Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I am your host, Justin Stoddart, and really honored to have these two back. If you had been watching my show for any period of time, you realize last year, Tonya Eberhart and Michael Carr, and I’m gonna explain to you who they are and why that matters to you here in just a minute, but they were on and they were loved by me and by anybody that watched the show. So let me just remind you before I, again, make this great introduction of these amazing two people that are really going to delve into branding, the things that you need to know about branding, that, that my personal mission is to is to wake you up to help you recognize the potential that’s inside of you, and then inspire and help you live a life in pursuit of that. That’s what I’m all about. This show is a function of that. And I go out and find amazing people like Tanya and Michael, to bring to you to, again to help you be in pursuit of that life. So that’s what this is all about. And again, I want to thank Tonya & Michael, let me before I do a full intro. Let me just thank you two for coming on the show today. That’s such a pleasure, actually. I love spending time with you guys. Let me do a kind of a brief intro here. Tonya is the founder of Brand Face and branding agent to the business stars. She’s authored four books on personal branding if that doesn’t say enough, her start wasn’t maybe in like with the stars, right? It was actually out selling vacuum cleaners right? She hustles and then she’s had jobs in radio kind of all the way top to bottom. How do you go from prospecting like door to door sales all the way to where people are coming at you because of your brand. I think that’s an amazing transition that everybody that I work with, wants to know How do I stop having to go to people and have them start coming to me? Next to her and handsome gentlemen on the right there is Michael Carr. He’s America’s top selling real estate auctioneer, and the abundant life broker. I think anybody that’s been in real estate auction knows Michael Carr’s name. Michael, you’ve done, been involved in over 74,000 transactions. You know, it as many as 27 states that’s a pretty impressive resume and pretty cool and your story, right is that you sought out Tonya’s help for branding and realized what a magician she was, and at that point, you’re like, why don’t we partner up? I think you can do I can even help you scale this further and became testimonial number one and now a key partner in helping to expand this branding movement across the country. Is that true?
Michael Carr
That is true. Yes, it but when I had met her I had done around 65,000 transactions and we’ve done another we’ve added another 10 – 11 on those. Since we came on board, we moved from auctions to arm’s length transactions with just regular brokerage and, and now we’re working on a third location for Michael Carr and associates all using the brand base principles.
Justin Stoddart
I’m thrilled to have you guys on here. Thank you for taking the time. I know I’ve I’ve had the privilege to do this once. So excited to do it again. Let’s jump into kind of what the audience is here for, which is to really get clear on branding. We’ve promised them kind of six critical categories for the becoming like a branding expert. And so let’s just jump right into that. Tonya, I’m going to have you kind of lead us point number one is differentiation. Would you talk to us about why differentiation is important and what people need to do to differentiate
Tonya Eberhart
You got it. So we developed a program called Brand Face score. So if you don’t really know whether you’ve got a super strong well defined or developed personal brand, you’ll go to Band Face score.com and that’ll take you through a certain system so you can find out whether your brand is strong. When we look at whether a brand is well developed and defined, so that it can help you stand out we look at six different major categories and differentiation is the first one of those and that means is it immediately apparent what sets you apart you know what makes you different. As we might have talked about the last time we were on your show, Justin, it’s better is subjective, different is inarguable, and so you never really want to say I’m better at this time. I’m better at that, because that’s all subjective, right? You want to express how you’re different from everybody else in your arena. And that is exactly what that differentiation means. What sets you apart?
Justin Stoddart
That’s powerful. You right? I don’t know if it was you guys that coined this, but but the sea of sameness was that you that
Tonya Eberhart
It was actually yeah, it was in that and that is that was something that just kept coming up. And we came up with the term one day, but it just kept coming up to us because all the agents that were coming to us and were telling us, everybody starts to look the same. The business cars, the websites, everything looks the same is like oh, well yeah, because that’s now we’ve created this sea of sameness and now we’ve got to break out of that sea of sameness.
Michael Carr
And hey I gotta add this and I can’t help but add it in. There’s there’s major brokerages national worldwide brokerages that are making that sea of sameness worse, they’re they’re touting their brand, and now the individual agents are going away. So there’s been been a shift in the disruptors to even make the sea of sameness worse.
