SHOW YOUR WORK!

Somebody very wise once said to me, “if you can’t demonstrate your value, you’re likely not bringing any.” That same person, one of my mentors and toughest critics, also said, “one of the most important jobs of a leader is to take people from where they are to where they want to be.” In essence, my value Sensei was telling me to put up or shut up. Show my work, prove I can do what I’m saying I can do, and develop the ability to move people off of where they are now and to some place better. Those lessons have been bouncing around in my head ever since and I’ve spent every day since that experience honing my craft of how best to demonstrate my value and move people from where they are to where they want to be. 

Good morning, my friends, my name is Blaine Feyen and I am your host for this, and every single episode of the Real Value Podcast. So excited to back hanging out with all of you again this week, it’s one of my favorite places to be, and you’re some of my favorite people to hang out with. So, thank you for tuning in each week and I sincerely hope you get some value from these episodes. And when I say value, I mean ideas that make you think, questions that make you ponder, and suggestions that you put into play in your life and business that make a difference for you in some way. After all, my value sensei told me, the job of a leader is to help take people from where they are to where they want to be. I’ve added one small line to that since then and that is that I believe it’s also the job of a leader to take people where the leader knows they could and should be. They may not always want to go where you’d like to take them out of fear, laziness, apathy, lack of confidence, or they simply don’t know there’s a better path and a better journey they could be taking.

 And this is where demonstrating your value comes in handy. Whether it’s your clients and customers, your students, your employees, or your team members and direct reports, one of the vital elements of leadership, as well as getting people to pay for what you’re offering, is trust. You know the saying, ‘people don’t care what you know until they know that you care’. If somebody doesn’t trust you yet, or at all, not only will they never buy from you, but they’ll also never follow you. In fact, they may even go in the opposite direction you’re telling them to go.

 One of the best ways to earn trust in any scenario is to first get clarity around what it is you want somebody to do and why you want them to do it. If what you want them to do is to give you money for something you’re offering, they have to first believe that what you’re trying to sell them will solve a problem they have, address an issue, scratch an itch, alleviate someone’s pain, or take them to a place they either couldn’t get to on their own or didn’t know even existed. Once you have clarity around your purpose and exactly what result you’re trying to help somebody achieve, then you can start to work on your messaging and eventually on exactly how you can demonstrate your value.

 Before I go into some of the ways I think you can and should be demonstrating your value, let’s talk briefly about why this all matters. In addition to what I previously mentioned about earning trust and how important that is, being able to demonstrate your value is probably one of the single greatest differentiators for professionals, for businesses, for anyone really, and in everything we do.

 Why do you shop at one store over another? Why do you buy one brand over another? Why did you choose your wife, husband, or significant other over all of the other choices available to you? Why does somebody choose one Realtor or lender over another? And maybe the most important question of all; why should somebody choose you over all of the other choices available to them in life and in the marketplace? Before you start to answer those first questions with the easy answers like ‘price’, ‘proximity’, or ‘first available’, be sure to always ask the last question along with it. As you’re thinking about why you choose one store over another, for example, also put yourself in the proverbial shoes of the store owner and ask, ‘why should somebody shop with us over our competitor?’

 Being the lowest cost provider of a product or service is definitely a business strategy for some, although not the best one, in my opinion. Basing your business strategy on location only or counting on your customers choosing you for the convenient proximity is also not the best strategy if it’s your only strategy. Whatever your business and marketing strategy, one of the most vital lies in the question, ‘how am I demonstrating my value such that the cost of what I am offering looks ridiculously low?’ And one of the best ways to make your cost look low for what you’re offering is through demonstrations of value.

 Now, for my appraiser friends, colleagues, and coaching students, if your first thought is that you’re already demonstrating your value by doing an appraisal, we’ve got to talk! That is the exact wrong mindset that I’ve been trying to eradicate for the last 10+ years. If you’re a service provider of any kind, and this goes for my Realtors and mortgage people too, you cannot have the mindset that my job is to sell a house, or my job is to originate a loan, or my job is to do an appraisal. That might be part of what you offer to the market, but it’s only part of your business. The problem is that most of you place all your emphasis on the doing of that thing because you think that’s the part that makes you money.

 For my investors out there, you’ll be familiar with the philosophy that your money is made when and how you buy, not when you sell. When you sell an investment, that’s just when your good choices and decisions are realized in the form of real money, but the magic happened going into the deal, not necessarily on the getting out of the deal. The same philosophy can, and should, be applied to service businesses in that your money is made on all the things you do to get the business flowing in, not necessarily on the actual transaction or the doing of the thing.

When my appraiser friends and coaching students are actually completing the appraisal, that is the result of something you did 30, 60, or 500 months ago to get that business flowing in. In essence, whatever you did to get that order or business flowing in was where you really made your money. The doing or completing of the appraisal is an ancillary, albeit important part of the process, but it’s not the only place the real money is made, so if that’s what you’re focusing on, you’re missing out. The money is made when you are able to effectively demonstrate your value to the market by standing out, being unique, offering way more value than everyone else, having a valued opinion, speaking the language of your ideal clients and customers, having an audience, building a following, and being authentic.

 Friends, I’ve said it many times before, but there’s never been a more important time to say and emphasize this again; if you’re not demonstrating your value to the market of your ideal clients and customers, and I believe one of the best ways to do this is through creating content, then you are not being seen, heard, felt, or perceived as different in some way than every other voice out there. Your appraisals are not different no matter how many times you exclaim to the world that they are. Your for-sale sign in the front yard says nothing to your market about your difference in the world from all the other glamour shot photos of other agents around your market. If you are not being noticed and eventually recognized as the go-to authority in your market because you demonstrate your value in some other way than just completing an appraisal or selling a house, than you are, in many ways, losing.

