If you want clients coming to you or you want a more consistent income, or maybe you’re a brand new agent and you’ve never sold a house before then you’ve got to get good or better at this before you work on really anything else in your business. And that is Marketing. You marketing yourself because you can’t sell any houses. If you first can’t quote unquote, sell somebody on the idea of using you as their agent, you have to do that first in order to do the job of real estate agent, which is to help people buy and sell houses, Marketing, You means giving people a clear reason to choose you as their agent in a way that has them wanting to reach out to you and wanting to work with you. On today’s episode, I’m giving you the five questions to ask yourself. So you can come up with your very clear and compelling reason why somebody would want to work with you. Welcome to this episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent. I’m your host, Jennifer Myers, listen in, as I share exactly what I did to go from not being able to sell a house for years to becoming one of the top 1% of agents in the U S even opening my own brokerage full of agents, help me serve all the clients that were coming my way. I taught those agents. The same strategies I use in date two became top producing agents. Now through this podcast and agent grad school.com, I’m sharing those same modern marketing and business strategies with you. Most of which I learned from looking outside the real estate industry, no fluff, no theory, no outdated sales techniques or paying for leads, just the exact steps to get you the real estate business you’ve always wanted. And the life outside your business, you’ve always wanted to let’s make it happen and dive into today’s episode. On last week’s episode, I talked about the five pillars of a successful real estate business, and there’s really a sixth pillar that makes everything run and that’s your CRM. And that’s how you get it all done without hiring a big team or really an assistant or a transaction quarter coordinator until you’re at like one house a week. Now I will link to that in, in the show notes for this episode. So you can go to agentgradschool.com/fivepillars to get that one or today’s episode is about the first. And really, I don’t want to say the most important, but it’s the one where if you don’t have clients coming to you, it’s the one where you have to focus on first so that you can do all the rest of the things in your business. Because if you don’t have Marketing that actually brings clients to you consistently and, and creates, you know, a consistent income and a consistent livelihood for your real estate business, then really nothing else matters because then you can’t get good at helping your clients achieve their goals. If nobody knows about you, or you don’t have clients coming to you, that means that you’re not giving people a reason why they should. And so in today’s episode, we’re going to focus on why the traditional marketing that real estate agents do doesn’t work, especially now in this market. And especially now in our modern times. And then I’m going to talk through the key ingredient that you need to make any marketing, really anything, and your real estate business work for you. Then I’m going to finish off with the five questions to ask yourself so that you can come up with your compelling reason why somebody should choose you. So that’s what today’s episode looks like. And we got a lot to cover. So let’s dive in. I’m going to start with the three biggest reasons. There’s a lot of reasons that traditional marketing that we see in the real estate industry among real estate agents doesn’t work, but I’m going to give you the biggest three reasons why it doesn’t work. So if you’re using traditional methods, it’s not that the thing doesn’t work, right? So for example, you can apply a strategy to anything. For example, just, just listed postcards. It’s not that just listed postcards on their own don’t work. It’s that they’re missing the key ingredients to get the marketing to work. So I want to make sure that you know, that, you know, whether it’s door knocking, whether it’s cold calling, whether it’s postcards, whether it’s posting on your social media, it’s not that the thing itself doesn’t work, it’s that the strategy behind it doesn’t work. And so that’s what I really want to have you take away today. So the three biggest reasons that the traditional marketing that we see most real estate agents do doesn’t work very well. First and foremost, there’s no differentiation for whatever reason. And I’ve talked about this a lot, but if you want your marketing to work, you have to stand out, which means you cannot have your marketing look like everybody else’s marketing in your, and so often I feel like real estate agents look around at what everybody else is doing. And then do that, do the opposite of that. That is how you get attention and how you stand out and how people say, oh, I get it. That person’s different. It’s not about being better. It’s about being different. And I learned that concept from Sally Hogshead and her amazing book called fascinate. And if you haven’t read that book, please, please read it. It is so good about how to differentiate yourself and stand out in the marketplace. So first and foremost cannot have your marketing look like everybody else. Your marketing has to stand out if you want people to choose you, instead of other options. The second reason that traditional marketing in the real estate space doesn’t work very well is because it adds no value whatsoever. So let’s just take, just sold or just listed postcards. For example, there is no value added there because most buyers ends up potential buyers and potential sellers. The people that you’re mailing, those just listed or just sold cards to, they already know that it just listed or just sold because they’re on their apps, looking at it. If they care at all, and if they don’t care, they’re not going to look