A photo I snapped that night in Washington Square Park where we talked about Michaels New Book - The Education of Millionaires

In June this year while visiting Lewis Howes in New York City,  Lewis introduced me to author Michael Ellsberg.

Win a copy of Michaels new book “The Education of Millionaires”:

To win all you have to do is leave a comment below. It’s that simple.

I will pick a winner by Sunday Night and yes the quality of your comment will help!

How a realtor should be using Social Media – Top 7 tips for Realtors & Social Media

I do many coaching calls for our 500millionstrong clients. Many of them are Realtors and I get a lot of the same questions about Real Estate & Social Media.

So I thought it might be helpful to the Realtor community to give this advice on how to use Social Media.

Here are some of the best ways to use Social Media as a Realtor.

Top 7 ways for a Realtor to use Social Media.

(*in no particular order)

#1 Facebook - Facebook is great for Realtors. Most Realtors get a ton of referral business from friends and family – and primarily this is exactly who your connected to on Facebook. This is also who you clients are connected to The trick is to not be selling your services all the time.

No one goes on Facebook to be sold, so updates like “I am taking new clients” never work.

How do I use Facebook then? Simple, Take the “Top of mind/awareness” approach.

Post updates like “I am grateful to be blessed with so many great clients.” Or post photos of your listings with comments like “Super excited for this new listing – isn’t it beautiful?”

Then get ninja and tag your sellers in those photos. This is a great way to get in front of their network ALWAYS add your clients on Facebook. Communicating with them on “their wall” is a great idea as well. Just keep it classy and don’t sell using this approach – ever”

Be sure to leave an update on their wall once you close. Example – “I just wanted to say thanks for your business. You guys were a treat to work with” or something along those lines.

#2 YouTube – This is often times the most overlooked of all the networks. Hands down YouTube is one of the best things you can do to get more business as a realtor online.

How? Simple – start filming all of your listings and throw them up on Youtube today.  I did this, I kept it real simple (as you can see here) and just turned on my camera and then proceeded to walk and talk. My buyers loved it – My agents loved it as the buyers they showed homes to who had seen the videos were 5x as likely to sign.

1 quick tip when it comes to YouTube:

Make your title “Keyword rich” – Example: If your listing is in Santa Barbara – Make your title “Santa Barbara Real Estate – 1234 hight st” Most of my videos ended up on Google as the first result. This in turn drove a ton of targeted traffic to our website.

If you want more information on how to get your videos to show up on the first page of Google for popular terms like ” Denver Real Estate” go get www.VideoTrafficAcademy.com – I guarantee if you get it – your videos will be all over Google for the best keywords. The course is that good.

#3 Twitter – I honestly think Twitter might be one of the least useful ways to use Social Media for a Realtor. Actually I take that back. It can be useful, but is very time consuming. BUT – if you enjoy Twitter and use it currently – make sure you are focusing on building a local following. If you live in Miami Florida, a follower in Denver probably will never lead to new business.

To build a local following I would look at the followers of News Celebrities, Radio DJ’s, Local Restaurants, Rotary Clubs Etc. These kind of profiles will almost always have a local following. I would then go and follow all of their followers as many will follow you back. Using this tactic – it works as a virtual handshake. Most people you follow will wonder who you are and why you followed them – they in turn will look and your profile and many will click on your website link.

If you don’t want to do this following – you can use a tool like Tweetadder to do it on auto pilot. Tweetadder can be your best friend if you value your time. It’s not cheap – but it’s worth it.

#4 Linkedin - This is the diamond in the rough of Social Networks. Take full advantage of LInkedin I promise you will thank me later. The best thing you can do first is to optimize your profile. My business parter Lewis Howes has a great post here explaining exactly how to do that. The second thing I would do is get active in groups. I would start my own group, and also get active in others that are local.

Start a group – this is a great way to get more referrals. We have a Realtor student in who started a “Young Professionals” group on linkedin. He then invited all of his local friends and the group took off. After 2 months He held a happy hour mixer/get together for the group. The first time he did it – 25 people showed up – not bad! The second mixer he through over 100 attended. As you can imagine – as the head of the group, and the host of these events – he got & gets a ton of referrals! Literally over 2 million dollars in business came from this one tip for him.

