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"If your ideal customers on the other end of that platform, it should work for you. Most of the time what hasn't happened is they haven't set themselves apart. They haven't differentiated themselves in such a way that they stand out from everybody else. And you've got to do that before you can expect to be treated differently."
Show Notes
Alright everybody. Welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate show. Boy, I feel honored today to have two people with me here today who are making quite the stir in the real estate industry and the kind of a stir that I think the real estate industry needs. I want to welcome today here on the show, Tonya Eberhart and Michael Carr. You may have heard of these names. They're bestselling authors of the book Brandface. We'll be talking a little bit more about that. A little more on their background here in just a second. Before I go into that, I want to talk about the problem that we're going to solve so, and you're going to want to know who these people are. So the problem that I see so often is, real estate agents chasing, hunting and the consumer feeling hunted, feeling chased, which is not necessarily a good position to be in. Whereas what Tonya and Michael teach is a way to brand yourself to where people chase you where people are anxious to try and find time to get on your schedule. I want to thank both of you for coming on today to discuss this very important topic.
Hey, thank you Justin. We are honored to be here. Thanks for having us.
Thank you so much.
Yeah. So, let's get a little bit more into your background and, and they've got such a comprehensive bio that I won't be able to cover it all. Let me start with you Tonya. You really have become synonymous with building brands in the real estate industry and really helping people stand out in this "sea of sameness." I love how you said that. That's so true here. You know, in the market where I work directly, there's over 8,000 real estate agents just in our city and very few of them really stand out. So many of them say the same things, market the same way, have the same tag lines, have the same posts. I mean, it just looks so much the same. I know that you really specialize in helping people stand out.
Yes, yes we do. So, you know, one of the things that I thought I'd start with Justin is kind of what's going on in today's real estate industry. And that is, it's no surprise to anybody listening today that there are tons of new agents coming into the industry. They're entering or reentering the industry. And then you also have lots and lots of new marketing platforms and tools out there that didn't even exist 10-15 years ago. So there's so many ways to market yourself, but the real problem comes when you mix those two together. You've got all these agents using all of these marketing tools and systems exactly the same way, right? To your point, everybody kind of then starts to look the same and that's why we refer to it as the sea of sameness. And that's not really coming from us. It's coming from all the agents we've been dealing with these last several years. They're saying, oh my gosh, everybody around here is marketing exactly the same. And when that happens they tend to kind of blame the marketing platform. Oh, Facebook ads doesn't work. Um, newspaper doesn't work. Radio doesn't work. Google ads don't work. Zillow doesn't work. Right?! And so that really is not always the truth, right? There are some platforms that are better than others, but most of the time if your ideal customers on the other end of that platform, it should work for you. Most of the time what hasn't happened is they haven't set themselves apart. They haven't differentiated themselves in such a way that they stand out from everybody else. And you've got to do that before you can expect to be treated differently.
You know, I'm a big fan of the book Blue Ocean Strategy and what you're talking about sounds sounds similar to that. You know, what they teach there and I'm sure your book, which I'm so excited to read by the way really takes a concept of standing out and really deeply applies it to the real estate industry. Like, how important is that?
Right? It does. And you know what I'm going to hand this one off to Michael because he's actually the first real estate professional that I worked with with the Brandface concepts and that's actually why he's a partner in the company today. So I'm going to hand that one off to Michael.
Hey Michael, before you get started, let me just share with the audience who you are. They're like, who is this Sean Connery looking figure in the middle of the screen. So, some context here. Michael is actually America's top selling real estate auctioneer and the 'Abundant Life Broker.' During your 26 years experience, you've been actively involved in over 74,000 transactions. Like that's phenomenal; And licensed in as many as 27 states in the Continental US. Now let's talk a little bit about how you guys met. You kind of alluded to it, Tonya, that you actually implemented these ideas in Michael's business. True?
It's absolutely true.
