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Forward Event Recap: Personal Branding · Mortgage Marketing Radio

• 0:00
  Hey, what's up my friend? Welcome to a solo episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast.
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  Thank you for tuning in. I'm going to be doing more of these on an ongoing basis. So if you
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  have any special topics, questions you wanted to talk through, have me feature topics, challenges,
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  issues you're struggling with, social media related, marketing related business strategies
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  and challenges wise. Here's what you can do. You can go to our Facebook group over on Facebook,
• 0:38
  type in in search mortgage marketing radio. And if you're not already part of the community there,
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  jump in and join us and post your question or challenge your biggest frustration in the current
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  market. And I'll hopefully answer them. Today, what I want to do is finally get to my recap of my
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  attendance for the third time in a row of the recent forward event put on by my buddy,
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  Neil Dingra and his partner Trevor York business partner. And this is the fourth year they've
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  been doing it. Third year that I've attended. And I'm going to say every year keeps getting better.
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  There'll be a link in the show notes if you want to learn more forward event.com. But they've got,
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  you know, just 10 plus world class speakers, the thousand attendees. And it's definitely an event
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  if you haven't attended as you consider going. So what I'm going to do is do a debrief of some of
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  the highlights from the speakers that stood out for me and some of the topics I wanted to bring to you
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  in case you didn't get a chance to attend or secondly, if you did attend, maybe you forgot or
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  life got busy, right? So I'm going to start with the first speaker, Rory Vaden, who runs an
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  organization called Brand Builders Group. I've actually had his wife, AJ, on the podcast. And they're
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  really smart when it comes to personal branding. And all that goes into that, they work with some of
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  the top author speakers coaches out there, including at my let, Lewis Hous, Trent Shelton, a bunch of
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  others as well. But Rory being all about personal brand and people often ask, what is a personal brand?
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  So if you ever asked yourself, what is a personal brand? And I love the definition that Rory gave
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  the personal brand, especially in today's market, today's world, is the digitization of your
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  reputation. That's it. Personal brand today is the digitization of your reputation. And so when
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  people look you up online, whether you're going to referral, right, however this source of business
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  comes to you, let's just face today, we're in this world where people are looking you up. And the
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  question is, what do they find? And the higher the requirement for trust, the more important
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  a personal brand is. And if you think about the business we're in, right, financing homes,
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  purchasing real estate, there is a high degree of trust required for that transaction,
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  comparatively to let's say you grabbing your phone, hitting your Uber or lift app,
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  inhaling, shared ride, not a ton of personal branding required for that, right? Like, you don't
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  necessarily go deep on the person's background, who's gonna be nice because I've had some really
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  bad Uber rides, right? As I'm sure you have to, but you pretty much it's a low friction
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  transaction. It's a low risk transaction transaction. Let me say that. So the higher the requirement
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  for trust, the more important a personal brand. What are you doing to help convey trust
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  in your personal brand, in your content with what you communicate?
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  Let's go a step further. We talked about a personal brand being the digitization of your
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  reputation. Where do you show up online today? Can you be everywhere all at once? For most people,
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  probably not, because you don't have the bandwidth, you don't have a team, and when you have
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  diluted focus, you get diluted results. So my takeaway that I share with you is what one to three
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  maximum platforms, social media platforms, can you focus on? Where do you already hang out?
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  Where do you already engage? And stop trying to be everywhere to everyone all the time, and get clear
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  on what problem you solve. And Rory, when he talks about what problem you solve, and I remember
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  I was actually a client of brand builder's group for some time, and we worked on this together,
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  and in a one word, can you come up with the one problem that you solve in one word? And for the time
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  that I was working with them, the word we came up with was confidence. And if you think about
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  what I do when I help mortgage regulators do is I help them attract versus chase real estate
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  agents and help move them from being seen as a solicitor and vendor to a partner and peer.
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  So no more chasing, no more like disadvantaged positioning when it comes to approaching real estate
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  agents, you attract versus chase. And to do that, for some, takes a certain level of confidence.
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  I remember when I first started, I was not confident in approaching real estate agents.
