Mike Henderson 303-949-5848 Genius Ventures

So far it has been a great session. It's definately time for lunch though. I was super impressed with the way they had lunch organized. It sounds stupid, but it's the little things like this that can seperate a good conference from a great one.

First the lunch was Pizza, everybody likes Pizza! It came from Pizza Hut not some no name mickey mouse local shop they went with the good stuff. I can make an arguement the Domino's is better, but that is not important. It's better to spend a dollar or two more a pie for something that people like more, or even if they don't like it's familiar and they don't dislike it.

It was extremely organized in that they had signs next to the pizza. They had four kinds veggie, cheese, pepperoni, and something else. I stopped looking after the Pepperoni.

In line it was interesting because Jeff Turner was off to the side talking to somebody in line. The person talking to him was extremely grateful that they put the event on. Jeff was comparing the people who traveled to a bunch of traveling cirus freaks. I told him to please not insult the circus freaks. He thought it was pretty funny.

The challenge in a place like this event is to find a good spot to eat. We had a great venue, but it wasn't designed for a couple hundred people sitting down for lunch. I found Jeremy Cont, the office manager for Your Castle Real Estate. In a crowd full of real estate agents it can get a little salesy and full of hot air. It was interesting to get a different persons perspective on the whole event. He was there giving away free to all participant Your Castle's newest real estate book "Thrive". The only bad part of the book is I wasn't asked to be one of the authors. I told Jeremy what was going to happen at the next sales meeting when they ask me about social media.

I saw another fellow agent Jonathan Ghaly, that I am working on a potential video project with. I only wonder if it will be good or it will be great. I haven't seen him in about a week and went to go catch up. We were later joined by Elizableth Martinez and had a great conversation about the Sloan's lake area of Denver.

I went to go sneak more pizza. Social protocol limited me to two slices on the first run through. I ran into Tom LaRocque who I initially met on Bigger Pockets. It's always great to see real life networking from people who you originally met online. Tom is a part timewriter for the Denver Post on Real Estate. I also ran into Emelyn Morris-Sayre, we are working on a huge project examing the effect of light rail on residential property values in the Denver metro area.

It was disappointing that I thought there were several great sessions after lunch. The 12 o'clock sessions were the hardest to figure out which would be the best. Brad from Active Rain was presenting, Jeff Turner had a session, and there was a program on linked in. I spend a lot of time on AR and was looking at choosing one of the other sessions. Emelyn was looking at the board with me and we had a hard time choosing between Jeff Turner and Linked In. I told her to pick which one she wanted to go to and I'd hit the other and we could trade notes. She choose Jeff and I was kicking myself and got the other session. Turned out I didn't regret it and it was one of the best sessions.

Complete overview of Rebar Denver

The next session I chose Twitter. I was looking forward to this one the most. I'm using this the least of all the tools. I see the pros and a lot of people write about the cons here on Active Rain. This was in one of the bigger rooms, so I must of chose the right one.

On a side note at the very begining of the class Rob asked for a volunteer. I was sitting in the second row and so I shouted out I would. He might not of heard me. He asked again and somebody asked what they had to do. He said he couldn't say. I gave my name again. No response. A collague at my company, Your Castle Real Estate, Diane Wiolta, said Mike has volunteered twice.

I finally got picked. I didn't know what it was for, but how bad could it be? The only time I would not volunteer for any setting like this is if it was on real estate security seminar, in that case you might get shot with a Taser or put in a choke hold.

On with the presentation:

The speaker, Rob McNealy, with contrivedmedia.com was great. The person next to me looked him up and he has 92,523 followers. He was a great speaker in addition to great content.

OUTLINE

Use your name if you can get it

Location

Link to your website

Put keywords in your profile, not flowery lingo

PROFILE AVATARS

choose wisely

be yourself

TWITTER BACKGROUNDS

tell your story

additional information

BUILDING FOLLOWERS

find and follow people

engage people that have large numbers

follow people you are interested in

retweet others a lot

GOOD TWEETING HABBITS

tweet daily/pepper tweets

be nice

post interesting links

stay away from religon and politics

TIME MANAGEMENT

use tweetdeck and group people

bookmark and/or use RSS feeds

use your phone

twitter in the background

ACTION PLAN

finish fix your profile

tweet daily (morning/evening)

post links

The opening session and links to all the others

Rebar camp is very interesting. Once you leave the session they have a board set up and you just look at the times and look at the sessions. The 9:30 session the one that looked the most interesting to me was about "The silent market." The presenter was Joe Barfield

He was interesting in that his background was he was an archeologist before he got into Real Estate. I guess if being a professional poker player relates to real estate then his background might be even better. He described being an archeologist is like being a Realtor in reverse. He works in the San Antonio market and once he started doing it full time I think he had a volume of 3 million his 2nd year, 6 million his third and currently around 9 million. This is pretty impressive when you consider the average price of the home is between $150,000 and $175,000.

