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.

I believe it is kind of embarrassing to have someone else come to you and inform you, accidentally, about something going on you your company, but with social media the information is really shared on a wide scale and you learn much more about people by looking up their accounts and their activities than by just talking with them and sharing the same working space for years.

I have been living this experience myself in the last couple of days. I had hired a virtual assistant, somebody helping me on my business activities from a distance. We had a full time agreement, that is he was supposed to work for me all the time and he had given him a list of things to do at the beginning of the week, yet I had seen little results. He was moving slow and it took him two days to do an action that can be performed in half an hour. He told me he had technical problems to work out, but then I caught him sending out messages on Facebook about products that had nothing to do with my business.

I realized immediately that he had started working for somebody else and that was why he couldn’t complete my task list on time. I confronted with him and proposed him to get paid half, but when he complained loudly about the unfairness of my request, I knew I had hit pay dirt and it was time to end our relationship. By using Facebook, in just few minutes, I was able to spot a problem very early and act on it immediately.

I am not advocating the use of social media for controlling others, but social media has become so much part of many people life that you can use it to establish the true character and intentions of people even if they live in another continent and act accordingly. When people do something wrong they often want to be discovered and social media is the new channel that many individuals use to make their public “confessions”.

Roberto Mazzoni

Public confessions on social media is a post from: Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

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

Beginning with a mistake and ending with a plan is a post from: Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

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.

Facebook is a great tool for this and you can bring a nice portion of “your world” with you, wherever you go, your personal world. Skype is another perfect tool that I found extremely effective to keep business contacts all over the world. The team we have created with my business associate Daniele has people in Italy, US, Brazil, Philippines and Hungary, and more countries will soon be added.

We are developing business activities that put together people from several different places so that we all feel part of a team even though we are not close together. In this fashion I could be working in Florida, Alaska or China for that matter, and the team would still be the same and I would feel at home anyhow.

I am also using the web to show and explain what I am doing to people that are far away so that they are informed and attracted to the point that they are willing to spend their time and money to come and visit me and therefore share even further. Tighter relationships are created in this way that merge online and offline.

The meeting person to person are short and very intense, since we know that we don’t have too much time to spend before they go back, and then we deepen and strengthen the relationship by communicating online.

This wasn’t possible before Web 2.0 and I am amazed to find out that now my friends and associates in Italy know much more about what I am doing in the US then when I was in Italy much closer to them. The necessity of using Web 2.0 as the key medium is paying back by giving an incredible amplification to my “voice”.

In this adventure, I have been very fortunate to my family with me. My wife Maria and my twin kids Alex and Stefano have shared every minute of these first 15 months in the US and have been very supportive. We have built a little portion of Italy in hour new house in Florida, while striving to understand more of the surrounding culture and mixing with it.

And we have realized that, despite some apparent similarities, the European culture is widely different from the North American one. One is easily mislead by the fact that we do shopping in a similar way and we watch the same type of movies, but that is about it. The way we conduct our families, our relationships and our business are very, very different. There is much to learn on both sides and we fully enjoy the chance of being the “melting pot”.

Roberto Mazzoni

Feeling at home while away from home is a post from: Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

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

Getting things done or making things happen is a post from: Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

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.

They have flourished since their arrival in Florida and they enjoy completely their new school and the new teachers. We might be returning to Italy for some time and in the last few days I have received many comments from teachers and other school personnel that they will miss Alex and Stefano, my twin boys.

Yesterday particularly I went to pay their monthly tuition and the cashier at the school made a remark that I believe best describes them above anything else. She said: “They two are remarkable little gentlemen”. It is the best definition anybody ever gave of them and it describes the unique character of patience, dedication and utter courtesy that they display, both toward adults as well as toward other children.

They are the best legacy I could ever leave in this world and I feel rich because of them, I feel proud of what I have accomplished together with my wife Maria. And they are proud to have two parents like us.

No career or adventure can measure up to this feeling of genuine creation.

Roberto Mazzoni

Two remarkable little gentlemen is a post from: Using the Web and social media to sell real estate