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  And that's a process to become confident. And one of the things they say, and I was shared
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  at this event is that you're most equipped to help the person you once were. So at one time,
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  I was not confident in approaching real estate agents. Now I'm confident. Now I could walk into any
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  room, any meeting anywhere and meet any real estate agent and feel totally 100% confident
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  about providing a value proposition. And if you're hearing this and that's not yet you,
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  well, that's what we do. And if you want to learn more, you can go over to mortgagemarketing.pro
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  and book a call with me to find out how we do that. But back to the one problem you solve,
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  this is something that's going to take a little bit of you thinking about working through,
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  you know, like who is your ideal client. Sometimes, by the way, with first-time home buyers,
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  that might be it for you as well, might be confidence. A lot of first-time home buyers are lacking
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  confidence, right? And so think about that. Continue to work on it. And get clear on one of the
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  solutions to the problems you solve. If you aren't clear, your clients won't be clear either. By
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  the way, same true for real estate agents. One of the problems you solve for referral partners,
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  right? Certainty of transaction, right? Less friction in the transaction. Confidence to close,
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  right? Those are examples. And then here's a key point. Become an ambassador of the problem.
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  Sell the problem as much as the solution. See, people are looking to solve problems more so
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  than they are perhaps to gain a solution, right? People want to get out of pain more than they
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  want to get into pleasure. And so if you just tried leading with you being an ambassador to solve
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  the problem, to talk about, to promote the problem that your target client, referral partners
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  having in this market, and you move that to the surface and you talked about the problems,
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  you agitated, you stirred up the problems, and then you demonstrated, provided proof that you
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  can solve those problems. That will help differentiate yourself, you, your personal brand,
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  and what you do, right? And it'll help create trust. How do you help create trust? Stories,
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  results, do stuff, get things done, and then talk about things you've done. And then when possible,
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  have other people talk about what you did for them. And in today's world, what does that look like?
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  It looks like online reviews, testimonials, success stories. Research that was done by
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  Rory's company brand builders group found that the number one purchase factor for people
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  decided to make a significant purchase was testimonials about them and their work.
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  How proactive are you at capturing past client testimonials, referral partner and testimonials
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  at every single possibility? Do you have a process for capturing past client reviews and testimonials?
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  If not, you're missing the mark. I was preparing for a real estate agent interview here today,
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  and I looked him up on Google, and he has 388 Google reviews. Pretty much five-star across the board.
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  But let me ask you, if you were considering transacting with a real estate agent, moving to the city,
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  where this agent actually operates, and you looked them up and you found that they had 388 reviews,
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  would you feel more confident? Would you have more trust as compared to the other four or five
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  agents that show up on your search? That would have significantly less than 20, 30.
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  So to build trust in today's world, your personal brand, remember what did we say at the top,
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  is the digitization of your reputation. What does this mean? It means I have to see you,
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  I have to know you, and I have to learn from you. See you repeatedly over time,
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  get to know you, engage with you. That's called content. That's why social media platforms work so
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  well, so that I can learn from you because that's going to build trust. And if you show up
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  repetitively with that, you're going to break through the wall of noise, you're going to gain my
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  trust, you're going to gain my engagement, which ultimately at some point is going to lead to
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  some type of an interaction. The direct message, your phone call, a meeting, a zoom, whatever it is.
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  Remember, a great personal brand is service-centered, not self-centered.
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  So to recap, personal brand is the digitization of your representation. I'm sorry, the digitization
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  of your reputation, the higher the requirement for trust, the more important having a personal
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  brand is because that's the only thing I have to go on is how do I trust you? Other ways to build trust,
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  as you know, help people solve problems, talk about the problems, you've helped people solve,
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  and have other people talk about how you've helped them solve problems. Visa V, success stories,
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  testimonials, online reviews, and then promote the problem as much as you do the solution,
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  and align yourself with how you, your system, your process, your experience, your team,
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  solves that problem, and then prove it. Okay, so that's recap, number one, from
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  the forward event, shout out to Neil and Trev for putting that on, banging an event,
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  linking the show notes if you haven't yet registered for the next year's event in 2025,
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  go check it out, appreciate you guys tuning in, and we'll see you on the next one, bye for now.