The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – BrandFace for Entrepreneurs UPDATED: Be the Face of Your Business & a Star in Your Industry by Tonya Eberhart, Michael Carr

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

BrandFace for Entrepreneurs UPDATED: Be the Face of Your Business & a Star in Your Industry by Tonya Eberhart, Michael Carr Brandfacestar.com People don’t do business with a logo. They do business with a person.Marketing yourself as an entrepreneur and the face of your business has become more complex. New marketing tools and platforms are being introduced almost daily. In order to break through the clutter and noise, you must define your point of differentiation and learn to develop and display your unique personal brand in a powerful, memorable way. When that happens, you’ll not only stand out among your competitors, you’ll attract ideal customers and make your marketing work for you in ways you’ve never dreamed possible.In this book, you’ll learn many of the principles and tactics we’ve used to position and market our clients for success, such as: • How to Become a Recognized Authority in Your Industry…even if no one knows who you are right now • How to Develop an Attractor Factor That Naturally Appeals to Your Ideal Customers…so you can work smarter, not harder • How to Stop the Cycle of Poor Prospecting and Become a Sought After Expert…without the arrogance that can turn prospects away • How to Use Today’s Marketing Tools Differently…and avoid the same vanilla marketing tactics your competitors are using • How to Set Yourself Up for Long Term Success…regardless of the ups and downs of your industry About the Co-Author:BrandFace for Entrepreneurs is the fourth book in the BrandFace series and is co-authored by Michael Carr, entrepreneur and America’s Top Selling Real Estate Auctioneer. Michael has been licensed in as many as 31 states in the continental U.S. as both a real estate broker and an auctioneer. He has been actively involved in the sale of over 78,000 homes and has conducted over 8,300 auctions in the last 27 years. This book includes Michael’s experiences and advice as the face of his own brand.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast who knew we'd do it again we've been doing it for so long i i don't even remember i think it's episode 5 million or actually it's more about a thousand anyway guys so be sure to

go to youtube.com for chest chris fuss hit that bell notification button so you can see all the wonderful things we're doing over there go send it for our new linkedin newsletter we got access that what two weeks ago and it's just killing it grows like i don't know 100 a day and it's a what is it about 35500 now or something? It goes out to everyone's email and tells everybody what we're doing on LinkedIn, which is, I don't know. It works for some reason. Anyway, guys, go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. See where everything we're reading and reviewing.

Go to all the other groups we have on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Today we have two amazing guests that are with us today. They are here on their book that you can find on Amazon or where fine books are sold. And the book is titled Brand Face for Entrepreneurs. Be the face of your business and star in your industry. Came out in Paperback December 11, 2018. It's by Tanya Eberhardt and Michael Carr. They join us today.

Welcome to the show, guys. How are you? Thank you so much. We're doing great. We're doing fantastic. Fantastic. Over here, Chris. Oh, there you go. There you go. Give us your plugs. People can find you on the interwebs and get to know more about you guys. All right. You got it. All right. So I am the founder of Brandface and it actually started when I sold vacuum cleaners to Dora to pay my way through college. And I realized I needed a good story. I needed to personally brand myself because I can't just walk in and ask for somebody's

wallet and leave behind a vacuum cleaner. So I understood and got my first taste of personal branding back then. And then I did that for three years, paying my way through school and then was discovered by somebody in the radio industry, asked to apply for a sales position. And I did that. I stayed in radio for the next 18 years. And during that time, that's when I realized the effect that personal branding can actually have on a business. Because I saw these business owners come in and out of the station and at networking events, and they were like rock stars. And they all had one thing in common. They were the face and voice of their own business. And so that became a common thread

for me for the next 23 years of taking my clients into a studio, helping them become the best voice and face of their business. And then finally, in 2013, wrote the first book in the series called Brand Face. It was for business owners. And then around that time is when I met this gentleman, and I'll let him pick it up from there. Michael. I was an auctioneer by trade. I had a chance to be an engineer when I came out of high school, and I did not want to be an engineer. I wanted to be an auctioneer. And my mom cried, said I'd never make a dollar and feed the family. It'll be all right, mom, trust me. And I specialized in cars and the guy that taught me the business in Georgia, I was born and raised here in North Atlanta. He said, get your real estate license. You might be able to make a little extra money on the side, sell on a farm sale, something like that.

