Totally stunning email this morning from John Kalinowski of LiquidBlueRealty.com. John is a profile in courage, to my way of looking at things. He’s just launched a brand new brokerage. In this real estate market. In Cleveland. He’s being very sweet to the Bloodhounds in this note, but this is an amazing amount of work he has undertaken:
I finally had a minute to sit down and send you a note, to thank you for all the help you’ve provided me, even though you weren’t aware you were helping! I’ve been following your site for quite some time now, absorbing every little tidbit possible, and in the last two weeks left RE/MAX to start my own brokerage in the Cleveland Market, Liquid Blue Realty. I’m building the entire company around the custom sign idea, and so far the response has been incredible, to say the least!
I am eternally grateful to the Bloodhounds (and to Russell Shaw) for all the inspiration that has pushed me to make this move. I even built my own website, using WordPress and the Thesis template, even though I’ve never had a blog or built a site before. I probably wouldn’t know what WordPress was if I hadn’t started following your site.
Our signs are 24″x36″, just like yours, but are actually printed directly onto a sign material that is made of some sort of hard plastic with aluminum bonded to each side. Our printer owns what amounts to a giant inkjet printer that can basically print on anything that will fit inside (I’ve seen them print on a bedroom door!), and uses waterproof ink. They use the same process to print conventional signs for other agents, and the panels are about 1/8″ thick and weigh about 5 lbs, so these are serious signs.
Believe it or not, I create my sign files on a PC! I start with MS Publisher with a full-size 24×36 image, then print to a PDF using Acrobat Distiller at 300 DPI. I then jump between Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to fix the CMYK values on the blue color, and to create the huge 350mb EPS file that is delivered to the printer on a CD or USB drive. Our printer is just as happy as yours, as he just has to load the file and print! It took a while (like several months) to figure out how to get everything right so the file would print properly, but now it’s pretty much a simple process. I use a hefty 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 PC I built myself a couple years ago, but even with 1GB of RDRAM it does take all of its processing power to chug out the bit EPS file.
I also designed and built my own post, using a combination of a white vinyl 4×4 fence post that slides over another custom PVC pipe-based device I designed that you pound into the ground (no holes to dig). The cross-bar is PVC pipe, carefully drilled with fixtures I designed, so all the holes line up, and the whole setup installs in about 5 minutes. We’ve had a few come off in recent windstorms, so we beefed-up the mounting hardware, and so far, so good!
The website was a lot easier than I thought it would be, though it did involve a lot of late nights and early mornings! I’m sure I’ve made many mistakes, and don’t know everything I need to know about SEO, etc., but the WordPress software is just simply amazing to me. Agents in my area think I spent a fortune, or hired a big-dollar designer, when the reality is the overall dollar cost is very low.
You can find several pictures of our signs here, and I can send you more if you like. One thing we’re trying is to offer the sign to our agents as part of what they get for their commission split. Instead of just advertising that we offer the “highest split in town” and other junk services, we are trying to provide our agents (and clients) with something that is truly different. I guess I’ve caught the Bloodhound fever! You can see our pitch on the Careers tab.
I hope to meet you some day, so I can thank you in person, as I just can’t say enough in words how much I appreciate what I’ve learned from you and the other Bloodhounds, and the insight I gain every day from your site.
Take care, and send some of that warm weather our way!
Oh, man, this warms the cockles of my heart. This is Splendor at its finest, and, along with everything else, I love to see the light of pure human joy shining through.
But John is taking on a tremendous risk in a perilous economy with no guarantees except his convictions and his willingness to back up those convictions with hard work.
But the cool thing is, everything is up for grabs right now. The turmoil in most real estate markets calls every long-settled certainty into question. Are Stuffington and Snobb the last word on listings? Then why do their listings languish so long on the market? People don’t change their habits when they’re comfortable. But once comfort has fled the scene, a marketer offering something new, something different — something better — has a chance to be heard. If you want to be the iconoclast who shatters the glass ceiling in your market, you’ll never have a better chance than right now.
First Mariana Wagner and now John Kalinowski. This is shaping up to be a great Christmas for the Bloodhounds…
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing, technology
Tom Hall says:
ok – so I find myself asking – what the hell am I waiting for? Question is – how quickly can I get my site up and running?
December 21, 2008 — 11:24 am
Michelle Minch says:
I am a professional home stager, not a REALTOR. But I am always interested in what helps to sell a home. I have been a fan of your custom, eye-catching signs from the start. I’m glad to see that other brokerages are picking up on that and using it to what I think will be great marketing advantage. Congratulations to John. Even though this is a difficult market, homes are still being listed, bought and sold. Someone is getting that business and he has taken a big step toward insuring that it is Liquid Blue that gets a piece of that pie in his market. Very impressive.
December 21, 2008 — 11:35 am
Greg Swann says:
> Question is – how quickly can I get my site up and running?
