The Grit and Grow Podcast
The Grit and Grow Podcast delivers in-depth, unfiltered interviews featuring emerging entrepreneurs and start-up founders. Join us as we dive into their vision for change, explore their sources of motivation, confront their fears and failures, and uncover the pivotal moments that propelled their ideas into reality.
The Grit and Grow Podcast
From Truck Driver to Tattooed Realtor: Justin Mercer's Bold Journey to Real Estate Success
Imagine transforming from a truck driver and school teacher into a standout real estate agent known for bold tattoos and even bolder marketing. That’s exactly what Justin Mercer, the "Tattooed Realtor" from Phoenix, Arizona achieved. Today’s episode unravels Justin's incredible journey, where he turned societal expectations on their head and used his unique appearance to build a powerful personal brand in the real estate market. We'll hear firsthand how Justin navigated through struggles, skepticism, and a pandemic to emerge as a leader in the industry.
We promise you'll gain invaluable insights into the world of personal branding and unconventional marketing strategies that truly set you apart. Learn how Justin embraced authenticity and leveraged social media to propel his fame and success, creating a magnetic brand that resonates with clients. From the emotional roller coaster of the real estate business to the calculated risks that paid off, Justin's experiences offer a compelling blueprint for breaking free from the mold and achieving greatness in your career.
Plus, we explore the nitty-gritty of transitioning from an individual agent to leading a team, the significance of mentorship, and maintaining a unique office environment. Justin shares candid stories about the emotional highs and lows, innovative billboard marketing tactics, and the ever-important balance between personal branding and regulatory compliance. Whether you’re just starting or looking to revamp your strategy, this episode is packed with actionable advice and inspiration to help you carve out your niche in real estate.
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You're tuned in to the Grit and Grow podcast. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Grit and Grow podcast. Today we're going to dive into the impact of personal branding, specifically when it comes to marketing yourself in the real estate industry. Today we have a very special guest who, in the Phoenix metro area, has made quite a name for himself, showcasing his masterful marketing skills across billboards all over town and known as the tattooed realtor. We'd like to welcome Justin Mercer to the show. Appreciate you, guys.
Speaker 2:Nice intro. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3:Appreciate you guys, appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us.
Speaker 1:I love doing these so yeah Well, time out of your busy schedule to be with us. I love doing these. Yeah Well, we want to. We really want to dive into the whole, the whole impact of personal branding, and I figured you know who else better to reach out to than you. I mean, you have just taken this whole Phoenix metro area to a whole nother level as far as taking on a personal brand and making yourself maybe uncomfortable and getting on billboards. And I know you've done TV commercials, you've done the news, you've done all kinds of different things, podcasts, which is how we met, and we just want to hear a little bit more about what you have to say about all this.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean I just put a story up last night about this because I have a class I'm doing tomorrow on branding too.
Speaker 3:Oh cool.
Speaker 2:And I think it's important to let people know. Like I didn't have any kind of branding marketing knowledge before real estate, I didn't know anything about real estate, social media, business branding marketing I was a truck driver, okay.
Speaker 1:So like.
Speaker 2:I've been on stages to speak. I've had companies fly me out. I've been on a stage with a Johnson Johnson rep. I'm just like what am I doing here?
Speaker 2:I don't have a background in marketing, but I used to become nervous and I would shake on stage because I'm just like I don't think I have the credibility to be up here. But when I start speaking about, just as an average Joe, the thought process I had behind things and why did things a certain way, I think I can help the average Joe better than some of the experts can. So the way I learned about branding marketing everything you just said is strictly by doing it and in my own thought process and thinking like a consumer, not like a like an agent.
Speaker 1:That's incredible so tell us a little bit about your background. Did you grow up here in Phoenix?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I grew here, born and raised here, lived for Indiana for a little bit, so I moved to. Indiana for like four years came back. So high school I went to Marcos de Niza, graduated there when I was 15, I got my first job. I started working with kids. So from 15 to 23, I worked with kids. So I was a teacher. A lot of people don't know that I was a school teacher, no kidding.
Speaker 3:Okay, what did you teach PE? I came out through 7 to PE.
Speaker 2:And then I ended up teaching a behavior program for teachers because I worked in a Title I school and so lower-income kids, and we had a lot of trouble with kids, so I knew how to work with them a lot better, so I ended up teaching teachers how to teach how to communicate with them how to get through to them. So kids is what I've known, what I've always known.
Speaker 1:but when I was a teacher I made 31 grand a year, 800 bucks every two weeks, like the days off are cool, but I can't support anything.
Speaker 2:And you said you drove a truck too, yeah, so from teaching I went to Pepsi and I worked there for 13 years, so back-breaking labor, probably the worst position I've ever been in my life from that job, just because of the unhappiness. So real estate was a long story how I got into it, but it was not supposed to happen and I just always wanted to do it, but I didn't think I could. So I got to the point in my life where nothing could get worse.
Speaker 3:So I just tried it and said if this doesn't fail, I can't go any lower than where I'm at right now. So the tattoo branding how far back does that go? Does that go back to your school teaching days, or?
Speaker 2:No, so I had a couple of tattoos. When I was teaching I wasn't covered, but when I started driving to semis, when I started getting covered up.
Speaker 2:But it's funny because I was actually going through a divorce and, uh, driving back to work in my truck, so I started work at two in the morning that day. That's five in the afternoon. I'm hot, it's 120 degrees out Middle of the summer. The truck has no AC. I just do cases all day. I used to bring an extra shirt with me because I sweat through the first one all day and I can't wear it past a certain time because it's just too wet. So that's how the day went. Plus, I'm going through a divorce and I ended like.