And that's really what I did in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee for several years. 2000, I opened up my own brokerage, but I still just did it to have autonomy. I did not. I still buy my own rental portfolio and helping family members and friends do a transaction every now and then. I really didn't push the issue. But in 2006, on the cusp of the mortgage debacle, we saw that coming. I brokered a deal in Georgia for a company and it went really well. We had 300 houses. We sold 296 of them. And I said, we need to do this again. They agreed. We partnered together and went after

the Bear Stearns residential portfolio. We got most of it. And I ended up with an office in Irvine, California, an office in Seattle, Washington, an office here in Atlanta. I ended up licensed in 31 states as an auctioneer and a broker, and then probably personally handled about 70,000 residential transactions during that time period. But auctioneers are always working themselves out of a job. And we did that. And thank goodness, because I had a portfolio back here in Atlanta. I needed to come back to market value. And I came out twiddling my thumbs wondering what I'm going to do now.

I bought a piece of property, met a lady that said, look, you ought to open up a brokerage here in this little bitty town north of Atlanta. There's no competition here. And she said, help me. I'll do it. And then she did. We opened up the brokerage. And then she came to me and said, your marketing stinks. You won't have a brand.

You won't have anything. You need to meet my needs. And so I met Tanya at that time and hired Tanya's turnkey company at the time to help me establish the company and begin to get ourselves out there. And little did I know she had written a book about Brandface and she guinea pigged me in the real estate industry. She had worked with so many other entrepreneurs. I think I was the first real estate brand face. And I tell everybody from there that the secret to my success is just doing what she tells me.

And I've been doing that now for eight years. She really transformed our brokerage, talked me about personal branding and the things we'll talk about today and the importance of being the face of your brand and how that exponentially grows companies. That's awesome, man. That's quite a journey you guys have taken and done there.

Yes. So what was the proponent or motivation behind writing the book, Brand Face for Entrepreneurs? Okay, so a couple of things. First of all, that was what I had been doing. And at the time, I had a a small agency and we ended up doing, as a lot of agencies do, especially after the big mortgage debacle, you took business as you could get it. You couldn't be picky because business was not easy to get. So at the end of

that timeframe, I realized, shoot, we could do anything. I realized that anybody that walked through the doors of our office, I could help anybody with anything. And that was a kiss of death because there's nothing different or special about you at that point when you try to serve everybody. But we had just worked ourselves into that. So I had a talk with myself and I said, OK, what is it you really are passionate about? What is it you really love to do? And that's when I realized I love helping people put their personal story out there to showcase what it is about them that is special and why people should do business with them. So getting that personal story to inject and be part of the business. And so that's when I figured that brand face would be a good name for

the business, a good name for the book. And that was the journey toward where we are today. The other thing is more personal. Actually, I grew up surrounded by a lot of alcoholism and addiction in my family, both sides. And it was just rampant. And fortunately, I did not get affected myself. But you see it and you see what goes wrong a lot of times. And I noticed at that time that really the only difference between some young person sitting on a stoop waiting for the next drug deal and some young person going off to college with a hopeful future is really about one thing.

It's about self-worth. It's about understanding what makes them special and unique and that there's a place for them in this world that's a hopeful place. And so that to me was the personal motivation behind the company and what we do. And we like to say, we don't make stars, we unveil them. Ah, I love that saying. That's a great shirt. That's a shirt saying, right? Thank you. So let's talk about the book. Give us an overall arcing of the book so people can get kind of a feel for it, and then we'll get into some of the details. Yeah.

So the book, I helped her write the second book in the series, which was a play on her original book. And the book really deals with the importance of personal branding. We say that people don't do business with a logo. They do business with a person. And I found that to be the case in my life. I've been being a senior vice president of a major corporation that dealt with so many residential properties and dealt with companies on the Wall Street level. I find that even be the case on B2B.

People do business with other people they trust, people they know, people they know can follow through with what they say. It's definitely important on the street level, right? So any forward-facing business is very important that people know the why. Why do you do what you do? So the book really deals with, number one, the concept of that and personal brands, and then how to do it. The 3D freedom formula that we coined is define, develop and display and how important that is to start breaking it down. But we start with the why do you do what you do? What led you through this journey to get to where you are right now? That is important that you let your customer on the other side of that phone or the other side of the street know who it is they're doing business with.

And what were those three items again? Design, display? Define, develop, and display. So tell us a little bit more about what each of those mean, please. Absolutely. All right. So in the define phase, when we're working with a client, we look at really a couple of different things. Number one, who are your ideal customers? We all like to say pretty much anybody that fogs a mirror, right? But at the end of the day, if you're going to be known for something, it's not going to be known for serving everyone. It's going to be known for our specific niche. So we look at that because when you go to market yourself,

that's where you spend your money, time, and effort. And so in that marketing, the very first thing you need to know is who am I talking to? Specifically, who am I talking to? Because if you don't know that, you don't know two things. Number one, you don't know where to market, on what platforms, and you don't know what to put in your marketing, what to say. So we start there. Then we take a look at the individual. What is it that's unique or different? Every human being doesn't have just one thing that's different about them.