#5 Ads – Linkedin & Facebook – As a Realtor, personal branding is everything. Ads can be an amazing way to build your personal brand. There is probably no better tool than Facebook ads to build your personal brand. The targeting options on Facebook are ridiculous. Do you know your customer? If you do you can laser target them on Facebook. Categories for targeting include – Sex, Education levels, Zip Code, City, Marital status, Interests etc.

#6 Blog / Website – While a blog is not a necessity, you should definitely have one. This can be the hub of all your online marketing efforts. A great place to drive Social Traffic to turn it into leads. WordPress is the only platform I would recommend. There a million great themes specifically for Real Estate. I used a WordPress site for my listings. WordPress is super easy to use.

#7 Email Marketing – While not social – A good email marketing campaign should be your #1 priority.  If you set up a decent site with a good email capture in place – you can expect to convert 5-15% of your traffic to your email list. This was vital to my success in Real Estate. Every time I sent an email – my phone immediately rang off the hook. in 1 year my list quickly grew to over 10,000 people. People loved getting my listings by email.

Hopefully this will spark some ideas on ways you can use the internet and Social Media to drive more traffic to your listings. I could have easily written an entire post about each of the 7 ways mentioned above. If you liked what you read or would like more on a specific network or method – let me know below.

On Wednesday March 30th Lewis Howes and I had the honor of hosting Peter Guber on a webinar to discuss the topic of story telling. Peter just came out with a new book called Tell to win – Connect, Persuade and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story.

This webinar was one of top 3 favorites of all time. It’s not everyday you get the opportunity to talk to someone as accomplished as Peter.
To give you an idea of peters success – he is the Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment. Films he personally produced or executive produced, including Rain Man, Batman, The Color Purple, Midnight Express, Gorillas in the Mist: and many more. He is a minority owner of the Golden State Warriors, has been the CEO of Columbia Pictures, etc. The list goes on and on – if you care to see more check out Peter Guber’s Wikipedia.

The book is fascinating and really explains the power of story to win (for lack of a better word . After reading the book and talking with Peter On the webinar I had a personal revelation that confirmed the true power of story. For now watch this replay and let me know in the comments if you want to hear about my personal experience with story telling to sell.

Enjoy.

Almost a year ago I wrote a really popular post called How I get Massive amounts of stuff done. In that post & video I showed you a short simple to-do list method I developed over the years.

In the last few months I have been using Google docs to make my todo lists. It is awesome tool to keep all of your to-do lists in one place and also to delegate tasks to other team members.

If you like simple solutions – you’ll like my method.

This short video shows you exactly how I do it.

If you liked this – check out the original “How I get massive amounts of sh*t done” post.

Today I was on Facebook when a scammer hit me up via chat asking for money. This is the third or fourth time this has happened to me in recent months, so I thought I’d share this video with you so you can see how this scam was orchestrated and what to do in case it happens to you.

A few month’s ago I decided to download Twitter’s iPhone app. One of the first things I noticed was that when you viewed a profile you could see the date they signed up & the account number.  

To verify that is what the number represented I checked Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey’s account and it showed the number 12. (Supposedly the first 10-11 accounts were junk accounts created to test the system.)

You can clearly see from the image his account was one of the first and by the date it looks to be the month and year Twitter launched.

To track Twitter’s growth I initially began clicking on Twitter profiles that were spam targeting me using the @reply method.

Since these accounts usually only last for a day or so I started looking at their sign up date and number. By doing this I could keep an eye on Twitter’s growth as spam accounts were almost always brand new.

I then later began to create new accounts so I could track more accurately.

To track Twitter’s Growth you will need an iPhone and the Twitter app.

You can then repeat the what I did to accurately gauge it for yourself.

Side note – It wouldn’t surprise me if this feature disappears soon from the iPhone app as Twitter has saved their growth numbers & reports for big announcements or conferences in the past.

