On today’s episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent. I’m Rebranding My Real Estate Business. And I’m pulling back the curtains and sharing with you how I’m getting started. Now, how this whole thing started is it’s been 10 years since I’ve updated my real estate branding in any way, shape or form, including the website. And I thought this was a perfect opportunity to peel back the curtain and show my students. And he’s inside agent grad school that I’m not just teaching theory. I’m not just teaching a step-by-step process to bring clients to you. I actually do it. And I did it in the beginning of my real life. Once I figured it out and my real estate career, I did it when I began my real estate brokerage. I did it when I began agent grad school, and I’m going to be doing it again in this rebrand. So I thought it was a great opportunity to share as much as I could with you on the podcast and share every step of the way with our students inside agent grad school. So whether you become a student or not, I want you to listen to this episode and hear how I begin branding my real estate business. You’re going to learn the questions that I’m asking myself that I have to answer before I get started to guide and kind of be the north star on everything that I do. I also share to things that we as entrepreneurs and especially in real estate, agent’s need to manage in order to be successful. I give you the process that I’m going to go through to kind of rebrand and revamp my real estate business to go from zero to monetized and what my expectations are for how long this is going to take. And pretty much just like what I’m dealing with right now, emotionally to get this project off the ground. I know so often in the beginning of a career or beginning of a business brings up so many questions. So I thought that’s why I would share this particular episode with you guys here so that it can hopefully help you do the same in your business. Then of course, we want to join us and see the ongoing behind the scenes of me building my real estate brand, or I guess rebuilding it or rebranding it. Then you’re welcome to join us inside agent grad school and whether or not you ever become an agent grad school students. That’s not the point of this episode at the point of this episode is to show you how I begin the rebrand of a real estate business so that you can hear how I’m doing it here, what I’m thinking about and decisions that I’m making, so that hopefully you can do the same thing with your real estate business, whether you’re beginning or rebranding after 10 years. Like I am so listen into this episode and implement as much as you can. And I can’t wait to hear and see the results 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 to even opening my own brokerage full of agents helped me serve all of the clients that were coming my way. I taught those agents to the same strategies I use in data to 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 of the real estate industry, no fluff, no theory, no outdated sales techniques or paying for leads, just the exact steps to get you to 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. And so here are what my timeline and expectations like are, and I think this is really important. One of the things that I see over and over again from real estate agents, especially, but really any entrepreneur is I think the expectations of ourselves and our businesses are, are oftentimes out of line or out of whack with reality, I think for, so for some reason, and I had this exact same experience. So, you know, when I first, you know, quit my job, put myself in a very bad financial position and emotional, very bad emotional decision place as well. When I became a real estate agent, my expectation was that things were going to happen quickly. I would be successful very quickly. And I think that that was just the function of like, I was always a good student. I was excelling in my other career. I just figured that it would be, it would translate little did I know that I, I did not actually have a plan for creating a business, bringing in clients and bringing in customers. Okay. So now I understand that my expectations needs to be a little bit longer term. So in the fall of 2020, that’s when this whole brainstorming thing began. It’s also when I started to become super frustrated with myself, all the negative self-talk began. Somebody once told me that being successful in business as an entrepreneur, which all of you are as real estate agents requires two things. It requires knowing your numbers, keeping track of your numbers and also managing your emotions. And I can’t, I believe actually that is the managing your emotions. That is the most important part of creating a successful business and a successful life. And so I want you to understand that I’m just not just because I have like, have an outcome that might look different than yours at this very moment. I want you to also see that I fight the same demons. I fight the same negative self-talk and I don’t know if you guys have all watched that video, the Dunning Kruger effect, right? All of us go through it. So right now I’m in this kind of, you know, if you look member the Dunning-Kruger effect, right. I’m In this beginning and that’s the part where it’s like, should I do this? Can I, this, you know, what’s it going to take to do this? And all that negative self-talk is, is, has been happening since the fall. I kept thinking like, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to