing local contacts as well and crossing them together. So my US friend have known my Italian friends and viceveras, both online and in person and therefore there a new wider community at play.
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My wife Maria often reminds me that there is a major difference between urgencies and priorities. Under urgencies fall things like: reply to an e-mail, pay the bills on time, file the proper paperwork when it is due, and so on. Under priorities you have all the activities that are essential to the progress of your business or life and to generating income as a result.

Would you rather talk with a customer, or look for a customer who needs your product, or take care of some kind of duty that is urgent but will not bring any income? It is true, if you pay a bill late you might incur into additional fees and other complications. You should definitely try to be organized enough so that you don’t miss on those things, but is it more important make the money with which you will pay the bill or simply pay the bill on time?

Your daily actions should strive to create some possibility that wasn’t there before, taking some risk and forging new paths. You should demand and obtain excellence in what you produce and set yourself ambitious goals otherwise you will never stand out from the crowd and actually bring a business in existence.

You will make mistakes, that’s for sure, and there will be remedies for them. Yet the worst mistake is not to be successful in creating the wherewithal required to keep the business running. As long as you are producing and generating income, you will be able to ask for expert advice or help and get out of urgencies and focus more and more on priorities.

There will be many people, particularly those who don’t produce anything themselves and are out there to stop others, that will try to keep your attention on urgencies. Leave them alone: no matter how important or convincing they sound, close your ears and concentrate on what you think and know that is important.

Roberto Mazzoni

It took me just a few hours to recognize that my life was completely changed when I first got the news that I was going to become the father of two twin boys about 11 years ago. They have arrived at a time when my career was at its peak back then and when I was not so sure I wanted to have kids. When I got the news over the phone I was in the US, during a business trip with a major computer company and I was attending to a dinner with other journalists in at a restaurant in Palm Springs.

My twin sons Alex and Stefano at the far right with a black suit and papillon during the recent school play.

My host commented then that God was sending them because he knew I could “take them”, and indeed that gave me the immediate concept that there was something special to their arrival. Now I am back in the US and I am here particularly because I want to give them a better education and a better future life by allowing them to see different cultures and live closer to nature.

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