So, the big question is this, how do aspiring real estate investors like us escape from the rat race and build real wealth and freedom without access to millions of dollars in investment capital and start to live the life that we know we deserve? This is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Zack Childress and welcome to Real Estate Investing Talk Show.

Hey, it’s Zach Childress. Welcome back to another Real Estate Investing Talk Show. I’m excited to have you on Week Four. If you’ve been following this podcast series, you know that we’re in a 24-week challenge right now and that is because I’m challenging you, the viewers and the listeners, to dig deeper into your business because you can hashtag this. The choice is yours, right? The choice is yours and that’s what you need to understand. No one’s going to give you anything. No one’s going to tell you did a good job. Only you need to be aware of that and only you need to have the self-awareness to know that the choice is yours.

Whether you stay in the same situation you’re in or you make a difference in your life, your family, and your future by making choices that are going to matter, which is why you’re here today, which I love that you’re here today. You’re here listening to me on the podcast or on the blog talk radio or any of the other streams out there, or you’re on my Facebook feed. I encourage you to go to www.reisuccessacademy.com/facebook and like our page over there, that’s reisuccessacademy.com/Facebook. Join our Facebook family. We have a great community there. We have people that have been with us for over a year and they keep coming back for a reason. They get value. Value, right? Think about that. What is value? Value is something that you perceive that gives you more than you’ve already got, right? It’s something that allows you to grow. It’s something that gives you the extra edge in the market that’s value, right? That’s value added to you. Hence why we do the show. No one else wants to do this. Why? Because they don’t love you guys like I do.

They don’t love you like I do. I want you to succeed. Here’s what I know. I’m going to help more people this year than I did last year. I know that I have a drive to do that. I got a passion to do that and I promise you, if you know me at all, I set goals. I’m not going to let them get by. I’m going to reach my goals and you’re part of that. I want you to succeed. I want you to win. I want you to get the right information to grow your business. And part of that is why I have unfolded the 24-week challenge – to help you grow your business. So, you need to get a clean sheet of paper out so we can go through this. There’s so many people out there in business that don’t understand branding, which brings us to our training today, which is branding.

How do we brand our business? How do we create a brand for a business? How do we become the go-to person? You know, there’s lots of ways to do it and we’re going to talk about that – from just the multiple methods to videoing, to article submission, to really getting out there and getting people to recognize your brand. But brands always start with one thing in mind. What is your identity, right? What is your identity? When I say what’s the first thing you need to think about when it comes to branding. It is always going to be logo driven. Its always logo driven, okay? The logo might have influence from the message, but the logo is literally the first thing that we think about when we brand, right? Like, what am I branding?

And here’s why I tell you a logo, because if I wrote down my message, like our core value, here’s our 5F lifestyle. If I just put 5F lifestyle on everything that we did, people would be like, well, what’s the 5F lifestyle? So therefore, I’ve got to explain that. So therefore, it leaves them in a little bit of a confused state. But if I create a logo, when people see the logo, they start to identify it with what I’m doing until I can get my message out there enough to then start putting out a brand around my tag lines, like the 5F lifestyle, like the dig deeper, like the choice is yours, right? Those are part of the brand extension, okay? The brand always starts with a logo, right? Because here’s why. People will always remember an image faster and longer than they’ll ever remember text. It’s just the way we’re driven.

I’ll give you an example. So, in my real estate company, the logo is the first thing you know. Obviously, we created the name and then we created the logo. But the logo was driven around the brand and it was me and a partner at the time when I thought of my company, landmark investments, “I thought, man, landmark, right? Like big buildings, like I wanted to have like these skyscrapers, these high rises.” Well my partner thought landmark as like Niagara Falls, the pyramids, you know, like landmarks, right? Definitely on two sides of our brains there where we. So, we couldn’t really come up with a conclusion, so I hired a graphic designer $1,200 later. I ended up with a pyramid with a building in the middle of it.