Speaker 2:I remember looking at it and saying that's exactly who I'd work with someone that had that kind of branding right so that memory had always stuck with my head. So, six years later, I'm now at the worst point in my life and that had always been in my head. Like man, how did he do it with his look? And now he's an anti-lawyer lawyer. Yeah, now he's an anti-lawyer lawyer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it took me seeing that that's the guy that rips his sleeves off right in the commercial. Yeah, it took me seeing that to know like maybe I have a shot.
Speaker 2:So had I not seen that, I don't know where I would be, because that's kind of why I started that other company where I did a podcast but it was to show people like you may not think you're worth it. You may not think you're worth it, you may not think you can have a professional industry like a career in professional industry, but there's things out there for everybody, Okay. So I kind of took my branding just by that and I was like you know what he did it, I'm going to do it too. Tattooed realtor worked out.
Speaker 3:So you got into real estate first and then saw that and started formulating the branding. No, I had the idea first, oh, first, oh, you came into it. Yeah, I came into it with idea I actually had my business cards made before I graduated school. That's fantastic.
Speaker 2:It's a long story, but like I was going to not be here anymore, if that makes sense. So like real estate was like the last shot for me that I felt, so I took it very, very seriously. So I looked up all the stats. I think a lot of people now don't do this. That kind of work is is. I looked like what do I need to do to get the business? Yeah when's a paycheck come? How much is the average like? I looked up all the stats and you realize like they're scary.
Speaker 3:85 percent of people fail out and so I knew, going through school, people weren't going to take me seriously and I've always been the best worker where I've been at it's just, I didn't need to get the opportunity so you, so you're trying to pull yourself out of a personal emotional kind of hole that you're in and you find real estate and you think this is what's going to help me. But then you're looking at these stats that are saying success rates are very low to get started, very difficult to get started. What was it about the real estate industry that really did pull you into it? I?
Speaker 2:love architecture, I love houses.
Speaker 3:I used to watch Million.
Speaker 2:Dollar List, all the real estate industry that really did pull you into it. I love architecture, I love houses. I used to watch Million Dollar List All the real estate shows I watched just as a consumer, and I would drive through Camelback to look at the nice houses. I never had anything like that growing up, so I was obsessed with mansions and how they designed it and I would look through design books. So real estate has always interested me. I just never thought I could do it.
Speaker 2:I bought two houses and sold two houses before I was even licensed, just as a truck driver and you see how much they make on the settlement statement and stuff, and I was like damn, like I always want to do it. But then you see, like the opportunity or the possibilities, and I always had that other side, which tattoos all over my face and head, and I was like I could never do this and there was no like specific rule that you can't. But it was kind of drilled in my head that you're not supposed to be in this, in this industry. So it's never. I never even took a step to even see if I could, until that moment, what we said earlier.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And how quickly, once you got licensed and you got rolling in the industry, how quickly do you feel that your, your branding, really took hold and started becoming its own thing?
Speaker 2:It got more attention. So I had my open house signs, business cards, car wrapped, everything before I even had my license, because I knew this was my only shot, because if this doesn't work I'm done. So I put everything into it and I still had a job at the same time. So I was still working 60, 70-hour weeks and there're hard days. I started at midnight when I got off till two in the morning or two.
Speaker 3:This is the truck driving this is truck driving yeah, so I had to pick up the kids.
Speaker 2:I had so much going on I couldn't even do real estate. So I was licensed for two months. I couldn't do anything because I still was working yeah in that time was the news story that came out because the russell shah made fun of me and all that, oh, okay. That's where the news came from, because I took headshots and someone ended up seeing it on my page. They sent it to him and said this guy's trying to be an agent in Arizona. They were like laughing.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:Russell had posted something. What he said wasn't offensive. I got a thick skin. I love a sense of humor, so if you're bagging, on me and I find it funny.
Speaker 1:I'll laugh with you.
Speaker 2:But what a lot of people were putting in the comments is what upset me. And that thing went from 16 comments to like 600 overnight and then the news ended up getting tagged in it like five times. So they did a story on me. Russell had reached out and apologized, he didn't know I was in Arizona and he ended up being like a good mentor for me, but the news called me, so they did a story and then now I went from 800 Facebook friends to 5,000 overnight, because now it's been syndicated now across the nation, that news story. So it was playing in Houston, jacksonville, all these places. And then I started feeling the pressure because everyone's like this guy's an agent. I'm like I ain't done it.
Speaker 3:I ain't worked.
Speaker 1:I don't got the license, but I got a job. This is amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my old team leaves the one ahead and he quit. He's like you got all these people following you.
Speaker 2:You're telling people to chase your dreams. When are you going to start doing it? And I'm like you're right. So February of 2020 is when I quit my job. Put my two weeks in, I ended up getting one in escrow, but by the time my two weeks was ended, that escrow fell out. My last day of work, the escrow fell. So now I'm like starting the industry. I have no background knowledge, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm licensed. I now don't have my safety net. I got I'm a single dad of two kids, so, um, I was scared. And then March 2020 hit. And uh, covid, and no one knew what to do. No one knew how I was gonna affect the industry. So I started off like grinding. So I I interviewed myself, looked in the mirror and did like a job. I I did a six step thing that I do. It takes too long to go through, but those are the six steps that kind of got me to where I'm at. But the branding alone. I started beforehand, like before I was even licensed.
