Ok, that was bad English and a bad play on words but the underlying truth is still there.  Most real estate agents, as disciplined as they are with the rest of their time, fail to set aside time to learn how to become social media savvy.

This comes on the heels of sitting through a GREAT social media class for real estate agent and having some major Aha’s (or revelations to the non KW lingo’d of you) on how these “A” type personalities take on a task, Head First Focus;

Ask one to Sell this home, they dive into action, don’t rest, sleep or eat until the job is done.

The same thing happens when you introduce them to a new idea, like social media.  I predict there will be a major spike in Ottawa’s social media profile this week as Keller Williams agents put into practice the techniques Liz Landry, social media savvy agent (from Jacksonville, Florida) taught them.  What I suspect, is that it becomes an all or nothing endeavour, they will sign up for the Big 3, Google themselves till the cows come home and at the end of the week throw their hand up in the air and declare it a waste of time.

All because they ducked out and missed the most important thing Liz Landry had to say…

“Spend 20 minutes on it in the morning, afternoon and at night, and don’t give up your lead gen time.”

What do you think?  Will they last past the end of the week?

Dave Williams

Follow @OrangeSlacks

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I meant to post this last year but it got lost in the digital mess that is my phone (where I do a large portion of my draft writing.)

“Where’s Gordon!”  My two year old son wailed looking at his wooden railway set on the floor in the living room.

“You don’t have a Gordon Cael,” I tried to explain.  Probably a little to harshly being up at 7;00 in the morning and having not even started to brew the coffee yet.  As he broke down into tears at his missing train, one he didn’t even have I tried to comfort him as Trish drearily came down the stairs.

“Mommy, my Gordons gone.”

“Oh honey, you don’t have a Gordon, all you trains are here.” She said taking over the comforting hug while doing a mental count of the trains to be sure.  We looked at each other with confusion as Cael insisted he had a Gordon.

“I had Gordon in bed.”

“When, last night?” I asked.

“Uh hu.” He nodded.

“I read him the train books last night but he didn’t have any with him.” I explained to Trisha.

“Cael,” she asked, “did you dream you had a Gordon?”

“Yah, I dream of Gordon.”

That was how it started, a two year old with dreams of owning a toy train.  Later that evening once he was tucked in and asleep Trisha and I sat down for our weekly family meeting to recap our progress on our dreams and quickly the conversation turned to our son and his.

“He really wants the Gordon, it was all he talked about all day.”  She began, “but I don’t want to go out and just buy it for him, it sets a bad example and I don’t want him growing up thinking he can just have anything he wants.”

“I whole heatedly agree, what did you have in mind?” I asked, not sure if I was being led somewhere or not.

“I’m not sure, I was thinking we could set up some sort of chore list, give him a dollar here or there for helping out.”

I sighed.

“What?”

“I just have vision of him holding out his hand every time he cleans up looking for money….what if we did some sort of event.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure, a craft show or something.  We could get him to paint those rocks he keeps bringing home and sell them for $1 or something.  That way he learns how to be entrepreneurial.”

“How about cupcakes?”

That was how it started, my sons first business venture, well more of a co-venture but it was still the start.

Over the course of the next two weeks we started the planning. The first hurdle was the where, which Cael quickly resolved with his two year old charm.  The moment our roommate heard about the sale he offered a table at his next gig, his band Titan Rain was playing at a local bar that he also worked at.

With Trisha’s help Cael started to promote his event with the help of Social Media, while he is too young to have a profile he does have a fan page.  Within a day he had over 20 registered attendees and with my help we also called our friends and family who were not on social media so he could tell them about the sale.

For the week before the event Cael helped buy the supplies, picked out the toppings, chose the cupcake flavours, helped to bake them and decorated them himself.  The marvel of a two year old dunking cupcakes in the icing and toppings created unique pieces of edible art with no two cupcakes alike.

Then came the big day, we loaded up nearly a hundread cupcakes and took them to the Cajun Attic.   Cael manned the table as people showed up and bought chocolate and banana, vanilla and sprinkle cupcakes while the band played.

Withing an hour and a half his entire stock of 50 cent cupcakes were sold out and then we watched in amazement as his cupcakes became black market goodies when people showed up late and bought them off others who had bought some by the dozen.  Despite the lack of supplies Cael continued to rake in donations to the cause and walked away at the end of the day with over $75 to his name.

The following day, jar of profits in hand Cael went shopping and bought not only Gordon, but a Toby as well.

Too this day if you ask Cael who his favourite trains are he will show you Gordon and Toby, the trains that he earned and bought himself.

The best lesson he learned though is best explained in the most recent conversation while watching his show;

“Look mommy, a Buldgy bus.  I want a Buldgy bus.”

“Sorry honey, you don’t have enough for a Buldgy bus.”

“Oh, we sell cupcakes, buy a Buldgy bus.”

This year Cael plans to buy himself a scooter.  Stay tuned for more of our young entrepreneurs adventures.

Visit Cael’s Facebook Page

…Bird, Bird, Bird,

Bird is the WORD!