 Content is communication at scale. Content is anything you put out into the world that speaks to your unique market of clients and customers. It can be a blog, a newsletter, a podcast, a YouTube channel, a weekly email of valuable thoughts or advice. Content can be giving monthly talks, Zoom webinars, Q&As, or teaching CE classes. Whatever it is that you choose to be your thing, if you’re not creating content of some kind in 2023 and beyond, you’re losing. It’s that simple.

 By the way, content will not save a shitty business model or attitude. There are definitely aspects to every business that need to be optimized for the best results, so if your business model is you grinding away endlessly during the busy time without picking your head up to look forward, creating content will not save you. This is one of the big problems in the appraisal industry, as well as the real estate and mortgage businesses. Way too many of you just grinding away at the ‘during’ part, that’s the middle part in my coaching framework where somebody is doing the actual technical work of that trade. There’s the before and the after parts of the business as well, which are almost always sad afterthoughts in all three of those industries.

 On a side note, for my Realtor and mortgage listeners and students, if you’ve never heard of the ‘loyalty gap’ in those businesses, it’s the gap between who your past clients say they’’ll do business with and who they actually end up doing business with. I believe the term ‘loyalty gap’ was coined by the former CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, Chris Stuart, who is now the President of the prop-tech startup called Place. Essentially, they asked buyers of real estate who they’d choose when they buy their next home and something like 90% of people said they’d use the agent who sold them their last home. When measured against reality, only 13% of people actually used their prior sales agent.

 The big question, of course, is ‘why’. Why do people say one thing, yet do something completely opposite? Well, for one, it’s human nature to do that. Secondly, however, the vast majority of the people who used a different agent than the one they purchased their home from cited lack of contact and no follow up as their reason for not using that agent again. The agent and lender were transactional, plain and simple. You sold them a home and then rode if into the sunset with your commission check. Shame on you agents, lenders, and appraisers who simply focus on that one deal and then never follow up. Appraisers have a little bit of an excuse in the lending appraisal world since there’s not a lot of follow up needed after a lending appraisal is done. But there is still relationship building that should be going on after the transaction is complete.

 If you want to stand out in a noisy, crowded market of sameness and very little differentiation, one of the greatest paths to doing so is through content creation. So, here are the 5 tips for demonstrating your value through the use of content:

 Tip #1 – Whatever form of content you decide is right for you to create, make sure it’s something that speaks to an interest they have, not an interest you have. So many people go into business for their own reasons without any consideration of what the market wants or needs. Friends, the market does not need another Realtor, another lender, nor another real estate appraiser. What the market needs is somebody who is informing, educating, teaching, leading, raising people up, building leaders, doing it different, doing it better and letting the world know, helping people realize their dreams, creating new business categories, and people solving problems that others are not.

 Tip #2 – Whatever form of content you decide to focus on creating, make sure it’s not a constant sales pitch. We get it, you sell houses and want people to remember you when it’s time to buy or sell…boring! When you put out content like that it’s perceived as pandering and begging. It’s a low value activity and comes across as desperate and uncreative. Quit pitching people and, instead, start demonstrating your value over and over and over in other ways.

 Tip #3 – Whatever form of content you decide to create, it should focus on addressing or solving a problem of some kind. The huge mistake I see appraisers, especially, making is that they start blogs and newsletters that speak to problems nobody has. There are some really great blogs out there from some great appraiser friends of mine, the problem with those blogs, in my opinion, is that they speak to appraisal issues that very few people care about. Either the author is speaking about appraisal issues that other appraisers deal with or they’re speaking about issues somebody might have one time in their career. Although your content should be specific to a specific group, make sure it’s addressing or solving a problem that people actually have.

 Tip #4 – In tip #2 I told you to not make it everything a pitch to hire you or buy your stuff. This tip is along those lines, but more advice on what to do instead. Instead of pitching your service or your products, evangelize around the problems people deal with, the ideas that you believe in, the philosophies you operate under, and the solutions to some of those issues. If you happen to be one of the solutions, great! But let the listener, the reader, the consumer of your content be the decider of who they choose and why. You get to be the one who delivers value to the over and over until they’re ready to make a choice or refer you to somebody who is.

 Tip #5 – I talk about this one all the time and it’s to have a teachable point of view. If you listened to last week’s show about developing the magnetic persona within your business, this was one of the character traits of that magnetic persona. Steve Jobs had a teachable point of view. Jared from Subway had a teachable point of view. Dan Kennedy has a teachable point of view. Tom Ferry, the real estate coach and magnetic persona of his company, has a teachable point of view. I have a teachable of view and am the persona of my brand. So, what’s your magnetic persona and what are your teachable points of view?

 There you have it my friends, 5 tips for demonstrating your value, the reasons for why you should be demonstrating your value, how you could be demonstrating your value, some ideas for going about it (blog, podcast, newsletter, speaking, writing, YouTube, etc.), and why this all matters.

 For my appraiser friends and colleagues, if you’re interested in learning more about creating content to differentiate yourself in the market, we talk about this topic all the time in the Appraiser Increase Academy, which is one of my private coaching communities. I’ve lowered the barrier for you to enter by paying for your first month so you can check it out completely risk free. In fact, I go one better and put my money where my mouth is by completely reversing the risk when you join one of my communities or coaching programs. I guarantee all of our programs for 366 days. You’ve got a whole year and a day to make a bunch of money from the ideas and lessons I teach, or I give you back every cent you’ve invested, no questions asked. If you can’t 5X your investment with what I teach, I don’t want to keep any of your investment. Try it completely risk free at www.coachblaine.com/freemonth and let me help you increase your income, reduce your time, put some systems in place in your business, and become the go-to authority in your market.