Improve Your Branding with BrandFace Founders Tonya Eberhart & Michael Carr

Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I am your host, Justin Stoddart, and really honored to have these two back. If you had been watching my show for any period of time, you realize last year, Tonya Eberhart and Michael Carr, and I'm gonna explain to you who they are and why that matters to you here in just a minute, but they were on and they were loved by me and by anybody that watched the show. So let me just remind you before I, again, make this great introduction of these amazing two people that are really going to delve into branding, the things that you need to know about branding, that, that my personal mission is to is to wake you up to help you recognize the potential that's inside of you, and then inspire and help you live a life in pursuit of that. That's what I'm all about. This show is a function of that. And I go out and find amazing people like Tanya and Michael, to bring to you to, again to help you be in pursuit of that life. So that's what this is all about. And again, I want to thank Tonya & Michael, let me before I do a full intro. Let me just thank you two for coming on the show today. That's such a pleasure, actually. I love spending time with you guys. Let me do a kind of a brief intro here. Tonya is the founder of Brand Face and branding agent to the business stars. She's authored four books on personal branding if that doesn't say enough, her start wasn't maybe in like with the stars, right? It was actually out selling vacuum cleaners right? She hustles and then she's had jobs in radio kind of all the way top to bottom. How do you go from prospecting like door to door sales all the way to where people are coming at you because of your brand. I think that's an amazing transition that everybody that I work with, wants to know How do I stop having to go to people and have them start coming to me? Next to her and handsome gentlemen on the right there is Michael Carr. He's America's top selling real estate auctioneer, and the abundant life broker. I think anybody that's been in real estate auction knows Michael Carr's name. Michael, you've done, been involved in over 74,000 transactions. You know, it as many as 27 states that's a pretty impressive resume and pretty cool and your story, right is that you sought out Tonya's help for branding and realized what a magician she was, and at that point, you're like, why don't we partner up? I think you can do I can even help you scale this further and became testimonial number one and now a key partner in helping to expand this branding movement across the country. Is that true?
That is true. Yes, it but when I had met her I had done around 65,000 transactions and we've done another we've added another 10 - 11 on those. Since we came on board, we moved from auctions to arm's length transactions with just regular brokerage and, and now we're working on a third location for Michael Carr and associates all using the brand base principles.
I'm thrilled to have you guys on here. Thank you for taking the time. I know I've I've had the privilege to do this once. So excited to do it again. Let's jump into kind of what the audience is here for, which is to really get clear on branding. We've promised them kind of six critical categories for the becoming like a branding expert. And so let's just jump right into that. Tonya, I'm going to have you kind of lead us point number one is differentiation. Would you talk to us about why differentiation is important and what people need to do to differentiate
You got it. So we developed a program called Brand Face score. So if you don't really know whether you've got a super strong well defined or developed personal brand, you'll go to Band Face score.com and that'll take you through a certain system so you can find out whether your brand is strong. When we look at whether a brand is well developed and defined, so that it can help you stand out we look at six different major categories and differentiation is the first one of those and that means is it immediately apparent what sets you apart you know what makes you different. As we might have talked about the last time we were on your show, Justin, it's better is subjective, different is inarguable, and so you never really want to say I'm better at this time. I'm better at that, because that's all subjective, right? You want to express how you're different from everybody else in your arena. And that is exactly what that differentiation means. What sets you apart?
That's powerful. You right? I don't know if it was you guys that coined this, but but the sea of sameness was that you that
It was actually yeah, it was in that and that is that was something that just kept coming up. And we came up with the term one day, but it just kept coming up to us because all the agents that were coming to us and were telling us, everybody starts to look the same. The business cars, the websites, everything looks the same is like oh, well yeah, because that's now we've created this sea of sameness and now we've got to break out of that sea of sameness.
And hey I gotta add this and I can't help but add it in. There's there's major brokerages national worldwide brokerages that are making that sea of sameness worse, they're they're touting their brand, and now the individual agents are going away. So there's been been a shift in the disruptors to even make the sea of sameness worse.
That's a great point, Michael. You know, it's interesting. I see kind of the best brokerages out there ones that are more platforms, you see some that really try and dominate the brand and be all over the like be the brand. I think there's there's value for the brokers. But my question is, is there value for the agent? Right? Maybe it's a question. Because to the consumer, it's, I can't tell why you're different than that that person pretty soon you start to wonder what the differences between thatagent and some of these discount brokers and tech platforms that are coming in offering to do with a lower cost. So I think it's pretty powerful to have that viewpoint number one, so let's go ahead and move on, man. So point number two.
Yeah. Number two is your message, right? So you want to be sure that your message is more than just on the surface, right? You want your message and how you are different to that particular ideal client to be equal across all of your platforms, right and it needs to dig a little bit deeper. They need to know why you're better for them in all of your messaging. So number two is very important once you differentiate now you got to get that message out there clearly and deeper than just, you know, a picture on a sign.
I can see why two follows one right in this scenario is that they'll never care that you're better unless they really identify that you're different, right? Different almost makes them say, Okay, I need to listen then, this is this is apples to oranges. What makes an orange and orange right what point you can really delve into what's the value proposition? what's what's, why is being different better for them am I understandin g that right? 
That's exactly right. Because that message will tell what stand for what your niche is, what your expertise is. And we all have it. Even if you've just started in real estate, you got a point of differentiation and you've got a message of your entire experience and life experiences led you to that point. And there were people out there seeking to work with that particular message and in that's where you start. You stop going out there and screaming and you start attracting.
That's great stuff you guys. Let's move on to ideal customers. I think this is a key one right? Everyone tries to be kind of to serve everybody right to not want to lose any money right? You don't want to say no to people you don't want to turn people down for fear that that might be a great a great commission opportunity or a great you ...