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Tag: unchained (page 1 of 1)

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.

May 8, 2010

Mastering the Art of Active Listening

by

Realtor, Surfer-in-Training

Author website

Yesterday I was in a meeting in which relevant information was disseminated yet some people just refused to LISTEN.  I know they could hear what was being said, but for whatever reason they either chose to ignore it or don’t have the mental ability to understand (I really hope that it was the former of the two).  This is not meant as a rant, a diatribe, a denunciation (or whatever other label can be attached), but rather as a reminder to those who hear what others say but still don’t listen.

It takes much more to be a participant in a discussion than to just spout off opinions.  To some, being a good communicator means being able to speak in public or BS’ing your way through a conversation.  Well, actively listening is becoming a lost art.  And let’s make clear the difference between “listening” and “hearing”.  Hearing, in a nutshell, is having the ability to perceive sound.  Listening, on the other hand, is understanding, interpreting, and assessing what is being said.  Sometimes you can even see when a person stops listening, you can see the wheels turning in their head as they prepare a rebuttal and just wait for their turn to speak.

Well, for those people, I have a few suggestions:

*  Start out with blank, neutral slate and let the speaker have their say;  it might even be something that you agree with or new ideas/information that could benefit you.  In doing so, give them your undivided attention (yeah, that means no doodling or daydreaming, at least not for now).

*  Use non-verbal communication, it will let the speaker know that you are listening.  Maintain eye contact (no, not in a creepy stalker way), nod and gesture as appropriately, and use body language.  And this is much less disruptive than interrupting.

*  When appropriate, ask relevant questions.  This allows the speaker to explain their points further (in case they were not clear in their Read more

January 19, 2010

Unchaining a Bloodhound Pup

by

Mortgage Systems Samurai

Author website

It’s funny, I am almost never at a loss for words. I have an opinion on just about any topic and am usually a passionate conversationalist….but put me in the yard with the Big Dogs and I’m feeling a little puppyish (you’ll find that I like to make up words).

To introduce myself I want to tell you about the path that led me here.  I found BHB right as things started to really get hairy in the third and fourth quarter of 2007.

I have to admit I had trouble understanding much of what I read here about technology, SEO and Greg’s passionate dissertations that seemed like they were written in Greek (come to think of it, maybe it was Latin).

I could not resist being drawn to this incredible community of creative, innovative and free thinking professionals sharing openly their trials and their triumphs as they searched for answers when we really didn’t know exactly what the questions were, or what they would be.  It was a true mastermind of master minds.

When I found out about Bloodhound Unchained in 2008 I spent every cent that I had to buy a plane ticket and book a seedy hotel to be there.  I still remember, the cheapest hotel I could find was about a mile and a half from the Heard Museum.  I grew up on a farm in Michigan and figured “a mile and a half, no problem – i can do that in my sleep!”…and I don’t recall any mention on the announcement for Unchained about Arizona heat.  Even in April it was about 109 degrees!

So I showed up every day, lugging my $300 Fry’s laptop that someone lent me the money for, soaking wet, looking like I swam to the event like that dumb Michael Phelps Subway commercial they keep playing during the football playoff games.

I had already read about, and implemented fully without completely understanding,  long tail SEO strategies posted by Greg on the blog.  I was almost blinded by the innovation in the conference and found solace at a time when everything seems like an uphill battle….we’re talking Everest Read more

May 15, 2009

Unchained Freedom “Friends Keep Friends In The Business”

by

Las Vegas Mortgage Blogger

Author website

As I was driving back to Las Vegas after a full week of hanging out with the Bloodhound crew at Unchained, my mind was racing to get a grasp on all of the new real estate marketing possibilities that I could achieve by the end of the year.

The confidence I gained through the relationships built at Unchained was all I needed to fully execute my online marketing plans.

I believe that everyone is an expert at something, and we all have a ton to learn from each other.

The Scenius sessions at Unchained were a great example of this concept:

  • After a full day of building blogs, Eric Blackwell, Ryan Hartman and I stayed up until 3 am discussing some SEO strategery for Battleback.com.
  • Greg showed me how simple it would be to syndicate my mortgage content on all of my real estate agents’ blogs with just a little bit of technical savvy.
  • Brad Coy and Brian Brady helped me figure out how to easily integrate a Twitter or Facebook presence into my weekly relationship building routines without having to spend too much time being social.
  • Al Lorenz and I talked about the benefits of owning the social media platforms that our clients and referral partners participate on.
  • Sean Purcell’s brainstorming session over a $100 casino chip got me excited about top of mind sales and branding tools.
  • Kerry Melcher’s “Small Town Phoenix Living” reminded me of how important it is to connect with the emotional needs that may impact our clients’ decisions to do business with us.
  • Scott Cowan and I compared our local markets and shared similar opinions about how much online social networking really matters in the long run.
  • Scott Schang and Mark Green opened my eyes to the power of holding online webinars for the purpose of building a loyal database.

I could go on and on about all of the great conversations that I had at Unchained.

My main objective for that week was to fill in a few technical gaps with my blogging skills.  As Greg has mentioned many times, real estate professionals have a publishing problem.

There are so many ideas that I haven’t been able to Read more

April 20, 2009

“No Matter How Good You Get, You Can Always Get Better…

by

Database Marketing Expert

Author website

… and that’s the exciting part.”  End Quote.

That’s a peek into the mind of the man who arguably will go down as the most dominant athlete of all time – Tiger Woods.

For those of you who aren’t golf fans, let me rewind a few years.  Tiger Woods was firmly entrenched as the #1 player in golf.  And by firmly entrenched, let’s just say that the #2 player in the world couldn’t even carry Tiger’s bag.

Yet, at the height of his dominance, Woods shockingly fired his “swing coach” and re-engineered his entire mechanical approach to the game.  Virtually everyone in golf thought he was nuts.  And the results were far from immediate.  In fact, some players on the PGA Tour even began referring to Tiger as “beatable”.

We all know what happened next… he won last year’s US Open with what basically amounted to a broken leg.  Woods refers to this victory as his greatest ever.

Here’s the thing:  Tiger Woods doesn’t share his secrets of success with his peers.  Any golfer looking to supplant Tiger as the world’s greatest player is going to have to figure it out for himself.

But for some reason, the sharpest minds in the real estate industry are willing to share what makes them successful with the rest of us.  Here are some of the questions I asked myself before committing the time and money to attend Unchained:

  • Can you create your own website without any help from anyone?
  • If so, how long does it take you to publish something worth seeing?
  • Are you ranking for the keywords your prospects are Googling?
  • Are your systems outdated and archaic?
  • Is there someone in your market who’s about to catch and pass you because they know more than you do?

Here’s another Tiger Woods quote from early in his career:

“Second sucks.”

If you live within 500 miles of Phoenix and you’re not committed to attending Unchained, chances are good there’s someone down the street who will be nosing up alongside you very soon.

I’ll be honest with you – I get the feeling my competitors are crawling up in the fetal position right now… cutting costs and wondering where Read more

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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