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Category: Innovation (page 3 of 8)

January 3, 2012

Product idea: Sarah, Heidi’s helper in the real world.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The big buzz in the mobile computing biz is augmented reality, your phone or tablet takes in a scene and then echoes back to you what it can infer from an image and its GPS coordinates, compass direction, etc. This may be cool, or it may be cool like a QR-code, an idea whose time will never come.

Augmented reality will be that much cooler when it’s like Arnold-the-Terminator’s eyes, but that illustrates the key defects of the idea, as it is currently implemented:

Augmented reality is not done continuously but only on demand, and only in static and affected ways.

And, in consequence, it’s not doing anything terribly useful, except possibly in vertical market applications.

But reflect that an iPad can run continuously for 10 hours without recharging. Next year’s models may double that number. Soon you will get reminders to plug in, or your devices will find ways to provide for themselves while you’re asleep.

So instead of a truly amazing augmented reality presentation on the Black Hills of Dakota, how about a piece of software that watches you and your life all the time, and augments your activities however it can.

This harkens back to an idea I’ve brought up before, a hypothetical self-maintaining CRM called Heidi:

An email comes in over the transom. The spambot says it’s not spam and the sender is not already in your CRM database, so let’s extract as much information as we can from the email. With a name and an email address we can probably get the sender’s full contact information, and possibly a whole lot more.

Make that first contact a phone call instead. Caller ID is lame, but Google is not. From the phone number, can you get back to a name? A location? From those, can we effect the same kind of searches discussed above?

There’s more: Once your CRM knows a name, it should be watching for any changes in publicly-available databases that should be reflected in your private CRM database. That is to say, your CRM should be maintaining itself.

Sarah’s going to monitor every phone call, of course. She or Heidi should be doing all Read more

December 5, 2011

My address changes when I move. My phone number changes when I swap phones. My email address changes when I get buried in spam. But my name never changes — so it’s the perfect contact address.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. From PC World:

Forget phone numbers and e-mail addresses. The era of the Internet handle is emerging.

Instead of having to remember a phone number or an e-mail address, in a few short years we might simply find somebody remotely over the Internet via his or her handle, another word for an Internet nickname.

It would be similar to the way handles are used in instant messaging or Skype, except that the handle would apply to all modes of getting in touch, including a phone number or e-mail address (or several of each). In my case, my Skype handle, “MattaboyBoston,” could become the way you would reach me.

“People will no longer seek each other’s phone numbers or email address[es] when establishing personal or working relationships,” wrote Gartner analyst Adib Ghubril in a report on mobile predictions for 2012 and beyond. “Instead, they will ask each other, ‘What’s your handle?’ ”

Ghubril said that handles will have a huge advantage. They could remain unchanged for a long time, if not for life.

The idea is simply indirect addressing: If I depend on your physical address (or your phone number or email address), when you make a change, I am lost. But if I use an indirect addressing scheme — I address you by name, or by “handle” as this article avers — then the indirect address can always accurately reflect your current contact information, even if you change it twelve times a day.

The responsibility for maintaining accurate contact information moves from dozens or thousands of distracted and loosely motivated people to the one person most strongly motivated to make sure your messages get through — you.

As with all predictions, the ideas discussed in the PC World article are kludgy and stoopid. This all will actually happen as a beneficial side-effect of cloud-based data storage. We talked about this over the summer in discussions of a hypothetical CRM called Heidi:

An email comes in over the transom. The spambot says it’s not spam and the sender is not already in your CRM database, so let’s extract as much information as Read more

November 18, 2011

Unchained From A TechTard’s Prospective

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

I’d be criminally remiss if I didn’t first comment on how massively cool it was spending an entire day and night with the level of expertise, knowledge, experience, and plain old results present at this Unchained event. This was not a room for posers — possibly the understatement of 2011. I was in nosebleed country all day. I felt pretty much all day like I was merely an insignificant fly in the room with these guys.

Got nothin’ to say about all the GeekSpeak that went on. It was when each speaker began to elucidate their strategy(s) that I perked up and began takin’ notes. I did notice one thing that made it more than just a great day of learning. Something that had me feelin’ all warm ‘n fuzzy.

Nothing’s changed.

• Scott Schang, and later on Mark Madsen with Tony Sena, pounded home the point that measuring results is mission critical — period, shut up. More on that principle later.