Yeah. The way that all worked out is I was an auctioneer by trade. I still am. And the guy that taught me the industry said, get your real estate license because you might want to call a sale, a farm sale or something like that in rural Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama. So I did. So, then I opened up a brokerage in 2000, but mainly I did it to buy my own stuff and help family members. I really wasn't pushing the idea of an arms length transaction brokerage. And then in 2006, I partnered with a company out of Irvine, California, and we brokered a deal in Georgia and it turned into the Bear Stearns residential portfolio when they went under and we thought they would end up being about three years worth of work. It turned out to be six or seven over the course of that time. And so that's where a lot of those licenses came from. I had an office in Atlanta, had an office in Irvine, California, and an office in Seattle, Washington. And we were just trying to liquidate these properties at the time and praying at the same time that our regular arms length transaction businesses would all come back because I was an investor first and a real estate agent/broker second. I was hoping for the recovery just as much as everybody else was but when that happened and we began to see that that was going to happen, I knew that I needed marketing. And so I went about it on my own and I said, okay, I need to stand out. I need to be different. I need people to notice who I am and why.
But I didn't have all those concepts actually pulled down into one concept of differentiation. I had an agent that helped me start the brokerage. She kept saying, you need to talk to my niece. She's in marketing, she's a genius. She's great, she's awesome. And by that time I was so passed it, I was like, I'd already had heard all the stories. I've heard about this is the path for us and none of them are going to work. Like I was too busy building systems and too busy doing this. And so at the same time she was going to Tonya saying, "Michael is expecting your call. Michael is expecting your call." Or, "You got to help Michael. He's waiting on you to help him." And so we laugh about it now because she's still with us but she sort of tricked me and Tonya in to coming together and then the rest is pretty much magic.
When she came into my life, told me what I needed to do I saw right quick, she knew what she was talking about and I'm like, "Okay, this is a person that can conceptualize all of the different platforms and media that you're using to try to get people to come to you and pull them into one message." She had already been doing that through Brandface for other professionals and businesses and she wanted to apply that to me in the real estate business and it continues to work. We still every day practice all of the Brandface principles in this brokerage and it continues to grow.
You know, I appreciate what you shared Michael because I think there's a lot of real estate agents that maybe fall into a similar category as you, which is they're really, really good at the business of real estate. They really understand how to serve people, but I think the disconnect that a lot of people recognize is that if nobody knows that about you, you're going to be constantly hunting. And what I hear you saying is that what Tonya did for you is she took your expertise and put it out to the world to where people recognize the value that you bring so that you could spend less time out chasing and looking for the next deal and more time in your sweet spot, which is serving people at a really high level.
I would definitely say that's well put. That's really well put. That's the idea of it. You know, there's a cost of confusion. And I think that agents get wrapped up in that and they don't really know. They don't have a purpose in getting in every day in the office and in seeking out their ideal customers in ways that while they're working, their ideal customers are seeking them out. And Brandface is all about that. It's all about stopping this blanket of advertising that doesn't say anything except for "I'm in real estate." And it pairs it down to a message to seek out those people for you that are seeking your specific niche in real estate. And it's so important. And then in time you are known for that and people start contacting you for that, for those points of differentiation and like you said, you can reside in a greater fashion why you got into the business, which was helping people with their real estate needs.
The cost of confusion. That's a quotable comment right there, Michael. You're right. I think we probably don't recognize how expensive that really is. How many people would love to use agent X's services. Right?! But they don't stand out. They don't know what that person specializes in. Therefore they don't choose them. That gets really costly when you're talking about real estate commissions.
Let me give you another scenario. You walk into a restaurant and there's Justin a real estate agent, there's Tonya a real estate agent and there's Michael the real estate agent. It would be better that you be known what you're the real estate agent for. "That's the real estate agent that skydives." You know, there's Justin, the real estate agent that does the podcast." And all of a sudden that point of differentiation just elevates you and even though you're in the group of competitors that everybody knows you're in the real estate business, but they don't know exactly what for, or exactly what separates you. But when you can define that and then start putting that into your content, people can find you online and they can understand, "Oh, okay, I get it. I get their principles. I see where they're coming from. I understand and see their heart, their family, their life mixed in with their business and I want to do business with that person." And then you become attractable for a specific reason.
Well, the burden for real estate agents to try and figure that out by themselves and understand all the platforms and be able to still be an effective real estate agent, that's asking a lot, right? I mean I can see the value proposition that you guys bring to the table, which is allow the agent to just be who they are and be really good at it and let us help extract from that agent what makes them unique, what their niche really is and then begin to publish that out to the world so that people can recognize and find you. True?
