Notorious R.O.B.

Last night, the RE.net and the world lost a thinker, a mentor, a wit, a pioneer, and above all, a good man.  Joe Ferrara has passed on.  My thoughts and prayers are with his family, and his wife Sandra, whom he loved above all else.

Joe’s Sellsius blog was one of the first and best real-estate blogs, full of interesting thoughts, news, and most of all, a great sense of humor that Joe imparted to it.  Posts like this one usually had me grinning, and sometimes laughing out loud maniacally, startling the nearby denizens of a Starbucks or two.

Joe is also one of the first people I’ve met in the RE.net.  When I first started blogging in 2008, Joe was one of the first to somehow find my unadvertised blog, comment on it, and contact me, encouraging me to keep writing.  If it weren’t for him, it isn’t clear whether Notorious R.O.B. ever evolves.  I called him the Godfather of La Blogstra Nostra, the East Coast RE.net Famiglia, out of respect for him and his sense of humor.  That is what I’ll remember about him — how great his laugh was, how his eyes would twinkle constantly, and how funny the man was.

I will never forget that Joe was a font of ideas and innovation.   Although not a wealthy man, Joe was constantly thinking about helping those less fortunate than himself.  We must have discussed the idea of pro bono real estate for hours, days, weeks.  He was the first person I remember proposing a “Hot Ladies of the RE.net Calendar” to raise money for various charitable causes, like Habitat for Humanity.  His ideas were often great, sometimes not, but always, always interesting.

Joe and I have had so many great conversations over the years, whether on the web, or in person at various conferences, or meeting up in New York City over a cup of coffee or seven, debating everything from social media to real estate to the state of the nation to whether Batman could beat Superman in a fight.  It was our love of conversation that led to the Lucky Strikes Social Media Club, which is still going strong in New York, in the hopes of getting together with other like-minded real estate, technology, and marketing people to share a meal and a great conversation.  That wonderful network of people does not exist without Joe Ferrara’s leadership and vision.

Above everything else, I will remember just how much Joe genuinely loved people.  That’s a rare enough quality in human beings, nevermind an attorney.  (Yes, Joe, I hope you’re laughing where you are, since you loved attorney jokes.)  But he really cared about people as people, was interested in them as human beings, and wanted to connect as one person to another.  If social media means anything at all, it means human beings treating each other as such.  Joe embodied that spirit better than just about anyone I know.

I’ll miss you, Joe.  See you on the Other Side.

-rsh

I'm the better looking one...

So Joe Ferrara and I are going to do a fun little event: a live debate on some topic or another.  We’ve been talking about doing this for a while now, and with Inman behind us, I have time finally to try it out.

So, the time and place and topic:

TalkShoe (Link: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/35673)

4:15PM Eastern

Topic is Lifestyle Search:

Description:
Joseph Ferrara of Sellsius and Robert Hahn of Onboard Informatics discuss whether consumers need or want lifestyle search when looking for homes.

The call-in # is:

Phone Number:
(724) 444-7444
Call ID: 35673

The “debate” is public, which likely means we’ll get about six people showing up.   But all six of you are welcome!

-rsh

UPDATE: The call was a lot of fun, and I owe many thanks to the various folks who participated.  You can listen to the recording here.

This post by Joe Ferrara made me laugh out loud.  Seriously, I don’t know where Joe finds such interesting nuggets.  You want to check it out.  Don’t believe me?  Okay, here’s a peek:

Like I said, you want to check out the post.

For some reason, this reminded me of the rather interesting conversation that Joe, Jessie Beaudoin, and I think Jeff Corbett and Henry Davidson had at the ActiveRain party at Inman San Francisco.  If I’m forgetting anyone, it’s because of our mutual friend Jack‘s lingering influence.

Nakedlistings.com

Yes, the URL is parked courtesy of GoDaddy.com.  I wonder who bought that…  (Jessie?  Was it you? You did threaten to do just that at the party, hehe.)

The concept is simple.  It will be a direct analogue to nakednews.com (NOT SAFE FOR WORK).  Each listing is a ~60 second video in which an attractive woman talks about the property, while taking her clothes off.  I know that every single reader is going, “Are you insane?”

The key to nakedlistings.com working is that it only deals with commercial real estate listings.

As much as I like and respect commercial real estate and the top-notch professionals who work in it… let’s face facts, shall we?  I don’t know that I’ve seen a more macho, more male-dominated industry outside of Wall Street trading floors in the early 90′s (and restaurant kitchens, incidentally).  Things that would shock the average corporate person happens all the time in the rough and tumble world of commercial real estate.

Therefore, nakedlistings.com would absolutely work in commercial real estate.  Consumers generally don’t look for commercial properties; only professionals do.  The vast majority of those professionals (CREW – Commercial Real Estate Women – says 23% of commercial brokers are women, but I think that’s a significant overestimation) are men, and men of a certain type, who would sit through a 60 second listings presentation simply because the presenter is stripping as she talks about column spacing and loading dock heights.

So you heard the idea here first.   You are hereby free to take advantage of it, as I have no desire to explain to my United Methodist Church pastor parents what I do for a living were I operating nakedlistings.com.

Now, there is a serious point here.  Allow me to dig it up.

In marketing, especially in real estate marketing, there is a very serious tendency to focus on the product and the service provider (i.e., the agent).  But few real estate marketers think very hard about the audience.  Listings flyers are produced that betrays a real lack of thinking about whom said flyers are targeting.  One page rinky-dink flyers for a $15m alpine mansion is just one example.  Agents and brokers have websites that were obviously constructed from some off-the-shelf template from a cut-rate agency, yet they work and operate in high-end neighborhoods where the median family income is over $150,000 a year.

If nakedlistings.com can work, it’s only because it starts with identifying a specific audience segment that would be receptive to what is otherwise crass and offensive.  The Lush campaign that Joe Ferrara discussed might work because it did similar audience segmentation and identified a group that would respond to the sex-based marketing.

Think about the audience.  It is likely to be important.

-rsh

Over on Homegain’s blog, his new home, Joe Ferrara has a set of excellent advice for real estate agents:

As in any profession, you get pigeon-holed, often unflatteringly and marketing yourself becomes an uphill battle to overcome a stereotype.

There’s a better way. Elevate yourself to “expert” in your field. It does not matter how small your specialty because as an expert you will automatically stand out from the crowd of other like professionals.

People feel more comfortable dealing with someone who they know is a specialist. They will seek out experts. Just make yourself known as one.

Then he goes on to discuss five ways you can be an expert.  Contributing to newspapers, holding a seminar, etc.  It’s really good stuff.  Go check it out.

I have one thing to add to his list:

6.  Actually, you know, BE an Expert.

Joe addresses this right at the beginning, but then kinda glosses over it.

You are a professional. You possess specialized knowledge. You may have devoted yourself to extensive education. You may have several decades of experience. But when you introduce yourself or hand out a business card you’re just one of the crowd of that profession.

The implication is that anyone can become an expert by following Joe’s Five Step Program to Guruness.  That ain’t the case.  The precondition of using Joe’s Five Step Program is the highlighted part above.  If you are not a professional, if you possess no specialized knowledge, if your idea of extensive education is attending NAR conference once a year, then no matter how many years of experience you’ve got, do not hold forth as an expert.  If you think you know everything, do not hold forth as an expert — seems to me that more I learn, more I know about something, more I realize that I really don’t know jack.  This is not to say that I don’t know more than this guy, or that guy, or even the vast majority of humans on the planet.  Just that I realize there’s so much more I need to know.

I’m sure Joe would agree with me, but I wanted to make sure that message resonated.

-rsh