• All of ’em, directly or indirectly paid homage, due tribute, to the end game of all that was taught: Gettin’ belly to belly with those seeking the aforementioned expertise, knowledge, experience, and yes, that pesky concept — results. Any outcome short of that is akin to a coffeehouse conversation with two broke ‘artists’. In other words, you’ll never get that time back, sans results.

• Mark Madsen literally humbled me with his prodigious work ethic — which when combined with his ‘do it now’ attitude reminded me so much of Dad when he was making plans for his company, back in the day. For reasons I choose not to divulge here, I’ve been unable to follow up with Mark, but that’s passed, and he’ll be hearing from me. Remember his name, cuz he’s the real deal. I don’t often get impressed, mostly cuz I’m a cynical OldSchool bastard. But believe me about Mark. It’s a shame he doesn’t write more here.

• Ever been to a concert where the first several acts knocked your socks off? One time in the 70s I went to a concert where the freakin’ opening act was Linda Read more

November 18, 2011

A Peek Inside the Unchained Conference (Part 5 of 5)

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Each day of the past week, I featured one of the amazing speakers from the Unchained Conference 2011. It was your chance to spend a little time with some of the most creative, innovative minds in real estate online marketing… unfortunately, that’s all it could be: a few moments. For those of us in attendance, on the other hand, we had over 10 uninterrupted hours of access…

There were many great speakers, and lots of great ideas this year.  There always are.  But at every conference – Unchained or other – there is one Keynote Speaker.  One presenter that no one will miss.  The Superstar, if you will.  The expert who turns the fire hydrant on full force and dares you to step up.  At Unchained, there is no doubt who that speaker is…

Eric Blackwell is an SEO expert, and he has helped countless real estate agents generate countless new clients through their online presence.  When he gets going on what works and what doesn’t, you can almost feel the absolute truth of his words.  Why?  Could be all the sites he runs, or the totalality of hours he has spent doing SEO work, but it really comes down to this: Eric Blackwell does SEO for a living – he’s down in the trenches every day testing, trying and correcting.  He knows what it takes to build your online presence, and we know he’s a star.

November 17, 2011

A Peek Inside the Unchained Conference (Part 4 of 5)

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Each day this week, I’ve featured one of the amazing speakers from the Unchained Conference 2011. This is your chance to spend a little time with some of the most creative, innovative minds in real estate online marketing… unfortunately, that’s all it will be: a few moments. For those of us in attendance, on the other hand, we had over 10 uninterrupted hours of access…

Whether “I told you so,” or not… remember this for next time: when you hear about an Unchained Conference being scheduled, get online, get out your wallet, and get yourself there. You will leave dead tired, overwhelmed, and so filled with ideas you’ll find yourself clicking your heels and saying “There’s no place like Unchained. There’s no place like Unchained…” Leading that chant will be none other than today’s speaker:

Brian Brady is called America’s #1 Mortgage Broker by Google; but he’s got a lot more to teach than finance.  He’s been generating clients AND closed transactions from online and social media venues since way before most in the industry had even heard the terms.  At Unchained 2011, Mr. Brady took us on a wild tour of email marketing, Hollywood movies and secrets to converting prospects into clients.  Want to know how The Wizard of Ahhhs does it?  Join him on the Yellow Brick Road at the next Unchained.

November 16, 2011

A Peek Inside the Unchained Conference (Part 3 of 5)

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

As promised, here’s another amazing speaker from the Unchained Conference 2011. This is your chance to spend a little time with some of the most creative, innovative minds in real estate online marketing… unfortunately, that’s all it will be: a few moments. For those of us in attendance, on the other hand, we had over 10 uninterrupted hours of access…

Today, instead of repeating the: “I told you so,” mantra… I’ll just get right to the point: the next time there’s an Unchained Conference scheduled, do everything you can to be there. You’ll leave dead tired and overwhelmed, but overflowing with ideas you can implement immediately. Which brings me to…

Mark Madsen’s real estate site and an in depth discussion on how he creates web sites that not only attract a lot of traffic, but convert that traffic into clients. Sounds difficult? You bet, but just to make his numbers all the more startling, I’ll remind you of this fact: he’s doing business in Las Vegas… otherwise known as “Ground Zero” of the housing crisis. How does he not only survive but thrive in that environment? The same way he wowed all of us who were there: he creates TRUST.