Justin Stoddart
That’s a great point, Michael. You know, it’s interesting. I see kind of the best brokerages out there ones that are more platforms, you see some that really try and dominate the brand and be all over the like be the brand. I think there’s there’s value for the brokers. But my question is, is there value for the agent? Right? Maybe it’s a question. Because to the consumer, it’s, I can’t tell why you’re different than that that person pretty soon you start to wonder what the differences between thatagent and some of these discount brokers and tech platforms that are coming in offering to do with a lower cost. So I think it’s pretty powerful to have that viewpoint number one, so let’s go ahead and move on, man. So point number two.
Michael Carr
Yeah. Number two is your message, right? So you want to be sure that your message is more than just on the surface, right? You want your message and how you are different to that particular ideal client to be equal across all of your platforms, right and it needs to dig a little bit deeper. They need to know why you’re better for them in all of your messaging. So number two is very important once you differentiate now you got to get that message out there clearly and deeper than just, you know, a picture on a sign.
Justin Stoddart
I can see why two follows one right in this scenario is that they’ll never care that you’re better unless they really identify that you’re different, right? Different almost makes them say, Okay, I need to listen then, this is this is apples to oranges. What makes an orange and orange right what point you can really delve into what’s the value proposition? what’s what’s, why is being different better for them am I understandin g that right?
Michael Carr
That’s exactly right. Because that message will tell what stand for what your niche is, what your expertise is. And we all have it. Even if you’ve just started in real estate, you got a point of differentiation and you’ve got a message of your entire experience and life experiences led you to that point. And there were people out there seeking to work with that particular message and in that’s where you start. You stop going out there and screaming and you start attracting.
Justin Stoddart
That’s great stuff you guys. Let’s move on to ideal customers. I think this is a key one right? Everyone tries to be kind of to serve everybody right to not want to lose any money right? You don’t want to say no to people you don’t want to turn people down for fear that that might be a great a great commission opportunity or a great you know, even niche that they want to pursue at one point, how does somebody Let me start off with why is it important to identify an ideal customer and then how you do you do that?
Tonya Eberhart
Okay, so there is a formula that we created called the H.E.AP. formula and we break it down and help clients or help agents figure out okay, who are those ideal customers that I’m best suited to help every day? So that H.E.AP. formula is number one, the H stands for help, who can you truly and genuinely help? E is who do you enjoy working with A who appreciates what you bring to the table and P who is profitable for you? So when you pull all those things together, you determine that ideal customer. And if you think about it like this, Justin, how on earth does anybody know what to put in their marketing to attract a certain person unless first of all, they know who it is they’re trying to attract. So you got to know that first. So we’re not necessarily doing these things in the order in which we build brands. We’re just going through to tell you these are the six criteria. We look at the ideal customers, one of the first things we look at, who are you trying to attract? Because that thing that’s different about you that will be used to attract exactly the kind of people you’re looking to attract.
Michael Carr
We want to be clear, Justin, like, we tell people all the time, we’re not telling people not to work with anybody that knocks on the door and says, hey, can you help me with real estate? But you just want to confine them because we all know like, you know, you can get the phone ringing off the hook for people looking for rentals. But are you a rental agent and do you want to deal with rentals and if you don’t, you don’t need to advertise to those people, you need to advertise to your ideal customer.
Justin Stoddart
And one of the best examples I heard of this there’s a great podcast but the with John Lee Dumas he came up with the podcast Entrepreneur on Fire. And he talked about he knew that his ideal listener was a 32 year old married man with two kids who was frustrated with his job and come home at night and turn on XYZ TV show and he was like, I knew that anytime I was struggling as to where I was going to go with my show, I’d go back and I would say, How do I serve that person and it was like, so crystal clear and the avatar, the person he was serving, then all of a sudden all the message and all the differentiation started to kind of fit around like this person that I’m trying to help so I love you said like, once you identify that ideal customer, I hundred percent agree that everything else gets a lot easier, right?