call it. I don’t know what to say to him for all the things that you go through. When you start sitting down and thinking about, you know, going through the course and you start thinking about, what is this gonna look like for me, I went through the same exact stuff. The only difference, my expectation was not to figure it out in a week or a month. My expectation was just to sit on it and start thinking about things. So now here we are in the summer and it was sorry, guys. It was the summer that I said to myself, it just kind of started coming to me. So, you know, I gave myself the space and I’m going to show you the questions here in a second, the questions that I was pondering for this amount of time. And I did not put myself in a position or put the pressure on myself to figure out the stuff in a couple of weeks, I gave myself that’s the mental space and the ease for the ideas and the thoughts to come to me. And then I said, okay, I’m ready. And so about in June-ish may June-ish was when, after about six months, five months of thinking through things, not liking it, writing stuff down, throwing it away. I started finally being able to feel like I was in my zone and I was like, okay, I got this. I can see the vision. I understand what I’m going to stand for. And I had all the questions that I was about to share with you. I have answers for them. I’m going to share my answers for them as well. And then as far as monetization, because again, I understand what being an entrepreneur means. It means putting money and time in first and reaping the benefits later, similar to like a farmer. So oftentimes in real estate, we say like the word farming, but I, I want you to see you’re not farming a neighborhood, but, but think of yourself as a farmer for yourself and for your business, I’m planting my seeds right now. I’m going to go through a winner of lots of work and lots of time and lots of expenses so that when it comes to be spring-ish, that is when the monetization can start happening. Okay. And so for me, what that means, and again, it’s only because I’ve been through this before I went through a business in the beginning part of my career, my real estate career, where I didn’t want to spend any money. I didn’t have any money. And then finally there was a day when I was like, I keep not spending money. I keep getting nowhere. I have to invest. And I started investing and, it required taking on debt. And so I apply that same strategy with every one of my businesses to get agent grad school started. I did not use any money, any savings. I put, I created debts. I got like a credit card and I put it in debt. Like I put it on credit and now I’ve been able to pay that debt off or the beginning, but I’m going to be doing it again. So my expectation over the next couple of months is I will be investing. I will be getting into debt. And then when monetization starts next spring, I’ll be able to first, the revenue will start coming in. I’ll first pay off the debt before I take a penny. And then the profit begins. And that is when I can start reinvesting in my business. And once I get to a certain point, I can start benefiting from that business. But I want you to hear and see that every step of the way, my expectations are fighting. Those demons, having complete anxiety and anxiety for me is always a mixture of like, I’m so excited, but I also am like nervous as hell. So remember that Dunning Kruger effect, again, it talks about when you start a project, you get really excited and then there’s this like, kind of drop off. And you’re like, God, this sucks, right? My expectation is I am going through all that. I’m going to spend a lot of money, not a lot, but a certain amount of money, but I think it will take to get this business off the ground. And even when success, quote, unquote happens, the chatter and my expectation is that chatter will still be there. I think so often I see, especially real estate agents, but entrepreneurs as a whole, they’re waiting for some kind of change in their like self-talk or they’re waiting for some change and then they’re going to do something. And what I would like to, to offer or show is that I’m going to what feels like trudge through mud, because it’s my own brain telling me how terrible everything’s gotta be the whole time. And I’m going to keep moving forward anyway. All right. Oops. Okay. How am I going to do this? What are my steps? First, second, third, fourth, fifth. I’m going to do literally exactly what has outlined in agent grad school, in the before, and that marketing use action to bring clients from all over the US to me, the first thing I have to get myself asking myself these questions and answering these questions before I start anything. So he the same questions that I asked you guys in our classes, and sometimes in the course, right? First question, who do I want to help? And how do I want to help them? Okay. When I think about people who buy and sell real estate throughout the US there are so many different types of people, not just like people, but types of buyers, types of homeowners, right? Luxury. I could pick downsizers. I could pick retirement, I could pick financial, I could pick investors. I could pick all sorts of things, but I know that what I need to do is kinda narrow in here. So who do I want to help? And how do I want to help them? So my answer to that question, spoiler alert, is first-time home buyers. First-time home sellers, first-time homeowners. And by default, I