We have multiple points of differentiation. So we look at those and say, okay, what one or blend of a few of these can we start? Can we build your brand on? But those also have to be important and unique to your ideal customer. So it's like this formula. You can't just say, I'm different for this. And this is what I'm going to build my brand upon. If it's not important to your customer. So those two things have to come together. And then finally, in that phase, we come up with what we call a brand identifier, which is like a slogan or a tagline that kind of positions you. And here's the reason we do this. Think of your brand like a book because your brand is your story.

But you can't possibly fit the entire contents of your story on the cover. It won't fit and nobody would read it if it did. So what we do is we create the 75 mile an hour view of this is my slogan or tagline or brand identifier. This is what I'm known for, which is designed to entice the people you're trying to attract to at least crack open the book. So it's like a door opener. And so those are the things we take care of in the define phase. That's awesome because a lot of people don't realize you only have sometimes seconds with these generations now that you've got Instagram notifications coming and you've got just seconds to capture their interests. Exactly. That's so important.

And especially post-COVID, like we ushered in a whole world of people. We've been using Zoom platforms and stuff like that for years now, eight years. But a lot of people happened and then all of a sudden they found where they needed to. And we see this huge growth in that type of a platform. When you have defined your brand clearly and you know where you're targeting and the people you're talking to, they are the ones that are looking us up online. They're looking us up on social media. They're looking us up on our websites and things like that, trying to find out if they even want to do business with us. That define section has been super important. The timing is absolutely perfect

for it because everybody's looking everybody up before they get to them to see if that's even somebody that fits who they are their acumen if it's a part if they can get along with them what makes them tick that define phase is very important and I don't think people in business put enough thought process into that at first you know many times they think that their brand is just I have to spend a lot of money for the brand that's not necessarily the case you need to define it. And then you sort of know where to go. I'm looking at your guys' website.

I like the slogan you guys have on here. People don't do business with the logo. They do business with a person. So many people don't realize that. And I was laughing a little bit earlier when you mentioned people have to know who they're talking to. I was thinking of some of the messages I've gotten recently on LinkedIn and Facebook where people are like, hey, buy our stuff. And I'm like, dude, you haven't even qualified me, warmed me up on the first date. And it's really funny.

Like I had somebody friend me on Facebook two nights ago and I was like, I don't know why they're friending me, but they were friends with some friends. And they just go right to something about my business. And that was like their first question. I'm like, my business is private, man. It's proprietary. It's none of your business. And I was like, he just went from, hey, Chris, it's good to be your friend. Boom, closed.

And I was like, I don't even know what. He wouldn't even tell me what he was selling at first. He was just asking me, like, do you want to buy this? And I was like, what the hell? I don't even know who you are hell i don't even know who you are i don't know who you are i don't know what you're doing maybe you could shake my hand before right because i come from an old world of sales where it's all about people buy you and that's really the thing so i love you guys this is a quote you have on your website yeah thank you sir yeah yeah

it's pretty brilliant so a lot of companies companies, they don't really get online. And I thought most people had gotten with the program of having a business online. But when coronavirus hit, a lot of people didn't have websites, a lot of restaurants didn't have websites or social media accounts. They got caught with their pants down because a lot of them had to move to online ordering. And I'm like, holy crap, you guys haven't gotten this mastery? Tell us a little bit about why that's important. And who knows what the next pandemic is going to lock us down. They might need some websites done right.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's for sure. It's hugely important because, as Michael said, the vast majority of people, that's where they're first introduced to you. And it could be something as simple as, like, you're on a Zoom call and there's eight other people on it. And all you're these either a little thumbnail with just their name on it or you see a little video of them. If your brand is defined, developed and displayed properly, you're going to have an image that shows a photo of you, some of your branding elements, maybe your brand identifier. And it's going to be at a glance.

They're going to see you. And imagine just in that five, 10 seconds, wow, that looks interesting. Let me learn more about this person, even if they've never met you before and you just happen to be on the same Zoom call together. So that's just one aspect of how powerful it is and how important it is to be online, period. Websites and social media, you can't not do that today. You just can't not.

And I'll tell you another thing that I really believe in is there are a lot of people who, when you ask their website, they'll send you to their Facebook page, right? Please Lord, people don't do that. Okay. And here's the reason why, because what if Facebook goes away tomorrow, right? And not only that, if you go to a website and you can clearly go from page to page, see everything that you want to see, click on, okay, who's the team? What's their mission? What services do they have? Where are they?

