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:

1. The already rich (trust fund babies, entertainment relatives, etc..)
2. The people who work on their cars, tend bar, mow lawns, wait tables…
3. 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

As a real estate professional, you already have (or should have)

• an opt-in email list that reads everything you write (mine is over 5000)
• Groups at Realtown, ActiveRain, linkedin.com, Yahoo, Google…places where you can post partial articles that lead back to your blog, effectively reaching many thousands of group members for free, overnight.
• direct email is not considered public advertising – in other words, you can ask everyone if they would like to read your ‘executive summary’ (I like to ask their opinion, so they do not even realize that they are being exposed to the offering legally in the process)
• knowledge about what to buy, when, where, why in your market – every reason why they should invest with you!
• the ability to buy, sell and get paid – difficult for everyone who is not you!

You can put up a nice blog like this one I did for Jeff, create an offering, invite your list…..now what is your excuse?  Why aren’t more of you doing this?!

Now picture the Zen: you are writing in your blog, this article will be read by 20,000 people within a few hours.  They will receive it because they have opted in, to a group, or a site, or your blog, or your Facebook, twitter…and they will read it, and they are all the right people.   Do you know of more cost-effective marketing?  article done, time to see how the surf is doing…get it?  Israel: 805-827-2450

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

http://fertile-future.com/

A multi-function social networking site

Shopping carts and more (http://spermcenter.com/)

A magazine website

The site (http://edwardandsons.info/) needed a way to allow their visitors to see their company updates, to use as a blog, to share useful information about nutrition and natural foods.

Goal:

• Interactive way for the customers to participate
• Show important information about the company, healthy organic foods and more
• Use the header from their main website and have the blog match

Solution:

This WordPress site was created with an emphasis on the matching header from their other website. The theme was modified to look like a site that the client referred to. Their articles were formatted professionally with pictures included. The site includes a contact form and a bright colored footer.

One of our recent clients decided to use off-shore development for building their software platform. They signed up for oDesk and it seemingly couldn’t have been easier. They posted their project and received lots of interest. They found a development company in the Ukraine that seemed like a good choice. They liked their portfolio and the hourly rate was 25% of what it would cost in the U.S. The firm practiced SCRUM which is a type of software development that doesn’t rely on specifications but instead relies on many rounds of iteration. The development phase seemed to have progressed well and on-time and the clients couldn’t be happier. The developers said that they thought that the application was just 1 week away from being ready for go-live. The clients were very excited! They could already see themselves becoming famous and rich entrepreneurs overnight.

Then, the clients began to do real testing and the leaks started to appear in the software. For the next 11 weeks, the developers continued to fix defects and inadvertently introduced new ones. The test server would be down for days because there were configuration or software issues and the developers couldn’t or wouldn’t fix them in a timely manner. They would either be sleeping, not answering their emails, taking the day off, or making excuses that the issue was on the server which was NOT their responsibility. With the project now way over budget in both time and money, the clients decided to bring me on to fix one of the bugs in the core application. What I found was very shocking and surprising!

Over the next several weeks, I uncovered issue after issue where the offshore developers did lazy and amateurish work. First, the developers all used the same username for code source control which meant that it was impossible to trace down who worked on what. There was a lack of logging and error handling making it impossible to diagnose issues on the server. The code was not architected well which made it expensive to maintain and full of copy and paste. Over time, developers were rolled on and off the project causing the quality of the code to continue to drop. Rather than identify and fix the root cause, the developers were lazy and implemented hacks. 

I worked with the client and the developers to tighten up the development process by performing code reviews, creating a code management process, helping diagnose issues, adding logging, and upgrading certain pieces of the codebase that were particularly poor. I diagnosed and resolved issues on the test server and prepared the site to go live. The clients were thrilled to see progress and were very upset that they had been deluded into thinking that they good getting a great deal and a robust application.

I think that the lesson is that the software, in this case oDesk, to manage the programmers is NOT enough. Experience and skill is required to make sure that the software is well-written and robust. You need to have a real architect on the project to ensure that you don’t get poorly written code back.