can serve that audience. I can show real estate agents, my kind of fourth audience. How I do that in point to you guys, this is how I did it. You can do it to, okay, so I can serve all those audiences. I know it seems like I have too many niches, but I’m going to show you how I take all those quote, unquote niches and turn them into one niche. Okay. And then what’ll happen is because those homeowners, sometimes what they’re thinking about is should I be a landlord, should I do investments and going to bring in that conversation, but not in the beginning. Okay. So now that I understand who I’m talking to, and I’ll talk more about how I want to help them in a minute, but I need to be asking myself what holes are there in the space that I can fill. What parts for me was a big motivator for me is frustration. When I see things not happening, like in a right way, or I see, like, for example, the reason I started to go in grad school is because I saw agents all over the place, like fumbling, making mistakes, not being able to create the businesses that they thought they could or should. And I was like, it doesn’t have to be that way. So out of that level of frustration, right? I’ve said, I want to do something to change it. So I’m applying that same thing to this new business. What frustrates me enough for me to want to change it. So the answer to that question for me is what frustrates me enough. What frustrates me so much is that there is, seems to be this unlike incorrect information in the public, on the national scale about what it takes to be a first time home buyer, things like what all of the news articles I was seeing when, when this market was crazy, quote, unquote, all over the country. Perfect example, you know, being told to write love letters, not that the way too, to do this market, right? So when I start seeing things and advice given from people who aren’t, even in the industry to people who that advice is not accurate, I’m like somebody needs to step in here and explain what really needs to happen to help them like help buyers, especially first-timers in this market, that conversation about, oh, everything’s being beat by cash offers. There’s ways around that, to which it wasn’t being addressed. Okay. So there’s all these little frustrations I want to say. Like, it doesn’t have to be that way. Don’t listen to the crowd. Don’t listen to what you’re hearing because it’s not accurate. Okay. And then the other question is, what do I want to take a stand for? What is the stance on the stand, the slice of like, what do I have to say? What do I want to say? And what do I believe about real estate that is not already being discussed? Other questions I’ve been asking myself, what perspective can I bring that is different from everything else out there. And just gave a few examples of that and always attaching to why, why is it important that I do this? Because there will be days that I do not want to do this, that I will feel like I’ve got to much else on my plate, too much else going on. And so really understanding why I want to do this and the biggest motivator of why I want to do this as you guys, because I want to show you how to do this. And like open up my business and be like, here’s exactly how I’m doing it. And you’re going to see it go from zero to who knows what. Okay. And also noticed that I’m not attached to the outcome. Okay. I know like when we’re starting a business, we want to be attached to the outcome, but I’m focused and the creation mode. And I know if I can add value, be consistent and create something that is valuable for people, it will become successful monetarily. Okay. What do I have to say in this space that is not already being set so much? There is so much, that’s not being said or explained, and I have a lot to say about it and what is going to take me from, what’s it going to, what’s it going to take for me to take what’s in my head and make it a reality? There have been so many times, especially earlier on in my entrepreneur journey where I had so many great ideas and I did not understand how to take what, like, what are the ideas I had in my head and turn them into something that was out into the world. And I really slowed myself down and I took longer. And I want you guys to see that it’s not about thinking about things. It’s actually about putting it into the world and then being able to evolve it and make it better. So what’s the first step you see out of the gate. It’s not going to be great, but it’s going to be done and it’s going to start. And then I’m going to continue to change it and change it and change it. And you guys can watch it. But the other thing is, is what is it going to take for me to pull this off? Okay. And there’s probably a name for this concept. I’m not a hundred percent sure where I learned it. But one thing that I do quite often is I write anytime I’m nervous about something, or I feel like I have a big hill to climb. I write down everything that could go wrong, everything. So I, Thomas it’s almost like it’s like M I high to create the worst-case scenario. And I’m like, am I okay with this? Am I okay with this? Am I okay with this? And what that does for me is it makes whatever actually happens. No big deal, because I’ve already gone through it. I’ve already been through the emotion. So I want to share some things like, and this next slide, if it will move, here we go. Okay. So here are the big things that I’m, that I know it’s going to take for me to get this whole thing off the