Dead on.
Absolutely true. And I like to say a little bit more about that, Justin because somebody said, I wish I could take credit for this quote but I can't. Someone said to me one time, "It's hard to see the label when you're inside the jar." And that's so true because it's hard for us to look inside ourselves and see truly what sets us apart. And so to have somebody from the outside looking in that has been doing that for so many years to say, "Okay, I see these great things about you both professionally and personally," because that's what a personal brand is too. It's not just about your accomplishments or the things that set you apart in real estate. It is about your personal life too. And I think you did a podcast about business or family. There was something similar to that topic not long ago that I thought was fascinating because you talked about the fact that you were upset that someone had said something about the fact they want to be known for being a marketer and they didn't really want being a dad on their tombstone. Right? But, but we look at it very differently. It's like, what else sets you apart other than being human, right? Because you can line up 500 real estate agents and they could all have the same technical professional qualifications. But what else is it that makes you want to do business with them? And on the back of our book it says people don't do business with a logo. They do business with a person. And that's what we focus on. We go a little deeper into opening up the personal side just a little bit. So when you walk into a room, people know you beyond just being a real estate agent. Let's face it, that's boring a lot of times, you know, how many real estate conversations does somebody want to walk up to you and carry on?
Not too many, but they will walk up to you and say, "Hey, I heard your podcast on this...." or "I saw that you went hang gliding the other day," or "I see all of your posts about the positive things that you're doing in the community." Something along those lines is so much more powerful and adds to wanting to do business with an individual.
So good. So good. Now, Tonya, you didn't necessarily start off understanding this branding concept and I want to close with this because I think it's super important for people to recognize maybe where I think the real estate industry has gone and I don't know that it's necessarily the best place for them to go. Now your background, uh, is, long, long ago, right before you developed this brand expertise, you were actually the person knocking on people's doors wanting to sell them vacuum cleaners. True story?
That's a true story. And for anybody who wants to know it was Electrolux and it is still the world's greatest vacuum cleaner. Always a salesmen, right? I started doing that to pay my way through college and then I happened upon the house of a radio station engineer one day who said, "Hey, there's a sales position open at a radio station. I think you'd be great for it." And so that catapulted into the next level of personal branding. So first I started out selling vacuum cleaners and I realized really quickly I had to have a story when I went up to that door. Otherwise, I'm just like everybody else knocking on the door. But my story was, "Hi, I'm Tonya. I'm a student at Florida State University. I'm paying my way through college selling vacuum cleaners door to door. I'm not asking you to buy one. I just want to demonstrate one and I get points for every demonstration."
And so that got me in the door and I realized, "Okay, that story worked." You know, that was true of course, but it was telling that story. Then I went into radio actually ended up taking that job and stayed in radio 18 years after that. Very early on in radio was where really the personal branding bug really got me. When I noticed that these local business owners were walking into networking events and they were almost like rock stars. And I thought, what on Earth is going on? And I realized those were people that were the voice of their business. They were the face of their business. They were the spokesperson of their business. And so that's where Brandface came from--the face of your brand.
I love it.
So, when I noticed the things that they had in common, they were doing really three different things which we teach today and we call it the three D's: define, develop and display.
First of all, you've got to define what sets you apart. You know, what is it that separates you from the pack and at the same time will attract your ideal customers. Second, you've got to develop a personal brand wrapped around that point of differentiation. That means everywhere you've got to develop that. You've got to make sure your photos display that image. You want to display your imagery, the photos that you use, your logo, your brand colors, your messaging, which basically is your way to communicate what sets you apart. Once you get those puzzle pieces together, then you make sure your new brand is displayed correctly and consistently across all of your marketing platforms because it is the consistency that really brings the results. So that's what I learned from vacuum cleaners then radio. And that has been the common thread through my entire professional life.
This evolution of your own understanding of how brands are found has been fascinating. I hope that there are some real estate agents in the audience today that are recognizing the fact that, "Boy, I'm showing up a lot like a vacuum cleaner salesperson and I really need to be showing up as a celebrity walking into a room," and say, "Is that the guy?" or "Is that the gal that's... Oh, I've heard of them before. I'd love to work with them. Hopefully they're not too busy for me." Right?As opposed to, "Oh, who's at the door?" Right?.
