Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

Legal papers are just as good as the people who sign them and though required in some types of transaction will never replace the true respect and mutual dependence that results from knowing and trusting who you are doing business with.

Since my arrival in the United States I have followed an approach that is quite contrary to the business habits of this country. I have opened all my connections and resources to the people who wished to work with me, without first asking to sign a iron clad agreement or any other type of paperwork.

Amrk and me during a recent family event.

My intention was first of all to contribute something to this great nation and also to invite the right people, because I knew that the very best wouldn’t have taken any advantage of it. I met many potential partners, but some of them were simply not ready yet and some were just too busy doing something else and didn’t want to take the time to build a strong and long lasting relationship.

Eventually I found the right person that was willing to work with me for nine months, creating one of the most powerful investment network that exists in the real estate field: Mark Jackson.

These are the five successful actions that helped us getting to this point:
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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 a very important journey began: my friend and American business partner Mark Jackson jumped on a plane to Italy, leaving all his family behind in the US, bound on a mission that will expand our activities in North America by increasing enormously the involvement of European investors. But what’s more relevant about this special trip, is that Mark will be working for two solid weeks side by side with Daniele Bogiatto, my closest friend and business associate, that will lead him through the ways an means a successful business network is related in Europe.

Daniele is the most prominent web promoter in Italy and has been recently working in supporting the Tony Robbins event in Rome and is the leading expert and eBay evangelist for the whole continent. Mark is evolving his personal position so to become a life coach for American entrepreneurs and this trip will be fundamental in his project as well as in our future personal and professional relationship.

Just before the take off, we were on the phone ironing out the last details of his mission: I wanted to make sure that he was fully prepared to immerse in the European way of doing business and that he could also position himself properly for who he is and what he can do. It’s been a “coaching” session on the fly that continue until the plane captain ordered to switch off all phones.

It is a special achievement for me as I have been building on this project since last February and this trip is the conclusion of a system we had put in motion together with Mark and Daniele at the Fairmont hotel, in Monte Carlo, on the 1st of April of this year.

I know that Mark will do well and that will return with a totally different scenario for himself and for our business. Yet another milestone on my adventurous new life in the US.

Roberto Mazzoni