It seems like he is generating most of his activity from an email list. He initially sends out his mailing to around 50 real estate advocates who look it over. Then it goes out to the entire 2,000 names in his database.

What was fascinating to me is his listing are mostly focused on Vintage homes. His email that he sends out are written by an architectural historian. This really give a unique approach to highlight the significant features of the property. It also gives a historical perspective and research on the area.

I think his approach works great in a long standing community with older historic homes as opposed to the new build track community. Although Joe said he used the same approach with homes that were even two years old.

The specific action item and idea I got from the material was the idea of Having the homeowner list their top ten memories that they have in the home.

After he send the home out to his initial list if it still hasn't sold he then sends it to a list of 150 Realtors that work in the area. If the home still hasn't sold it then goes out to a list of 500 Realtors that he knows.

All of this marketing is done before the home hits the mls. That is the silent market.

I see several advantages to this approach

1) It's great for clients who are dealing with overpriced homes

2) It creates a cool factor and a sense of urgency. Better buy this house before it hit the mls.

3) For those deals that fall through it won't look that way on the mls. It will still appear fresh because it hasn't been listed yet.

Review of the opening session - Links to all of the presentations

Well I didn't blog or twitter about the event, I'm not good at it using just a cell phone. I did spend the entire day at the event and learned a ton. When I got to the event it was very well organized, which was very suprising to me for an event like this. I walked in the door and was greeted by my own company, Your Castle Real Estate, one of the sponsors. I was very suprised since I was unaware of the sponsorship. That is another blog post. They had our names preregistered and we got our name tags and proceeded to the opening session. I was pleasantly suprised by the number of people I knew and it's always great to see a familiar faces in the crowd.

There was a giant projector (I'm guessing size was 25x25 feet) with "I cut my own grass." It was up at the very begining as people are sitting down. I think this is a great approach. It gives people time to think about this obscure phrase and how it relates to real estate. It's dangerous to give a wondering mind like mine to much time and I replaced "cut" with "smoke" and I get a laugh. I'm a former stand-up comedian and my mind naturally tries to find humor in everything.

Jeff Turner is the opening speaker and gets it kicked off with a bang. Ironically, he is actually talking about cutting his own grass with a lawn mower. We see pictures of various lawnmowers, including his. Some are Giant John Deer's and others are basic push mowers. The bottom line is to use the right tool for the right job. What is ironic and Jeff said that none of his neighbors in Southern California cut there own grass and he doesn't even know anybody who cuts there own grass. The bottom line is Use the right tool for the job and do what is right for you.

Now it all made sense! It is great method of teaching to deal with something completely unrelated and to the topic and then tie it back into the idea at hand, social media and real estate. I'm actually teaching a free class next week "The parallels of poker and Real Estate." Bottom line is to figure out what you want to accomplish and how to do it in a way that works for you.

He also talked about key concept that everyone needs to be drummed into their heads ACTIVE LISTENING! Listen with intent. This is not college where you just show up, and get a grade at the end. Ask questions, get involved! Here is a tip. As a frequent speaker, we actually prefer it that way nine times out of ten.

On with the program!

Session 1 - The silent market

Session 2 - Twitter and Real Estate

Lunch break

Session 3 - Using LinkedIn

They say in blogging that you should write about what you are passionate about. One of the things I do care about in the Denver community is the Broncos and the Nuggets. Two teams I'm very passionate about. As an informed fan here in Denver I might be able to give additional insight into the team that you may not be aware of.

The last game was a major butt kicking. They held the Hornets to 63 points. This was the fourth lowest score by an opponent in playoff history. The others were

54 points Utah at Chicago (1998)

56 points New Jersey at Detroit (2004)

61 points Cleveland at Detroit (2006)

63 points New Orleans at Denver (2009)

What is interesting is the highest offensive output by any of the winning teams was Chicago with 96. The Nuggets scored 121!

What do 3 of these 4 teams have in common .... Chauncey Billups a.k.a. Mr Big Shot A product of Denver's own George Washington high school and former Colorado Buffalo

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Billups also won the NBA sportsmanship award today, April 29th, 2009. A winner in more ways than one, welcome home sir.

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The Hornets were given the day off on Tuesday by their coach. I partially understand why ... but don't you think they'll be getting a lot of days off real soon ...

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During the last game the Nuggets announcers got a text from Charles Barkley with one minute left saying that the hornets (you don't get capitalized if you don't try) still had a chance.

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All good blogs are suppossed to be visual. I was looking for pictures of the Nuggets players or games, but I liked this one better.

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If you are a passionate Nuggets fan like me and read this blog post I have a special offer for you. Get a mortgage or buy or sell a home with me this year and I'll take you to a Nuggets game.