To Sir, with love: A rundown of the links in the Unchained chain

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Brian already cited some of the constructive criticism we have received about BloodhoundBlog Unchained, and that’s as it should be. I think we did a nice job, for a first swing at the ball, but the whole BloodhoundBlog idea is about doing better. Praise might be sweet to the ears, but it is criticism that puts us on the path to perfection.

Even so, I promised some link love to people who blogged about or wrote to me about their experience at Unchained, so I’m going to discharge that duty in this post. We’re very grateful to the people who gave us their minds and their time and their funds, and I am more than delighted to pay back what I can.

Don Reedy paid more than most of us to attend Unchained. While he was in Arizona, his dog, Sir, a one-time Universal Studios movie star Rotweiller, made the run for the last exit. Don made the decision to forge ahead at Unchained, keeping us up to date as his wife nursed Sir through one medical procedure after another. But by the time Don got home late Tuesday night, Sir had passed away.

If you’re not a dog person, it might not mean anything to you. Cats and other pets have their charms, but a good dog is like a playful four-year-old child who never grows up and moves away. I don’t delude myself. I spend a lot of time thinking about the epistemology of dogs. But to have a friend that game, that loyal, that full of heart — always thrilled to see you, always eager to be involved, always there for you no matter what — that’s a love unbearable to lose.

Even so, we have to force ourselves to press on regardless. Sir’s life is over, but life goes on. Here’s to Don and to his wife, Beth. And here’s to another great dog they will learn to love, when their grieving for Sir has waned to something easier to endure.

Vance Shutes wrote about his experiences at Unchained. He also wonders if we’re going to run out of water. Not before Phoenix hits a population of eight million souls, I promise. Vance added this by email: “It is said that you are known by the company you keep.  Birds of a feather flock together.  However you put it, the past three days at Unchained have been both exciting and humbling.  I am humbled to have been in the company of so many brilliant, energized real estate practitioners.  I am energized and excited by a whirlwind of ideas just itching to be implemented.  The contacts I have been able to make at Unchained will be with me for a lifetime in real estate.  And for all of this, I thank you both for all your work to host such an event.”

Real estate coach Jan O’Brien has some great recaps of the session on Sunday, Monday and later on Monday. Jan knows the way to my heart: “These guys know how to deliver the good stuff!”

Kevin Warmath sent along these notes: “Thanks for a great event, guys.  It was nice to meet you all, get exposed and re-exposed to so many ideas that can improve our business and value to our clients, and meet so many nice, interesting fellow attendees.  I look forward to many continued relationships; after all, it was billed as a social event. Thanks again for time well-spent at Unchained; you guys put a lot of thought and energy into it and it showed.  A November meeting in Orlando is a great idea, as it is on the East Coast…does that mean I should be going to the NAR conference, too ;-p  ?” We tried in every way we could think of to live up to our word on the Web 2.0 world. Kevin provided a small proof of this by registering for engenu — while I was still talking about it.

Lenore Wilkas gives a great rundown of David Gibbons’ presentation on Zillow.com’s Mortgage Marketplace.

Donald Teel passed along these thoughts: “Thank you for allowing me and my colleague Robert Barringer to attend the Unchained event.  We enjoyed the networking opportunities, content and challenges posed during the three day period.  Unfortunately, due to commitments we had to depart prior to the conclusion. Your dedication to helping real estate agents understand the transition of the industry and the demands this places upon them is commendable…few I know are willing to actually take the steps and dedicate the time to such endeavors. Consider my team your partner in the continuing message to our industry.”

Sue Griman shared this with us: “I want to thank you for a very useful, dynamic conference.  I met many wonderful people whose cards I have and Mary is going to help me out with a blog.  I like to think I keep up with changes in the business and marketing but Greg YOU are a super marketing expert and by the time I left I had many notes and ideas.  My agents and company is very busy but this opens up a whole new world.”

Brian Brady posted this morning on Louis Cammarosano At BloodhoundBlog Unchained. Louis also sent along this sweet note: “Thanks for inviting me to the bloodhound conference. I  enjoyed the curriculum. I  had a chance to meet with just about all of the participants whom all expressed that they found the conference very useful. I especially enjoyed the dialogue that the two of you shared over  the Teri/Laurie panel. It was a great way to highlight that there are different customer segments and different ways of targeting them within the same medium. I would urge you to have the conference again and to keep in close contact with the participants and perhaps update them from time to time with new learnings, links and materials. You’d want successful agents to say they are BH members. Its great word of mouth and something that we have been doing at HomeGain for awhile with some success.”