Here’s a video with me from the first time that I ever spoke live on stage. It was at Than Merrill’s Info Empire event earlier this year in San Diego. I was just watching it and I had the same nervous butterflies as if I was back on stage. It’s so strange. . . I’ve done webinars for tens of thousands of people and rarely do I ever get nervous. I’ve now spoken a bunch of times on stage and I don’t get as nervous; but man, that first time was such a rush! Anyway, this is just a snippet from the first few minutes of my speech. I actually tell a pretty funny story about how I first got into Twitter. Enjoy.

Interview with David Siteman Garland

Smarter, Faster, Cheaper Book Review

About a year ago I had the pleasure of virtually meeting David Siteman Garland (@TheRiseToTheTop) on Twitter. The more I learned about him the more impressed I became with what he was accomplishing online in such a short period of time. I noticed he was interviewing and featuring some of the top pros in the marketing / blogging / new media industry. He hosted interviews With big names like Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, some guy named Sean Malarkey,  Tim Ferriss, etc.

Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business Get the book on Amazon here.

What impressed me the most was how smart his approach was. He was networking and forming alliances with all of the top people in our space and doing it at a rapid pace. His hustle & drive was inspiring. Needless to say I was excited to read his new book Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business.

Here’s my honest review:

Get this book if you have a business, brand or product. Smarter, Faster, Cheaper is full of practical advice that works. I know it does, because as I read through the chapters I kept relating his experiences and advice to things I had been doing myself online for the last couple years.

What I really like about this book is David doesn’t say “this or that strategy” is what you “have to do”. Instead he exposes you to what he has seen work for himself personally and also what’s has worked for all of the brilliant people he has interviewed. He did a good job of introducing  a ton of good ideas that work well to cultivate relationships and business using mostly free tools available online.

David’s explanation of how the business mindset has drastically changed in the last few years is spot on. He talks about the power of collaboration with other business’s that may share the same customer base. He dives deep into video marketing and using online video to build your brand, which (chapter 7) is a must read.

This book  should be required reading for any college student getting a degree in business or marketing.

For me personally, there weren’t any major light bulb moments but it was  a good refresher and reminder of a plethora of great ideas to build my business online. It was a fun read and time well spent.

It was inspiring and I found it hard to read more than 20 pages at a time without wanting to put the book down and work on the ideas that kept racing through my head. David does a great job of inspiring you to take action which in my opinion is the mark of a good business book.

If you enjoyed “Crush it“, “The Four Hour Work Week“, “Un-Marketing“, “Purple Cow” or “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” — you’ll love this book.

Side note: While searching for photos of David for this post, I came across this and couldn’t resist sharing it with you. David is gonna kill me for posting this but whatever – enjoy.

Caption Contest: Leave a comment with your caption to this photo to win.

The 5 funniest captions will win a copy of David’s new book:

Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business

I will pick the top 5 funniest captions and announce a winner this Sunday night. Enter as often as you’d like.

13,370 things to consider when using @PayPal.

Imagine this: You go to your bank to withdraw some money and the teller tells you, “I’m sorry, we feel like you are somewhat of a risk so we’re going to hold onto a large chunk of your money.” You laugh nervously and reply, “That’s funny, but seriously can I have my money?”

The teller looks at you and says, “No, you can’t, not right now. I am sorry, we are going hold it hostage for an unspecified period of time. If you would like to access any of it again soon, I will need 6 months of bank statements, tax returns, various business licenses, pictures of your children, proof you have been to the moon and 11 more annoying things that will take you endless hours to prepare.”

A dozen expletives run through your mind, but instead you say, “Close my account and give me money now – please.” The teller then looks at you and starts laughing! She says, “I’m sorry to laugh, but the funny thing is that I could close your account, however we have a policy I have to enforce, and that policy says we will keep your money for 6 months and at that point you can have it back….. hahahaha isn’t that funny?”

So you think to yourself, “Man, I really like this bank and I want to work with them, but this is a lot!” So you weigh the pros and cons and decide to deal with it because it’s an important option to many of your customers and hope that as your relationship develops they will lighten up on you.

You spend the next two days chasing down the requested items. You print and scan documents, search through boxes looking for that file that always evades you at times like this. You even contact NASA for a copy of that photo from your last visit to the moon.