What time is it? We argue for the 70% solution. Build 70% of what you want and see how it works. Don’t tell anyone you’re not finished, just test to make sure you’ve taken the right approach. If you have, apply yourself to doing 70% of the remaining work with each revision. If not, start over with a new 70% solution. You can have that much done today.
December 21, 2008 — 11:41 am
Greg Swann says:
Here’s a mitzvah for Michelle: Staging sells houses. We tell our sellers that the formula for selling a home is price, preparation and presentation. If the house is priced wrong, it won’t sell — and nothing else will make a difference. Custom yard signs — as one element of a full-blown marketing plan — make up the presentation of the property, critical to getting people to look at the home. But if listers and sellers skimp on preparation — repairs, cleaning, decluttering and staging — they are leaving money on the table. Staged homes look and feel like a better value, so they generate offers more quickly and at higher prices.
December 21, 2008 — 11:50 am
John Kalinowski says:
Wow!! Thank you, Greg, for putting me on stage at BloodhoundBlog. I am incredibly humbled, as I’ve always looked at your group as the pinnacle of the real estate world, and it’s an honor to see my sign at the top of your page. Keep the great ideas flowing, and hopefully other agents will continue to read and change with the market, not against it, as we’re attempting to do at Liquid Blue Realty. Happy Holidays!! – John
December 21, 2008 — 12:02 pm
Mariana says:
John – I really like how you laid out your signs. I really like the plat map. That would be an excellent feature for the properties that have odd lot lines or lot features that are unnoticed from the road.
December 21, 2008 — 12:15 pm
John Kalinowski says:
@Mariana – Thanks! I imagined buyers standing at the street, looking at a line of trees and wondering what’s really there. The maps on the sign tell them right away exactly what they’re looking at, and what the property offers.
December 21, 2008 — 12:25 pm
Robert Kerr says:
Help me understand the argument for a domain name per home.
I’m out driving and I see three homes of John’s that I like, but I have to write down three domain names? And when I get home and want to know more about all three, I have to enter each name?
Wouldn’t one domain with the listings organized properly within be better for marketing and buyers’ online navigation between them?
December 21, 2008 — 1:44 pm
Teri Lussier says:
Awesome!
This is sooo inspiring, John… I can’t tell you. Yeah. I’m lost for words. Please keep us updated and Go, man, GO!
December 21, 2008 — 2:02 pm
John Kalinowski says:
Thank you Teri! You are one of my Bloodhound favorites, and you’re a Buckeye, which is even better!
December 21, 2008 — 2:09 pm
J Boyer Maplewood NJ says:
I love the signs and that they are willing to take the chance and go out on their own. I wish we could use signs like that here in New Jersey but they regulate everything here, usually town by town even. There are towns around me that I will not work, because my 18 x 30 signs are not allowed.
December 21, 2008 — 4:19 pm
Tom Bryant says:
This is all very interesting. John, congratulations and best wishes with your new brokerage. I sincerely admire your spirit. I keep reading this site for inspiration, and you’ve provided it!
Robert’s point:
“Wouldn’t one domain with the listings organized properly within be better for marketing and buyers’ online navigation between them?”
…is one I’ve wondered about as well. I do notice that your sign has both your company site address and the specific property site address, so I guess that covers it. I do think that an info box/tube on the sign could solve that “problem” with both addresses available on the info flyer, so no note-taking by the prospect. We have our assistant stock our flyer tubes weekly (at a minimum) and we challenge people to find empty tubes on our signs! : )
I’m guessing you have more weather issues to deal with regarding info boxes or tubes in your area, though, than we do in Phx.
John, there’s more than one Buckeye here. I’m about to be invaded by swarms of family headed out for the Fiesta Bowl.
December 21, 2008 — 6:18 pm
Brian Brady says:
“Wouldn’t one domain with the listings organized properly within be better for marketing and buyers’ online navigation between them?”
I’m not an agent by I’ve spied on Greg Swann and Sean Purcell for months. The single property, address domain site is an everlasting sales brochure. You won’t remember “that address” but you’ll google:
“for sale+willetta street phoenix ” (do it)
That’s the power of the single property site
December 21, 2008 — 6:34 pm
Greg Swann says:
> The single property, address domain site is an everlasting sales brochure.
Check. If we plan to be back in the neighborhood, we never take the sites down. Breadcrumbs on the street forever. The neighbors will revisit those sites when they’re thinking about listing, and we have a strong case for listing for the buyers of our listing when they themselves are ready to move on. At a minimum, we have a very detailed glimpse of the house at the time we sold it.
December 21, 2008 — 6:42 pm
Russell Shaw says:
John,
I am just delighted at the progress you’ve made! You are more than welcome for any and all help that might have come from me. Truth is – and I am betting that Greg would totally agree with me – any lessons we try to teach were available for *anyone* who cared enough to want to learn. It was *you* who found jewels where others saw only sand.