It’s a great logo. I was very happy with it, but what she did was she built the building in the middle and then built a pyramid on the outside of the building. Now here’s the irony of that. That brand is what created landmark in the California market. When I first started out, we used it on everything and I’m going to get into that in a minute. It got to the point where I would show up at a REIA and I would hand someone my business card and they would say to me, “Oh, I’ve seen this logo somewhere, right?” Not My name. They didn’t say, “oh, I seen landmark event.” No, they said, I seen the logo. That’s when you know that you’ve started a brand of momentum. It starts with the imagery first. So, think about that. Yeah, it’s the logo. You remember the logo.

So, think of that when you start to initiate a brand and what am I going to do with a brand. Start thinking about what am I going to create to make me different than others, right? Like what? Like our logo, all my vest here, right? REI Success Academy. That’s our logo. It goes on everything. It starts with that first and always keep that in mind. So, branding is very powerful. It will absolutely help you to differentiate yourself from somebody who calls themselves XYZ property investments. Well, who is XYZ? There’s nothing on there. I will never remember that, right?

I’ll give you a great one. A guy years ago gave me his business card and I’ll never forget this. It was called Home Rescues. I think it was out of Orlando, Florida, I think it was like home rescues, home rescue buyer or something like that. But see there again, I don’t remember the name off hand, but I remember his logo and it was a house that had a little thermostat. A thermometer sticking out of its mouth and it had a life preserver around it. But do you remember that home rescue, right? The house was sick and it had a life preserver around it and it was holding onto the life preserver. That brand, that image stands out more than anything.

I’ll give you another example. What’s the big one around here? Home vestors. What do you know of Home Vestors? The little cave man, right? The caveman and the Home Vestor, the green and yellow house. They branded that, right? Those are the types of things that I’m talking about. It’s imagery. Branding starts with imagery. Create the image. People will understand and they will be able to remember the brand from their brand.

Recognition is always that they are guaranteed. There’s nothing we don’t do. For instance, look at the screen right now with me in jail. Go back to the split screen. What do you notice behind us? The logo, right? It’s always in what we do. It’s the branding of who we are. It’s the branding of what we do. It’s always everywhere. It’s on all these stuffs, so it’s part of that. My real estate company, it’s the same way. It’s branding, it’s branding the messaging. So, then you have to really follow your message. What’s the message of the company? For our education company, the message is the 5F lifestyle – faith, family, freedom, fitness and fellowship. That’s our message in my landmark company. It’s always been the message to serve our community, to help those who can’t help themselves and to be able to produce a product into the market that is of high quality and have standards. That’s a message to my community.

What is landmark? Landmark is a company that provides a solution to the market by helping those who can’t help themselves, which is what we do a lot of times, right? With our rent to owns and our lease options and our takeover payments, and to provide a product into the market of high standards and quality. That is in our rehab business. We want to put a product out that is better than others, so there’s a message that has to be created behind you. It’s like your mission statement. What’s the purpose of your business? What are you trying to offer the community? What are you trying to give as a service or a product or what are you trying to do? That’s the messaging.

So where does it start? Let’s write some on the board here. It starts with what? Jail logo. It starts with logo, which really logo is all about what? Imaging, right? Images. Number two is what? Your message. The message, right? Number three is what? Consistency. Consistency of the message, okay? That’s what it boils down to. Logo, message, consistency.

Now let’s talk about consistency. So how do we stay consistent with our message and our branding? We do that through the distribution of our marketing. Number one thing is business cards. So many people do business cards wrong. Its horrible how people do business cards. I want to grab them and throw them in the trashcan. Most of the time, if you’ve ever been to my event, you know how I feel about business cards. Business cards can make you a million dollars. Here’s the point. You want to make your business card so powerful and so full of impact that people will remember you no matter what. That’s the only way that you’re going to scale your business to the point that you don’t need business cards anymore.