You prepare all of your docs, deliver them to the bank, and wait. And then you wait some more. Finally after a couple days, you go into the bank to check the status of things and to see if you’re able to access your money. The same teller is there to greet you. “Oh hey, how are you?” You reply, “Great, can I have my money yet?” Still smiling, she says, “Sure! Well, sort of. After reviewing all of your information and documents, we have decided to keep a reserve of $10,000 and 35% of any new incoming funds, so your  available  balance of $15,730 has been reduced to $5,730.”

Naturally, you ask, “What about the $10,000? What happens to that?” She replies, “Well, we are going to be keeping it for now (invest it and earn some money from it – thanks), and after 6 months you can request to have it released or reduced and at that point we will reconsider and let you know.” you scratch your head for a minute and think of other options and then you say, “Wow, ok ….. well, what if I decide to end this relationship and close my account?” She replies, your free to do that, but we will still keep the $10,000 for 6 months”

She goes on to explain their reasoning, you counter with a valid argument and at the end of the day, you realize you’re arguing with a brick wall. “She who holds the money – wins.”

The above scenario is very real and could happen to you.

I know  - because it happened to me.

I logged in to see if the $12,000 I had transferred from my business bank account to pay an affiliate had hit my PayPal account yet. I got a popup saying my account was suspended, with a contact email and phone number for more information. I then clicked around on my account and could see the $12,000 had successfully transferred. I tried to click the “Send money” button and it was disabled.

Our account with Paypal after the "freeze"

I went through the above described scenario, and it sucked. I was well aware of this scenario as I heard from a mentor that it could happen. In fact there is a story floating around somewhere about the formation of PowerPay – that was somewhat inspired or influenced by paypal holding hostage a marketers funds to the tune of around a million after a product launch. Can you imagine having a million dollars held for 6 months and affiliates who were expecting a paycheck in 30 days? Put that champagne away.

Why it happened – PayPal’s Reasoning:

• Why? – An increase in business over a short period of time. For  many months we had been slowly climbing in sales – not much of a jump from month to month. The growth and corresponding incoming funds were consistent. Then we had a few huge partners promote our products & services and our incoming funds probably went up 500% – 1,000% over the space of a few months. This drew a red flag.
• Paypal’s main reasoning – No commercial business credit: We have almost zero business credit and therefore PayPal doesn’t have anything to gauge our credit worthiness. Not that were asking for credit, but it gives PayPal a warm and fuzzy feeling if they can see you pay your bills. Understandable, but not fair.

Nothing more – nothing less. I argued with my contact  that we were a safe bet based on our history. I asked her to tell me how many refunds or disputes we had with purchases of our products or services that were done through PayPal. Her response – “zero”. Literally out of around 100 transactions we had ZERO refunds or disputes – yet that wasn’t good enough.  It’s actually ironic as we average around a 7% return rate, but with PayPal we had zero.

Should  I avoid PayPal altogether?

No – As bitter as I am regarding what happened, I still feel PayPal is good for your business. Many consumers only use PayPal, and others find comfort in using PayPal. The reality about the “held funds” is that it is still your money and you will get it back eventually. Also, when a consumer buys using PayPal, the money is available immediately.  With just about every other type of merchant account you have to wait 2-4 business days for funds to clear and arrive in your bank account. Just be aware that if you don’t have a lot of business credit and your online business sees a sharp rise in incoming funds, you might  have a sudden freeze of funds. How much you’d be able to access when the ice melts is completely up to PayPal. Truth be told , about 85% of our business goes through our merchant account. Only 15% of our buyers use PayPal. So the frozen funds don’t affect us as much as you might think.

In PayPal’s defense: I do have a friend who has been using Paypal for years without any issues. He has processed 7-figures+ and to date has had no problems. He does have business credit, and he has seen a slow steady rise in sales. The big difference between his business and mine is that he sells software, not a digital or information-based product or service.

What I recommend:

Get a merchant account with  PowerPay and offer your customers the option of paying with any credit card & PayPal as well. Most shopping carts will allow you to do just this.