at your postcard anyway. Right? So there’s no value there. So if you don’t provide value, that’s not good Marketing. You have to give people something of value for them to want to engage with you, or want to reach out with you, to you, or even just notice you. Okay. And the third reason that traditional real estate agent marketing doesn’t work is it, it’s what I call like, I’m just here Marketing. It’s the type of marketing. That’s like, just what I call like vanity plate marketing. That’s like, I’m here. Here’s my face on a bench. Or here’s my face on a sign. And it’s almost like the goal is to intercept a potential buyer or seller just only at that very moment that they’re ready to call an agent because it lacks follow-up. It lacks value. It lacks the need for anybody to engage with you before they’re actually ready to move forward. And one of the ways that you get people to choose you as you provide value when they’re not buying and selling so that they naturally want to reach out to you when it’s time to do that huge thing in their life. So, so often real estate agents expect somebody to, I mean, we forget sometimes as real estate agents that buying and selling a house is a huge deal for our clients. Financially, emotionally, there’s a lot at stake for them. This is their home. And oftentimes our marketing just kind of like hopes that we’re going to like get alive one or hopes that we’re going to intercept them. And instead of giving value or helping them be great homeowners, which then positions you as the expert, which then naturally more people would use you when it’s ready and they’re ready. Excuse me. Okay. So the three reasons traditional marketing that most real estate agents do is it looks like everybody else’s, there’s no differentiation. There’s no standing out. And if you want to be seen and you want to be chosen, you want people to come to you. You have to stand out in some way, not be better, be different. Number two, it adds no value whatsoever telling people just sold or just listed, not valuable. They already know that. And then third is that hope to intercept because I’m here at the right time. Again, that kind of leads to no value, but I, but I want, and there’s no follow-up. Like don’t expect your marketing to beat, like go out then somebody calls and there’s a client, there’s this, there’s this piece to it. Probably like a lot of you listening, right? The reason I do these podcasts over and over and over again every single week is because my expectation is that you’re going to need more than one episode to want to engage with me, to understand what I’m about to maybe want to become a student, right? I want to add value week after week after week. So that if, and when you’re ready to become a student, you have all the information and I’ve created this relationship with you. That is the same relationship that I create with my clients and that you’ll create with your clients. So if you’re just kind of sending a one-shot thing in your marketing, expecting some results, that is, that is that’s high odds, right? You’re just hoping it lands at the right time. Now, the reason I know traditional marketing for most real estate agents doesn’t work as a cause. I see everybody doing it B I see my students coming to me over and over again, saying, here’s what I’m doing and it’s not working. And the third reason is because I see the statistics like the NAR, every single year releases, how many real estate agents, what they all make, all of that. And so if you’re doing the things that everybody else is doing, your results are going to be what they are on average for real estate agents. And they’re really sad. The income for real estate agents went down last year, even though the market was hot. And that’s because there’s more real estate agents than ever. And the marketing is not moving forward in a way that our potential buyers and sellers actually like. So I’m going to give you five questions today to ask yourself, in order for you to rive at your reason, somebody should choose you. If your marketing’s not working, if you don’t have clients coming to you, there’s one reason they don’t know when and why they should. That’s the only reason you don’t have clients coming to you is because you have to have a reason why they should. Now, a word of caution, do not be like me. When I was asked that question, I had no answer. And it really kind of made me depressed and doubt myself because I couldn’t come up with my reason at first. Then I realized that reason was there all along. And I’m going to help. I’m going to ask you questions that you need to answer the same questions that I answered over time to formulate my own powerful, compelling reason why people choose me. So that is what I’m going to talk through today. Now, another word of caution is I want you to think about these questions in order. I don’t want you skipping around because one, if you find the answer to one, it leads to the answer to the second one. Okay? So I’m going to ask them to you in a very particular order. And I highly recommend that you take, as long as you need to answer one at a time and then they will build upon each other and then it will become so clear. Okay? Do not expect you to have the answers by the end of this episode. So as I ask these questions and I give you examples about how either I or some of our students answered them, don’t beat yourself up. If you can’t figure it out for yourself right there. At first, it took me like a year or two of constantly asking myself the question and being like, oh, maybe it’s this. Nope, that’s not it. That doesn’t make sense. That’s not compelling enough. Let me keep digging at it. That’s how that works. So don’t go into any kind of downward spiral like I did, because the key ingredient that you need in order for you to have a successful business is you have to believe in yourself. So, so many of us when asked the question, including myself, this is how I’m able to come up with this stuff is because it