Delivering A Quality Experience

“To successfully adapt to the rapid changes occurring all around us and not create more problems than we solve, we must pay attention to the quality of the experiences that we will be creating and delivering.”

That line was part of the description I sent to Brad Nix and his team at RETSO months ago, as the conference was in the early stages of planning. At the time, I had an obvious sense of what I wanted to say to the RETSO audience. The message has changed in the months since hitting the send button on that email. That doesn’t surprise me.

The rapid changes occurring all around me have forced a reconsideration of the topic. And I now find myself reading those words over and over as I attempt to prepare for the presentation. “We must pay attention to the quality of the experiences that we will be creating and delivering.”  And I’m beginning to wonder if that’s a lot like saying, “you must focus on being happy.”

The Quality Experience

This year’s RETSO conference has a new format, a new venue, and a new date. Considering the past success of RETSO, a change in any one of those three would be risky and evolving all three at the same time borders on the insane. But I know, without question, it was a necessary move to ensure a quality experience.

To the RETSO team’s credit, they embrace the changes occurring all around them and are unafraid to shake things up to ensure the experience they are creating and delivering is high quality. The team, which also includes Mike Pennington and Ben Carter, navigated a similar change last year. They kept the same venue and held the conference at the same time of year,  but they threw out their traditional conference format to focus on creating and delivering a business model generation workshop. It was a risky move and one not without a few rough spots. But it was a move that paid high dividends for those in attendance, for those who embraced the change. And many did.

This year, the RETSO audience will get another significant change. The format will shift again. I’m not sure many conferences could pull this off. But I know RETSO can. Because what has not changed is what is the key to delivering a quality experience – a steadfast commitment to their vision and core values. I believe the RETSO community knows this. They can feel it.

The RETSO Vision

“RETSO was created to make real estate smarter by connecting ideas worth doing to doers willing to challenge the status quo,” Brad Nix shared with me. “The values were not defined at the beginning (I didn’t know any better); thus we have a culture of adopted values among the producers of the event. Today these values include humility, relationships, collaboration, creativity, inspiration & fun.”

Just as focusing solely on being happy won’t make you happy, focusing only on creating a quality experience won’t deliver that experience. Happiness is a by-product of living life in sync with your core values. So is establishing and delivering a quality experience. It is a lifestyle, not a destination.

This time next week I’ll be putting the finishing touches on my opening keynote presentation for RETSO. The presentation has been titled, “Delivering A Quality Experience.”  As is typical of my process, the details of what I’ll be saying will not be fully formed until the moment the words leave my mouth on the RETSO stage on June 4th, 2014.

What I’ll be concentrating on, however, is not in question. I’ll be focused on connecting ideas worth doing to doers willing to challenge the status quo. I’ll be focused on humility, relationships, collaboration, inspiration, and fun. If I do that right, if RETSO does that right, the results will be evident.

I hope you’ll join me for the experience.