Tonya Eberhart
Because you know who you’re talking to. Otherwise you if you’re talking to a stadium full of people that all are so very different. What’s your message going to be? What’s the message you’re going to be this going to resonate with all of them. There isn’t one yeah resonate with all of them
Justin Stoddart
So powerful. Awesome alright let’s move on to point number four
Michael Carr
Image image is so important and we’re not just talking about a picture right you know thank goodness the glamour shots days are over like we’re past it we survived it just like the disco era, right? You know, something to look back on now and enjoy that we may move in a different direction. But we’re not talking just in imagery. We’re not just talking about your how you look right. That is very important. Once you have a message once you have a point of differentiation, once you find that ideal customer, you do want your particular likeness, right it is Brand Face, it is a face forward business. You do want that to portray your message and that’s super important, right? And we want that but it’s also the background imagery. You want your background imagery to also be speaking to those customers. I tell the story all the time that I we hosted in my brokerage hosted an event for movie night at a local town and they did it at a park. It was great. It was actually hosted by a church. But it was not touted as being hosted by the church. It was literally advertised as movie night free movie night just come out. But when they printed what was being played, who was in it, all that kind of stuff, they printed it on the background image that I happened to be the same image that they use for their church bulletin on Sunday morning, and I’m standing by the concession stand, when a person comes up and says, Hey, to the pastor, I’m standing beside him. Are y’all the same people that are within your community? And it dawned on me at that point, that the imagery that you put forward, even your background images that you’re picking to go on your social media sites and on your website, on your card, and on your thank you cards and on, you know, on your shout outs, they are just as important as your face, facial recognition. So imagery is important. It’s gotta support everything else you’re saying.
Justin Stoddart
But that’s a great example. Michael. I think we In this world where there’s so much information coming in everybody being able to actually create a file in someone’s brain where your message is considered to be received and called upon when they need you that there’s got to be some it’s all gotta kind of look alike right is what I’m hearing you saying is everything from the from the coloring I’m assuming to are the images in the background like everything needs to have a consistent theme for end up you know, sometimes I’ll see real estate agents are on their website they have very modern looking homes and their business card has gables have a very traditional style home and even that right says it’s very similar, but it’s subliminal.
Michael Carr
Yeah, very subliminal. here’s, here’s how I can relate it. How many people in your listeners and all of us, the three of us here, have bought a new car, and then all of a sudden everywhere you look you see somebody with that same car. It’s it’s all you didn’t realize those cars were there before you bought your car, but you had not your brain and not filtered it so that it was resonating to you. And your imagery has to do the same thing, right? We know that you have to be remembered five to seven times before people really have you in their memory bank. And imagery is a powerful one that people stumble on a lot of times not meaning to. It’s not there’s not something that is just an honest mistake. But it’s very important.
Justin Stoddart
And what I hear you saying is if it’s five or six times for it to really make an impact, and people do business with you, but they can’t tell that one and two and three and four are actually related because they’re all so different. You almost don’t get credit for it except to keep starting over at one right because your marketing and social and, and print all looks so different that they don’t actually combine to create the the non diluted potent force of your brand.
Michael Carr
Yes.
Tonya Eberhart
And that’s a beautiful segue into number five. It is consistency, because it’s what we used to call it in the old days of media which is my stomping ground. T.O.M.A. Top of Mind Awareness when you capture a certain Top of Mind awareness in your market, then that means people are going to instantly think of you first they used to do the old T.O.M.A. surveys and a lot of different markets they were called perceptuals. And they used to do those in a lot of different markets. And you could say okay, and when it comes to car dealers, what’s the first car dealer that comes to mind and in evidently, every single time, that car dealer or or Home Improvement contractor or whoever was that was the most well known, well recognized is somebody who had a consistent brand and presence and put it out there on a consistent basis. You can’t just create these beautiful invitations and all this wonderful stuff and not send out invitations to your party nobody’s going to show but if you consistently put out invitations Put them out in a consistent manner. And everywhere you look, you see and feel the same thing. That’s what you’re looking for.
Justin Stoddart
How do you how do you do that? I mean, the consistency thing, I feel like that’s one of the biggest challenges that entrepreneurs real estate agents face is being consistent, right? Even putting stuff out there is would you recommend that somebody just get started and start putting this stuff out and and tweak it as they go? Or is it really a better plan to kind of regroup, be sure that your brand is consistent so that then you can be consistent in the delivery of frequent enough content? frequent enough marketing and advertising that people see?
Tonya Eberhart
Yes to the latter.
Michael Carr
Yeah, that’s a great question. We wrote an article that was in a realtor magazine, Active Rain and so we’re Tonya used to be famous for around real estate for say, you know it like if you don’t have your brand named if you don’t have these elements in place it’s like leaving home without your clothes, right? Because you got to do that first. Like, if you do anything you have to get dressed before you go out to get really before you leave the house, right? You can’t want it. And so if you’re not dressed for that, and if that dress is not authentic, like if you’re not wearing authentic brand, because that’s very important. People are not ignorant, they they know and we know things instinctually also. So your number one, your brand and your message all have to be authentic to who you are. You can’t act like you’re somebody else. But you have to do that first. If you don’t you have wasted your time and your marketing dollars everywhere that you’ve put it.