all happened to me too, right? But when somebody asks, why should somebody choose you? And we don’t have an immediate quote, unquote, good enough answer. We start to doubt ourselves. Doubting ourselves is never going to lead to a good place. It’s never going to lead to what our clients need from us, which is belief within ourselves belief in ourselves. We have to be strong enough in our belief about our value to our clients before our clients are ever going to believe that we’re the right agent for them. If you don’t believe that about yourself, then they’re not going to believe it about you. So often. We think that belief comes from proof, meaning, well, if somebody chooses me over and over again, then I’ll feel confident and valuable, but it’s actually the opposite. You have to believe in yourself and your ability to help your clients before they do, before you have proof. A perfect example was when I was asked this question, I had no idea. I had never sold a house. How was I valuable to anybody who wanted to buy or sell a house? Right? But out of that is the, is how I found my value and how I created a marketing machine that had clients coming to me. And what I became known for in my very competitive marketplace of Washington, DC. Right? It was asking that, that question of what is my value that got me there. And, and you guys know my story, the answer I came up with was, well, at least I bought a house before people haven’t done that. So at least I can help those people. And that’s what I focused on in the beginning. Now that’s not going to be the answer for all of you. And it shouldn’t be the answer for all of you because each one of you has a different experience has different reasons. Okay? So let me go into these five questions because I’m getting a little ahead of myself. So I’m going to ask them one by one. I’m going to also give you examples, but I really, I almost don’t want to give examples because I’m worried that like, you’re going to think that yours has to be something like that and it doesn’t, but I want to tell you, show you how myself and my students answered these questions. I want you to know that it wasn’t like ask the question. And the answer came like in a snap. It took some thinking. It took some digging. It took some kind of connecting within yourself, not looking outside for an answer, but really connecting with yourself and saying, what is it that I want? Okay. So first question, these questions lead you to the answer, why somebody should choose you above all other options and not only that, but why they should do anything at all. You have to answer both those questions for people to come to you. So, first question you have to ask yourself, and this actually is a question that you should answer in a lot of your marketing, if you have a compelling answer. So the first is why did you become a real estate agent? And as you’re thinking about your reason, if your immediate question, your immediate answer is so that I could make a lot of money and you know, have freedom, or if I could be home with my kids or anything of that, that is very internal. Like you focused. I want you to think about your why in a way that helps other people, as you’re thinking through that, I want you to think about what experiences or experience maybe that you had in your life that made you choose this profession from all the jobs that you could pick. Because for example, if you said, I want to be home more with my kids, or, you know, I wanted to be able to not have a ceiling on my income or whatever. All those internal kind of self-focused answers are. They’re not bad, but there’s a reason deeper that you chose real estate of all the options. There are thousands of jobs, frankly, that might be a lot easier than being a real estate agent. If you want freedom, or you don’t want a cap on your income, or you want to be home more with your kids, there are thousands of ways to accomplish that goal. Why did you choose estate of all the jobs you could’ve picked? Not just real estate, even like being an entrepreneur and really, if it is freedom that you were after, then how can you translate that into an experience that your clients might want? So think about your experiences. Think about the why. There’s a reason that you chose real estate and think about a way that you can kind of think through that reason. And then how could that help other people notice that all of my questions and all of my examples are going to revolve around helping people not selling houses. That’s another thing. When you think about marketing, don’t focus on the real estate itself, focus on what the act of owning a home or selling a home or buying a home or downsizing a home, or moving up at home. All the actions that, that buying and selling does for our clients, focus there, not on the house, not on the price, not on the location, focus on what all those things, what the buying or the selling of the house does for your client. Like, frankly, nobody really wants to go through the process of buying and selling a house. Like it’s a lot of time. It’s a lot of effort. It’s a lot of expense and there’s a lot of, you know, emotion. What if it’s wrong? What, you know, what, if I mess up, I gotta leave my neighbors. I gotta leave the house that I raise my kids in. Or, oh, this is the first house we had, right? There’s a lot of emotion tap into that part of your client’s needs and desires and goals, and really focus on helping them. Okay. So an example is, and again, it took me a long time right now. It seems obvious when I talk about it, but I want you to know that this took a long time for me to get to. So for me, the reason I became a real estate agent and this, I hear this from a lot of our, of our students is for me, I had a bad experience buying my first home, but it wasn’t just a bad experience. It was the fact that I missed out on by that down payment assistance to buy my first home, I was making like $45,000 a year. And at the time in the location I bought, I could’ve gotten more than that as a down payment for my house, from the county that I was buying a house in. Nobody told me that. So that became kind of tiny bit of my fuel. And there was lots of reasons. I became a real estate agent, but that was the one that actually was able to help other people. Right. I also just didn’t like working for other people. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. There’s all sorts of other reasons. But the reason I chose to talk about in my marketing is the reason that helped other people, which is my experience with my first house and how it didn’t go well, but not in a way that bash the agents in a way that said, I don’t even think it’s their responsibility. I think it’s my responsibility. And now I want to like teach you how to take responsibility for that. And what that does is remove that for first time, homeowners home buyers, especially not only does it make their home more affordable, but it helps them chip away at this feeling like, well, I get it wrong. So when you think about Marketing, you got to think about your experience, but how does that connect to what’s happening in your potential client’s mind and, and, and in their thoughts and in their emotions. Right? So my story helps give them confidence because I want to make sure that that doesn’t happen to them. Okay. So that’s the first question. Why did you become a real estate agent? What experience did you have that made you choose this or all the jobs you could have picked? I’m going to give you one or two more examples from students that we have. One is, and this is how slightly different they could be. So one was, I was talking to a student this week who bought a really old house. She wanted to focus on a certain area of town and she, she bought a really old house and there’s kind of not old houses in other parts of her area, except for this part that she wanted to focus on. So she’s focusing on. And when she bought her old house, a lot of things were missed. She, she didn’t realize how much was involved in buying an old house. And she kind of had a bad experience. And now she knows so much about how to take care and what to look out for when you buy an old house. That is going to be her why? Right her, why is I bought an old house? I didn’t know what I was doing. I feel like we had to spend all this money, fixing up an old house, things that the inspector missed. So not only is she focusing on a certain area, but she’s going to become known as the person. Who’s an expert at how to buy these old houses, because she knows her clients are coming from places where they aren’t, they’ve never owned an old house. Okay. Another example is we have a client who, again, and this is just a theme. It doesn’t always have to come from a bad experience, but often our bad experiences are really what our difficult experiences, what, what makes us stronger, which fuels us in a direction. Another one of our students, she had, she, she lost a home because she bit off, more than she could chew. And so now she’s going to help other people make sure that doesn’t happen to them. Right. So you don’t have to have it all figured out, like you’re probably focused on. Yeah. But how first you just need to know, like, you know, I had to have to start playing in the sandbox before you like, build the castle. So start digging around and seeing your answer. Why did you become an agent? All right. Next out of that, you have to then be able to answer. And the should become an easier question to answer. Who do you want to help? Who do you want to help? Now? This is where, for some reason I become known as the niche person, but it’s not about choosing a niche. It’s not like an I’m going to, my niche is blank, right? That’s not what it is. It’s who do you want to help buyers sellers first-timers, downsizers move uppers. People who like to buy old houses in a particular area, right? Who do you want to help? And oftentimes what happens is our, our minds immediately go to scarcity. So, you know, notice, I didn’t say you had to pick one person. You don’t only have to pick first-time home buyers. Right? My niche, in the beginning, was first-time home buyers, but then it was my past clients. Those are who I wanted to help. I wanted to help first-time home buyers. And I wanted to help my past first-time home buyers sell their first home. That’s who I wanted to help do not go into a scarcity mindset. When you’re thinking about who do you want to help think about? If I could help anybody, who would I enjoy helping the most? Who could I benefit the most? And then think about your goals and say to yourself, you know, let’s say your goal is two houses or four houses a month, two times. Let’s just take it two times 12 is 24. Are there 24 people that you could find that need your help, who you want to help? And I also want to make it clear as I always do. When we talk about the who, I’m not talking about discrimination, fair, fair housing. Any of that, I’m just saying, who are you most suited to actually help? And that comes from really, why did you become a real estate agency? Naturally? Why I became an agent? I looked at my experience then who do I want to help? I want to help first-time home buyers. The answer to one usually gets the answer to the second one. So think about who do you want to help? The next question, you don’t have to answer. You hear my paper rustling. I have notes. I got notes on this. One is how do you want to help them? So often our students, they feel they get to the who, and then they forget the how. And I have to remind them, you have to answer, how do you want to help them? And so there’s two parts to this one. How do you want to help them? And the second part is, how can I make, how I help these clients? No brainer to choose me. Okay. So first sort out your answer of how you want to help them. And the only way you’re going to know how to help people first decide who you’re helping and then dive deep into what they need, what are their