What are their reviews? And you can clearly click on those things on a website. Whereas on Facebook, you have to scroll and scroll. And it's not categorized and organized like that. Plus it's not as professional. I do have to say it's social media, right? Doesn't mean, yeah. Doesn't mean you don't present yourself professionally on social media, but you don't let that become your entire professional presence. That should not be your business hub. Yeah. By no means. Yeah. And you, I don't know how you guys feel, but I always tell people you've got to go to where all your clients are.

And the thing I learned being a social media rock star was you've got to be everywhere. And I'm trying to find this survey that I did on LinkedIn where I asked people if they use their YouTube account, if they have a YouTube business account, and if they use it. Because a lot of people have it. Oh, here it is. And I asked people on LinkedIn, does your brand company have a YouTube account? Do you really post videos to promote your company?

And literally, the winning category was 67 for two-thirds of the vote. I feel like I'm announcing elections here. Have a YouTube but rarely post. So a lot of brands had YouTube accounts. Two-thirds of the people responded had youtube accounts and rarely post they're not even using every social media dispose uh platform at their disposal how important is that to know where your customers are and customers are a little everywhere to me they just have preferred silos they like to go if i could let me back up just a little bit

first let's talk just a second about how important development is. And I want to answer your question to it. When we go into the D, the second day, when we go into development, this is where your imaging and stuff begins to be very important. OK, you're you're like I'm in the real estate business. And so our bios tend to be in the industry. Sold so many houses. Nobody personally sold more houses than me, but that's not really important to my clients now. What does that matter to them? They're

interested in their house. So my bio has got to be about how my experience level is important to them. It's not a braggadocious point on what I've been able to accomplish or been in positions to do. And so we teach our people that, like, okay, to speak to your question, you've got to go where your clients are. We know clients are looking this up online. So we've got to have that online presence correct. And we've got to have that developed out after we've defined that personal brand and what that point of differentiation, that leader is going to be. And then once you do that and you develop it out, it's very important to put those elements in there like background images, the proper colors. And then these things need to be very consistent on those platforms you're talking about.

And you've got to be everywhere because people register in our minds different things. Like take, for instance, your background there with the blue and your name and stuff like that. Oh, how'd they get here? I could see that from a distance now. And no, I was crystal because my mind is registered that behind you. And we put enough emphasis on the fact that subconsciously we pick up on those elements. And we already know from marketing, it didn't come from us. In fact, I think it was in the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing that people have to see us 7, 11, 21 times before our brand really starts to register to people. You have to

show up seven times to somebody before they begin to remember who you are. You have to show up 11 times where they associate your name to what you do. You have to show up about 21 times before they start doing with you. And so to your question, pull that back and we can dig a little deeper even to pull that back. You got to be everywhere because you don't know they might be YouTube users, right? Now you got TikTok out there. Everybody that wasn't YouTubers now a TikToker and there's going to be another one, right? Facebook didn't invent anything. They stole it. And then other people have been copying it ever since. There's going to be another social media

and another social media and another social media. And you've got to show up in those places. But here's what happens when you do. When you show up consistently like that, they're on a YouTube video or whatnot. Then all of a sudden you pop up and they may or may not register the fact that they just saw one of your podcasts

or they don't know that. Now they're like, what is this? And they go to your website and they see that a website and a bio explains to them why your experience level is important to you. Then you're beginning to get those impressions that are so necessary to your clients calling you to do business with you. Most definitely. We had my friend, Cara Golden, who wrote the book Undaunted. She's the CEO of Hintwater, if you're familiar with Hintwater. And she's just an amazing CEO.

And when she was on the show, I found out she wasn't on TikTok yet. And I said, you need to go on there. That's perfect for your brand. She goes, I don't know, man. Those young kids, the newest thing. And I'm like, no. And so we did a search. I think we were on air at the time. And we did a search. And I'm like, there's people talking about your brand here. And she's like, really? I'm like, yeah, you guys have a hashtag going. There's people taking pictures with your brand. They got the Hint Water.

And she's like, are you? Okay. And I'm like, no, you need to be over here. There's people talking about it. And a lot of people don't realize. There's like, I've had that where, you know, if there's a product I fall in love with a certain brand of coffee or something, and I'll be tagging the brand. I'm like, I do these guys even listen. And then a lot of times the brands, if they're smart and their media is monitoring and they'll come on and they'll be,

Hey, thanks for buying our coffee or thanks for doing this or whatever. And it's been really good for customer service. A lot of people, like you guys said earlier, they don't realize that people kind of credit check them online. Look for a nice restaurant, even on Yelp. I'll still go check out their website. And there's something about, there's something about the qualification of it.