Tonya Eberhart
And you asked a question about how do you how are you? How can you be consistent? And the answer to that is create those things first, that’s you know, when we help people create their brand, we create all the parts and pieces, the branding elements, then we put them all together to display their brand correctly and consistently across all their everyday marketing platforms. And each time you add on and you advertise or market yourself somewhere you’ve got that core group of all your branding elements. You can’t go wrong if you take these branding elements and plug and play plug and play. And so that’s where creating these things one time gives you everything you’re going to need to market yourself from this day forward.
Justin Stoddart
Powerful. I think, you know, all too often people don’t because they don’t want to stop and regroup whereas the value, right it’s like the whole analogy from Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People like the final habit is sharpen the saw, you know, and he sees this guy out here like, He’s like, you know, cuttting down a tree. He’s like, you know, you should stop checking your saw like I don’t have time to stop. I don’t find that I don’t have time to put gas in my car. I’m like, I’m too late. Like, at some point that’s going to catch up. It sure is. The ineffectiveness of not having your you know you’re you’re kind of ducks in a row are going to are going to actually cause you to more waste a lot of time, but otherwise would have been a lot more productive time had you had your stuff ready,
Tonya Eberhart
It can take you in an entirely wrong direction. If you don’t know, if you don’t chart that path first and realize this is where I need to end up reverse engineer it, this is how I’m going to get there. What I want to be known for a while and getting there, and all the steps in between, then you can end up going in entirely wrong direction. And we get that all the time people on the phone with us saying, you know, I’m getting leads, I get lots of leads. They’re all the wrong people. It’s like, well, what are you projecting? What are you putting out there to create to draw these people from the universe to you?
Justin Stoddart
That’s a great analogy. Because you do you have people who are or who are busy with business they don’t really want. It’s like, you could make that right. It’s not magic, but they’re showing up. It’s something you’re actually doing to attract that lead that business that person and do something different and get a different turnout, right?
Michael Carr
That’s exactly right. Yeah. And that leads to number six is retention and that’s the whole reason that you want to do it. Right? The whole reason you build the brand. Yeah, we were talking about it the other day on a, on one of our podcasts, we were like, you can’t you’re never going to grow exponentially, deal by deal by deal. You, you grow exponentially when your deals make deals, right. And so bringing your brand does that and if you do it correctly, then it’s a soldier that is out there working for you 24, seven, and so many different directions that you can’t even fathom, right? The the ripple effect, you don’t know where it ends up when you put it out there. But if it is all consistent, it does not matter where it lands, it’s going to bring back the same result. And so retention is super important and you got to build the steps in to be sure that you do get that retention,
Justin Stoddart
you know, and and then that customer in your T shirt, Michael, I think coming from a guy who’s that’s been involved in 74,000 real estate transactions. I just want to like pause and be sure everybody heard what what you said there sure was coached and guided to you, you know, through Tonya’s expertise as well as your own, and I almost compare it to investing money, right? It’s some point, all of us have to realize that there’s not enough hours in the day to maybe have the life that we want. We have to set aside money and let that money start to work for us, right basic investing principles. And what I hear you saying is the same principle with our brand that if we do it properly, we stop, we pause, we take a quick timeout, we realign our brand and be sure it’s it’s the message and the image and everything that we’ve talked about today. And then we put that up to work for us while we’re working for trading time for dollars right at some point, that brand, those soldiers as you call them, I love that they start to grow and and and and there’s more and more of them out doing the work that pretty soon starts to come to you and now you can start to scale. Powerful.
Michael Carr
Yes, we have a favorite phone call in our office. When people call and say I looked you up online, I want to do business with you. And every time we do that, we all it goes out there. Everybody in the organization and we all cheer, because that’s what we’re shooting for constantly, right? Well, that’s the message. That’s what resonates with and we know that it is resonating. And that’s what everybody is looking for. And really, no matter what your business is, it doesn’t matter if that goes to all entrepreneurs. And it goes, if you want to be a one person shop, or if you want to grow multiple brokerages, it doesn’t matter. It’s the same principle.