Oh yea, LOVE your new signs!
December 21, 2008 — 9:18 pm
Greg Swann says:
> Truth is – and I am betting that Greg would totally agree with me – any lessons we try to teach were available for *anyone* who cared enough to want to learn. It was *you* who found jewels where others saw only sand.
Damn betcha. FWIW, one of the reasons I try to detail everything we’re doing is because I learn so much from what others share back from their experiences.
December 21, 2008 — 9:40 pm
John Kalinowski says:
@ J Boyer & Tom Bryant – Thank you so much for the comments!
@ Russell Shaw – Can’t say how much I appreciate your help, and your e-mails over the past year have really helped keep me chugging forward to make this happen.
@ Greg – No much else I can say to thank you, but as soon as we sell our first listing with a new sign, I’ll send you the panel so you can take a look.
December 22, 2008 — 10:18 am
Sharon Hollas says:
Boy, I wish this company was up in Langley, BC where I am. Those signs are very well done.
Sharon Hollas – Langley Real Estate
December 22, 2008 — 1:45 pm
Greg Swann says:
> as soon as we sell our first listing with a new sign, I’ll send you the panel so you can take a look.
Looking forward to it. They sound like they’d be bulletproof!
December 22, 2008 — 1:59 pm
Tim Golden says:
Great Stuff …very inspiring …great signs …have been thinking about stepping out on the edge myself …Thanks so much for all the comments …Now is always the time …and long term ‘Now’ given the down market may be the best time for a new brokerage concept!! …Love the per property domain name …simple to do …last a long time.
December 22, 2008 — 4:20 pm
Greg Staker says:
I consider my reading about the custom sign on the Bloodhound blog one of the top 10 best real estate related tips/suggestions for 2008.
As I mentioned at Unchained Orlando, I included the Bloodhound blog post that first discussed the custom sign in a marketing presentation during a sales meeting for my office.
Good stuff and why I keep coming back to this blog.
Thank you and Merry Christmas!
December 22, 2008 — 8:35 pm
Thomas Johnson says:
John: You have just blown me away. The signs are great. Your custom yard arms are incredible. Our summer baked gumbo soil is probably as solid as frozen ground-and you don’t have to dig!
BTW: I hope you used your official NAR 10% Lowe’s coupon when you bought your supplies-get something for your dues.
Merry Christmas!
December 23, 2008 — 12:58 am
John Kalinowski says:
@Tim- I say “go for it!” I was quite amazed at the way my sellers responded. Every one of them switched to my new company, and they didn’t care at all about having the “big company” name.
@Greg & Tom- Thanks for the comments! The yard arm has been a bit of a challenge, but we’ve documented all the design details and built fixtures and drilling jigs for all the parts, so we can pretty much hire a handy teenager to build them as we grow. This last week was very windy, and we had a few signs come off, but we used the Tim-the-Tool-Man method, and went to a mega-hook that will never bend!
December 23, 2008 — 5:15 am
Greg Swann says:
> This last week was very windy, and we had a few signs come off, but we used the Tim-the-Tool-Man method, and went to a mega-hook that will never bend!
A 24″ bungee cord around the pole and then hooked at both ends through a hole in lower inside corner will stop sway entirely. Looks a little kludgey, but it works. In the long run, we’re going to a custom-built H-frame with short bungee cords doing the job of S-hooks at all corners. We’re barely listing at all right now, so it hasn’t been a priority.
December 23, 2008 — 7:48 am
Jim Gatos says:
John, I think your idea of putting the plot plan of the property on the sign is cool; I can actually see people pulling over and looking @ the sign.
May I ask, how much does it cost you for the sign panels? Do you get the posts from Lowe’s or Home Depot?
December 23, 2008 — 8:41 pm
John Kalinowski says:
Jim- I’m about the same as Greg; about $250 by the time I’m done with everything. You could get the posts and Home Depot, but you really need to by them by the pallet load for the pricing to make any sense.
December 23, 2008 — 8:49 pm
James Wheelock says:
John,
I appreciate your courage and have been pressing to come to the game with everything I have as well. I thought the youtube.com video I have posted below fit this post and comments thread very well. John, I can see that you have a big red rubber ball and have stepped out to chase it. I am in your corner with a pumping fist. If you would like to know what a red rubber ball is watch the video below.
December 23, 2008 — 10:59 pm
Jim Gatos says:
Jokingly, I ask, what instructions would I give my sign guy?
I asked and showed this post to a LOT of agents in my area, btw. 5 homes a year, up to 60 sales a year, and the universal response seems to be they think it’s not really something they’d do.
Me? I suppose I’d have to try one out maybe. May I ask, what have been your results (sales closed units) and (new listings obtained Directly from this idea)?
December 24, 2008 — 4:12 pm