Antonio & Alexia Cardenas "The Realtors In Motion" Remax In Motion

Our Name tag is "The Realtors In Motion" because we are also amateur ballroom dance competitors. In the last 3 years we have done over 200 free ballroom dance demonstrations at schools, nursing homes, boys & girls clubs, churches, senior centers and many other places. We dress up the part, full ballroom gown for my wife and a competition tux for me, we dance our 5-dance International Style routine; the Waltz, followed by the Tango and the Viennese waltz and finish with the Foxtrot and a lively Quickstep. We take these opportunities to do a full dress rehearsal and do our competition routines by the book. Our audiences get an up close and personal demonstration of the romance and elegance of ballroom dance, we get a great practice session in front of a live audience, It is a "Win-Win" situation for everybody. At the end of our performance we ask the audience that if they ever are in need of a good Realtor, that they can call us and we will come... and TANGO with them.

As we used our dancing to create goodwill, we also dance to say ‘Thank You." While Alexia's 93 year-old mother was recuperating from a hip operation at Oakland Summit Medical Center early in 2007, we promised the staff that if they took good care of her that we would dance for them. True to our promise, 3 weeks after she was home we took her back to the hospital in a wheelchair. As we arrived, the nurses had the patients line up along the corridors or sitting by the door of their rooms anxiously waiting.

Dancing along the corridors of this hospital surrounded by doctors, nurses and patients with their IV's or breathing apparatus attached to them was an experience unlike any other. The music reverberated through the halls and got patients out of their beds, patients that the staff had not been able to move in weeks!

As we were leaving the hospital I noticed that Alexia was quiet and clearly emotional, without looking at me she asks, "that man is going to die soon, isn't he?" I nodded in agreement, we both knew to whom she was referring to. A nurse had confided on us that he was terminally ill and wasn't expected to make it to the weekend. "He will stop suffering," I said trying to comfort her. "He smiled and winked at me." Alexia said fighting back tears. I put my arm around her and said; "Look at it this way honey, when he opened his eyes and saw your beautiful face smiling at him and you are all dress up in your red sparkling gown dancing in his room... he knew he had seen his first angel... and he smiled because he liked what he saw"

While dancing in the main corridors, the nurses kept pointing us towards his room. They wanted us to go inside so he could see us, because he couldn't be moved. We did dance into several rooms for that reason.

Our exit from the hospital was much different than our entrance, smiles greeted us, and tears saw us out. After so many ballroom demonstrations we were emotionally touched, we had come to the realization that sometimes when we reach into other people's hearts, we can't help... but find our own.

About a year ago, my wife and I saw the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean" We both liked it, and as the movie ended she turns to me and says "Wouldn't it be nice if we make it look like a Pirate ship in front of our house for Halloween...? I turn to her and starting to say... "Are you craz... you know what? That is a great idea!

Before I knew it I was looking at pirates' ships on line, at dead captains, anchors, cannons and all kinds of nautical paraphernalia. The summer of 2007 found me at sitting at open houses with the plans of a Pirate Ship on the table. It was a perfect time to do that since nobody was coming thru the open house. I figured I could do that at home, but why not do it at a listing on a Sunday afternoon... with the door open... just in case.

Because of the lack of buyers, I was able to come up with a detailed plan. My wife who is also a Realtor and I wanted to make sure the ship was recyclable; after all, what would you do with it after Halloween? We live on a busy street, and our house has a 100' frontage so we had plenty of room. The ship building project sort of took a life of its own; we would be watching a movie and making the dead captain out of paper mache or measuring a sail.

After months of work there were pieces of the ship scattered all over the house, in the middle of our ballroom was this huge piece that one day be the bow, almost like looking at us asking "are we ready yet...?" I wanted to make sure we photograph every step of the way so we could create a virtual tour of the entire project. The idea was to turn this into an advertising campaign.

October 1^st 2007 was a Saturday, this was the day we will finally see what we had created, and here it is:

A 40 foot long, 8' wide with 3 masts, a 20,22 25' tall made out of wooden pallets, burlap, aluminum, paper mache. You have to go the web site, look at the list of virtual tours and find "The Pirate Ship" to see more pictures.

As we started putting the ship together, people stop by and ask questions, children wanted to be photographed on the ship, neighbors wanted to know if we had permits... then we hung a plaque that said "WANT TO KNOW HOW WE BUILT THIS SHIP? GO TO WWW.LISTEDBYANTONIO.COM " Our web site traffic went from an average of 4,000 hits a month to 18,000 in October and over 20,000 during the next 2 months.

People still remember the ship today, on Halloween we had over 2,000 people come on board to collect the candy. Dressed as a pirate I greeted everyone on the gangway with a postcard of our web site inviting them to go look at the virtual tours, on the other side my wife gave out the candy. People actually had to come on board!

The result was not only a huge PR campaign, the local paper put a picture of the ship and named the street where it was, (somebody tip them off ;-) the traffic was incredible, especially at night when the blinking eyes on the captain quarters were visible. We had 3 listings and 1 sale out of this project. Our ship become our Open House... finally we were busy! we were talking real estate!

This was an inexpensive yet very powerful advertising campaign and we had lots of fun. At the open houses we only had 2-3 people in 4 hours Sunday after Sunday. Working on the ship outside our house we actually had an audience, people will stop and chat, we will invite them to come inside the house to see our private ballroom... and our real estate home office. The name of the ship? "Homebuyer" and we explained why... then turn the conversation into real estate.

I CHALLENGE YOU TO GO BUILD A SHIP FOR THIS HALLOWEEN! Build it at the local park, invite the neighborhood children and parents to help... Build it in front of YOU OFFICE... in YOUR PARKING LOT... Go to my web site and see what you need and how to do it. I offer you "technical support" ... in exchange for referrals of course!

What happened to the ship after Halloween...? well, that might be a subject for my second blog... if this one is read by more than 100 people.