Speaker 1:Okay, so really quick about about your look about the tattoos, kind of going back to what Brian was saying. So I know that, like most people, when you, if anybody's talking about tattoos, like it's like every tattoo has its own story and so when you're head to toe pretty much, I mean it's, it's everywhere like could you even do that, could you even say each tattoo has a story oh my, a lot of them do. But or is it like it's your whole story? Is your, is your appearance, I guess?
Speaker 2:it's a little bit of both.
Speaker 1:Like I do have a lot of meaningful what draw you, or what drew you to, to have your whole body inked up like that.
Speaker 2:It's an addiction, so okay I've been always self-conscious growing up so I I have never been open about this stuff. So a lot of people people, stuff I talk about on podcasts, my friends don't even know because I'm so closed off I don't let people know. But like I was very self-conscious growing up, I just thought I was always getting made fun of. So when I started getting tattoos it was almost like a diversion for me, like now I don't have to think about it.
Speaker 2:When I'm walking to a, into a room, in my head everyone's staring at me, making fun of me, like no one was literally doing it. But it was just a thought I had in my head, like everyone's talking about bad things about me or whatever. So when I started getting tattoos, like the attention was always going to the tattoo, so it kind of helped relieve me of that. Plus, I mean, I liked the pain, I liked it, I was addicted to them. So some of the mean things, some of them just it's full space because you can't have, I'm pretty fully covered, I mean so generally they all mean something, they all have a meaning.
Speaker 1:So you're like a walking work of art. So do you have just like one tattoo artist, or is it like? Is this like all of Phoenix? No, like two or three people. Is that your body somewhere?
Speaker 2:Yeah, One of them. He just kind of fell off.
Speaker 1:Another one.
Speaker 2:I moved away from an area, so it was just. I have like two or three major but one I I try to stick with one yes, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool though, yeah.
Speaker 1:So so what advice would you give to somebody Cause your story is so interesting and it's so unique, but to, let's say, a brand new agent that's getting into the business and they're really struggling?
Speaker 1:I know I mentioned this kind of before we sat down, but a lot of agents, a lot of brand new real estate agents, they really struggle with this idea of like I've got to create this like personal brand for myself in order to become something, and so a lot of times, you know like, the marketing reps will get with the agents and they'll say, hey, you know if you could somehow like align yourself with, like some passion of yours or some something that can relate or, you know, somehow tie into someone else's interests.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yours is so unique and it's it's almost like you've got this like following of people that are interested in like what you represent, maybe more so than um, you're, you're almost like a, like a public figure, and you've got this message that you have kind of um, become this notorious, uh, person in the real estate industry, but you're really I mean, in talking to you, you're, you're not really that way, and so I think what I'm trying to say is like is there like a persona that you've almost like taken on indirectly, that is, pulling a certain crowd of people to follow you and then ultimately want to work with you as as an agent?
Speaker 2:So yeah, like it also gave me a lot of imposter syndrome because I was getting the attention, but I didn't feel like I was at a level of business yet where I deserve what I was getting. Like people find me to speak on stage and I was like wait, and I would always step back, like why do you want me? Like? I don't want to feel stupid up there, I don't want people to judge me because I've always had that same mentality.
Speaker 1:That's kind of what I was getting at, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I didn't know I would be that. But then I remember when I first saw Byron. He's an anti-lawyer now. But I saw his Bronco in downtown Gilbert and I freaked out. I was like, oh my gosh, he's like around here out, Like we ended up doing a podcast together.
Speaker 2:So the first time I met him, I like gave him a hug and I was like, dude, you have no idea the impact you had on my life. And he was just so like taken back. At first he was like whoa, whoa, I'm just a regular guy.
Speaker 2:And I'm like no dude you indirectly might have saved my life. You don't know, Like everything I have right now is directly related to me seeing you have success. So, um, what he is to me, what people started coming to me and saying that kind of stuff and saying I got into real estate cause you had this. So then I started like, oh man, like why me? Like the imposter syndrome again. So the way he felt when I said to him is the way I feel now when people say it. So I didn't know I was going to be like a persona, but I'm glad I'm, I'll. I'll be that because I think it's important that people see, um, some people just need to see it.
Speaker 1:And the young, you know, the younger generation of people that are coming up in this industry, like, I think they they need to see guys like you succeeding, like they need to see it like okay, this, this guy, was absolutely not, you know, cut from the cloth of like the real estate professional, as we all you know remember. Like the of like the real estate professional, as we all you know remember.
Speaker 1:Like the century 21 agents with the gold jackets, jackets and stuff that like our parents generation was maybe a part of you know, but like to see someone like you succeeding and to the level that you have, like it's amazing.
Speaker 3:I mean it really?
Speaker 1:it really. It really is like. It's like um, um. I see stuff like that and I'm like man, you know, like it. It couldn't be happening to a better person and in an underdog type of situation like what you you've been up against the last few years, it's, it's really awesome to see.
Speaker 2:So I appreciate that. Like coming in, I did ask the people around me, friends and family like hey, here's my idea to join real estate. I'm going to do real estate, I'm going to brand myself this way. Here's, like my kind of business plan. I don't own a business so I didn't really know what I was doing. But I got the same reaction from everybody. I'm talking about my mom, my sister, my best friends. They're all like don't do it and they're like not because you.
Speaker 3:What was the reason? What was there?
