On Monday night, I drove up to my mom's house near Dallas and spent the night in anticipation of the Raincamp event the next day. Surprisingly, there was still several inches of snow on the ground when I arrived, although the roads were clear. Since we didn't get any snow at all at my house, I was a little disappointed that my kids weren't there to see it.
This was the very first night I spent away from my wife and kids since May of 1998, when my son was a few months old. He had an emergency surgery (intestinal blockage) the night before my grandfather's funeral. I was there for both "events". When I was at Raincamp, I mistakenly thought that it was the very first time I'd been away from them. Still, it takes a lot to get me away from my family. I was looking forward to Raincamp for weeks.
But I digress...
Raincamp was a terrific event! It was incredibly valuable from a networking standpoint, since it allowed me to finally connect in person with many of my friends from AR that I have known for years online. Additionally, I learned some great techniques with regard to lead conversion and generation. I hope to implement some of the real estate ideas right away at my company. Big thanks to Ben Kinney, Bob Stewart, and Brad Andersohn for putting together such a cool day of learning. I have a list several pages long of sites to check out.
After lunch, I was asked to sit on a social media panel with my good friend Debe Maxwell of Charlotte and Josh Hartley of Dallas. It was a lot of fun to answer questions from Brad and Ben and a few from the audience as well. Here's a picture that Lori Cain of Tulsa took of us:
Overall, I would HIGHLY recommend getting to one of these events if you have a chance. You will learn some tips, tricks and techniques that will help your business to grow, regardless of your level of expertise. They covered a broad array of information in one day, and I am frankly not that easy to impress. I won't claim that I learned something during every part of the event, since I also teach social media and blogging, but I will say that it was well worth my time to attend.
Ben has a very laidback presenting style, but hearing some of his sales techniques was motivational to me as a broker. It stimulated me to work on our own lead conversion, since we have tons of leads coming to our site, yet not that many sales to show for it most months.
I think Bob mentioned that the next Raincamp will be held in Denver. If you have a chance to make it, GO! Maybe I can convince them to fly me in. Kidding.
P.S. I wasn't really kidding in my title, by the way. I spent so much time talking that I really didn't make a point to take pictures, and I even ended up with a hoarse voice the next day. I was hoping that many of the photos that were taken with me in them would appear on posts and on Facebook. I wasn't disappointed, since I saw a bunch of them in earlier AR posts, but I didn't see any of them make it to FB. If you have any to share, feel free to post them in the comments below. :)
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