I remember the first phone call I got back in March, 2020 from a REIA leader (Real Estate Investors Association) on a Saturday asking me what we were going to do now that they shut down the world and we couldn’t have live events anymore. At that time I had no idea how to answer that question for 2 reasons. First reason I wasn’t aware of that because I don’t watch the news and I spend as little time as possible on facebook and other social media platforms because everyone has become so negative. And the second reason is that we were hosting a live event at that very moment so I told them that we would talk on Monday.
I just assumed that they were talking about their state and that it was not going to affect most of the country. But by the time I turned a TV on Sunday night, almost the whole country was on lockdown. That week Vena Jones-Cox from Cincinnati REIA was doing their first Online Main Meeting and there was over 600 people in attendance at that event including myself. Everyone heard about the Cincinnati REIA and their topic was how to deal with tenant and real estate with all the new rules and restrictions that had been trust upon us in less than a week or 2 weeks for a lot of the country.
At first it was fun for me and everyone working with new technologies and working through the challenges to adjust to the (don’t yell at me…) new normal. People were working from home and we had to take all our training session that we have been doing for years and decades in a live environment and figure out how to get our customers to consume the same type of training and networking in an online world.
I did my best to make the members experience as awesome as possible and I got on server webinars and zoom meetings to learn how others were doing it and what seemed to be working and what didn’t. There are some things that we did that made it easier to train online. I even tried doing a daily networking zoom event to help people get what they seemed to be missing. Out of the 10,000 plus people that I invited to join us every day, maybe a total of 50 people actually did and past the first week, it was really just the same 8 of us every day.
When we first started do the meetings, training and zoom networking events, people remained professional and maybe didn’t wear suits, but at least they wore dress cloths. After a few weeks though, people stopped getting dressed up and were now wearing t-shits and baseball caps. Which for me was great, because that is what I prefer to wear all the time. And you could get so much more training online than you ever could in a live world. Most days you had at least 10 training options that you were aware of, life was great for the online world.
4 months later though it because very obvious what was missing. Human interaction is part of the learning experience and the process to build a business. The first time I noticed it was after our June Main Monthly meeting. We had a guest speaker that has spoken 3 previous times for us over the past 8 years. His attendance was always in the top numbers for us, usually 250 plus, even in the summer because he is a local lender and teaches how to value a property from the eyes of one of the most successful hard money lenders and an investor. However this time the attendance was the lowest attendance we have had in over 5 years.
I remember after that meeting saying good night to our speaker and all the members and guests at 9pm. I then shut my computer down, went home and went to bed. The next morning I woke up and remember thinking that I felt tired and was not excited or energized from the night before. The very next night I did a 3 hour online Wholesaling 101 class. At 9:15pm I said good night, went home and went to bed, but I was exhausted the next morning because it is harder to keep that level of energy up with no human expressional feedback and I am sure them audience didn’t get as much out of the experience either because we couldn’t see each other. Or at least I couldn’t see if they were confused or if they were just talking the dog out to go to the bathroom.
What was missing? Human interaction was missing. We learn when we are engaged and with GoToWebinars analytics, you can see that most people are never fully engaged online. When a speaker asks questions, it is important for the other audience members to see who answered, that is how connections are made. If an audience member answers a speakers question, the new people will now be able to see who from the REIA knows this stuff and if the opportunity presents itself in a networking environment after the event, they now have a connection and something to talk about to break the ice and that leads to partnerships and deals done together.
In an online event, training the human interaction is missing. Unless you account for the zoom meetings were people don’t realize that there phone conversations are being heard by everyone, the rustling of the potato chip bag is extremely annoying, the dog licking their face which causes zoom to think that their video is so important that it is the main video on zoom at that minute and I can go on and on, but the most annoying thing about online events is internet connectivity.
I always tell people that the meeting after the meeting is the most important meeting to be at because that is where relationships are developed, deals are struck and aw ha moments happen.
Bottom line is, after a live event, I feel energized and motivated for at least 2 days and always take action on what I learned within a few days. With the online learning environment, I listen to so many trainings, events and conversations that all I want to do is take a shower, brush my teeth and go to bed.
See Mike's Last Blog Post Here