The clients also identified many other challenges due to the language barrier, the timezone difference (the Ukranians were 10 hours ahead), and the lack of availability as the developers were not readily available via cell phone. Now, the clients wish that they could just be rid of the development firm but is being held hostage because the developers are dragging their feet with the documentation. This story is not unique but just a prime example of what can happen with off-shoring and outsourcing development if you aren’t a skilled developer or architect yourself.

The site (http://mobmentalityseries.com/) needed a way to display videos that would be easily viewed by visitors and to enhance the series “Mob Mentality”.

Goal:

• Native video player
• Featured articles
• Interactive way for the audience to participate
• Show important information about the cast and crew
• Update the audience about the series

Solution:

This WordPress site was created with an animated flash panel header displaying the featured pages and a native video player. There are a lot of custom graphics created for this site as well as formatting existing images. The native video player embeds videos from YouTube, MetaCafe, or other video sharing sites. Multiple pages were created for cast and crew members and a widget was created for a donating to the cast and crew.

It is no longer considered embarrassing to have your credit score cleaned up: with major credit agencies offering the service, (like Experian, Transunion, and Equifax) and so many of us with formerly good credit needing the service after the recession, there is not shame in using a professional service to remove derogatory items, and get out of debt in the process; enter Freedom Debt Solutions – with a affiliate program that tracks the referral and pays you $100 for the referral for up-to one year after the click: it is all done with a WordPress plug-in and a simple banner ad capitalizing on your exit traffic from your busy website site:  You can sign up here is five minutes flat:

Debt Education Blog, sponsored by Freedom Debt Solutions, has a new 2-tier affiliate program where you can earn $100 for one year after anyone clicks on your affiliate banner and buys within that year, and another $50 for anyone who buys from them!

“I want to enable and empower yo to take over your website and online destiny.”

As usual he was reluctant at first, stating that “..we are not techies, we are Realtors…”

Now here is his testimonial two months later:

“A Case For Being Enabled and Empowered

-         By “A Busy Real Estate Professional”

Any real estate website has a #1 job. To get leads. That’s it. If people are not putting in their information into your real estate website, please take it offline tonight.

Israel Rothman with Social Media Systems was the perfect solution to our website, social media, and lead capture needs.

Some might say that a sales person should focus on what they are good at, and hire someone else to do their website. Others might say save the money & put up a simple site yourself. I’ve done it both ways. I’ve built sites from scratch, and I’ve paid good money to have sites built. I’m here to say that Social Media Systems offers the perfect hybrid of both.

One of the biggest investments any real estate professional will make is their online presence. Things change in this business every day. Why wait for someone else to make those changes & get charged for it? It just doesn’t make sense. If you can type a note in Microsoft Word, you can update your website with relevant information to your market with Israel’s system. And a partnership with Social Media Systems gives you a huge jumpstart. The key is that it’s not a build it yourself site, and it’s not a site someone else builds, only to leave you dependent on them. It’s the best of both worlds! Here’s how it works:

Israel builds the framework of your site, incorporating the latest search engine techniques to get you noticed. The latest gadgets are put in there for you, so all you have to do is login and fill in the blanks, Can you say “DREAM ANSWERED?”

You might be saying “but where will I find the time?” I am a former believer of that myself. I’m here to tell you that you will never find the time; you have to make the time. I pull in a very nice income just on website leads alone. If you target your local area with keywords and have good lead capture on your website, you can make a great living on website leads! Israel builds the machine, and you just fill in the blanks with topics you already know and talk about every day. He leads you through every step, so you are enabled and empowered to make your site the absolute best it can be!

I would recommend Israel Rothman with Social Media Systems to any high level high production agent out there. Please contact Brian at Brian@KroneTeam.com with any further questions.”

Thanks, Brian, I will spread this around: there are a lot of Real estate professionals who need to be reminded that success is possible with hard work!

The site (http://essenzamedspa.info/) needed a way to increase their web presence with a visual site that displayed their services.

Goal:

• Featured articles
• Interactive way for the customers to view their services
• Show important information about the spa

Solution:

This WordPress site was created with an animated sliding panel header displaying the featured articles and an animated header. Information was also imported into their current website from their main one. A blog section was also created so they can blog separately from their main site.