emotions? Why haven’t they done the thing that they want to do? There’s something stopping them. Why, what is it? And how can you solve it? So in the example, I gave you of my own business, right? The why I became an agent was birth out of my own experience as a first time home buyer, in order to answer the question, why should somebody choose you? And feeling like very doubtful about my own abilities to help anyone. I looked at my past experience and said, well, at least I bought a house. At least I know how to do that. I might not know how to sell house, but I know how to buy a house because I’ve done it. Right. And then that defined who I help first-time homebuyers. And by the way later on that grew to first-time home sellers. But in the beginning, it was just first-time homebuyers. And then how do I help them? So the thing, there are so many things that are standing in the way of first-time homebuyers moving forward. And oftentimes it has to do with misconceptions, things that they think that aren’t really true things like I need 20% down. I need to keep saving. I need 20% down. Not true. I have too much student loan debt. Well, you might, but there’s doctors with hundreds of thousand lawyers with hundreds of thousands of, of dollars of student loan debt. And they’re buying houses. They’re special loans for those people. So how do I help first-time home, home buyers, I over and over and over again, explain how I help them in my weekly newsletter. And specifically how I help them is I help them make their first home more affordable, because that is generally speaking. When you combine all the reasons why a first-time homebuyer hasn’t yet moved forward, it’s because they don’t think they can afford a house in the location that they want. And in my world, right? Oftentimes that’s a condo or a row house, not necessarily house. And I also have to define things like, you know, your first home doesn’t have to be a forever home. It rarely is. Okay. So how I help them is I got busy. I got, I figured out literally how I can help first-time homebuyers do the thing they want to do, which was buy a house. And how, and why didn’t they buy a house? Because they didn’t think they could, but they could nine times out of 10. So I found loan programs that helped them have down payment assistance so that they could, the stuff that I missed out on, right. Birthed out of my own experience. That’s the rabbit hole I went down. I talked to other, to all sorts of lenders about how do I help first-time home buyers. I’ve learned all sorts of things by picking up the phone and researching. You’re not going to have the answer right away. Right? So don’t think that in the case of how do you want to help them? Oftentimes it doesn’t have to do with what you already know. You have to go out and gain some knowledge. And that is how then you become, have that belief in yourself. And your abilities is by going out and finding your answer to this question, how do you want to help them? So that becomes first, but then once you get that and you start putting that into the world, I want you to, I want to challenge you to think, how can I make this a no-brainer? How can I make this a no-brainer? And oftentimes that comes with things like guarantees or programs, right? So in the example of my past clients, right, how could I make it a no-brainer that my past clients would want to work with me a second time? So I was giving them information. I was being in touch with them. I wasn’t bugging them for business. I was following all the steps. I was creating that relationship with them after the transaction so that they understood that I was in it more. I was, I was trying to be a resource for them, not just a sales person to them. So I was doing that all along. And then once I kind of had that, once I got that stable, I said, how do I make this a no-brainer for them? That’s when I created my loyalty club. And I explained what that is for them. And I thought constantly, how can I make this a no-brainer for them? And I kept adding different things to my loyalty club. And that’s what I was marketing to them is how to be a great homeowner and how to sell a house, like kind of a year into their experience of being a homeowner. And of course always telling them about my loyalty club and what was great about that is when I was meeting with my potential clients, my potential first time home buyers, right by loyalty club also helped answer the question, why me, because I would talk about my loyalty club and I would say, Hey, when you, I want to create a relationship with you in that, in that initial consultation, which we’ll talk more about next week, but I would say, Hey, I don’t want to just be there to sell you a house. I want to help you be a great homeowner. I want to stay in touch with you. I want you to see me as a resource. And when it is time to sell this house, I want you to know I have this loyalty club and here is what it’s all about. And that helped answer the question. Why me before they ever became a past client. Okay. So question number three, two parter. How do you want to help them? How could I make this a no-brainer for who I want to help? Next question, number four, what do you want to be known for? So, you know, often I have clients who, students who they don’t, they, they don’t want to kind of come out of the gate. They feel nervous about being in touch with people. They know about them being a real estate agent. They become nervous about what to post on social media. They get nervous about sending out their first weekly email. They get nervous about showing up and being seen. And I totally get that because I’m an introvert. I feel that way every single day, I feel that way right now, as I record this podcast, right, I get that. But at the end of the day, in order for people to choose you, not only do you have to explain why they should, but, and how you help them, but that is what then creates what you’re known for. So again, I’ll just give you my example. I