Yeah. We always like to say, your brand precedes you. And so you want to make sure it's super strong and it portrays what you want to portray--the authenticity inside of you. It really needs to portray that. So that's, that's truly important. Justin
You know, I think the way forward for real estate agents to maintain their margins is to be better at branding, to be more professional and to really understand these principles that you're talking about. I think it's super generous what you've done, which is offered people that are listening to this an opportunity to go to this website, which is: discussyourbrand.com. So, tell us a little bit about what agents will find when they go there, Tonya.
Well we made it super easy for you. So basically you get access to our personal calendars, right? So, you'll see the calendar there and you just pick a time slot. You want to talk about your brand and what that's for, it's for agents who are really serious about setting themselves apart. We will discuss your challenges on the call. We'll discuss any goals that you have. We'll make sure to help give you solid direction on how to get to where you deserve to be because everybody deserves that that stardom inside of you. We like to say, "We don't make stars, we unveil them." And everybody deserves to be a star.
So this isn't just a here, download this paper. Hopefully this will help you. This is an actual conversation.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yep.
So generous. Like I said, it's really an honor for me to have you guys on the show today offering such value to the Think Bigger Real Estate audience. Again, I believe this is what real estate agents need and I wouldn't have you on here and endorse you if I didn't feel like this was really good for the industry. Even hearing more of your story just compels me to want to say, "Please reach out to these wonderful individuals." Take advantage of the help that they're offering. If you plan to be in the business for 3, 5, 10 years from now and beyond, then you need to develop a brand. It's the future of real estate. If you want to be paid well... You can go the route of more like a Barista, right? And open up doors for a certain dollar per hour and I believe there is part of the industry that will go that way, but I believe that there's part of the industry that's going to understand what you guys are teaching and they're going to carve out a very profitable niche for themselves and have a great life with great impact moving forward--which is my mission. And I'm super excited and grateful to have you guys here on the show. So thank you Michael and Tonya both, for your time and attention today. It's meant a lot to me and to my audience and just, thank you so much.
Hey, we love your positivity and we're honored to be on the show. Thank you so much. Yes,
Thank you, Justin.
Well, hey, we will do it again. I look forward to staying in touch with you guys and again, please go take advantage of this really generous offering and I'm looking forward to the value that is going to come to this audience.
Hey, thank you Justin. We are honored to be here. Thanks for having us.
Thank you so much.
Yeah. So, let's get a little bit more into your background and, and they've got such a comprehensive bio that I won't be able to cover it all. Let me start with you Tonya. You really have become synonymous with building brands in the real estate industry and really helping people stand out in this "sea of sameness." I love how you said that. That's so true here. You know, in the market where I work directly, there's over 8,000 real estate agents just in our city and very few of them really stand out. So many of them say the same things, market the same way, have the same tag lines, have the same posts. I mean, it just looks so much the same. I know that you really specialize in helping people stand out.
Yes, yes we do. So, you know, one of the things that I thought I'd start with Justin is kind of what's going on in today's real estate industry. And that is, it's no surprise to anybody listening today that there are tons of new agents coming into the industry. They're entering or reentering the industry. And then you also have lots and lots of new marketing platforms and tools out there that didn't even exist 10-15 years ago. So there's so many ways to market yourself, but the real problem comes when you mix those two together. You've got all these agents using all of these marketing tools and systems exactly the same way, right? To your point, everybody kind of then starts to look the same and that's why we refer to it as the sea of sameness. And that's not really coming from us. It's coming from all the agents we've been dealing with these last several years. They're saying, oh my gosh, everybody around here is marketing exactly the same. And when that happens they tend to kind of blame the marketing platform. Oh, Facebook ads doesn't work. Um, newspaper doesn't work. Radio doesn't work. Google ads don't work. Zillow doesn't work. Right?! And so that really is not always the truth, right? There are some platforms that are better than others, but most of the time if your ideal customers on the other end of that platform, it should work for you. Most of the time what hasn't happened is they haven't set themselves apart. They haven't differentiated themselves in such a way that they stand out from everybody else. And you've got to do that before you can expect to be treated differently.