PowerPay is a merchant account provider that understands Information and Internet Marketing. If you sell digital goods and plan on being successful, go with PowerPay.

www.powerpay.biz

I have heard story after story of banks & merchant account providers freezing funds, and every time the ending is not good. With PowerPay, your risk of this is minimized. They understand how your business works, and as long as you keep an open line of communication with them, life is gravy.

They may or may not hold a reserve on your account in the beginning or on an ongoing basis. They have several factors that will determine if a reserve is necessary or not. My account has a 5% reserve for 90 days, meaning 5% of all incoming funds are held for 90 days and then released into my account.

Aside from all of the benefits of using PowerPay, the thing I like most is that they  care about your business and seeing you succeed. You are NOT just a number. In my experience (and all of my friends’ experiences) with them – they have been more than fair. I have two accounts reps – who are amazing. (Tina & Kevin – if you’re reading this, thanks for all your hard work! I appreciate you more than you know.)

When I called up Kevin & Tina to tell them what had happened with PayPal,  they  had my account reviewed by the underwriting team at PowerPay and had my reserve lowered from 10% to 5%. This reduction mitigated the actions of PayPal big time.

Here is a testimonial I found on their website from a great marketer, Jeff Johnson. It sums up my feelings and the thoughts I have heard from others perfectly:

“PowerPay is the Best Merchant Account Ever! They never let me down, and I always get paid. I wish I could say that about the other merchant account providers I’ve used, but I can’t. Only PowerPay has proven that they truly care about helping my business grow.”

“Sign up right now and you’ll soon know what I mean when I tell my clients that Powerpay is ‘The Best Merchant Account Ever.’ Highly Recommended!”

- Jeff Johnson
www.UndergroundTrainingLab.com

Conclusion:

My hope is that by sticking it out with PayPal and establishing a history with them, our account will someday go back to the way it was. I will appeal our reserve as often as they allow me to, and hopefully soon it will be returned as they are literally holding all of our profit margin from those sales and then some.

I hope this post is helpful to anyone else caught in this situation or who might find themselves in one similar. This has been swirling around in my head ever since that fateful day with the laughing teller. So I hope you enjoyed it & learned something that might help guide you on your path to success online. This is the kind of information I was privileged to learn early on because I had a great mentor, but after hearing one horror story after the next, I felt like you might benefit from knowing this as well.

Tell me what you’re thankful or grateful for and win an Ipod touch.

When I was younger I used to keep a gratitude journal. I had heard there were benefits to being grateful so I thought ”why not?” I would try this exercise for 30 days.

I would spend 10 minutes a night writing down the things I was grateful for that had happened that day. I got some enormous benefits from that exercise that have lasted throughout the years.

The most important benefit I got from it was a habit of being grateful. I take the time daily to think about things I am grateful for. I do it because it makes me feel good and I truly realize how blessed  I am.

Some new research has been done that proves being grateful or thankful is beneficial to your well being. I did some research for this post and found an interesting article that provided some evidence on the benefits of being grateful.

Heres an excerpt:

So on this Thanksgiving I ask – what are you grateful for?

Leave a comment and let me know. I will be awarding the Ipod in the next few days.

::UPDATE::

After much debate I awarded the ipod to Ellen Crimi Trent. I read and re-read each and every entry and it was damn near impossible to pick a winner. I even tried asking my friends on Facebook for numbers  to randomly pick a winner. I then got lost in the calculation and trying to make sense of those numbers, so I went back to reading the comments and finding one that I felt really moved me.

It was tough picking a winner as there were many that stopped me in my tracks and made me think. So I picked 3 and then asked 2 of my employees to read them and tell me their 3 favorites. Ellen’s came up with both of them. So boom you have your winner.

The reason it moved me? Well I can relate to almost every sentence in her comment. I too feel like I am lucky, I wake up everyday thankful for my life and what I do. I too am thankful for the hardships and crazy negatives that have happened in my life as most of the time they were catalysts to bigger and better things. Finally like Ellen I am grateful for all the amazing people I have met through social media. Most of our employees have come through relationships built using social media and beyond that I have made many great connections, friendships, etc using social media. So that is why I picked Ellen.

Thanks again for everyone of you who took the time to post a comment. I hope it was as beneficial for you as it is to me to take the time and stop and think how grateful I am for everything.