became known as the go-to person for first-time homebuyers in Washington, DC in the Washington DC area. At the very least among anybody who even thought about me in real estate, they knew like first-time homebuyers. And then eventually those move-up buyers, because that’s what I became known for to my past clients, because that’s what I started doing, because that is the business that I went after in a way that helped my clients with my loyalty club. So what do you want to be known for if people were talking behind your back, right? Because that’s what everyone’s so worried about. What are people going to think? Well, what do you want them to think? Define that, and then go be that. And how you be that is you become a resource for that thing. You become the most knowledgeable expert about all things that have to do with that in my case, first-time home buyers, right? What do you want to be known for amongst your friends? And this is how you differentiate yourself. Everybody knows a bunch of agents right now, but nobody really diff no agent really is defining when people should come to them. And often again, don’t go into scarcity mindset, go into there’s plenty of people who, who need the help that I can help them with. And so what do I want to be known for? So perfect examples again, first time home buyers already give you a ton of examples. In the example of our student, with the old house houses, right? She wants to be known as an expert on how to buy old houses, right? That differentiation, right? She was scared about going up against these agents who like have their tentacles in this particular area for 30. She’s like, how am I supposed to go up against them? I’m like, don’t be different. Don’t sell your knowledge of the location, sell your knowledge of the houses in your experience. Nobody can compete with that. Nobody because it’s your experience. And you are the thing you are coming up with what you want to be known for. And it’s different than what everybody else is doing. So think about what do you want to be known for? And that is also how you slowly, but surely are willing to be seen, except nobody sees you. Nobody’s going to choose you. You have to put yourself out there, but you don’t have to do it in a way that has your face plastered everywhere. Any of that stuff that you see, I am a huge introvert. And the only way that I could put myself out there is to be known as an expert in certain things. That is the introvert way of putting yourself out there is be known for something, build your credibility, build your knowledge base and keep talking about it over and over again. And of course, as I always say, the places to start is your weekly email, not a newsletter, not what I saw, what I’m talking about, but a weekly value, add an email to the people, to who, you know, at first, then you grow it to people who you don’t know and you direct them to your website. So your website in your weekly emails, the fine you D you get to decide you pick. And then you define it week after week after week, right? So first week you can buy a home. If you’re focused on first-time homebuyers, you can buy a home. Even if you have student loan debt, you can buy a home. Even if you don’t have a down payment for a lot of our students, they help people who are moving up, right? So it’s over and over again. Like what do those people want? They want to love the house while they’re there. So talk about that. How to take care of your house, how to love your house, how to change your house, especially like, you know, in COVID right, but then slowly but surely talk about the things that are on there. Most likely on their minds. For example, right now, how do I at home when there’s not many houses for sale, how to buy a home in the fall market, how to sell your house in the fall market, right? There’s so many opportunities to position yourself as an expert for those move-up buyers. It’s always answering the question. How do you buy and sell at the same time financially? So your job is to go find out how they do that. There are so many ways, so many ways that people can buy first before selling their house. Okay. So what do you want to be known for? If somebody is talking behind your back and they, and they like, what do you want them to actually say, define that like, oh, she’s the best person who can help people. She knows about blank, define what that is. And then the last question, question number five, so that you can come up with your reason of why somebody should choose you. And this is so crucial. This is the linchpin that makes everything work. Is who do you want to be for your clients? So often we get stuck in the house. Tell me what to do, tell me what to do, right. Just tell me what to do. It’s not just what you do. It’s how you be. So for me, how did I want to be for my clients? I wanted to be the example, right? I had bought a house at 23. You can do it too. I bought a house when I was making $40,000 a year without putting 20% down. So first and foremost, I wanted to be the example. I wanted to be like that big sister being like an approachable person that they could come to and be like, I’m thinking about this. Like, what do you think? Like, where do I start? That is how I want it to be to my clients. But more than anything, how I wanted to be, how I wanted to show up in the world. And this is again, how you differentiate yourself. I wanted to stand for possibility. Like, I don’t know if you can buy a house right now, but let’s see what’s possible. So that the word that I chose of how I want to be for my clients is that I wanted to be an example and I wanted to stand for possibility. Let’s find out. I don’t know. Let’s find out what’s possible. Okay. So think about who is it that you want to be for your clients. And you got to be that, that person, you got to be that for yourself as you build your business, right? I had no idea at the time that me deciding to work with first-time home buyers and me figuring out all this stuff was going