I need a “green building” (not mold) speaker for a realtor’s symposium in September, near Cleveland, Ohio. Interested parties may email me directly at homewiseinspections@live.com
Hi. Jeff why not take the green building course here on Nachi and be the speaker your self. It is a very good course and I am sure if you needed maybe Nachi could make it a P/P presentation for you to use.
I try not to hold myself out as an expert unless I am. I’ll check out the course but still need someone with practical expertise.
That was the most refreshing post I have seen on this Message Board in years.
I salute you, sir.
You don’t have to be an “expert” to give a talk.
I’ll tell you a funny story. Back when I was at Peach Inspections I was asked to give one of those bore-every-agent-to-tears talks about home inspections to a bunch of agents.
I decided to instead do something more interesting. I brought in a bunch of those ICF blocks http://www.greenblock.com/ and built a big corner out of them and passed them around the room (they’re light) and all the while talking about the advantages of them and how agents can tout these advantages when showing a home made with them. I had copied these advantage onto a flyer with my inspection company’s contact info at the bottom and passed them out to all the agents of course.
The corner I built got up to about 5 foot high and all the agents were piled around and some where helping. I left part of the corner as a demo at the broker’s office at her request.
It was much easier to talk about something while doing this big, physical demo as opposed to standing there like a dork with my hands in my pockets saying stupid stuff like "I’m a thorough inspector. My website is… " Ugh!
Anyway, my point:
I knew nothing of ICF’s until the evening before when I loaded my truck up with them at the supply house (about 6pm the night before), downloaded the manufacturer’s talking points about them (about 8 pm the night before), and studied (until about 9 pm the night before).
Best presentation I ever did and was asked to give it many times to real estate offices. A different manufacturer got wind of me and asked me to be their expert presenter in the area.
John…
Nick is right,and here is an exciting site for those kind of ideas.
Hope it helps.
http://www.facilitiesnet.com/#
I don’t know your circumstances, John, and I don’t know how much time you have to prepare for the symposium, but if you are at all comfortable with speaking in front of people, I’d say go for it and give the talk yourself. The InterNACHI “Green Course” has a wealth of information in it, much more than you would need for a brief talk. You would just have to pull out the essential material, boil it down and make it interesting for a presentation.
A few months ago I was asked by the Director of Continuing Ed for a local community college, if I would teach a 3 hour course in “Green Building Concepts” as a CE course for Realtors. After giving it a little thought, I said sure, why not! Get to speak in front of a room full of Realtors for 3 hours and get paid, what’s not to like!
Basically, I tweaked a rough outline of InterNACHI’s Green Course, submitted it to the state of MD, explaining that I would be speaking generally on those topics in the outline, but gearing it to a Realtor audience and had it approved for CE credits for MD Realtors. I’ll actually be giving the course in late September, so it’s still a work in progress.
There’s a wealth of information on “Green” out there and it seems to be growing exponentially everyday. The trick is to condense it down to the essentials of what is important to Realtors. If a client goes to a Realtor and says, “I’d like to buy a house that’s “green””, what should that Realtor know. If a seller says, “I’d like to make my house more “green” before putting my house on the market so that it will appeal to a broader base of people”, what advice can that Realtor give.
Aside from taking the InterNACHI Green Course and following it’s links, you might want to pick up some magazines to get a sense of what the general public may be seeing. Fine Homebuilding’s Houses Annual issue Summer 2008 has a good article on LEED-H (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Homes). Most of the home building and remodeling magazines have regular “green” articles. Natural Homeis a completely green magazine geared to the home owner audience. If you start researching, there’s a lot out there.
Anyway, if you decide that you want to stick your neck out a little, it seems like a great marketing opportunity for yourself. Even if you decide that you aren’t in a position to do the talk at this time, you should seriously consider studying up on “green” issues. It’s the wave of the future and the opportunity might come along again.
Here are a couple of links to organizations in the Cleveland area.