Speaker 2:Because you can't change the stigma and everyone wasn't afraid of me. They're like. We know you can excel like cause. You're just. I've always been a hard worker. I've always been known for my work, so they knew I could do it. But they're like you can't change people's minds, and that's when I started, like you know, not wrong. I don't want them to think they're wrong by saying that, but it's just like. Why does it have to be the case? Why can't somebody who has tattoos do the same thing somebody else can?
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:I understand, customer service-wise, some people might not want that to be the face of their company, and I do understand that. But when you're talking about setting up your own business, why was that their first thought process? So now I took that into real estate and it put that chip on my shoulder, so that and you already had the anti-lawyer lawyer.
Speaker 3:You already had Byron to like, point to like. Look, he's a lawyer and this is absolutely working for him from a branding perspective. I mean, it's absolutely, I think, a major challenge for so many people in our industry, in the real estate industry, whether it's real estate agents or loan officers, to um, to dive into personal branding, and so one of the things I'm wondering maybe you could, you could talk to us about is is advice, having been successful creating your own personal brand, advice to somebody coming into it, how to kind of discover that? I mean, and maybe it has to happen organically. You just see a billboard one day, I don't know, but from your perspective, like what do you tell new agents in terms of how to discover their branding?
Speaker 2:So I kind of show them like how I took the step. So what's the reason behind branding? Like not, don't give them the reason, ask them, say what's the reason behind you wanting to brand? I just want to hear their thought process behind it. And the reason I started my brand was because I knew the way to get the business was door knocking, cold calling, open houses, referrals. I looked at that stuff so I was like, well, I'm not cold calling because I'm not going to talk to somebody for five months and then meet them in person. Now I got to overcome this objection.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to doorknob because they're going to call the cops, so I knew open houses and social media, all that would be my route for business.
Speaker 2:But then I started thinking okay, now I'm going to put myself in this situation. I'm at an open house. What's going to happen? People are coming to the door. They're going to get alarmed by my look. They're going to wonder where the agent is. They're not going to that. So I was like, if I make open house signs or listing signs, I had a six foot cutout at the door of me holding a sign that said uh, don't be alarmed by the big tattoo guy. Uh, sign in and take a tour.
Speaker 1:Um, it was just a overcoming objection, because I'm trying to talk to everybody, yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't want to talk to them about my look, about anything. I want to talk about business.
Speaker 2:I'm going to show them my business acumen, not my, not talk about the tattoos. So it was almost me attacking my look before they can attack me. So that was the reason I did that route. And it wasn't just that. There's a story I tell because it plays perfect in the branding role is I had a pest control company for um, when I bought my first house, got a pest control company and I had my daughter. At the time she was four months old and, uh, my ex picked her up and there was a scorpion underneath her and I'm like I've been getting scraped, sprayed for six months how is there still scorpions in this house?
Speaker 2:right, and it pissed me off and I remember driving. She called me on that way home from work. I pulled up at the light and I was next to a green mango truck and it was f-150. It was lifted, it was matte black, it had the green rims on it and the first thought as a consumer was, oh, that's they. They must know what they're doing, right? They got these kind of trucks I've seen a couple of them before. You know, I'm gonna give them a call because the phone number is on the side of the truck so I called them. I've used them for 12 years. I still use them to this day.
Speaker 2:But it wasn't. I knew nothing about their business, it just I saw that and I was like these people must know what they're doing. Enough that I called them, figured out they do know what they're doing and they've been my, my servicers, so I knew, coming in the industry, if someone saw my car wrapped in the signs and a listing sign, a cutout, they're like oh, this guy's obviously got a brand. He must know he's doing at some point, not just some one-off agent yeah so that was my purpose.
Speaker 2:Behind branding was the legitimacy okay yeah. So I always ask them why? First, because I don't want them to say hey, I'm the roller skating realtor and here's my business card.
Speaker 1:Would you say the roller skating realtor? Whatever it is, but it has to be something Branding is a big waste of money.
Speaker 2:If you don't do it right, it's a big waste of money. And then you've got to realize am I doing it for now? Am I doing it for the future? Am I going to have a team?
Speaker 1:Am branding so. So that was actually one of my questions for you is that like, at what point did you figure out like you can, you know, just be a real estate agent for yourself, working with yourself for yourself, and and that's it? Uh, but what? At what point did you pivot and and kind of know, like I'm going to, I'm going to go toward building my own real estate team, because it's two totally different things.
Speaker 2:So I was the tattooed realtor for almost two years and that's what I branded everything with. Everything was made the tattooed realtor, the logo, all that. And then I started thinking I started teaching these marketing classes for agents and I was like, yeah, well, yeah, you can brand yourself, but I do want to start a team eventually and I can't be the tattooed realtor team. So I started even thinking. Then I was like I'm going to have to change a lot of my branding up. But it came. I had to change it because I've got reported at NAR more than any agents ever been reported at NAR.
Speaker 2:They've literally emailed me 200 times. I've gotten complaint after complaint after complaint. Everyone's saying he's using the realtor trademark wrong. And they used to make me. They had to change my website, I had to change my Zillow, I had to change my URL and then finally I just said like why do you let these people complain about me? And they're like, well, we can't really stop them. I was like, yeah, but I see everyone using the word realtor wrong. Like technically, it's first last name, comma, realtor. That's the only thing you can do. You can't put one name, you can't. There's rules behind us. But you guys keep coming after me like, no, we're not coming after you, we've get, we get reported, we have to satisfy the report yeah so I got reported over 200 times in ar.