to lead to where we are right here was going to lead to a million. I mean, the thought of having a million-dollar per year income from a business I created from scratch was beyond what I ever thought was ever possible for me. And I’m not kidding. My wildest dream was to make $150,000 a year. That was my wildest biggest dream. So I had to be possibility. I had to be an example for myself before I could ever be that for my clients. And with that, that is how I grew my business, right. If I was being willing to be, if I wanted to invoke possibility, and I wanted to be an example for my clients. And I had to believe in the possibility of myself and my business and my value, and why should somebody choose me first? So often we need to be for our clients in order for them to, to us choose us. So we have to be for ourself. I needed to believe in the possibility that I could do this business. Right? And that out of that possibility is how I, that was like the stepping stone of how I kept moving forward. Even in the face of failure, even when it wasn’t working, even when I wasn’t seeing results right away, I believed what I wanted was possible. I believed that it was possible that I could have clients coming to me, choosing me. I could have more clients that I could ever hope for because I was adding value into the world and saying, Hey, first-time home buyers come to me. I believed that was possible. And I gave them the reason why those are the five questions. So I’ll just go through them really quickly. You hear my rustling? I apologize. Why did you become a real estate agent? What experience did you have that made you choose this of all jobs? Who do you want to help? If you could help anyone at all, who would you like to help? How do you want to help them? That’s three, a three B. How can I make, how I help my clients a no brainer for who I want to help? And what do you want to be known for? And who do you need to be for your clients? And also for yourself, as you’re figuring all this out, what you have to be doing all along, you cannot wait to figure all this out, then go off and be in front of people. You have to figure this out by putting things out into the world and seeing what works, what doesn’t work, what people resonate with. You’ve got to show up when you have this, figure it out. And as you are figuring it out, you have to show up in front of the people who you are best at helping or who you want to help. Okay? You cannot figure this all out in your mind and then be like, okay, I figured it out. Let me, let me go market myself. Now you can do that. That is, that tends to be how I work. But that’s why it took me, you know, five years to sell two houses because I was trying to figure it all out in my head first, instead of putting it out there, getting feedback, adjusting, doing it again until you have so much belief and a knowledge about who you help and how you’re going to help them that by doing that, like, if you’re like, I’m stuck, how do I help them? How do I help them? Keep asking yourself that question, then go off and find ways to help them pick up the phone, do some research and think creatively, what would work with me? What would I want if I was in their position, you have to get to that level of competence in yourself. And it doesn’t come from transactions. Yes. Transactions will help you gain confidence about the ability to help people through a transaction. But I had to believe in my ability to help first time home buyers before I could ever have a transaction. Because if I don’t believe in my ability to help first time home buyers, no first home, first time home buyer is going to come to me. Or if they come to me, they’re not going to actually work with me because people can sniff it out. If you don’t know what you’re doing, where you don’t have the confidence in yourself, people can tell, go out there and find the things that are going to make you feel confident in your ability to help the people you want to help. And then you’re going to see, what’s going to start to happen is that you’re going to get so confident, not from an arrogant place, but from a self-confidence place. You’re going to be like, why wouldn’t somebody in this position help me. And what that does is then kind of seals you off from feeling the emotions of failure, because believe it or not, first time home buyers would still come to me every now and then. And somebody would be like, oh, I decided to work with somebody else. And I’m like, you know, there’s always that tiny bit of disappointment, but it wasn’t in the disappointment of like, you know, I’m not okay or I’m not good enough. It was more like, oh, I really hope that, like, I really hope that I made it clear how I could really help them, because if I made it clear how I could help them, they would have chosen me. And yes, every now and then there’s like a personality thing and that’s fine. That’s fine. We’re not for everybody. And that’s totally fine. But you have to get to the point where you’re like, why wouldn’t somebody want to work with me? And that somebody is somebody specific. Like in my head, it was like, why wouldn’t first time home buyers want to help me? I’m like, I know how to do this. I know how to make this happen for them. And then I got to the point where, why wouldn’t my past clients want to work with me because I made it so irresistible for them so compelling for them. So they didn’t even think twice. You have to get to that point in your business. That is how you have clients coming to you. All right. That is everything that you need to find your unique answer to the question. Why should somebody choose you or to how you differentiate yourself, how you stand out. You have to answer all of these questions from a place of self confidence and belief that you have something to give that no one else can give your clients, because that is the truth. Even if you’ve never sold a house before home, before to anyone, even if you’re a brand new agent, so do not waste