You know, I'm a big fan of the book Blue Ocean Strategy and what you're talking about sounds sounds similar to that. You know, what they teach there and I'm sure your book, which I'm so excited to read by the way really takes a concept of standing out and really deeply applies it to the real estate industry. Like, how important is that?
Right? It does. And you know what I'm going to hand this one off to Michael because he's actually the first real estate professional that I worked with with the Brandface concepts and that's actually why he's a partner in the company today. So I'm going to hand that one off to Michael.
Hey Michael, before you get started, let me just share with the audience who you are. They're like, who is this Sean Connery looking figure in the middle of the screen. So, some context here. Michael is actually America's top selling real estate auctioneer and the 'Abundant Life Broker.' During your 26 years experience, you've been actively involved in over 74,000 transactions. Like that's phenomenal; And licensed in as many as 27 states in the Continental US. Now let's talk a little bit about how you guys met. You kind of alluded to it, Tonya, that you actually implemented these ideas in Michael's business. True?
It's absolutely true.
Yeah. The way that all worked out is I was an auctioneer by trade. I still am. And the guy that taught me the industry said, get your real estate license because you might want to call a sale, a farm sale or something like that in rural Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama. So I did. So, then I opened up a brokerage in 2000, but mainly I did it to buy my own stuff and help family members. I really wasn't pushing the idea of an arms length transaction brokerage. And then in 2006, I partnered with a company out of Irvine, California, and we brokered a deal in Georgia and it turned into the Bear Stearns residential portfolio when they went under and we thought they would end up being about three years worth of work. It turned out to be six or seven over the course of that time. And so that's where a lot of those licenses came from. I had an office in Atlanta, had an office in Irvine, California, and an office in Seattle, Washington. And we were just trying to liquidate these properties at the time and praying at the same time that our regular arms length transaction businesses would all come back because I was an investor first and a real estate agent/broker second. I was hoping for the recovery just as much as everybody else was but when that happened and we began to see that that was going to happen, I knew that I needed marketing. And so I went about it on my own and I said, okay, I need to stand out. I need to be different. I need people to notice who I am and why.
But I didn't have all those concepts actually pulled down into one concept of differentiation. I had an agent that helped me start the brokerage. She kept saying, you need to talk to my niece. She's in marketing, she's a genius. She's great, she's awesome. And by that time I was so passed it, I was like, I'd already had heard all the stories. I've heard about this is the path for us and none of them are going to work. Like I was too busy building systems and too busy doing this. And so at the same time she was going to Tonya saying, "Michael is expecting your call. Michael is expecting your call." Or, "You got to help Michael. He's waiting on you to help him." And so we laugh about it now because she's still with us but she sort of tricked me and Tonya in to coming together and then the rest is pretty much magic.
When she came into my life, told me what I needed to do I saw right quick, she knew what she was talking about and I'm like, "Okay, this is a person that can conceptualize all of the different platforms and media that you're using to try to get people to come to you and pull them into one message." She had already been doing that through Brandface for other professionals and businesses and she wanted to apply that to me in the real estate business and it continues to work. We still every day practice all of the Brandface principles in this brokerage and it continues to grow.
You know, I appreciate what you shared Michael because I think there's a lot of real estate agents that maybe fall into a similar category as you, which is they're really, really good at the business of real estate. They really understand how to serve people, but I think the disconnect that a lot of people recognize is that if nobody knows that about you, you're going to be constantly hunting. And what I hear you saying is that what Tonya did for you is she took your expertise and put it out to the world to where people recognize the value that you bring so that you could spend less time out chasing and looking for the next deal and more time in your sweet spot, which is serving people at a really high level.
I would definitely say that's well put. That's really well put. That's the idea of it. You know, there's a cost of confusion. And I think that agents get wrapped up in that and they don't really know. They don't have a purpose in getting in every day in the office and in seeking out their ideal customers in ways that while they're working, their ideal customers are seeking them out. And Brandface is all about that. It's all about stopping this blanket of advertising that doesn't say anything except for "I'm in real estate." And it pairs it down to a message to seek out those people for you that are seeking your specific niche in real estate. And it's so important. And then in time you are known for that and people start contacting you for that, for those points of differentiation and like you said, you can reside in a greater fashion why you got into the business, which was helping people with their real estate needs.
