During a 60 Minutes TV interview, Simon Cowell was asked if he created American Idol in order to gain celebrity status. In other words was Simon’s goal to become famous?

Simon answered that he didn’t really care about being a celebrity. He created American Idol simply to sell records for his record company – Sony BMG. By having a singing competition on TV, he would be able to sign great singers before they made it big. This would allow him to lock in guaranteed future stars for less money. He would also have exclusive rights to their songs throughout the entire American Idol process.

Simon’s business plan was so powerful that he has sold over 100,000,000 records in the last 4 or 5 years. Every time an American Idol artist sells a song or record, Simon’s record company makes money. American Idol is now on TV in 30 countries. Each year, he signs the biggest stars in 30 different countries.

What did Simon really do? He did the opposite of what all the other record companies were doing. The majority of the record companies spend their time and resources trying to recruit top selling artists away from their competitors. Not Simon.

He created a new business “in front of” the record business. The new business, American Idol, funnels signed artist after signed artist to his record company. In fact, he doesn’t waste any time trying to recruit artists away from his competition. He isn’t even competing with them anymore. He figured out how to attract future starts to him through American Idol.

Simon has completely re-invented the record business. Over the last few years, Obeo has done exactly the same thing with the home marketing business. Particularly, in the past year Obeo has completely changed the shopping experience of the online home buyer! And real estate agents who utilize Obeo HomeSite to market their properties stay ahead of the competition by giving home buyers exactly what they want when it comes to shopping for a home online.

If you’re a real estate agent who wants to exceed every expectation of your sellers and buyers, then you need to understand exactly how Obeo is doing it. You can at: www.Obeo.com/HomeSite.