ground. First and foremost, it’s going to take time. Like when can I devote time without taking away time from my lifetime for the, from agent grad school and serving you guys and everything else that I want to do for myself. So not just in the beginning, but maintain it for a long time for the longterm. And so for me, that means, okay, I might have to work an hour longer here, or a couple hours longer here. I might need to hire. Remember we always talk about it’s either time or money. So my plan is probably to invest in shortening my time by having people help me bring my ideas to life more quickly, right? Which then leads me to, it’s going to take an investment and understanding and knowing that this business that I’m creating will spend more than it makes for at least a year. And that is true with real estate in real estate agents as well. I wish somebody had told me that, that you will spend money for a year before you even start to make money in real estate. Nobody told me that, and that was, well, it took me four years back then, but now I can collapse that time period, because now I understand it and I know what needs to get done. And then most importantly, it’s like the risks that I’m taking, the criticism that I could get the people not really understanding what I’m doing, why I’m doing it. It might not work. Right. I might be embarrassed. I might be saying to you guys, look at all of the things I’m doing. I want to take you on this ride and it might or might not work. Right? So that might be embarrassing for me, but I have to believe more strongly in what I want to create and the vision I have and who I can help, and how I’m going to help them creating value, going through the motions and going through the emotions to make all this happen. Okay. So it’s all a big ball of crap right now for me, right? The emotional it’s investments it’s time. And I’m doing this because I want you guys to see that just doesn’t happen overnight. And it does take a lot of, I think it’s called like failing, like failing first, like in my mind, I’m failing so that when the actual failure occurs, I can get over it so much more quickly. So who do I want to help? And how do I want to help them? This is the most crucial question. All of us can answer as we began our entrepreneurial journey. But the number one reason I’m doing this is for you guys. So you guys can see it comes to life and you guys can see, like every week I’m going to send an email, the same emails that you guys have. I’m going to be sending them. I’m going to make them turn them slightly different, right. For a different audience, because a lot of it is, is location-based. So I’m going to change it slightly for my new audience. I want you guys to see that it can be done in a way that’s not full, like full time. Your marketing cannot take all of your time. And this, none of this will take any time away from Asian frat school in any way, shape or form, because I know how little time the stock takes. Once it gets set up second, I want to help first-time home buyers, like I said earlier, because I feel that they need the most help and I want to educate them and empower them with information. Because so many times when I hear from first-time home buyers is I wish I knew what I knew then like, or I wish I knew what I knew now then. And so many real estate agents throughout the country are not educating their buyers. And oftentimes buyers are not having a very good experience. And so I’m not in any way, shape or form wants to replace agents in their lives. I want to actually explain why agents are so crucial to their buying process and selling process and even educate them on why they need a good agent, but I want to empower them with knowledge so that they are, they’re not so like clueless when they start to process. And I think by default, if I can do that, even if I help like a handful of buyers and sellers, I think it will help that their agents and help them have a better relationship. I don’t know about you, but if I had a more educated buyer coming to me, I would be so much, it would be so much of a better relationship. I feel like there’d be more trust there. And so by educating the buyers and sellers, I want to create trust in the real estate profession. Cause I think there are so many people who don’t think highly of real estate agents. I want to change that perspective. Next. I want to help first-time home buyers, because the biggest thing about one of the reasons that buyers delay the eye, the purchase is because they’re like, but then I got to take care of this thing and how do I do that? And it feels so overwhelming. And I want to remove a little bit about that and not make it so like, like a question, like what actually do I do with this thing? I want to educate them and show them like, here’s what I’m doing. I’m going to paint my house. And here’s why, or, you know, I’m going to, to replace this because of this and show them how to be good homeowners and not, it’s not that hard. And then last but not least I want to help. And all the answers, all of the questions that a lot of homeowners have, like, should I invest in another big thing? I see a lot is homeowners spending a ton of money on things that they’re never going to get back when I sell their house, also answering those questions about whether or not to have the landlord. Should I keep this property as a rental? Should I know not all that stuff that homeowners think about and then last but not least, I want to help first-time sellers