This site (http://autospecialties.us/ ) was customized for a British sports car restoration auto shop.

Goal:

• Have an online presence for his auto shop
• Allow customers to see stock inventory
• Show people the location of his shop on a map
• Exhibit the photos of his previous work

Solution:

A WordPress site with custom graphics (call to action graphics) was created with custom features, including Google Maps to show the location of the store and an integrated flash gallery of his photos. The theme was personalized for the owner who wanted to show a more rough and mechanic-styled site to look unique and authentic. The site was also set up so that he could easily and constantly update the products that he has in stock.

This site was created for a debt consolidation company aside from their main one; the company wanted a blog that matched the theme of their main site to offer tips and advice to their customers for a more interactive experience.

Goal:

• Have a separate blog to match their current site
• Maintain a professional and polished look for their company
• Easy to maintain for updating company news and tips
• Helping customers with a personal touch

Solution:

A WordPress site with custom graphics was created with custom features, including a contact form, matching theme of the sites and detailed articles with a professional layout. The site was also set up so that the company could easily maintain and update their tips and to enhance customer satisfaction.

This site (http://blackburninvestors.info/) was created to create an online presence for a realty investment company and to allow customers to communicate with the company easily.

Goal:

• Simple, bold & powerful theme
• Easy to use site for updates
• One site to combine their various social network accounts

Solution:

A WordPress site with custom graphics and a customized theme was created. Social network icons were added specifically to meet the client’s needs and various of their other sites were joined together by the newly created site.

This site (http://goldcoastsecurity.info/) was created for company that provided a wide range of security. It was meant to be a blog informing people of his services. The client wanted to have better PR and present a professional online image.

Goal:

• Have a separate blog
• A bold strongly colored theme with his company colors
• Combining his other blogs into one main blog

Solution:

A WordPress site with custom graphics was created with custom features, including a contact form, desired colors, detailed articles with a professional layout and integrated flash gallery. The site was simple and easy to navigate through and was a place to unite all his separate articles and photos into one site.

A professional graphic designer requested a site to display her work (http://www.unCandid.com/) in a simple and easy to view portfolio- a site that would not distract from her content.

Goal:

• Clean and professional theme
• Simple and easy to navigate
• Gallery to showcase work

Solution:

This site was created to suite her needs for a portfolio showcase online. There is an integrated flash gallery, contact form and very clean and professional colors to display her work and to emphasize them as the main focus. There is an additional feature: instant chat. It allows the owner of the site to communicate with the visitors directly.

The clients requested to have a site (http://livelongreport.com/) built to manage and sell their herbal products, and to establish an internet presence.

Goal:

• Clean and professional theme
• A site ready for information and products to be placed
• A more personal way to connect with customers

Solution:

This WordPress site was created to cleanly display the products and to create a feel of freshness to enhance the clients’ products. A flash gallery was also integrated to show family photos of the clients to enhance personalization.

Goal:

• Clean and professional theme
• Easy and quick to manage
• A more personal way to connect with clients

Solution:
This WordPress site was created with an animated flash panel header displaying the customer’s personal photographs edited. The client’s articles were also professionally formatted and the site is very easy to maintain. The site also has a contact form and a customized “About” page.

Seemless Integration of Ihomefinder IDX Into a WordPress Blog

Ihomefinder.com IDX is available almost everywhere, and very easy to integrate into a WordPress Blog site seamlessly using the theme style sheet links and header:

The branded links then look like this:

Notice that I was able to also insert the site navigation on every page of the branded pages! The Ihomefinder.com ‘back-end’ software is very robust, and, although there is some cost depending on if it is an individual agent, or, as is in this case, a managed team of agents; and some of the links may be redundant with WordPress, WordPress is very effective for SEO if setup properly, and I highly recommend this approach for a Real Estate website.

It requires a little knowledge of CSS and XHTML, but I was able to do this for Brian in about 30 minutes, and it is included in our bundled solution, here:

http://socialmediasystems.com/tech/