I remember seeing the success of the best McDonald's in America. And they asked the guy, what's the key to being the most successful McDonald's in America? He goes, clean bathroom. People are like, what? And he's, if you have a clean bathroom, it speaks to what the rest of the thing people do. It makes them want to go back. If they see the bathroom's clean, likely their food's going to be clean and healthy or at least good.

Let's put it that way for McDonald's. But it's those things that people used to qualify that people don't realize. I would agree with that a thousand percent. In fact, I do that. I only stop at McDonald's to go to the restaurant. That's so true. That is so true. It'll be clean.

You don't go to a truck stop bathroom, right? I did much better. I grew up in the car business. My dad was a car dealer and was a pioneer in the buy-your-pay-your business back in the day. And our area, Lawrenceville, Georgia, back then. And of course, I grew up with that free labor, right? I was his free labor. And so, you know, I remember those July days, 107 degrees, and I'm in there, you know, cleaning windows and stuff. And dad was always pounding the table, clean the door jams, clean the door jams. And I'm like, why do I got to clean the door jams? I'm on a dark car. And he's like, people don't realize they notice those things.

Yeah. And he's so right because you clean the door. How many, what's the last time you opened a door at a car and look down at the door jams? You might notice it every now and then, but for the most part, we don't. But the mind does. We pick up on those little nuances like that. And we may need a whole paint job, but if that door jam is clean and you might not ever register that it, but that whole car will look cleaner to you because of that. So it is very important that we do that. It's those nuances. There was a little chicken place. It's a little family startup that's in my place. They make the best chicken family startup that's in my place. They make the best chicken I've ever had in my life.

I haven't been to the South, but I've been to Roscoe's. Does that count? Yeah, Roscoe's is dope. Man, they put crack in seasoning the chicken. The first time somebody told me, yeah, they got waffles and fried chicken, I'm like, ew. It sounds like you're mixing a meal. You're mixing breakfast and dinner. That shouldn't be legal. But then I went to Roscoe's, but they have a little

shop up here. And one of my problems was I kept calling them to, sometimes I get out of the gym, I want some chicken after arm day. And I had like half an hour, so I would barely be arriving there and not have time to order. And so I'm like trying to call them and their number was disconnected. And I'm like, what the hell? And so they lost business several times before you, before finally I got someone to respond on Instagram. And I'm like, what are you doing? They're like, oh, we're trying to, we're switching to a, I don't know, a call and order setup. I'm like, dude, you got to have a phone number customers can call. You guys are crazy. And then the other thing is they when they wash their

trays they have these trays they give you and it's really the greatest chicken otherwise i wouldn't care but they the trays they somehow they're always wet on the bottom like they dry the top but they don't dry the bottom and they stack them so when they hand them to you they're nasty they're all like all wet underneath and then so finally i i said to him i said guys this this really makes me wonder when you get this and your shop is always empty and i'm pretty sure it's because people are really tripped out by your trays oh they're enough for us every single time and it's those little nuances like you say um you talk in the book about how to develop an attractor factor tell us a little bit about that. Sure, sure. So first of all, it all starts with knowing who you're trying to attract.

And then you've got to look at what things are important to that person and articulating those things about you that fit that profile. So for instance, we do a lot of work in brand messaging and brand messaging is there are things like your elevator pitch, which to us is one sentence. It's not a 30 second soliloquy. It's one sentence. And then we do something called signature sound bites, which are about five or six bullet points that serve as highlights of your brand at a glance. Okay. Think back to the Reader's Digest days, right? The short reads.

Okay. So we don't always have the attention span to read a full bio. So when you don't, there's always the bullet points. And when you don't have space or you don't have attention for that, then there's the elevator pitch. So all links of content. And in that brand messaging is where you put those things that let somebody know that you're perfect for them. So let's say if you are a podcaster and you are trying to have

speakers become the best speaker they can, try to get them on TED Talks, things like that. Then you want to put that in your brand messaging. I've helped this many people land a TED talk. I've helped, I, I help you gain more confidence in your 17, 18 minute TED talk or things like that, that specifically relate to exactly who you're talking to. And those become the attractor factors. And on top of your book, you've got, uh, you've got, uh, different trainings and stuff that people can look on your website, how to discuss a brand, different videos that you've got on here. So define, develop, and display. Did we get display covered then? I think we got through define.