The cost of confusion. That's a quotable comment right there, Michael. You're right. I think we probably don't recognize how expensive that really is. How many people would love to use agent X's services. Right?! But they don't stand out. They don't know what that person specializes in. Therefore they don't choose them. That gets really costly when you're talking about real estate commissions.
Let me give you another scenario. You walk into a restaurant and there's Justin a real estate agent, there's Tonya a real estate agent and there's Michael the real estate agent. It would be better that you be known what you're the real estate agent for. "That's the real estate agent that skydives." You know, there's Justin, the real estate agent that does the podcast." And all of a sudden that point of differentiation just elevates you and even though you're in the group of competitors that everybody knows you're in the real estate business, but they don't know exactly what for, or exactly what separates you. But when you can define that and then start putting that into your content, people can find you online and they can understand, "Oh, okay, I get it. I get their principles. I see where they're coming from. I understand and see their heart, their family, their life mixed in with their business and I want to do business with that person." And then you become attractable for a specific reason.
Well, the burden for real estate agents to try and figure that out by themselves and understand all the platforms and be able to still be an effective real estate agent, that's asking a lot, right? I mean I can see the value proposition that you guys bring to the table, which is allow the agent to just be who they are and be really good at it and let us help extract from that agent what makes them unique, what their niche really is and then begin to publish that out to the world so that people can recognize and find you. True?
Dead on.
Absolutely true. And I like to say a little bit more about that, Justin because somebody said, I wish I could take credit for this quote but I can't. Someone said to me one time, "It's hard to see the label when you're inside the jar." And that's so true because it's hard for us to look inside ourselves and see truly what sets us apart. And so to have somebody from the outside looking in that has been doing that for so many years to say, "Okay, I see these great things about you both professionally and personally," because that's what a personal brand is too. It's not just about your accomplishments or the things that set you apart in real estate. It is about your personal life too. And I think you did a podcast about business or family. There was something similar to that topic not long ago that I thought was fascinating because you talked about the fact that you were upset that someone had said something about the fact they want to be known for being a marketer and they didn't really want being a dad on their tombstone. Right? But, but we look at it very differently. It's like, what else sets you apart other than being human, right? Because you can line up 500 real estate agents and they could all have the same technical professional qualifications. But what else is it that makes you want to do business with them? And on the back of our book it says people don't do business with a logo. They do business with a person. And that's what we focus on. We go a little deeper into opening up the personal side just a little bit. So when you walk into a room, people know you beyond just being a real estate agent. Let's face it, that's boring a lot of times, you know, how many real estate conversations does somebody want to walk up to you and carry on?
Not too many, but they will walk up to you and say, "Hey, I heard your podcast on this...." or "I saw that you went hang gliding the other day," or "I see all of your posts about the positive things that you're doing in the community." Something along those lines is so much more powerful and adds to wanting to do business with an individual.
So good. So good. Now, Tonya, you didn't necessarily start off understanding this branding concept and I want to close with this because I think it's super important for people to recognize maybe where I think the real estate industry has gone and I don't know that it's necessarily the best place for them to go. Now your background, uh, is, long, long ago, right before you developed this brand expertise, you were actually the person knocking on people's doors wanting to sell them vacuum cleaners. True story?
That's a true story. And for anybody who wants to know it was Electrolux and it is still the world's greatest vacuum cleaner. Always a salesmen, right? I started doing that to pay my way through college and then I happened upon the house of a radio station engineer one day who said, "Hey, there's a sales position open at a radio station. I think you'd be great for it." And so that catapulted into the next level of personal branding. So first I started out selling vacuum cleaners and I realized really quickly I had to have a story when I went up to that door. Otherwise, I'm just like everybody else knocking on the door. But my story was, "Hi, I'm Tonya. I'm a student at Florida State University. I'm paying my way through college selling vacuum cleaners door to door. I'm not asking you to buy one. I just want to demonstrate one and I get points for every demonstration."