See, you want to get to the point of branding that you don’t need business cards anymore, that people just know who you are. They see you, they know your company, they know who you are. That is when you reached a different level of marketing. I mean, I get that all the time. “Can get your business card? Man, I haven’t carried a business card in 8 years, 6 years, something like that.” But I give you all a copy of my business card that I used when I was out branding my investment company and growing my investment coming. It’s inside the 30-day fast track. If you guys have that, business cards are important.

One of the things that you need to understand is the business card is your brand. It’s your brand, it’s your message all in one little piece of paper, okay? You need to get clear on how you create. You should never have the back of the card blank. You should never have the front of the card with too much information. The front of the card needs your logo, it needs your company name, and it needs to know how they can contact you on the back of the card. You need to describe all the things you do. What services do you provide to the market? How can you help sellers? What are you doing for private investors? You need to have all that on the back of the card, okay? That is why it’s important to understand the power of a business card.

People will say to me, “oh, but I leave the back of mine blank so I can write on it or so they can write on.” Let me tell you something. If you want to write on my card, I’m going to take it away from you because here’s what it says to me. If I hand you a business card and you flip it over and write on it, then I did a piss poor job of explaining what I do and how to get hold of me in that card to the point that you had to damage it and write all over it. That’s how I look at it.

So, when you’re in the mindset that I leave it blank so people can write on it, then what you’re really saying to yourself is, “I haven’t told them everything that I can do for them, so I need them to fill in the blanks.” People won’t do it. You’ve left a person who’s not willing to write on your card to walk away from you with questions.

Well, and here’s, here’s the test. If you handed me your business card today at a social event because I didn’t really know you and I just met you and you handed me your business card, six months from now when I pulled it out of that drawer with 300 other business cards, are you, a.) going to stand out and; b.) can I tell what you do and how you do it from picking that card to not remembering you at all? That’s the test you got to ask yourself and let me say this and this is going to hurt some of your feelings.

No one cares about what you want your name to be. I get so many people that say, “oh, the name of my company is JR942 Investments. Well, what in the world is JR942? “Oh, well that’s the initials of my kids and my age.” Who cares? Like you need a name, your company based on something that is going to motivate somebody else to know what you do. Like home remedy buyer, right? Orlando house buyer, landmark property investments, landmark property solutions, you know, is a key word and investments, right? Because you provide solutions to people. Stop telling everybody on your business card that you’re an investor and that you’re an owner. No one cares. If anything, that is going to hurt you more than it’s going to do you good.

Your name should be Zach Childress Property Specialists. You can look at any business card that I’ve ever owned and not one of them have I ever wrote I own the company or I was an investor, not one of them. Why? Because I’m not ego driven. I don’t need people to know I own it. I just need to make money from the business. That’s all. And the less people know I own it, the less they think they’re negotiating with the final decision maker. Does that make sense? The other side is when I write investor on there and I started giving it out to homeowners, they might perceive me as a big bad investor and it might put a wall up between me and the. But when I acknowledge I’m a property specialist, then that means that I specialize in properties and I can provide a solution if they’re willing to listen to me.

You gotta, think about this. Stop thinking about what you think and start thinking about what the prospect might want to think about. Branding and it’s a message have more to do than you just make a pretty flyer with your picture on it, okay? The other side of it is blogs. Now, some of you say, well, I’m not a very good writer. Well, it doesn’t matter. Shoot videos. But having a blog creates a brand. It creates message. It helps you get into the search engines.

For instance, if I was starting over again and let’s say I was in,] San Antonio, Texas, I would become the Sanantoniorealestateexpert.com blog site. That’s what I would put out there. And you know what I would do on that blog site? I would write about the information that I find about my market. I would write about what the foreclosure rate is in the market. I would write about the deals I was doing. I would write about a closing. I would write about going to a REIA and talking to a property management company there. I would just write about what I’m finding or I would make a video about it and put it out there. That creates power for you. It gives you leverage, it creates a brand for you and the market that you’re in.

