There’s always something to howl about.

What’s the difference between BloodhoundBlog Unchained and a trade show like Inman Connect? Nothing but the chains…

In a comment to my Parliament of Whores post, Erion Shehaj asks:

I’m having a hard time differentiating between an event such as Connect and BHB Unchained[….] Is there any real difference between them charging for a conference and you doing the same?

Now that’s an excellent question.

Have you been to events like Inman Connect, StarPower or the NAR Convention? Are they charging you for a conference? You bet.

Is that their sole or even their primary objective? To the contrary.

A trade show exists to deliver you to its sponsors. The conference curriculum will consist of sponsored presentations, with the sponsors attempting to sell you their products. Are these the best tools for your business? No. The sponsors you hear from will be the highest bidders, and the hosting organization — Inman or StarPower or the NAR — will actively prevent anyone from pointing out that the sponsor’s products are inferior to others available. In other words, a trade show like Inman Connect, StarPower or the NAR Convention is nothing but a shillfest, a carnival for bilking dupes, who come there to be bilked on their own nickel.

I know you haven’t been to the one Unchained event we have had so far, but what we do is nothing like that. We had one sponsor, Zillow.com, which bought nothing but naming rights — practically speaking as a much-needed subsidy. No other sponsors, no sponsored presentations at all, no trade-show booths. The bulk of the program was Brian Brady and I teaching the theory and practice of Social Media Marketing. We interviewed a few vendors as a means of pinning them down and putting the screws to them. Everything about Unchained is contained in that one word: Achieving the greatest possible independence for the grunts on the ground.

You highlighted this text:

rather than strive to find new ways of milking Realtors and lenders of their income

Everything that Brian and I do is aimed at helping working Realtors and lenders hang on to every cent they earn. If you come to see us live, you’re going to pay. Electrons are almost free but atoms cost money to move around. But everything we talk about is always available right here for free.

Everything associated with the NAR and the Inmanosphere exists to enslave you in one way or another, to tie you up with one set of golden handcuffs after another, so that, in order to retain as much as half of your income, you have to piss the other half away on brokers, memberships, leads, hosted software solutions and other useless crap. Everything associated with BloodhoundBlog Unchained is aimed in exactly the opposite direction, cutting one bond after another, so that you control as much of your own destiny — and retain as much of your own income — as you possibly can.

You can come see BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando for $99 — at least for now; Brian still hasn’t bumped the price, and I like it where it is. But you can come and reap everything we have to teach right here for free. We want nothing to do with milking you of your income. We want you to make so much money that, if you should pay to come and see us, it’s because you want to make even more.

You don’t have to take my word for it. There were almost a hundred people with us for our first time out. Ask them what’s the difference between BloodhoundBlog Unchained and a shillfest like Inman Connect or StarPower or the NAR Convention.

In the mean time, please do not doubt my gratitude to you for having asked this question. It’s those lingering objections that don’t quite get addressed that cause problems in any persuasive endeavor.

To close, and to summarize, here’s the one clip I made with BrokerIPTV.com at BloodhoundBlog Unchained in May:


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