Meeting Andy Kaufman was a complete treat. He sent this note along: “Just wanted to drop you a note to say thanks for all your hard work in putting Unchained together.  I had a great time and I really enjoyed getting to meet you and Cathleen in person and I’m looking forward to putting some of the ideas I saw into action. While I’ve got your attention, I also wanted to remind you about our little event in SF in July.  RE BarCamp is shaping up to be an amazing, no BS event and we’d be honored to have you join us.” We had planned to help promote REBarCamp after Unchained unwound. I added a sidebar link to the REBarCamp weblog yesterday. Brian Brady is definitely planning to attend. I fly to Orlando for StarPower the following day, so I don’t know for sure if I’m for a one-day round-trip to San Francisco. But I know that REBarCamp will be rich in nuts-and-bolts content, so we’re eager to support it however we can.

Rudy Bachraty has sent a bunch of sweet notes to me and to Brian. On Sunday he was sitting across from me at a table, both of us working on our laptops. He looked up at me and said, “Somebody should take a picture of this.” In truth, there has never been any bad blood between me and Rudy — and the man is so sweet I can’t imagine how there could be.

Benjamin Ficker sends along these thoughts: “Thanks again for the great conference this last week.  I know there are some people out there that don’t get it, but I do.  I really appreciate you getting me in the same room as these industry leaders so we can talk about truly separating ourselves from the competition.”

Patrick Mahony has an infectious enthusiasm. We’ll be talking about him again, because he’s hitting home runs with custom yard signs. Here are his notes about Unchained: “Let me begin by saying… Great Conference. Just to meet everyone (I don’t need to name, names. I do mean everyone who was there) was worth the price of admission. It was a great conference before, I won the Blog from Mary and Steve. To win anything is real cool. To win something that you really want, and need. Is phenomenal winning. However everything comes with a price. When I signed up with Jeff Brown to skin cats, I knew he would hold my feet to the fire. I just didn’t know the fire would be that HOT. Priceless coaching… literally. By winning this Blog and having the knowledge of Unchained, there are no excuses. I know the question will be asked in November, “what ever happen to that guy who won the blog?” Jeff Brown squared.”

Brad Coy was actually afraid I might be mad about his parody of me. For my own part, I was totally confident that Brain would love Brad’s send-up of him. Brad is such a sweet man that this is what he had to say about the topic: “It delights me know that it was received with laughter as it comes from a loving place.”

Louis Cammarosano gave my wife, Cathleen Collins, a “Max,” the stuffed gorilla who is the HomeGain mascot. I don’t know if Cathy told Louis Max’s destiny — but we are dog people. We knew that Max would be a gift to Ophelia, our very playful two-year-old Redbone Coon Hound. Wednesday night we had dinner with Teri Lussier, so we left Max with Ophelia. Here are the before and after pictures:

If I’ve inadvertently left you off of this list of links, let me know. We’re very grateful for the people who have taken such good care of us, and we want to do what we can in return.

As I announced the other day, we’ll be doing a one-day BloodhoundBlog Unchained event in Orlando during the NAR Convention in early November. We don’t know the when and the where yet, but the what is fully-established. We’d love to see you down there to help us raise some Cain.

In the mean time, if you want to buy the DVD set from the inaugural session of BloodhoundBlog Unchained, you can have them for $199 by clicking on the PayPal button shown below:

The DVD set, $199

Note: If you paid to be at Unchained, you’ll be getting a set of these DVDs even if you didn’t make it to the event.

And: I don’t want to oversell these. We had a limited budget for video, so I think the DVDs might look a lot like public access TV. In the months ahead we’re going to be doing original programming in a TV-studio setting. But if you want to experience the next best thing to having been at BloodhoundBlog Unchained, here’s your chance.

For my own part — and I know Brian agrees with me about this — I loved doing this. It truly was a boatload of work, but it was work worth doing, and we brought our very best to it. I love it that we can share what we’ve learned, but I love it even more that we can learn so much more as a result of initiating the process of sharing. That’s what has always made BloodhoundBlog work, and it was a thing of Splendor to howl like a Bloodhound in a completely different way. We are so much in debt to our guests for making this possible that I’m tearing up just thinking about it.

To Sir! To Odysseus! And to a roomful of Bloodhounds — howling in delight as they run down the game!

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