Pretty much just through define. We've really been burying the needle on define. So should we do develop next? Most important part. Yeah. Yeah, let's talk a little bit more about development because this is where it matters. Again, as I said earlier, this is where the why comes in that your customers are interested in. Again, being in the real estate business, NAR proved a long time ago that the last stat 20 years ago was 84% of people were going online and

checking you out before they called you. And so now it's well into the 90s in a world where we have more access to this and more people are familiar with the computer and how to use it and where they're going to find out more about you. And I think that a lot of times it's with our clients in any industry, it's about, I don't want to commit. Like, I don't want to call this guy on the phone and then I don't want to use, I don't want to have to tell him, I don't want to use him and these sorts of things. So they go online and they check you out. And so development of that brand after you, that cover of that book that gets them to stop for a second. So in any industry that we're in, well, even podcasters, coaches, authors, speakers, home improvement, real estate, mortgages, insurance, name it, right? What do we have? We have thousands, millions of competitors, right?

We call it the sea of sameness. So after the buying portion, which is all the books in your bookstore, and you've finally settled on this one because it caught my eye, what do you want to do? You want to open up the book. And then that's when development really starts to take into play how they're going to really effectively talk themselves into why they're going to do business with you before they ever call you. Most of your work is done right now.

When you tie that development phase into your social media, when you take your spotlight sheet as a post on your social media with those same branding images, those same background images, those same branding elements that you use on the defines space, then you start to get those numbers that you need for people to begin to register while they want going to read your bio. They're not just interested in how many numbers. Another statistic in real estate business was that like 96% of people, NAR just read this, says they don't care what brokerage you come from. They don't care if you've got largest brokers in the country or you're the tiniest brokers or you're a one-man shop. They don't care. They care about you. They care about the agent that is going to be dealing with them. I find that to be the case. But where are they going to find that out? They're going to find that out when they start to go through the development that you've put into it. We look at 77 different criteria when we build a brand that helps to define this. It's a deep dive. This isn't just, hey, these are some pretty colors and here's a beautiful face to go on it. And now you're branded. There's so many more things that go into how to build that culture that you're trying to build.

And people during the development phase, people will tell us like, OK, look, I don't want to niche in. Am I going to alienate people? I want to take money from anybody willing to buy. The answer to that is yes, you would. Right. If they call, what is the number one thing that people in entrepreneurial businesses say? Marketing doesn't work. I can't get any ROI on my marketing. I mailed out 10,000 postcards. I had a puppy dog on it. Nobody called me. Right. You know what I mean? Like it's because you haven't, you're not building your brand. You're not building your culture. That's just marketing.

If you have the brand first, then you know who to talk to. You've identified into the fine phase who it is you want to talk to. So now when you start spending your money on marketing that is so vital to keep any business rolling, you know who you're talking to. That's when you start to see that return on your investment. That's when you can literally track, okay, those billboards work. Those radio ads work. Look at my podcast getting traction. Look at my YouTube channel gaining listeners and subscribers.

Look at my TikTok following. Don't grow. And then you can trace back like, oh, where did you come from? Oh, you saw one of my YouTube videos. Oh, that's awesome. Okay. What was it about that? And then you can carry these dialogues. Well, not only are you finding out more and more how your development has worked, you're also building that rapport with the customer you're talking to. And so development phase of that D is something that you've got to spend a good bit of time on and know how. Yeah, definitely. In fact, I'm getting a bit of a laugh looking at this survey I did on LinkedIn.

Only 8% of the respondents regularly post on YouTube. 25% don't and two-thirds rarely post. So that just means they have an account just for a platform. I actually do that too. That's one of my other qualifiers for companies or people I want to do business with. I'll click their, their at links for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter on their websites. And half the time they've never been like whoever designed the website, it goes to buy kick software for building your website. And they're just like, are you serious? No one's, you didn't think this through. But to me, that's a qualifier. And people don't realize sometimes I'll open three or four businesses, like if they're local on my web browser, and I'll actually look at the quality of their pitch, the quality of their website and everything else and how they brand themselves. And then I'll go back and, you know, pick through them and okay, close that one, cancel that. Nah,

I'm not in the business of those. And yeah, people go through this process sometimes very quickly and very judgmentally. They're not going to sit there and go, maybe they just have a bad tagline. They're going to go, I think. You're exactly right. No, you either have it together or you don't. I think we even qualify reviews. How many times have you gone and looked at reviews and went, nope, don't believe that one. Yep, that one's sincere.

