Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

Today I have been at the first day of the Internet marketing and Joint Venture bootcamp organized by Dan Stojadinovic in Tampa (www.hypefreebootcamp.com). On Sunday I will have my own presentation on Twitter, but I wanted to be amongst the attendees from the very first day because it is a fantastic opportunity to assess my Internet Marketing strategies and to meet people I will be able to do business with.

This is the second year in a row that I participate to the event and last year I created a strategic relationship with Mark Jackson, a leading investor and nation wide coach from Atlanta. By the way, Mark is leaving for Italy in a few weeks to meet my Italian partner Daniele Bogiatto and get introduced to a number of investors there.

Be your own voice.

So I can’t wait to see what will result from this edition of the JV bootcamp. For one thing today I followed a very interesting presentation by Gerald Rogers, an Orlando based real estate investor and Internet Marketer who has remembered to all of us that no matter what business we are in we are all in he same business, and that is marketing. Without proper marketing nothing moves and 60% of our time, as entrepreneurs should be devoted to marketing, leaving only 20% to the actual production and 20% to administration and operation.

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Yesterday was my second Columbus day in America. It creates always a peculiar feeling being Italian and participating in a holiday where such a great number of people celebrate another Italian for having discovered such a great continent. I also have the intention of bringing something new and important in this country and therefore I have decided to set October the 12^th as a benchmark date for my activities in the future.

Yesterday it was indeed a very important one because I have brought to the next stage a relationship that I have been cultivating since February of this year and that has required lot of patience and nurturing to foster and to bring to its current strength, but that has tremendous potential for the future. They say that the bamboo tree takes 2, 3, 4 years to fully develop its roots: it only grows a few inches, but then it can shoot up 47 inches in just one day, and they develop to their full height (up to 250 feet) in just 3 months.

It all began with an event about Internet Marketing and how to build a joint venture here in Tampa. I had been in the US for approximately six months and I had already met several types of gurus and investors, but no real match for me.

Me and Mark on stage at his latest event in Atlanta, September 2009.

I had a clear idea on how my business was going to develop, but nobody I had found was patient enough to wait for it to unfold fully and to find common activities to share in the meantime. They all wanted the bamboo now, without waiting for it to grow. Everybody was kind of looking for business opportunities right here, for the low hanging fruit. No commitment, no depth of relationships.

The event was organized by Dan Stojadinovic another European from Serbia who has built a very strong presence in Internet Marketing and real estate investing. Dan always invites several speakers to his events and makes sure that they deliver solid content. He is also a very strong promoter of the idea of joint venture so I was sure that I was going to meet somebody special at this particular event, and I did.

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I am returning from Atlanta, it has been an intense three days at the bootcamp organized by Sam Bell and Mark Jackson about investing on bank owned properties. I have learned many things that will help me improve my performances and that have made me even more familiar with the American culture and its way of doing business. I have also been fortunate to contribute my own experience with the European culture and its very peculiar way of developing relationships. Even today, as was leaving the hotel, several people approached me thanking for my presentation. Always glad to help.

Mark jackson on the stage with his byke: he rode over 1700 miles in 3 months.

But today was Sunday and the opening morning speech was done by Mark himself who gave a very motivational insight on how life can be changed by just cleaning up the bad habits that you have inside yourself.

I find it quite amazing that it kind of plays right in the hand of my previous post (Kill The Victim That Is in You) that I had written just before entering the conference room. So I want to echo it and give Mark’s view of business and life, as he has been able to acquired from years of teaching and coaching people on the very things he was himself doing.

Francesco, Sam, Me, Dutch and Mark during the event in Atlanta.

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Every time you are ready to make a major change in your life and tackle something that you consider well beyond your current capabilities you need to take a first step that will enable you to move forward. I tell you this out of experience because I have been taking huge leaps and done major changes in my life during the last 13 months. You often hear coaches and people telling “you need to get out of your comfort zone”. This is definitely one part of the action, but I would rather more see it as a second step, a result of you actually throwing yourself into the fighting ground, right amongst the lions which are ready to chew you to pieces.

Me and Mark Jackson during the event.

The actual first step, that goes somewhat un-noticed and that is the make break point was pointed out to me by my wife Maria few days ago, before I was starting for my current business trip. She said: “you need to kill the victim that is in you”. This is a powerful statement because it gets to the very core of you and I know that my wife would have never told it to me with the purpose of making me wrong. She knew exactly what I needed and the fact that she pointed it out to me made me immediately realize that yes I was playing victim in some area of my life which was the area where I was growing and improving the least.

Mark introducing my speech from the stage.

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You can’t win unless you play on both sides. This is what the Internet has taught us in the recent years. Those companies that have totally neglected the Web as a production and promotion tool have lost lot of ground or have disappeared completely. Many companies that were just active online have disappeared as well. Internet by itself is not enough, it has to be combined with some traditional (offline) product, place or channel, then it can become very powerful.

Me and the legendary Lou Brown during the event in Atlanta.

Today I have been full time listening to the various presentations at the bootcamp on bank owned properties organized in Atlanta by Sam Bell and Mark Jackson. Lot of very technical stuff, which is very relevant if you want to achieve a good level of promotion on Google, but that would be useless if one didn’t have knowledge about traditional real estate evaluation and contracts. So I appreciated the fact that the presentations of today followed a whole series of lessons that yesterday were delivered on property evaluation (Mark Jackson), on closing procedures (Michelle Spalding) and on creating the most advanced type of real estate contract (Lou Brown): the land trust (which is used both to hide the owners of a property and for transferring interest in a property without a formal deed).

Dutch Mendenhall "bringing me to new heights"

Real estate is a field where you can observe the effective merge of the old culture of negotiation, evaluation and paperwork writing, with the newest Internet Marketing techniques that can bring you new buyers and sellers with less effort and more effectiveness. Yet you still see many investors fumbling with technology and shying away from it, or you see some young nerd who knows everything about setting up a blog and getting it ranked on Google, but knows nothing about buying and selling houses and yet wants to become a full time investor.

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