Speaker 2:Oh, my god so I had to end up changing it.
Speaker 2:And she's like you know what I said I just put another billboard up with this logo. I said I don't have the money to keep doing this changing stuff, because someone now took the picture of the billboard and my car wrapped. And she's like you know what? I'm gonna give you 120 days. She's like you don't have to do anything right now. She's they ended up being really cool about it because I was just. I was like hey, can I legally change my name to the tattooed realtor? And and she's like well, that would be in a code of ethics because you're trying to skate around a rule. And that's when I changed everything to call tattoo was because of that.
Speaker 1:So I I was the tattoo, which is brilliant. Yeah, which is brilliant. Yeah, you've got the, the call to actions right there in the team name. Yeah, so now I'm contacting call tattoo real estate group is the name of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's brilliant so, and it was a good change, but, like it came because of the wrong reasons. At first, though, yeah yeah, but, yeah, but the. The reason I also did that was because, uh, when, when I was seven, eight years old, I knew the number to five different lawyers like Goldberg and Osborne yeah, when I got engaged I went to Shanko because it was one mile South of bell road, scottsdale, oklahoma.
Speaker 3:Like I knew the whole slogan in my head. I knew the phone number, the hours the way to go.
Speaker 2:So I started thinking there's no real estate. So now I'm asking agents when I first got licensed two, three months in the business I'm saying who's your most famous real estate agent? You know, and everyone's like, oh, I'm like the most famous. And they were like Russell. Shaw and Gillette were the two that came up all the time.
Speaker 2:So I didn't know Shannon at the time, so I did research on her, but Russell's the person who like, started me at this where I was so and I remember I'll be your realtor from when I was six seven years. I'm talking I remember him as a kid. I remember seeing him on TV, so the fact that I got to talk to him and he was my mentor meant a lot to me and I was like there's never really been that. Call Rafi, learn a row for real estate. So that's what I was trying to go for with the billboards commercials, this crazy jingle too. It's because that does stick out to some people.
Speaker 1:So you know, again, going back to, let's say, a new real estate agent that's struggling with this whole idea of the impact of of building a personal brand, they're struggling with the idea of, like I've got to come up with something. How do you get to the point where you're actually able to invest at that level in outdoor and bus station signs, wrapping your car billboards, and someone you know getting into the business would sit there and say and they would probably tell Brian and I the same thing Like it's easy for you guys to say, and we've been told that before.
Speaker 1:And yet we're sitting here where. What was that message I sent you? Was it last night or two nights ago? It says that if you're too broke to invest in yourself.
Speaker 3:You'll always be that way, get used to it.
Speaker 1:And I was like we have done that. We have just keep overcoming hurdles and challenges and we keep investing in ourselves and our business and the show. And it's like look what's happening when you have the stick to it and stick to it and this, to actually just keep grinding it out and doing it and that's really the whole premise of this show is like to have the grit and grind it out and stick to it. So like what would you? What would you say to that agent that's going to say you know the scoffer that's on the sideline that says, well, it's easy for him to say he's already on the billboards, it's, it's your business plan.
Speaker 2:It's like what, what? What do you and this is something I still struggle with, but it's something I learned, and you have to have extreme clarity in what you're doing. Like what is you?
Speaker 1:don't just look now, clarity you have to have clarity like why am I doing the billboards?
Speaker 2:It's not to get business. My goal is not to get business. My goal was to become Learn and Row.
Speaker 3:It's brand awareness. I just told him that the other day I'm like look at those buses when people are like oh, there's no ROI.
Speaker 2:I'm like no there's not. It's a waste of money. But at the same time, what is your plan in life versus mine? Technically, I didn't think I would ever be here right now. I'm not supposed to be here, so I ruined my life, making $70,000 a year when I was working 70 hours a week. Worst point in my life I made $70,000 that year. So in real estate, if I made $70,000, I'm happy.
Speaker 2:So, I could do everything in the world, but as long as I'm making $70,000 and I'm not there in my life anymore, it doesn't bother me. So my business plan was to become the call Rafi and those. So when I started pouring money, I'm like well, I got my bills paid this month. Everything else goes to my business, so commercials. I should never ran commercials. When I did, they told me not to run that short period of time too. They're like you got to have the money to do this for three months, not one month.
Speaker 2:So I just did it to get out there. But I made a lot of mistakes too. A lot of money was in just getting my brand out there Cause I just thought in the future this stuff will pay off. It's not going to be a right now, it's not going to be ROI.
Speaker 1:But you've got to be able to see that far ahead, Like to be able to say okay, I'm going to commit to this for 12 months or 24 months.
Speaker 2:If an agent wants to get billboards now I'd be like, why? And I'll tell them why. They're like, well, you're doing it. I'm like, yeah, but I don't get an ROI from it. Plus, if you spend, let's say, two grand a month on one billboard, you hiring two VAs is going to bring you 10 times X of business. So you're pouring your money in the wrong location, unless you're using it for a purpose. So I wasn't worried about hiring a VA doing a dialer stuff like that. I wanted to get out there.
Speaker 2:I wanted to not just become a brand, but I wanted to show people like I tried to come and change the stigma on tattooed people, like heavily tattooed people in the industry. I have friends not get let into clubs because they're Jordans or because their hair. I'm like these are the nicest people I've ever met and they can't get in because their look. So it wasn't. My whole plan wasn't just real estate. It was there's a big, big ideas down the road that I thought would happen. So, um, when I branded it, it's a little different me that talked to a regular agent, because I do help them brand themselves, but I'm trying to sway them into better decision-making with as far as where they put the money, because I could show them where I've made mistakes.
