Real Estate And Surfing | The Zen Of New Thinking
I am officially a Ventura, California local now, I have a surfer as a client after 2 year! 
Seriously: I am inspired this morning, this project really got me thinking about several things you may not think are related:
- The Zen and culture around surfing
- Investment in California Real Estate
- Venture capital, private placements, REIT’s (private real estate investment trusts)
- Opportunities for real estate professionals
- Online Marketing
I promise not to bore you:
The Zen and culture around surfing..
Interesting: I have been in Ventura California for a little over two years now. I was flabbergasted initially: how could this place remain so inexpensive, unpopulated: when it is sooo beautiful. After a couple of months of visiting chamber of commerce meetings and local leads groups, I described trying to sell to a surfer like talking to one third of a person; the other two thirds: one third is wondering when the surf will be up again, and one third thinking that somewhere in the world it is 4:20.
If you wonder why anybody would want to sell anything to a surfer, you are not from around here. Many high level executives, trust fund babies, and business owners surf: you must interface with surfers to live here. They have a culture, a Zen:
- They love their lives and their sport
- They are experts at many other things and surfing, and all of them are experts at keeping their priorities straight
I have learned to respect and value their perspective on life in general: as in Real Estate, and in life, priorities matter: our lives are greatly affected by the decisions that we make.
Investment in California Real Estate
It is absolutely amazing to me: I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, but always thought of southern California as an over-populated mess. I had only seen it by flying in for conventions – I had no idea: most of California is wide open spaces, really. If more people knew this, there would be twice as many people, and there would still be plenty of room: the endless miles of pristine beaches with no population at all; if you are not from here, you do not know or you would be here. Think about this: do not expect this to change anytime soon: the growth hasn’t even begun, really. With the changes taking place in how people work and live (at home), the landscape of roads, cities, and population demographics, Zoning; all are in for wholesale change, and, with change, comes opportunity.
Venture capital, private placements, REIT’s (private real estate investment trusts)
Jeff Belzer is a surfer, with local fiends: he grew up here, and owns a local surf school where everyone’s kids learn to surf safely. If you have every been to this part of California, or Santa Barbara, Carpenteria, many other coastal towns here: then you know that there are mainly thee elements to society here:
- The already rich (trust fund babies, entertainment relatives, etc..)
- The people who work on their cars, tend bar, mow lawns, wait tables…
- The middle class here consists almost completely of military, civil service (police, medical, fireman etc)
The simple fact is that there is plenty of money laying around doing nothing at the moment. If I were a Realtor, or a property management professional, I would definitely be putting together a private offering to raise money to buy REO opportunities and flip them: in Jeff Belzer’s's case, he knows the people who he taught to surf, they have the money, and they like him: perfect! The question comes to mind: how many of you are in a similar position to raise a pool of investment funds? How timely is this when there is so much money sitting on the sidelines, and nobody knows where to put it?? WAKE UP! SOMETHING IS MOVING AND YOU ARE BEING LEFT BEHIND!
Opportunities for real estate professionals:
You can go to PPMFast.com: this is the best place I know to get all your forms and paperwork: for under $100 you can download a complete template up-to-date and legal in your state: you just fill in the blanks and start raising money: in this country, you can start as many business as you like, raise money form anyone who will give it to you , in increments of any amount $5000, $5,000,000 whatever. With Regulation D Rule 504 of the federal securities laws, and similar exemptions under state “Blue Sky Laws”, you can even raise $1,000,000 from up-to 35 unsophisticated, small investors without a background in business: and an unlimited number of ‘sophisticated’ or ‘accredited ‘ investors (most of the people a Realtor or Real Estate professional deals with fall into this category – all agents and brokers are Accredited) Under REG D, RULE 506: you can raise AN UNLIMITED AMOUNT FROM ACCREDITED AND/OR SOPHISTICATED INVESTORS!
Why aren’t more of you doing this: you have the contacts, the expertise, and the cost is nominal?? IF YOU CAN ACTUALLY SELL REAL ESTATE, YOU CAN DO THIS!
Online Marketing: YOU HAVE A FARM ALREADY
Google Or Bing – When You Type In Buckeye Arizona Real Estate – Click Search
How often do you click a sponsored link or a pop-up banner? Let me guess: rarely or never, right?!
From BusinessWeek.com:
“Google grew its revenue and profit in its first fiscal quarter, exceeding Wall Street expectations and prompting the Internet company to express a commitment for “heavy investment” in its core and newer businesses.
Google’s revenue hit US$6.77 billion in the quarter, ended March 31, up 23 percent compared to the first quarter of 2009. Subtracting commissions and fees paid to its advertising network and other partners, revenue was $5.06 billion.”
Well, if that links we do not click on are worth that much, how much more are the ones we do: case in point:
Google search: Buckeye Arizona Real Estate
You will notice in the organic results three behemoths – lead generators: 1. www.homes.com; 2. realestate.yahoo.com; 3. www.realtor.com; then uh, oh!
#4 in the organic results: thekroneteam.com
#5 Trulia….
Now if you were a Realtor, being pitched by homes.com, realestate.yahoo.com, and/or realtor.com they would argue that you cannot get here on your own.
So how did TheKroneTeam.com get here? The short answer is; they deserve it, on purpose:
- TheKroneteam.com is a team of agents built on a solid couple built a business by pooling the resources of an ever-expanding team working together to make money right through the recent recession.
- By combining resources, the team has maintained a large marketing budget to stay at the cutting edge of technology and thereby do well by the firms clients.
- They have maintained ongoing efforts and a pooled budget too keep the company website relevant and on the first page results for the searches that will benefit their clients.
If all this seems too simple and straight-forward, consider that:
- Most of you will not ever maintain a routine of posting something new at least weekly
- Most of you will not maintain an ongoing promotional budget
- most of you will not plan your work and work your plan
- Therefore, most of you will not provide as good a service and thekroneteam.com
- Google can tell the difference