Nope, that one's not qualified. Nope. We even do that. We're skeptical by nature, I think. And so we want to be sure. And then I think the online presence is still, there's a lot of skepticism to that too. And so building that honesty and that rapport through your brand on those online platforms is so vitally important. You know, one of the words that we use in the book that she taught me, very important,

is the authenticity behind it. People are going to sniff you out if you're not able to live up to what it is that you're putting out there. Your brand has to be you. It has to be this criteria and the development that is truly you. Because if you put that portrait out there

and you build that out and they're like, oh yeah, I'm this person. And then they do reach out to you and you don't if you put that portrait out there and you build that out and they're like, oh, yeah, this person. And then they do reach out to you and you don't uphold those things that you said in your development, then you're automatically have lost all credibility. Yeah. And like you say, a lot of people are like, oh, the market doesn't work. No, you're just doing it wrong. It's always like a combination or like a dial in or I don't know, you shoot a missile at something and it's constantly honing in to hit the target and you're just targeting wrong. I'm looking at your Instagram and I like this saying, you need the right people to know why you exist.

I think that's really important. Yep. You don't just need people to know you exist. You need the right people to know why you exist. Yeah. So true. So true. I remember when social media was starting out and we used to build websites as part

of our business. WordPress is for people. And they would just be like, okay, it's up now. When does the phone start ringing? We put the website up, our little bricks out there. And where's the money? And you're like, no, you have to market this thing. There's so many.

And I think what a lot of people don't realize, me if i'm wrong is what people don't realize is like we don't want to spend all that money on that or i don't know we have plenty of business coming the door like a lot of restaurants said that before the pandemic and they don't realize their competitors are out there taking up that space yes yes and longevity has a is paramount longevity is paramount. Longevity is so important. No matter how they change the algorithm, that's one thing that has always stuck with Google is the longevity in your space carries a huge weight in how you show up organically. And so you can't get started soon enough with that kind of thing. You have to. I bought my first website at a charity auction that I was the auctioneer on. Oh, really?

And nobody had been on it. So I was like, it was Habitat for Humanity. So I was like, I believe in charity. So I was like, okay, I'll just go. And so I bought it.

I paid $125 for it. It was like $19.95, something like that. That was cheap back then. It was. Wow. But she had a value of $1,000 on it or something at the time.

And it was just like, trust me, it was like two or three pages. Like it wasn't, this thing was so rudimentary. It was not even funny. I probably could have built it myself if I knew how to turn a computer on it. And it was very block and it was, I don't even know if it was a WordPress. I don't even know.

I knew that it was important though. And I thought, okay, you know, this at some point, and I didn't even take it serious until the day came that I needed to buy E&O insurance. And I filled out my application for my E&O insurance as a realtor because that's why I needed it. You didn't need it on the auction side. You needed it on the real estate side in the state of Georgia. It wasn't mandatory. And I just thought, well, the business should do it. Insurance is good.

So let's get it. And my insurance agent denied me. And so I wanted to know why. And they said, because we went to your website and you are active in auctions and we don't insure auctions. And I went, look at that. And it was the first thing that came to mind where I was actually qualified on an online platform from an application that I literally faxed into them. I was back for those of y'all that remember the fax machines. And so it began to dawn on me.

I'm like, hold on, this is going to catch traction. It's going to be very important to build. And now 30 years later, it's the number one thing. We look at everybody's social media platforms before we hire them. And we rule out more than we rule in. That's absolutely true. The body of work on the Chris Voss show is quite astounding. We've got 12 years in the can.

I own all the Chris Voss's except for the.com. That got away from me probably in 1980. Some guy in Oxford, London bought it and then it got loose. And 10 years I would call him and be like, I'll give you a lot of money for it. And he's like, i'm not selling it and he had this crappy he was like some 70 year old guy in oxford england he was a teacher at the school and he had some crappy genealogy he had on there and i would have clients that would come to me and they'd be like chris so we really love what you do but uh

your website's crap i'd be like what website are we really love what you do, but your website's crap. I'd be like, what website are you going to? Because the Chris Voss Show is the big thing. And they were like, ChrisVoss.com. I'm like, oh my God, this is something I just, it beat me to it. But with our videos and our content, there's what, 4,500 videos and interviews on the Chris Voss Show podcast, reviews, the content that we have over there. We've got people now that for 12 years, I've got people, especially some of my friends where I'm like,

do you know there's a time capsule of you like 12 years ago where you looked 12 years younger? And they're like, no. I'm like, do you want to copy that? Because you should save that because you really look good. You look like hell now. But what's funny is people still consume those videos yeah i'll get i'll get just every day i'll get like comments and i'll at least even funnier than the product reviews because they're like hey how come my iphone 3 doesn't work and i'm like dude that video's from 2013 but people are still interacting with that.

They're still qualifying with it. And the body of content, people don't see it when they first start, I guess, basically what I'm trying to say. They only put out a couple of Instagram posts and what happens now. But yeah, you build that body of work and it's just, I look at it now and I'm just like, I'm tired, man. That was a lot. Yeah, it is. And it's still a drop in the bucket to what you're going to do. It still just builds upon itself and builds upon it.