November 15, 2011

A Peek Inside the Unchained Conference (Part 2 of 5)

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

As promised, each day this week I’ll post a few moments from some of the speakers at the Unchained Conference 2011.  It’s your chance to spend a little time with some of the most creative, innovative minds in real estate online marketing… unfortunately, that’s all it will be: a few moments.  For those of us in attendance, on the other hand, we had over 10 uninterrupted hours of access…

I know that yesterday I did the whole: “I told you so,” thing, but it bears repeating: the next time there’s an Unchained Conference scheduled, make it a point to get yourself there.  You’ll leave dead tired, overwhelmed, and full of ideas you can implement immediately.  Speaking of which…

Scott Schang’s amazing loan site and online marketing campaign started as an idea at the first Unchained conference, and now he’s back telling us how to do it.  Oh, and reminding us that when it comes to generating prospective clients, we all get what we deserve…

November 14, 2011

A Peek Inside the Unchained Conference (1 of 5)

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Each day this week (and earlier than this one, I promise) I’ll post a few moments from some of the speakers at the Unchained Conference 2011.  It’s your chance to spend a little time with some of the most creative, innovative minds in real estate online marketing… unfortunately, that’s all it will be: a few moments.  For those of us in attendance, on the other hand, we had over 10 uninterrupted hours of access…

I could say: “I told you so,” but instead I’ll say this: the next time there’s an Unchained Conference scheduled – and the way each one gets better than the one before, you better believe there’ll be more – make it a point to get yourself there.  You’ll leave dead tired, overwhelmed, and full of ideas you can implement immediately.

Here’s Greg, discussing how he creates hundreds of thousands of web pages to dominate the competition.

November 12, 2011

Here’s what you missed at BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Anaheim.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

20111112-071555.jpg

How much attention have you devoted, over the past few years, to so-called on-line real estate marketing experts? How stupid do you feel now that those unwitting judas goats have sold out your IDX feed to Zillow?

Nobody likes to be mocked for being a dupe — the prospect of which, I freely admit, can make BloodhoundBlog a daunting place. But: Which is worse — being called a doofus or being a doofus?

BloodhoundBlog Unchained is a completely different way of learning net.wise real estate marketing. No dupes. No doofuses. No hype. No cant. No vendorsluts. We work as hard as we can for as long as we can, and we send our students home poor in sleep but rich in ideas.

Here’s what you missed yesterday at BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Anaheim:

I demoed half a dozen ways of creating web pages and web sites automatically from raw content.

Scott Schang showed us how he has used WordPress and select plug-ins to create a lead-conversion machine.

Mark Madsen and Tony Sena illustrated the web marketing ideas that have launched their property management business into orbital velocity in just a few months.

And Eric Blackwell was the show-stopper as always, taking us through all the latest twists and turns emerge from from the Googleplex — and documenting a killer strategy for attracting sellers on-line, the holy grail of Internet real estate marketing.

We had other speakers as well, and Brian Brady regaled us with email marketing strategies until almost 10 pm.

But the highlight of our day was Realtor magazine’s on-line editor, Brian Summerfield, pictured above, who bearded the Bloodhounds in their own den. Brian very graciously and calmly defended the NAR’s more controversial stands, and the dawgs acquitted themselves admirably, engaging Summerfield with insight and without rancor. More that one person compared the talk to Nixon’s visit to China, but I’m not sure who was whom. 😉

Everywhere you turn there are so-called experts peddling so-called solutions — but the problems being solved are not your problems generating leads and closing sales. Instead, almost always, you are being sold, the the problem to be solved is the speaker’s carefully-concealed poverty. But Read more

November 7, 2011

What’s your marketing plan for 2012? Set a Bloodhound’s pace this Friday at BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Anaheim.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We’re having a Scenius this Friday in Anaheim, a BloodhoundBlog Unchained event that we’re running, subversively, during the NAR Convention. We’ve done this before, but the NAR was a lot more powerful the last time. By now it just seems pathetic — but we don’t much care either way.

We care a lot about the Scenius, though. What we do is put a lot of bright, ambitious people together and then revel in the great ideas that emerge from the synergy. Our guests are some of the inventors of the wired world of real estate, and they will have lots of new ides to explore.