And so that got me in the door and I realized, "Okay, that story worked." You know, that was true of course, but it was telling that story. Then I went into radio actually ended up taking that job and stayed in radio 18 years after that. Very early on in radio was where really the personal branding bug really got me. When I noticed that these local business owners were walking into networking events and they were almost like rock stars. And I thought, what on Earth is going on? And I realized those were people that were the voice of their business. They were the face of their business. They were the spokesperson of their business. And so that's where Brandface came from--the face of your brand.
I love it.
So, when I noticed the things that they had in common, they were doing really three different things which we teach today and we call it the three D's: define, develop and display.
First of all, you've got to define what sets you apart. You know, what is it that separates you from the pack and at the same time will attract your ideal customers. Second, you've got to develop a personal brand wrapped around that point of differentiation. That means everywhere you've got to develop that. You've got to make sure your photos display that image. You want to display your imagery, the photos that you use, your logo, your brand colors, your messaging, which basically is your way to communicate what sets you apart. Once you get those puzzle pieces together, then you make sure your new brand is displayed correctly and consistently across all of your marketing platforms because it is the consistency that really brings the results. So that's what I learned from vacuum cleaners then radio. And that has been the common thread through my entire professional life.
This evolution of your own understanding of how brands are found has been fascinating. I hope that there are some real estate agents in the audience today that are recognizing the fact that, "Boy, I'm showing up a lot like a vacuum cleaner salesperson and I really need to be showing up as a celebrity walking into a room," and say, "Is that the guy?" or "Is that the gal that's... Oh, I've heard of them before. I'd love to work with them. Hopefully they're not too busy for me." Right?As opposed to, "Oh, who's at the door?" Right?.
Yeah. We always like to say, your brand precedes you. And so you want to make sure it's super strong and it portrays what you want to portray--the authenticity inside of you. It really needs to portray that. So that's, that's truly important. Justin
You know, I think the way forward for real estate agents to maintain their margins is to be better at branding, to be more professional and to really understand these principles that you're talking about. I think it's super generous what you've done, which is offered people that are listening to this an opportunity to go to this website, which is: discussyourbrand.com. So, tell us a little bit about what agents will find when they go there, Tonya.
Well we made it super easy for you. So basically you get access to our personal calendars, right? So, you'll see the calendar there and you just pick a time slot. You want to talk about your brand and what that's for, it's for agents who are really serious about setting themselves apart. We will discuss your challenges on the call. We'll discuss any goals that you have. We'll make sure to help give you solid direction on how to get to where you deserve to be because everybody deserves that that stardom inside of you. We like to say, "We don't make stars, we unveil them." And everybody deserves to be a star.
So this isn't just a here, download this paper. Hopefully this will help you. This is an actual conversation.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yep.
So generous. Like I said, it's really an honor for me to have you guys on the show today offering such value to the Think Bigger Real Estate audience. Again, I believe this is what real estate agents need and I wouldn't have you on here and endorse you if I didn't feel like this was really good for the industry. Even hearing more of your story just compels me to want to say, "Please reach out to these wonderful individuals." Take advantage of the help that they're offering. If you plan to be in the business for 3, 5, 10 years from now and beyond, then you need to develop a brand. It's the future of real estate. If you want to be paid well... You can go the route of more like a Barista, right? And open up doors for a certain dollar per hour and I believe there is part of the industry that will go that way, but I believe that there's part of the industry that's going to understand what you guys are teaching and they're going to carve out a very profitable niche for themselves and have a great life with great impact moving forward--which is my mission. And I'm super excited and grateful to have you guys here on the show. So thank you Michael and Tonya both, for your time and attention today. It's meant a lot to me and to my audience and just, thank you so much.
Hey, we love your positivity and we're honored to be on the show. Thank you so much. Yes,
Thank you, Justin.
Well, hey, we will do it again. I look forward to staying in touch with you guys and again, please go take advantage of this really generous offering and I'm looking forward to the value that is going to come to this audience.
Creators and Guests
Host
Justin Stoddart
What is Think Bigger Real Estate?
The road to success for real estate agents is well-marked. The road to significance is not. Here, we help you to Think Bigger than just your business. We inspire you to seek success AND significance, income AND impact. We do that by interviewing the biggest thinkers and highest achievers in the real estate industry, extracting the secrets to having it all.