Tanya, one of her favorites, one of the sayings that she says is my favorite of hers, she's like when people start talking about building out their brand. And she's like, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. And the second best time today. So you have to get started and then you have to diligently work this. And then my favorite thing is consistently because consistency is the key. It's so key to your success.

When you will, success is the consistency you practice when you can't instantly see the benefit of the results. And I think that people do like you said, and they're like, well, I got a website. The phone doesn't ring from it. I know, man, like you're buried and like Google don't even know who you are yet. That's true. So these are really great ideas. I love what you guys have put in the book and some of the things you guys have in your website. Give us your website name so

people can go check it out as well. Yeah. Brandface star.com. BrandfaceStar.com. Anything more we want to touch on, guys, before we go? I think just that if you are somebody that's sitting there thinking, okay, I have my own business, but I'm not really sure my story's out there in the right way to capture the attention of the people I'm trying to attract, that's something you should really pay attention to. And I think the, I want to leave this, the number one mistake that is made by people in all industries is marketing before the brand is built. Marketing is using various different marketing vehicles to get a message and image out to the world. But your brand is that message and image that you're infusing into all of that marketing on all platforms. And if you don't have the story straight, then you end up marketing generically, just like the rest of the people in your industry. And that's why we call it the sea of sameness. You've got to stand out.

And in doing so, it is people do business with a person, not a logo. So I would say avoid that number one mistake to everybody. Yeah. And qualifying is so important too. Like you mentioned, you've got to be talking to the right person. I've had people, they call me up and they're like, they're asking me to, I think somebody asked me to invest or something in a charity or something. And I'm like, when did you get the impression that I do charity work or something? I work with charities or nonprofits. And they're just flipping it to everybody on LinkedIn, this pitch.

Seriously, you're wasting so much time. This isn't even my wheelhouse, some of the stuff you're pitching at me. LinkedIn's like a big for that. It's really crazy. Yep. Oh, yeah. We see that all the time. I see it a lot.

It's just hitting bullseyes on the wrong targets completely. Because you don't have that brand built out and know the why and who you're trying to attract. Even more than that, it's sending out the wrong message. Even if you've got the target, your message is all wrong. And why are you the person they should want to connect with? And what do you have to offer to them that's going to change their life or their business that's what's missing and you don't know that until exactly yeah if you don't because i've had people do that and i'm just like they go right for whatever the the closes and you're like who the hell are you and what is your brand and why do i care why should i care i don't

care what the hell you're doing they're like yeah we do, we do this. I'm like, yeah, so let's do this. Why are we having this? I've said to people, why are we having this conversation? Out of the blue, you're just hitting me up and I don't know, you're trying to sell me something. My favorite, I think, was when someone started walking me through a very slow walk that they weren't being really clear on what they were selling or doing, but they were basically trying to tell me what crypto was, even though I've been interviewed in articles for crypto. Do you know what crypto is? And I'm like, I think so. Sort of.

And they're like, crypto is this blockchain thing. And I'm like, dude, I have friends that are on the foundation for the Bitcoin Foundation. Come on, man. Like, what the hell? Wrong fit. Wrong fit. So there you go. So guys, thanks for coming on the show. We certainly appreciate it. Come on, man. Like, what the hell? Wrong fit. Wrong fit. So there you go.

So guys, thanks for coming on the show. We certainly appreciate it. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. There you go. And give us your plugs one more time, your.com, so people can find you on the interwebs.

Sure. Want to learn more about us? It's brandfacestar.com. And if you want to talk to our team about helping you define, develop, and display your own brand, it's discussyourbrand.com. And if you want to talk to our team about helping you define, develop, and display your own brand is discuss your brand.com. There you go. There you go.

So order up the book guys, but you can go to wherever fine books are sold. The book is called, and it's just got updated to a brand face for entrepreneurs. Be the face of your business and star in your industry by Tanya Eberhardt and Michael Carr. Thanks for tuning in, guys. Go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Foss.

Hit the bell notification button. The drill, it's free for an unlimited time, so you can just sign right up there. It won't cost you a dime. And I think that's a lifetime deal, so you may want to just take advantage of that because it could go away at any time. You never know. Go to goodreads.com forward slashrest, Jesse, Chris, Foss. See everything we're reading and reviewing. I think my book is on one of those giveaway things.

You can go check that out as well, the second book. And then also go to all of our groups. There's so many of them, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, all those places the crazy kids are at and all that good stuff. Be good to each other, and we'll see you guys next time.