Justin Stoddart
You know, the powerful thing that I hear you saying here, all here, agents that are oftentimes with earlier their career or typically kind of mid to late in their career, and they just say, I’m just tired, like, when is this going to stop when? When am I going to have to stop being in the hunt, and it just depends on how big you want to grow their business. But I think if if agents are feeling like, I feel like I’m on this endless hamster wheel of never being able to, like stop hunting and feel like I’m always hunting people, and I’d rather have people hunted me, I’d rather be the hunted than the hunter. Right, the expertise that you guys have provided. Here, and and even more importantly, the kind of free offerings that you’re offering to the audience today are going to really move them in the right direction. Let’s talk a little bit about this brand score of sort of brand face score, what it is and how agents can take advantage of that, to where again, they can move from the hunter to being the hunted,
Tonya Eberhart
you bet, just go to Brand Face Score.com. And there’ll be a little short video that will kind of explain what the program is. And then there will be the ability to, to apply to get your free Brand Face score report. And that will let you know how well defined or developed your brand is. Whether it’s really doing well for you or where it could use improvement. And it’ll tell you hey, this is exactly where your brand could use some improvement. In one of these six areas one or more of these six areas.
Justin Stoddart
So this service again goes out and evaluates across social mediums across different areas are people uploading their logos and brands what does that look like?
Tonya Eberhart
Yeah, so the application includes we want the link to your, your real estate website, we want the front and back image of your current business card and we want to link to your Facebook business page or for real estate. And if you don’t have them on those three places, those happen to be the three places that exchange hands and eyes most often in the marketing and what we call the everyday marketing materials. Because most of the time they’re going to see you on your website, they’re definitely going to see you on Facebook, you’re going to hand somebody a business card. If your brand isn’t rock solid on all three of those the none of the rest of it matters.
Justin Stoddart
Love it. Awesome. You guys Brand Face score.com I’ve got it up there on the screen. If anybody’s interested in going there. I think you all should I think we all show it. I’m excited to go look at it myself. It has tons of value and just the fact the success that you guys have had is remarkable. And it speaks to why people should be listening. Right this you guys aren’t just marketing people you are business people who have now applied this and proven that this stuff works. Now you’re dealing with a bunch of other people and extremely grateful for for you and the value that you bring. We know we have just a couple of minutes, I want to I want to end with this question that I asked all of my guests and either one of you can answer it. I’ll let you guys decide who wants to answer. But again, my passion and help people think bigger, again, to wake them up to the potential inside of them. What do you guys do to continue to be big thinkers? Obviously, you are big thinkers. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you’re on the show today. What advice would you have to somebody who wants to expand their own possibilities and continue to think bigger than maybe they have in the past?
Michael Carr
That’s good one. That’s a good one. You know, it’s hard for me to quantify it because I can’t think big enough, you know what I mean, like I’m thinking at some point we’re gonna be selling condos on the moon, you know what I mean? I want Michael Carr and associates to be there, so I don’t know exactly how to answer that. I know that I would have been bolder about My brand and my business earlier in life. So you can’t start too soon, that’s the first thing. And then align yourself with people much bigger than you that know what they’re talking about. That is the most important thing that you can do. Listen to podcasts like yours, and people that are opening that opportunity. Because I do know that it is somewhat visual, right? I grew up in a very small town I graduated with 100 kids in high school, right? So I took thought process that I would grow to a broker that has sold more residential real estate than anybody in the United States is not something I fathom out of my own dreams. Yes, I dreamed of being an entrepreneur. I’ve always been an entrepreneur, and hope to always be an entrepreneur. But I was brought along by other people bigger me that showed me a bigger vision. And then when I saw what those possibilities were, then I begin to dream bigger. So I would say align yourself with people just like Justin and others that are bigger than you that can show you a bigger world.
Justin Stoddart
Fantastic answer you guys know that was non scripted because you didn’t know I was gonna ask that and what an absolute answer from two who have done some incredible things again, I would encourage everybody here go to Brand Face score.com. Take a look at like how how’s your brand showing up and let these two take a look at give you some feedback you guys I want to thank you so much for being on the show today. And for always pouring so much value into the Think Bigger real estate audience. It’s a total pleasure having you in my network having you as friends, and excited to see the difference you continue to make. And for all those listening today, my final request of everybody are three simple words. And they are GO THINK BIGGER. Thank you, Tonya and Michael, for helping us do that today. And we look forward to connecting again soon.
Michael Carr
Thank you, Justin
Tonya Eberhart
Justin. It’s been an honor