The other thing you need to be thinking about is branding yourself with other real estate professionals. Now, how do you do that? Credit repair people, mortgage people, agents. You need to start providing them with consistent information about your business. You need to be sending them information about, you know, maybe a once a month email campaign that has your logo and your company information, what you’re looking for, how you buy. You need to be doing that. Not only is it shaking the market for deals, but it’s consistency in your message with your logo. Makes sense now, right?

It’s consistency with your message and your logo and the market place, and that’s something that you need to embrace with the professionals. The other side of it is social media. you need to be on social media. You need to be creating a social media presence. You need to have a San Antonio Real Estate Expert Facebook page. You need to have a San Antonio Home Buyer Network Facebook page. You need to have a Birmingham Property Solutions Company, Facebook fan page, a YouTube channel. You need to build that out. That’s how you create a brand overnight, create that message. Get people to see it, get people to be aware of it, okay? You need to create those branding aspects of it.

So, the other way to create a massive brand in the market is videos. You need to be into video marketing. Video marketing goes back to imagery, right? People will remember videos more than they’ll ever remember a text message. Create videos. You might say to yourself, “Zack, but I’m horrible in front of a camera.” Okay, go stand in front of a house and just talk about the house. Go stand in front of a title company and talk about you want to buy houses. You don’t have to be as exciting as I am. You don’t have to be as charismatic as I am. You just gotta do it.

Listen, if you guys could see some of the videos I made 16 years ago, you would laugh. Laugh. I mean you will laugh. Nobody will ever see those again. The point is, I just needed to get it out there. I needed to get it out there. I needed to talk. I needed to communicate with my community. I needed to have video marketing going on. That’s branding guys. That is branding. Video marketing has created such a massive traffic source and exposure for people starting any business out there, okay?

The other one that I think is big for branding and a lot of you probably aren’t even in the know how for this. You should get into it. This helped a friend of mine get on the national news in Arizona because all he did was do article submissions. Article submissions about how he was a house buyer in that market and how he was helping people get out of bad situations and how he was producing more valuable properties out there for less price.

He was writing articles. Now if you say to me, “I don’t really know how to write articles,” well you need to hire services that can do it for you. I’ll give you an idea. You could go to like, Guru.com. You could go to Upwork.com and you could hire an article writer. You could even go to Fiverr.com. You could go to one of those sites and hire someone to write articles for you. You can say, look, I want an article every week. I want a 300-word article every single week about my company and real estate. And you might tell them, start the article off with the state of the real estate market this week, and you give some facts about the real estate market and then how you’re helping that real estate market by what you do and how you provide service.

Once you have those articles, you simply have them go load them to sites like Digg.com, Reddit.com, Squidoo.com. These are article submission sites that basically take your articles and then they put them out there for you, okay? This is where you start to get the buzz. People start looking it up. Any news reporter that’s trying to find information on the real estate market is going to go to sites like this and look up stuff. They see your article, they read it, they call you up and they say, “hey, Mr. Childress, can I interview you about what you’re doing in the market?” Now you’re on national news. That branding, guys, that’s a ninja trick that I just laid out for you and some of you are going to do it and most of you won’t and that’s on you, not me. So that’s on you, not me.

So that’s what I got to tell you today. So, listen, for all my podcasters for all radio listeners, for all the other stuff out there. If you’re not on any one of those two, you’ll really need to join my Facebook page. You know why? Because I’m on it twice a week over there. I’m answering their questions. I’m helping them grow their business. Even though I know you get value out of this, I want you to join my Facebook page, Rei success academy.com/Facebook. So, listen, until next week. This is Zack Childress. I’ll see you.

You’ve been listening to the Real Estate Investing Talk Show. I’m Zack Childress and I’m on a mission to create 10,000 real estate bosses over the next year. Will you be one of them? Head over to my website, Rei successacademy.com/labclass and register for my free web class will you’ll discover how to escape from the nine to five grind and become your own boss in real estate. See you there.