Speaker 3:So tell us what. What were some of those mistakes? The commercial so I did made mistakes, so tell us what were some of those mistakes. The commercial. So I did the commercials.
Speaker 2:I did Monday Night Football commercial. That ended up costing me like $38,000 to run commercials for a month $38,000. I didn't even have a website. That was good. I had a landing page and it was a trash landing page. And the night I did the Cardinals-Rams Monday Night Football game, my website had like an 860% increase in traffic in two days over what I did in a month. And they're all going to a crappy landing page. So I literally spent all this money, got my brand out there.
Speaker 3:Everyone saw it, so you didn't have the infrastructure behind it to make it work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't have like click funnels and pixelate the page Like there's so many things now that I learned that I'm like what. She even told me not to do it for a month. She said people have to see you over and over and over again to call you. It's not like they just see it once and they trust you. They have to keep seeing you. So like just that alone. And billboards they're not good ROI. Great brand recognition not good ROI.
Speaker 1:Because it's really like a reinforcement of something that's already out there. When you get to be, you know, when you're doing billboards and even the sides of the buses and all that stuff, it's really like a reinforcement of a brand that's kind of already been built and so it's like you know what would you say is the best? I guess, bang for your buck again for a new agent or Social media.
Speaker 2:Social media all day, that is 70% of my business, more like 80% now. But even those mistakes, I learned how to incorporate a different aspect. So, like, the billboard company will charge you per drive-by. So let's say I got a huge discount by them, by the way, because they started getting hit up left and right from businesses so they started giving me a better discount. So then I started getting more, but they charge you per drive-by. So if I'm going to get paid, charge $3,500 for this one in Arcadia for every car that drives by. How do I get more action from that? And it's funny because I had a nice message. I was smile, call to action, everything you need on an advertisement and people were making fun of it. I got blasted on social media. Keep in mind, I don't care it didn't hurt me.
Speaker 2:I love any kind of attention like that. But people were blasting me I was like dude, it's a freaking billboard. Like if I see billboard, it screams success to me. Like, yeah, people think I'm a millionaire. When I got one billboard, I'm like dude, I'm scraping by just like you, right, but it was a perception.
Speaker 2:He's on a billboard, he's got money. I'm like, no, I didn't, but that I kept that perception in my head. So so now I'm like, well, I got a nice message call. Actually, this is what you're supposed to do when you're making fun of me. I got a smile on my face, like what do you have to make fun of?
Speaker 1:Like really this guy's just trying to get business right.
Speaker 2:So I was like, why am I even pushing to get business? I'm just going to get the attention. So the our bodies and it said bye bye, bye. And are you not in sync with your living condition? Let's talk. And that thing got shared over 500 times on social media. So then I was like why?
Speaker 1:am I going?
Speaker 2:So it's the picture of the billboard and my Instagram was on it. So then I started getting flooded with followers because now my Instagram's on a billboard. So I was like, oh my gosh, I don't need to have the call to action, I just need to get the attention. So that same billboard that I was getting charged changing the message, it's now shared 500 times, not twice that people make fun of it. So I started doing a whole bunch of crazy billboards, like I had one where the city of Gilbert was in a fight to try to take it down. The whole Western Skies community was in an uproar to get my billboard taken down. It said ho, but it looked like ho, but it. It said home. I was just in the middle of it and at the end of it it said, uh, don't forget me when it's time to sell.
Speaker 2:so okay but I knew, having ho big capitals and they extended over the billboard, I knew that was going to get that driver's attention because you also know people don't pay attention to billboards. Like you have to draw their attention to it yeah, so when someone sees the word ho and they see something like whoa and that forces them to read the rest of the billboard. So now it said don't use me, but they're like my kids. See that I'm like your kids watch YouTube Like what are you doing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, really Get off my back lady Like your kids have never heard guy like if you come to me with respect, I will listen and I will, like you know what, I can change that message. I get. I get why you're upset. I don't want to piss you off. Let me change it. Yeah, but the way they came at me I was like you're pissing off the wrong person because once I turn off, like I'm not going to help you out. So they started like coming at me wrong. So I was like you know what? I would have taken it down. I said, but now I'm gonna keep it up. You guys got your whole community. I said someone has to own a business. If you want to take me down, you got to pay full price and no one would do it. So I just came back at them and said leave me alone. If it doesn't get taken down, stop calling me.
Speaker 1:So do you still have the same number of billboards around town?
Speaker 2:Now I have six freeway digital ones, six, okay, and now I put the listings on it because I'm trying to. It's a good Move, it more to the team and all that.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, okay, I know listing appointments will help us win, and that's another thing. You've got to always think like a consumer, like branding marketing. Every time think like a consumer, not like an agent, because I know putting a listing on a billboard is not going to get that house sold Like MLS gets the house sold. Open houses don't even get the house sold that much. So the MLS is the main focus to get the house sold, right. But I know putting on a billboard, perspective-wise from a seller, they're like oh, my house is going to be on a freeway billboard.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:And I take a picture of it, send it to them, because now they're going to share it all over social media. So now you're getting hitting twice the three X the exposure of not just the house but my brand, and all that because when they see their house on a billboard they share it over social media. So you're kind of hitting three targets by just doing one little program.
