About two months ago, the HomeQuest team put on a real estate educational event in Portland that I thought rock’d…  With four great speakers (Gahlord Dewald, Garron Selliken, David Gibbons and myself) and some help from some local title reps, we brought together a few hundred agents to teach them about how they could improve their online marketing.

It was so much fun that I started pushing the team to create a similar event in Southern California…  and the team not only supported the idea, but everyone seems genuinely excited.  Assuming you’re a SoCal agent, then the only details you need to know are that we’re going to have the event on April 29th (9am to noon), it will cost only $20 and you can reserve your spot here: http://buzzreoc.eventbrite.com/

But for those that need more, here’s the catch… I want to improve upon the Portland event! And here’s my four ideas for how we can do that:

1. Make sure we have even more great speakers!
   • We’re gonna have 8 formal presentations instead of 4… and a panel of 3 local agents who have successfully incorporated internet marketing in their business
2. Make sure the presentation part of the day is extremely focused
   • We’re going to follow an overall structure that generally follows an Agent’s Work Cycle
   • We’re going to do it all in 2 hours, meaning each speaker will be giving approximately 15 minutes forcing them to focus on the stuff they find most important
   • We’re going to create one “overall” presentation so that we don’t spend time flipping between laptops/presentations and someone (in this case: me) is in charge of making sure the presentations will have a logical flow
3. Make sure to include local agents who are actively generating substantial business from their internet marketing activities
   • So far, one local agent who has been rocking Facebook has agreed to be on the panel and I hope to announce the other two panelists in the next few days!
4. Make sure the event is memorable!
   • For this, we’re giving it a fun name: BuzzRE OC  and…
   • We’re going to make sure it’s the most cost-effective educational event for every agent who attends.

So who’s involved?

Here’s the list of speakers as well as the tentative name of their presentations:

• Jon Lansner: State of Real Estate
• Dustin Luther: Overview of the Agent Biz Cycle
• Stacey Harmon: 5 Awesome Sphere Marketing Tools
• Robert Luna: Home Search Strategies that Work
• Gahlord Dewald:  Keys to Optimizing Your Web Marketing
• Loren Nason: 3 Tools that will make you a Better Agent
• Garron Selliken: Leads to Clients to Closings
• Dale Chumbley: Sphere Building with Facebook
• Linsey Planeta: Putting Theory into Practice

I’m convinced we can cover all of these super interesting topics in only 2 hours!   This means that we can plan for a solid 45 minute panel conversation with local agnets are doing interesting internet marketing and be able to wrap the whole event up in less than 3 hours!  As of right now, I have one panelist confirmed, one who has tentatively agreed and on the hunt for one more. The panelist situation:

• Robin Milonakis:  who’s been rocking the Facebook world.
• “Blogging” agent: I have a tentative agreement from an awesome blogger agent, but I don’t want to give her name until she’s confirmed
• “AdSense” agent: I want one local agent who’s generates serious business from online ad buying to round the group out… If you have a recommendation for an appropriate agent, I’m all ears!

And please, please, please… If you have ideas for what we should cover in each section (or you have a better name for any of the presentations!), let us know!   In an ideal world, we’d be able to take the general presentation (from sphere marketing to lead generation to client management and back to sphere marketing) and bring it to many other parts of the country!   (Bringing in local experts where appropriate!)

I’m really hoping to create a can’t miss educational event for real estate agents and would love any and all help you can give in spreading the word. One more time, here’s the details:

• Location: Rancho Santa Margarita Bell Tower, 22232 El Paseo, Rancho Santa Margarita CA, 92688
• Date/Time: April 29, 2010, from 9am to noon
• Registration: $20 at http://buzzreoc.eventbrite.com/

Can’t wait to see you in the OC!