The Heart of Unchained

Three days later and my head’s still not right.  Have you ever returned home from a few days away and felt like you needed another vacation in order to recover from your vacation?  You might say the Unchained Conference was like that… but you’d be off by a factor of 10.  Unchained was roughly 32 hours of fast-paced information downloaded without filter or pause in a two and a half day schedule.  Vacation?  I need an I.V. drip.

You might also think, based on what I just wrote, it would be difficult to name the #1 highlight of the entire three days.  But you’d be wrong again. (You’re really not very good at this game. )  There were hundreds of moments to choose from and I’m gonna list a few, but there was a definite highlight – an apogee if you will.  It was during that moment I realized I was experiencing everything it means when we say the bloodhound way.

In the kick-off class of the conference, yours truly was the instructor and I didn’t know what to expect.  The feel of this conference – the expectation – was very high-tech.  Yet I’m using terms like “old school” marketing and making a point of saying that all the shiny gizmos and gadgets handed out over the next three days  were just so much dust gatherers without a framework rooted in old fashioned sales and marketing.  To say I was a little anxious about kicking off an online conference with my offline message is like saying the Christians felt a little concerned about entering the lion’s den wearing nothing but butter-flavored bikinis.  I’ve never been so glad to be wrong.  Highlight of the class: we had two attendees benefit from the scenius of the group and nail down their niche, then go online to PURCHASE THEIR DOMAIN NAME AND LAUNCH THEMSELVES right there in class.  God bless people of action.

Once the moments began to roll, they just never let up for three days:

• Mark Green and his brilliant CRM class experienced one technical difficulty after another due to hotel bandwidth limitations, yet they never stopped finding ways to continue and learn.
• Dave Smith shared his Tucson Real Estate WordPress blog secrets and opened our eyes to the near perfection blog site marketing can achieve.  Just mention “images” to the students in that class and watch a knowing smile grow across their face.
• Greg Swann rapped (yes, I mean “rapped”) his own translation of Odes 3,26 by Horace and that wasn’t even the high point of his presentation!  The blessing of Greg is his absolute lack of secrecy or fear of competition.  He freely gave away so much code and single site knowledge that we had to mentally double-bag everything just to make it home.
• If you were to ask him his niche, Brian Brady would tell you VA loans and that’s true enough.  He is, after all, America’s #1 Mortgage Broker.  But what he gave all of us was a hunting scope and the ability to hit targets in our own niches.  Duck season?  Rabbit season?  No, it’s New Client season… and there’s no limits.

The great stuff just kept coming.  How does one even begin to describe Ryan Hartman?  I’ll tell you the truth: his ideas are so many steps ahead, the true gift was just getting to know the guy in person and discovering how cool he is.  Kelly Koehler once again dropped jaws with her system for catching a lot of fish using very small, very accurate ad bait.  And I haven’t even mentioned Brad Coy, Mark Madsen, Scott Cowan, Don Reedy and all the other scenius contributors.  It’s no exaggeration to say every time I sat down next to someone, another nugget of gold rolled into my lap.  Never mind that I finally met Geno Petro in person… he’s a walking, talking highlight reel all by himself!

A lot of great stuff to choose from right?  But as I said in the beginning there was one moment, for me, that completely captured the bloodhound way.  It came during Eric Blackwell’s class.  “No surprise,” you say?  You’re right, shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody.  Eric is the star of this event.  His SEO knowledge makes him the high priest of online marketing, the Elvis Presley of Google’s rock and roll world.  From 8:00 in the morning till often times midnight Eric was surrounded by people looking for answers.  The only moments Eric had to himself were when he was on stage talking to the entire class.  Make no mistake about it: the room was full of online marketing real estate agents and when Eric spoke pencils flew.  (That’s not true actually.  When Eric spoke keypads on laptops flew… or whatever it is keypads do.  I’m guessing mine was the only pencil in the room.  I’m old school; did I mention that yet?)

Eric did not disappoint and we all came away with cutting edge ideas on how to increase our SEO and thereby increase our business.  But the highpoint for me had nothing to do with “google juice” or “link love” or “ranking in the serps”.  The highlight came at the end of Eric’s class; when he shared a story with us.  I won’t retell the story here because it’s Eric’s story and I could never do it justice.  Besides, these experiences rightfully belong to those who’ve spent the money and made the effort to improve their business.  What I will tell you is this: there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.  Eric reached out and connected with us on a very personal level.  He was passionate and in turn touched the passion in our own hearts.  It had nothing to do with SEO… and everything.  In the end it was the high-tech guru – the SEO rock star – who exemplified everything you ever needed to know about skinnin’ cats.  It was Eric who connected with us on that personal, belly-to-belly level and in doing so revealed the heart of the bloodhound way.

Filed under: MARKETING, REALTORS, Unchained

Unchained Internet Marketing Notes – Overview

Random Thoughts
A day and a half since I left Unchained Orlando, but my head is still spinning.  Maybe it was Orlando – the home of Disneyworld – that added to the surreal nature of the experience.  If you haven’t been there, Orlando is beautiful in a Disney kind of way: everything is clean and bright and just a little plasticized.  Maybe the buildings all use the same 7/8 scale that Disney uses, or maybe Unchained was just oversized… hard to say.