Speaker 2:So when I posted it, I had an agent respond and say you think it was going to sell on the billboard. I'm like no, no, it's not the point of it, but it gets buyers and sellers now. Yeah, so it's a different approach. That.
Speaker 1:I'm trying. That's a great approach, yeah.
Speaker 2:This is brilliant.
Speaker 1:How do you think of this stuff? This is amazing. It's just being in it. This is why I love it.
Speaker 2:now I've had marketing companies reach out to me and I always say, no, I want to do it myself.
Speaker 1:I didn't. I wanted to live, so you had it just bottled up inside of you, and now it's.
Speaker 2:I've surprised myself. Sometimes I'm like, why did I think about that? But like Shark Tank, I've been a Shark Tank fan from season one, so I take ideas other people have and change them to be real estate related. One of the biggest marketing things I do that people give me credit for is there was a team in my office they had like seven closings in one month and I was like, damn, how do they?
Speaker 2:have seven closings in one month. So I went back through their pages and this is such an important thing to do as an agent is go to the people that have the business and look what they're doing that you're not. So I looked at their pages and I know every Friday they farm a neighborhood but they hand out donuts and coffee to all the residents that are coming out and then they take those donuts and drop them off to fire station, police station, all that. But they're using Dunkin' Donut boxes.
Speaker 3:It's right at the exit of the neighborhood, just hang out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then when they drop them off, they're dropping off a Dunkin' Donuts box with their business card taped to it. So I started putting myself in the firefighter's shoes or the doctor's shoes. I'm like, if I'm going to walk through, I had surgery. I'm going to open this thing, take a donut, walk away. I don't care who's on it, I don't care who brought it. When I go to my office Keller Williams there's cookies all the time from vendors and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:You take one, you walk away. You don't pay attention to who brings it in. So instead of doing that, I said you know what? I'm going to steal that same idea, but I'm going to make it 10 times better. So I made custom let's Ink a Deal. On the front had my phone number and Instagram. On the side, the top, had my logo and my cartoon character, and I dropped seven boxes off at the Mercy Gilbert Hospital. That night I was on 23 Nurses Stories saying thanks for the donuts.
Speaker 2:Because now they have a box, because of the branding on the box, because now it's like they know it's a donut box, they know there's donuts in it, but now you can't not see who brought it in right and the let's sink a deal. And the cartoon character was like oh, that's funny, that's cute, like it was like that. So now it's like I don't care if this nurse has 300 followers. That's 300 people. I wasn't in before, in front of before yeah so now that's my brand all over the place.
Speaker 2:So making that donut box my brand was something I got from another person. I just made it better. So that's awesome shark. Watching people's businesses, I always think how do I add something like they're doing into my business? So I think that's like one of the best things to do as an agent is rip off and duplicate.
Speaker 3:But try to make it your own and just make it better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I have so many people that do that now for the donut boxes, so a lot of these ideas I have is just from being in the mix just trying to think of what can I add into my business that somebody else is doing Very, very cool?
Speaker 1:It's a long story. No, it's amazing.
Speaker 3:So, besides billboards, getting away from social media is obvious. I want to go back to social media in a minute, but I'm curious. So, billboards, are you doing? Buses, Are you doing anything?
Speaker 2:else like that. No, because I'm trying to the big wins, big losses in my business. So, um, I started a team and got my own office the month of market turn. Like it was literally the worst time to do both and I did both and, uh, it really hurt and I started like cutting back my marketing expenses.
Speaker 3:And like.
Speaker 2:I'm one of those. If something's going to fail, I'm going down with the ship. I'm not going to cut losses. If it's going to be my team's last day in office, it's going to be all of our last day in office. It's not going to be. I cut things and try to do it on my own. So we took the last two years. It's been survival. It's been bad, but it's been bad like. But it's so like grit and grow like I. I got super depressed last year and a half. Like a year and a half ago I was super depressed and now I'm starting to get that same mindset I had coming into the industry, where it's like shoot, if I fail, it's 20 times bigger failure because everyone the haters say I told you so and the people that follow me is like, oh I guess it can't be all those, all those comments on his Shaz post back when he first got in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't want them to be right, so I started getting depressed like, oh my gosh, I don't have the business I should be having Now. I got the two biggest expenses I had coming monthly now, like the office is $6,500 a month, like it's a lot to run by yourself. And I met with a couple of agents and I remember talking to Jason Mitchell, who's got one of the best teams in the country.
Speaker 2:Um, come to find out like so many of the people you look up to have went bankrupt, sold businesses like failed over and over again. Then it started making me like, oh, okay, like I can fail. Yeah, like, yeah, just start over. Like I know an agent she cleaned bankruptcy twice, like she had to do bankruptcy twice. And I'm like, oh, I haven't done it once yet, so I'm still good.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:So it's almost like I went from being super depressed and miserable to literally the next day like I hope it fails. I got to start over again, cause now I got the blueprint. And that's the most important part of if you fail out of this industry. You have the blueprint, you know what to do, you know where to start and you know how to take off. So I went from being super nervous and like depressed to like oh my gosh, there's so many opportunities that are still lying in front of me, and it got me more and energetic and we got, we're still got the office.
Speaker 1:you go through these cycles where it's like you know, it's like the, the right, it comes in and goes back out. Comes in, goes back out, and you're, unfortunately, as salespeople, we're in this emotional roller coaster of whatever the market bears for us, but it's still it's up to us to go and get it and wake up every day and get after it. And you have a choice right Like you have the choice to wake up and keep getting after it, or you can wake up and quit.