Just think: Since the last time we did BloodhoundBlog Unchained, Google has come to be beset by Bing, Twitter by Facebook and the web by app-centric mobile computing. Seems like a good time to rethink your marketing strategies, doesn’t it.

If you’re going to be in Disneyville for the NAR Convention, or if you’re within driving distance, join us.

Here are the details:

BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Anaheim
Friday, November 11, 2011
12 Noon to 10 pm
Cortona Inn & Suites Anaheim Resort
2029 South Harbor Boulevard
Anaheim, CA 92802
714-971-5000
Mapped.

The dogs will hit town Thursday afternoon, so, if you’re around, look us up. But the main action will be Friday. I know there are seats left, I’m not sure how many. If you want to get your 2012 off to a running start, assert yourself:

Make the Scene: $99


















October 17, 2011

Why can’t the MLS or the mafia innovate? And what should you do instead of being an NAR goon?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Today, Redfin.com CEO Glenn Kelman warns us that we may be “outsourcing our brains” because MLS systems are so stupid:

I worry about whether the fundamental choice we made five years ago was the right choice, that if we played by the rules and used MLS data that we would be able to build a better Web site or a worse Web site. And, I think, the jury is still out there. But, I promise you, if brokers aren’t building the best Web sites for real estate consumers, we are headed for pain. Pain for the customer, pain for the broker.

For weeks now I’ve been sitting on a post by FBS CEO Michael Wurzer summarizing half-a-dozen non-starter ideas for MLS innovation. I’ve been waiting, so far in vain, for someone to post a comment stating the obvious:

Why can’t the MLS innovate? For the same reasons the mafia and the government can’t innovate: Criminals steal so they won’t have to produce wealth.

When BloodhoundBlog Unchained comes to Anaheim, we’ll be covering lots of nuts and bolts tactics for the hard-working grunts on the ground — as you would expect. But we’ll also be talking about very big ideas, most notably how to run our business like a business and not a crime syndicate.

I know Realtors don’t like to hear the truth about how the National Association of Realtors has behaved over the past 100 years, but just as with the leviathan state, the time we have left for childish stupidity is running out.

I can’t cause the congenital Rotarian Socialists of the NAR to discover, honor and live up to their humanity. But I can show you how to build a lasting business you can be proud of — by behaving like an honest trader and not like a predator.

I am not anti-NAR. I am not anti-MLS. I am not even anti-socialist or anti-graft or anti-sleaze. What I am is pro-values. If you will give me a few minutes of your time, I will show you how working with integrity in the real estate business is as simple as pursuing your own values — exclusively.

If Read more

October 6, 2011

Brian Brady makes it happen: BloodhoundBlog Unchained is on for Anaheim, Friday, November 11, 2011.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Brian Brady got us a room, may the gods whisper his name in awe. We’re working on sponsorship, and I’ll have speaker announcements in the coming days. Here’s the big picture:

BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Anaheim
Friday, November 11, 2011
12 Noon to 10 pm
Cortona Inn & Suites Anaheim Resort
2029 South Harbor Boulevard
Anaheim, CA 92802
714-971-5000

We’re going split the day between formal presentations and Scenius scenes. No one can predict where lightning will strike, but we have delivered transformative experiences before. If you go to the NAR sessions that day, you can look forward to being upsold on crap. Come see us and we could change your life forever.

That’s sounds like a value proposition to me.

I’ll have more to say soon, but right now I want to give people who are paying attention a chance to jump. We have a very limited number of seats, so if being there matters to you, get your credit card out now.

Make the Scene: $99


















October 5, 2011

Greg Swann’s second request: I need a partner.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

What? No one is going to send me to the NAR convention? Their loss — and the losses are but beginning.

Meanwhile, I need a partner. I’ve been thinking about this for months, but I don’t know that it’s something I can actually do anything about.

Here’s where I am, at this stage of my life:

I am swarming with ideas that can make boatloads of money.

And:

I am broke — not all the time, but frequently.

Being broke is temporary. The cure for that is just hard work and a little luck.

But the ideas are driving me insane, because I can see how much better things can be done, but I’m not able to accomplish even ten percent of what I can envision.

I need people behind me. And for that I need money behind me. And for that I need a partner, someone who can bring or attract investment capital — and manage it.

