I’m in Chicago at the iOi Summit.
NAR is going to stream the Pitch Battle live on their LinkedIn feed at 12:45PM PT. Below is list of the participants.
I’m a little biased but check out Tuesday. The founder Cole Boyer is second on the lineup. Each presenter will only have 4 minutes to pitch their product. Should be fun!
“I’ve had the pleasure to personally see all the Thrive speakers present before, and I wanted to bring their combined expertise to California’s elite brokerage community,” said CRMLS CEO and Thrive speaker Art Carter. “There’s a lot of understandable tension in the air about all the changes happening right now. The vision of Thrive Broker Summit is to offer actionable insights and draw a map into the future so that we can all succeed together. As we like to say; adapt through change, thrive with knowledge.”
CRMLS
Great lineup. I’m hearing that this may the first interview Phil Hawkins will be giving since accepting the CEO post at California Association of REALTORS (CAR)
I didn’t have “someone will make socks with your face on them, and wear them at Inman Connect” on my bingo card. 😳
Just love the smile of Eric Stegemann’s face after his company, Tribus, winning the Inman Innovator Award for “Most Innovative Client Experience Solution“. Well done!
While not the biggest news this past week the passing of Richard Simmons got me a bit nostalgic. I hired Richard Simmons to do a meet and greet at our booth at the 2004 NAR Annual Convention. This was on the heels of the NAR Annual Conference in 2003 where we had hired Fabio. But that’s another story. Fabio was a huge success and drew a huge crowd at the eNeighborhoods booth. So naturally we thought, let’s get another celebrity! After some brain-storming we settled on Richard Simmons. You can see page one of the agreement we did with the company repping him below and an ad we ran in REALTOR Magazine:
He was a lot of fun. I remember him calling our wives for a prank, “Hi Honey, guess who’s with your husband right now?!” He would also record voice mail greetings for our cell phones. “Hi this is Richard Simmons and you’ve reached Shane’s voice mail!”
Another thing I remember was how a lot of conference attendees came up and told stories about how he had motivated them to live a more healthy life. When I saw him having these conversations (sometimes he would pull them aside) you could see something in his eyes…he truly cared. Such a great legacy.
I think this NAR Midyear will go down in the record books as one of the most memorable. For good reasons and bad. First off I want to thank everyone for showing up at the Omni Sunday night. It was a great to see everyone in one place, even though the sole bartender probably needed therapy afterwards (I tried calling to warn them but nobody picked up). And a HUGE thank you to RoomVu for picking up the tab for the first round. RoomVu CEO, Sam Mehrbod, flight got cancelled so he couldn’t make it that evening but I sure he would appreciate if you dropped him a line on LInkedIn. And it was great to have Jeff Young there to give such an heart felt toast to Kristen. Thank you Jeff.
There is so much else to cover but I’m exhausted.
Godspeed everyone.
Heard an interesting story this week while out and about in DC. Apparently Anthony Lamacchia, a broker who just bought NAR President Kevin Sears’ brokerage, was a panelist on stage at the MLS policy meeting. I’m told during the panel Mr. Lammachia started discussing practices that seemed to encourage steering to the audience.
This caused quite a kerfuffle and NAR attorney, Charlie Lee, took to the stage. Apparently some in the audience left the meeting exclaiming “I’m leaving this meeting”. Which is what MLS execs were instructed to do when anti-trust behavior is taking place.
Now, I wasn’t there but I did verify from a one other person about shouting going on and people leaving the meeting.
The Notorious ROB has written a post title, “The Law of Holes” about similar concerns regarding Lamacchia in a previous “debate” Lamacchia did with Michael Ketchmark, attorney regarding the now infamous #SitzerBurneet ruling.
Anyone know what the outcome of this?
I think with the news of Kristen’s passing is going to make this Sunday night at the Omni even more special.
So be there Sunday night (5/5/23) at the Omni Hotel’s Marquee Lounge. Anywhere from 9 PM to Midnight (last call). And we can raise a glass to Kristen in a place I know she would have loved to be, surrounded by her friends.
BIG UPDATE: The guys at RoomVu has generous offered to pick the tab for the “first round” so the sooner you get there the better opportunity it is to get a free drink! RoomVu is a pioneer in Video Marketing for agents. Sam Mehrbod, the co-founder of RoomVu, will be there so we will all get to thank him personally. Many thanks Sam!
Check out their site to learn more.