because that move up buyer. There’s so much non-information out there that I want to empower both real estate agents and first-time sellers that there are easier ways to buy and sell a house at the same time than the traditional way of cell. First then by all of the things we’ve already talked about in this course, I want buyers and sellers to understand that, but you might be thinking, I thought you were only supposed to choose one, one niche. And I’m telling you, I have four natures, niches buyers, sellers, homeowners in real estate agents. But what is the common theme between all of them and for the buyers, sellers and homeowners it’s that I’m focused on the first time experience? Okay. That is my niche first-timers. And by doing this, I’m also creating an example for you guys who is what I care about at the same time. Okay. So I’m choosing my niche and now I’m going to walk you through exactly what you’re doing also. Okay. So I’m then serving my fourth niche, which is our students. So when I say, what do you want to be known for? Right. Asking me to sell the same question and really what you want to be known for. That’s how you create a brand. That’s how you know what to talk about, right? Because when I talk about buying your first home, I can talk about all sorts of things, but it’s what I want to be known for. That helps me decide what I’m going to actually talk about. So these are the things that are most important to me. You can create the life that you want, but you just might have to go about it differently than you thought. Or maybe not the way everybody else is doing it. One of my big themes is, and this goes for buyers, sellers in a real cities, just stop looking around at what everybody else is doing. And let’s focus on your own paper. What is it that you want? Right. So I’m going to weave that theme throughout everything that I do next. It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, right? Let’s be creative. Let’s squeeze the juice out of everything we have. And that’s where I’m going to talk about first-time home buyer programs and the different options to make buying and selling, not so expensive, borrow from yourself, not other, somebody else, the pros and cons of that, right. Homeownership, right? Don’t put a ton of money in, right. You could paint the cabinets and have really add new little pools and change light fixtures. And for a couple of hundred bucks and a little like a weekend, the time you can totally transform your space. Right. Also, I’m known in my inner circles, really cheap. So people know that like I just don’t like to spend money on things. And so that’s going to be a running theme and kind of like a joke. It’s the one I think about when I get to the point where I’m adding social media, it’s all going to like my social media is all going to be about these concepts. And also like how cheap I am or how much money I saved, because that is so like crucial inherently who I am. And I think that would serve that part of me would serve my audiences. And then I’ll sh like, I can show you how, like I’m an open book. I’m sharing the little-known secrets that I’ve gained from 20 years as the homeowner and as the real estate agent and a real estate investor. So I’ll show you, take it or leave it. Those are the themes and what I want to be known for there’s others. But those are like the big, big chunks. Sorry, I’m trying to say, okay. Now first thing is, I want you guys to notice that I am not focused on selling anything at this moment. And that is also the case in my real estate, but in my real estate dwell in my real estate business. And before, and even agent grad school, I have not focused 100% on selling. I focused first and foremost on serving my audience to providing value, right? My, my, my goal notice, I’ve not given you my grand plan for monetization because I’m the first focused on creating value. So I’m not trying to get to any of these people to become clients, including real estate agents. But I know if I create something of true value that is different than other things out there with the natural byproduct will be that I provide value to people and there it will be monetization that occurs. I also know that it’s going to take time to get there, but it’s that energy. And I see this so often in especially real estate agents. There’s this energy of when we think about marketing, we think about communication. There’s this energy that’s out front. That’s about getting people to do something. And I want you to start focusing on providing value first. Then if you provide value, you will get value in return. Okay? So what’s the plan. The plan is exactly what you guys know and what you’ve been doing. So I’m going to start with the static pages of my website. Then I’m going to add on the blog. Then I’m going to add in my quote, unquote newsletter, but just a weekly email am I often next I’ll add in social media, which to me means both posts and ads and continue to grow my list and all the ways that you guys already know create offers, make offers and monetize. So the same exact process that you guys have in agent grad school is what I’ll be following. That is just the abridged version. I’m not going through everything because you guys already know it. So that is the plan. And I will be updating you. 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 outside business too, but we need your help to get this podcast and 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 at agentgradschool.com. I’ll see you there.