This is some of what I have going:

Ascende.me is as sexy as four-day weekend in Vegas, and there’s a lot more real-estate-porn power still to come. I’m building versions of Ascende for Realtors around the country, but I can see ways to turn it into a cash-and-carry money machine.

As Sean Purcell pointed out yesterday, the BloodhoundRealty.com real estate listing praxis is a fearsome competitor. Phoenix is not a great listing market right now — but Phoenix is not the only city on earth.

We’re also building a property management business, which is poised to explode. My rental homes lease fast and stay leased, yielding maximum profits for our landlords. I personally sell a lot of rental properties, which we then manage, and I am ready to start recruiting landlords who already own their rentals. As icing on that cake, I have killer ideas for taking a VOW feed and using it to build a virtual Point-of-Purchase for out-of-state investors.

Away from real estate, SplendorQuest.com is a forest in its seed stage. There is a big marketing business in there — conferences, books, magazines, web sites, etc. It’s a content play, so there is no limit to the profit centers it can throw off.

My Get Read more

October 4, 2011

I want someone to give me a conference room in rounds so I can launch a Scenius in Sacramento Anaheim.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I want someone to send me to NAR in Sacramento Anaheim next month. I don’t want to do anything even remotely NARish, I just want to commune with the grunts on the ground. I have lots of interesting ideas about innovation in real estate, and I am lucky enough to know a lot of very clever people. Put us all in a room together, and we can make magic. We’ve done it before.

This would be cool: A double- or triple-sized break-out room in rounds of eight, each table its own little Scenius. Some formal presentations from the front of the room, with web and slide support, all that stuff. But also a lot of time for real work at the table level. I plan on throwing off a lot of product ideas, and I would love to have a leavening of people from the development side of the on-line real estate table. I want to sell some very serious ideas, but I want people to go home with new product plans, new marketing plans, too.

Here’s a true fact: This is the most propitious time for revolutionary change in the residential real estate business. Why? Because things could not possibly be any more screwed up than they are now. There is no sane argument to be made against any attempt to right this flailing beached whale we scheme to call a profession. I have ideas. You do, too. I want to talk about how we can be the drivers of real change in our business.

Am I too vain to think that someone would put together a show for me? I know how to do all this myself, after all. But: I don’t have the time or the money to put anything together. I loved doing the BloodhoundBlog Unchained events with Brian Brady, and with all the hard-working dogs who graced us with their presence. But all that is way more than I can do now. It comes down to this: I’ll do this if someone will take on the logistics and costs, and not if not.

But what I’m promising is a Scenius, Read more

September 27, 2011

The Reason for Boundless Optimism

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

This, from a wonderful op/ed piece in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend entitled: From Phoenicia to Hayek to the ‘Cloud’ by Matt Ridley.

The crowd-sourced, wikinomic cloud is the new, new thing that all management consultants are now telling their clients to embrace.  Yet the cloud is not a new thing at all.  It has been the source of human invention all along.  Human technological advancement depends not on individual intelligence, but on collective idea sharing, and it has done so for tens of thousands of years…

Knowledge is dispersed and shared. Friedrich Hayek was the first to point out, in his famous 1945 essay “The Uses of Knowledge in Society,” that central planning cannot work because it is trying to substitute an individual all-knowing intelligence for a distributed and fragmented system of localized but connected knowledge.

So dispersed is knowledge, that, as Leonard Reed famously observed in his 1958 essay “I, Pencil,” nobody on the planet knows how to make a pencil. The knowledge is dispersed among many thousands of graphite miners, lumberjacks, assembly line workers, ferrule designers, salesmen and so on. This is true of everything that I use in my everyday life, from my laptop to my shirt to my city. Nobody knows how to make it or to run it. Only the cloud knows…

…good ideas can spread through trade. New weapons, new foods, new crafts, new ornaments, new tools. Suddenly you are no longer relying on the inventiveness of your own tribe or the capacity of your own territory. You are drawing upon ideas that occurred to anybody anywhere anytime within your trading network….

That is what trade does. It creates a collective innovating brain as big as the trade network itself.

So far this is already inspiring. We are advanced by the collective brain power of everyone we trade with… need there be any further discussion of free markets and open trade?  Why, other than in pursuit of enslavement, would anyone suggest limiting the “collective innovating brain?”  But there’s more; there’s reason for unbridled optimism.  Not just a positive outlook, not just a subtle feeling that the world will Read more

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Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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