Stefan Swanepoel

Stefan Swanepoel is a successful businessman, a best-selling author and widely travelled public speaker. He spent the first 35 years of his life in various countries across the globe before immigrating to the USA. Today he is an American citizen and lives in California. Stefan has penned over 20 books, reports and whitepapers, over 1,000 published articles and given more than 750 presentations to over 500,000 people. Now for the first time he has combined his love of wildlife and nature, his ability to captivate audiences, and his comprehensive life experience into a captivating message in a major trade book.

In Stefan’s book,In Surviving Your Serengeti he vividly portrays how this larger-than-life metaphor can provide guidance and inspiration for individuals and companies in today’s fast, busy and complex world. Swanepoel’s life has been a “Serengeti journey”—from his birth in Kenya to schooling in Hong Kong and South Africa eventually, running a New York-based global franchise network with 25,000 sales associates in 30 countries. In all he has served as president of seven companies and two non-profit organizations.

TOPICS

Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business & Life
This keynote presentation is based on the compelling business and life fable, “Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business & Life.” The story is a riveting tale of life in Africa’s Serengeti, the animals and the unique skills they use to thrive in the extreme, constantly changing conditions. The insight gained from these animals offers us certain wisdoms we can use for our own urban, concrete jungle.

What Animal Am I?

Are you an enduring wildebeest, who understands that any goal worth achieving requires pressing on despite the hardships? Or are you a strategic lion, who knows how to execute a sound strategy with a stealthy, unified team? Do you take brave gambles like the risk-taking mongoose? Do you have the elegance of the gracious giraffe or the remarkable skills of the communicating elephant? Do you spot opportunities in adversity like the enterprising crocodile or are you as effective with your resources as the efficient cheetah? This is neither a personality assessment nor does in any way compete or replace the excellent DISC or Myers Brigg assessments. This is a quick 3-minute, 21 question online quiz that brings the animals from the fable to life; it can be taken by anyone, anywhere and any time. It’s fun and provides results immediately. People relate quickly to animals and as such have a strong curiosity to learn more about the traits and skills of their animal. Initial responses on occasion have left takers surprised, but as they discover more about their own strengths – and are reminded that we should never judge a person on outward appearances – everyone accepts who they are, and then begin see their own strengths within the animal. From there, the discovery process instills curiosity and takers seek to learn more about the people around them – whether office colleagues, friends or family members – and their corresponding animals.

This invariably leads to a fun and non-threatening discussion about all different skills and how people work together with the people (or animals with animals) with different skills. During the keynote presentation that coincided with the launch of the book, over 3,000 people took the quiz on their mobile devices during the 75-minute presentation! The presentation draws you in quickly and facilitates the audience’s involvement in a safari in Africa by experiencing all seven the animals, one by one. The audience discovers that the Serengeti is a window into the very essence of life itself, and that the animals provide a unique road map for mastering the difficulties and struggles we all experience in our own lives everyday.

The Top 10 Most Significant Trends Impacting the Real Estate Industry
During the last decade Stefan Swanepoel has become widely accepted as the leading authority on “Trends” and “Change” in the real estate industry. Different from most speakers, Stefan updates this presentation every 90 days and completely rewrites it every year – updated Trends, updated stats, current examples and brand new PowerPoint slides. He will often update PowerPoint slides hours before each presentation to ensure the presentation remains fresh and relevant. The following key issues are some of the points covered in this year’s exciting Trends 2011 talk:

• Impact of Technology on Realtors
• Uncovering New Consumer Needs
• Growing Knowledge & Skills Vacuum
• Location-based Services & Augmented Reality
• Evolving Social Media Marketing Paradigm
• The Ever Changing Real Estate Business Model

This keynote presentation focuses on the key trends impacting the residential real estate brokerage industry. It can be delivered in either 90 or 120 minutes. Packed with facts and stats, this objective talk covers a very wide spectrum of the real estate industry and is of tremendous value to brokers, managers, progressive agents and service providers. The talk is high energy, fast-paced and delivered in an upbeat, positive and motivational manner.

Maximizing the Impact of Social Media: Trends, Strategy & Action Plans
Become the Conductor of your own Social Media Orchestra and learn to maximize your time to get the best results. This talk includes topics such as:

• Where to Start with Social Media
• Determining the Landscape
• Rules of Engagement
• The Best Sites and Tools
• Monitoring the Conversation Online
• How to Tie it all Social Media Together
• Finding Social Balance

The talk also provides attendees with a free step-by-step “10-day Action Plan” for getting up and growing a large number of fans, friends and followers. The talk is based on the Swanepoel SOCIAL MEDIA Report, the first book published that focuses on Social Media in the real estate brokerage industry.

Full Biography

Stefan Swanepoel is a successful businessman, a best-selling author and widely-traveled public speaker.He spent the first 35 years of his life in various countries across the globe before immigrating to the USA. Today he is an American citizen and lives in California.

His academic accomplishments include a bachelor’s in science, a master’s in business economics and diplomas in arbitration, mergers & acquisitions, real estate, computer science and marketing.He is the former President of a technology company, a non-profit association, a movie studio and a 2,000 office international franchise.

Stefan’s professional career has focused on identifying trends and changes in the real estate industry and is widely recognized as the leading visionary in this field. He has penned over 14 industry books, reports and whitepapers, over 1,000 published articles and given more than 700 presentations to over 300,000 people. His most popular books include the including the 1998 Amazon.com bestseller, Real Estate confronts Reality and the annual Swanepoel TRENDS Report (2006, 2007, 2008 & 2009).

He has received numerous awards including; “Businessman of the Year” (Jaycees), has been ranked as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential People in the Real Estate Industry” (Today’s REALTOR?) and in 2008 as “One of the Top 100 Most Influential Real Estate Leaders” (Inman News). He is also the co-founder of Real Estate Wiki, the largest free online real estate encyclopedia and resource.

Stefan’s next book, Surviving Your Serengeti, will combine his love of wildlife and nature and his comprehensive business experiences into a message that vividly portrays how this larger-than-life metaphor provides guidance and inspiration for individuals and companies today. This book is due for publication Spring 2010.