another minute of your existence, feeling like you don’t know why somebody should choose you. You have experiences to share. You will have so much to give to your clients, regardless of how long you’ve been licensed, regardless of how many houses you’ve sold, you have experiences that you can bring and draw from, and you can actually help people get what they want done. I tell this to my students all the time, if you are worried, or you’re in this as self doubt, don’t, you’re focused on yourself. You’re focused on their cement. You’re focused on your own feelings. And what I want you to do is turn that to how do I help the clients who I can help. If you come from a place of service and truly wanting to help people, you will find people to help and they will find you. But if you’re focused on, oh my gosh, what are people going to say? Oh my gosh, is this right? Do I have it right? I don’t know. I’ve never sold a house. If you’re focused on all the things that make you nervous, you cannot help anybody. And no one is going to choose you. So take that energy and focus on who you can actually help go out there and find ways to help them and know that you are valuable regardless of how much experience you have, because you are a person who has experience, no matter how many houses you sold. All right? I hope this helps you start thinking about your marketing in a different way. And then once you figure this out, you can apply this to any thing. We talked about. Those just listed, just sold, just listed cards, right? It’s not that the postcards don’t work, postcards work. They just have to work that you have to tell people why they should choose you. What makes you different? So if you want to, if you want to dominate a neighborhood, right? You can’t just say, just send one just sold card and expect them to you to get a ton of listings. Yeah, sure. That works every now and then. But what actually works is giving people a compelling reason over and over and over again about how you can help them so that they come to you when they need help. So when you look at your answer, so let’s just look at, let’s say you decided you’re going to help move up buyers in a certain neighborhood. You don’t even need a just sold. You don’t need the experience to market, to them. Pick a neighborhood that would be ideal for you. Maybe it’s an air neighborhood that you live in, or you used to live in and tell people there who are buying and selling at the same time, how you can help them do that. For example, you could say, send a letter that says something along the lines of, we are in an unprecedented time in the real estate industry where we’ve got huge demand and low supply. Our interest rates are low and it’s a great time to buy. Despite the lack of inventory you’ve been looking. If you’ve been thinking about buying a house, I can help you find a house. I have off-market ways to do that. And if you also have to sell your house, I can show you how you can buy first, then sell with creative financial tools that I use to do that for my own, my own journey in this buying and selling at the same time, I can show you how I did it. If you, if you want to do this, if you want to accomplish this, you know, reach out to me. You sent that to people. They’ll keep that you sent it to people once a month, where you show them how you show them experiences. People you’ve helped, right? Show them how over and over again, versus the just sold card. See how much more powerful that quote unquote postcard could be. But if you’re any of my students, you know, I tell you don’t send postcards because everybody else is sending postcards, send a, a, send a letter with a stamp on it. That’s going to get opened. I never read postcards and neither do your clients. So think about what mail do you open? Send that everything you’re doing, make it clear that you want to stand out, that you’re differentiating yourself, stop doing what everybody else is doing and start, and stop and start doing what you want to do, kind of claim it and know that it is possible for you. All right. I hope this helps you think about your marketing. And it’s such a different way from a place of helping, not selling from a place of self-confidence in how you can help people and who you want to help and why your real estate agent. And if you’re able to communicate that to your potential clients and people, you know, in any marketing you do, then you’re going to have people saying, why wouldn’t I use this person? That’s how you get clients coming to you. All right. I hope that helps. Next week. I’m gonna be talking about why an initial consultation is so crucial to create clarity for both you and your clients before you start looking at houses with them. And I know so many of you are going to say, nobody wants to do it. You’re right. Nobody does. You have to give them a reason why they should see the running theme here. All right. See you next week, where we talk about how to get people, to show up to those initial consultations so that you’re not running around showing houses to people that aren’t really going to buy or use YOU. Okay. See you then. Thank you for listening to this episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent. We purposely keep this podcast sponsor and commercial free so we can focus solely on providing real estate agents with the content that will help them grow their real estate business. And how about life? They love out five but business too, but we need your help to get this podcast in the hands of other real estate agents. So please, if you liked this episode, leave a review on iTunes or wherever you’re listening, and also tell your agent friends to listen in to thank you so much for supporting the show for being a listener and supporting other agents along your way to success. That’s what this is all about. See you next time. On another episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent. And until then come hang with me over agentgradschool.com. We’ll see you there.