Over the next few days I am going to share a few of the gold nuggets I panned from the rapid flood of information that was one long, intense, ecstatic day at Unchained.  But not today.  Today I am still sifting and understanding.  Today I have only themes and simple data – points of interest that do not connect into a greater whole.  For new information to infiltrate and impact our daily activities it must be processed and that is where I find myself: clarifying the headers, organizing the outline and slowly expanding the void with pages and pages of ideas handed to me while I was there.  Bloodhound Unchained in 36 hours.  A blur of activity, a multitude of speakers – each sharing freely and every last one of them speaking much too quickly for my longhand chicken scratch – and laughing.  Laughing so much at times my sides hurt.

Dark Theme Emerges
The one theme I find over and over again is most assuredly not on Greg or Brian’s agenda, but the results speak for themselves.  Allow me a few words on most of the speakers and tell me if you see a thematic element:

• we opened with Greg Swann discussing the Greeks and the disciplined violence that was the Spartans
• you had Brian Brady sharing the dark secrets of being a Ninja in social media marketing
• Teri Lussier warned of a fatal addiction to the Tweet drug
• there was Kelley Koehler exhibiting the cool, detached efficiency of a hit man targeting Google
• Mitch Ribak covered 100mph marketing and proved that speed does kill the competition
• we were exposed to John Rowles’ killer app
• and finally, Eric Blackwell explained how to make the organically grown poison known as SEO

Is it just me, or was there a message here?  A call to arms, so to speak, that our competition did not (or could not) heed.

An Outsider’s View
These notes and those to follow are “an outsider’s view from inside the pound.”  Why?  Because I have a lot more in common with most of you reading this than I do with the speakers with whom I shared a stage.  Take a look at the people who spoke at this event: SEO experts, SMM inventers, Tech giants and Real Estate innovators.  This is the deep end of the RE.net pool and I try to stay out of it.  My area of specialty (such as it is) might be called the Passion of Marketing.  In that regard I try to be a very big fish in a relatively small pond.  I am what you might call a disciple of the Dan Kennedy school: take everything they will give, devour it, digest it, apply it and use it… boots on the ground and skins on the wall and all that.  I share all this so you know where I am coming from when I tell you to invest in yourself, invest in your business and invest in the next Unchained event.   The fee is ridiculously low.  (If I were running Unchained the cost would be higher by a factor of 8.)  Since I am not running it I will gladly pay what they ask.  But if you go, remember this secret:

Get Inside the Pound
Here you go, the secret to Unchained: find a way to spend time with the people behind this thing.  Go to lunch with them.  Offer to buy them dinner.  Stalk them in the hallways!  I had the great privilege of bunking with Greg Swann, Brian Brady, Eric Blackwell and Teri & Jaime Lussier.  It was like TWO Unchained events at the same time and gun to my head (there’s that violent imagery again) I couldn’t tell you which gave me more information.  If you have the opportunity to attend the next Unchained and they offer “Breakfast With (fill in your favorite speaker)”… take it!  Pay for it!  Just bring your pad and your appetite and I guarantee you will double your return.

Filed under: MARKETING, REALTORS, WORLD OF 2.0, Social Media Marketing, Unchained

Notes From the Peanut Gallery

I have been enjoying the fray caused by a post recently over on BloodHoundBlog, inviting agents to Bloodhound Unchained in November.  In the post author Greg Swann responds to some personal attacks by referencing the success he has had with his ideas.  Interestingly, the “Bloodhound Way” gets criticized, not on merit or content, but rather volume.  Interesting logic that.  Confusing volume with validity is common among common people.  I used to work with a mortgage broker whose office spent $150,000 per month on lead purchases and generated many hundreds of thousands more in gross income.  It was a poorly run, poorly executed operation that succeeded on sheer size and volume.  Was this a valid way to do business?  Numbers don’t lie.  Does his success invalidate the one-man office who uses localism, innovation and advanced marketing skills?  Hardly.  (Side note: can you guess which office is still conducting business?)  High volume is a measure of success… but not the tool I would use to discern quality or even future success.

I have been following the Bloodhound Way for only a few months now.  As I got back into Real Estate it struck me as eminently doable and obviously innovative.  In today’s real estate industry I believe the motto is “Differentiate of Die”  so innovative works for me.  I posted my first effort at these ideas in Custom Signs and Brake Lights.  That listing was taken June 09, 2008.  Since then I have taken two more listings.  (I am chagrined to say I took no listings in August, but I do have 2 listings coming online in September).  Suffice to say I am not a big volume hitter.  As I said previously, I am getting back into active Real Estate after a prolonged absence running a mortgage division.  Here are the stats:

• 2219 Eucalyptus SOLD 23 days on market
• 2324 Donnington SOLD 17 days on market
• 642 Glover SOLD 2 days on market

That is roughly $1.3 million dollars and an average of 14 days on market.  The absorption rate for the area is 251 days.  Big volume? No.  Should anyone be beating a path to my door to discover the secrets of my success? No.  But if you are interested in how someone just getting back into the business can sell $1.3 million dollars’ worth of real estate in the past two months… with an average DOM of 14 days against a market average of over 8 months… I will tell you the path I followed.  It is called the Bloodhound Way..

(This post was first published here.)

Filed under: BUYERS, INVESTORS, MARKETING, REALTORS, SELLERS, MARKETING, Unchained