Speaker 2:No one knew I was depressed. When I was Like, when I was at that point, no one knew it. I always put the smile on my face. It was always good. I was on social media smiling. Was that like summer of 22? Yeah, that's exactly what it was. So when I started being more open about it, you started getting answers, because the only reason I talked to that first agent I was telling, or the lady I was telling you about, is because I just got to the point where I was like you know, I'm not doing good, and this is the only person I sold it to and she just smiled she's like Justin, like you're fine, like you're doing good, you still can at least pay your bills. And then she told me her story and, oh, maybe I should open up about this more, not just because that made me feel a lot better, because I think agents need to know this stuff, because I'm comparing myself to everyone online, so every single agent is comparing themselves to everyone online.
Speaker 2:So now I get compliments in my stories because I am vulnerable and open and tell people hey this is a mistake I made.
Speaker 2:Here's what I did. Here's what I did wrong. So I'm so more open about everything now because I'm not trying to be Superman. I want people to know there is ups and downs, like you just said. I was holding my cards like no one's going to know that I'm not happy, no one's going to know I'm losing money. But when I started just being open and say, yeah, I lost 10 grand last month because I couldn't close this many deals or whatever. Now you're just helping agents Now you're just helping agents.
Speaker 3:I can imagine that while you were sitting there in 22, feeling the way you were feeling, there was all of these other agents out there who were fully aware of your branding and see the success that you've had and the perception that you were still having success, probably because all your branding was still out there, thinking man, what is he doing? I need to figure that out so that I can be as successful as he's being. So there were probably a whole lot of people who were looking at, not realizing what was actually going on internally, but thinking that they were not nearly as successful as you were.
Speaker 2:I'm an honest person to begin with, so I'm like I don't mind being open with that. I'm an open book. You guys can ask me anything about anything, and I would talk about it, because I don't like to be closed off. I want to.
Speaker 1:So initially, when you kind of shifted gears into like okay, I'm Justin, I'm just going to, you know, go for the tattooed realtor and and do it on my own to like shifting into this team, you know, I'm going to build this group, I'm going to build this team mindset, did you guys pick up like was your business? Did you notice like a increase in your business immediately? Or did you dive first? Because I know what it takes to lead a team, like I know what it takes and I know what it takes from me to lead a team of people and there's a commitment that you have to make if you're going to lead a team of people. So yeah, I was just kind of curious to see.
Speaker 2:First year I sold 23 homes. I was trying to sell five. I knew an average agent sells three to five and I was like you know, I'm gonna go for five and it's doing 23.
Speaker 2:Second year did 43. So now I'm like I'm way past where I thought I would be anyway, 30 years. When I started a team and I didn't even want to start a team, I kind of got pressured into it by past agents and friends and I ended up doing it kind of like I was like, hey, hey, I don't have a CRM, there's tons of mistakes I've made in my business, I'm not ready to help people grow their business, and it was like peer pressure. I'm like, well, I guess I can teach you the investment space, I can teach you marketing, branding, social media, so I can teach you certain things. So I was very open to people that came to my team and said, hey, here's what I'm giving away my business, because I didn't want to run a team either. So now it's like I'm usually closing these deals and I'm getting them away and making half and they're getting capped now and I'm getting capped now.
Speaker 2:It's just like these paychecks that would normally be $10,000 are now like $4,000 to me. It's $3,000 to me plus the market turned, so I'm giving away all my deals and getting half of half of them and at the same time, I still have all the bills so exactly it did like I. That's when I started getting super depressed because I'm like now I'm trying to help like what did I do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, how did the branding translate over, though, to going from an individual to to leading a team? You kind of alluded to it earlier about how you're trying to figure out how to navigate that part of it, and my thought process was, when you said that earlier. It was like, well, why not just run right at the tattooed realtor branding and and try to find other realtors who, and maybe there were other realtors reaching out to you that we're all you know that we're into tattooing and all that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:And well, the first six people I reached out to join my team were women. Okay, now I had a team of women who there were six of us and I was the only one tattoos I had one girl had like a sleeve, and the other ones like didn't have any.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:So I was like, and I started thinking.
Speaker 1:I was like oh, like I feel bad for for them because now they're part of my brand, like call tattoo. Yeah, maybe they're gonna get looked at wrong and um well, that was part of the whole, like the notorious part of the story. I'm thinking kind of how the reputation started, I mean maybe two, three years ago, but I asked them too.
Speaker 2:I said are you guys okay with this? Because I don't want my brand to get mixed up, what you guys do and people not to use you because of my branding yeah um, because you do get haters too, and they were more thinking the process of like you've created a brand that you're known, at least so us working for you because they would have open houses and people would go in there to meet. They'd call me and say someone came by just to try to meet you and they'd laugh about it.
Speaker 2:So they were getting some people that reached out to them because I was already on billboards commercials. We did Spanish radio, so our brand was getting blasted everywhere. So now I have a team of I have a lot of 19, 20, 20-year-olds, 22-year-olds on my team and plus I had this crazy look. I just rebranded six months ago. So I changed my logo, I changed the colors, I changed everything to be more of a luxury type feel.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:Because now I have agents that, yeah, you can wear whatever you want your listing appointment. You're calling Fizbo's. You really want to show up looking like that because I still have the consumer part and everything is in my brain. So when I brand now like all the agents, they wear black slacks. I made them all polos. The brand doesn't have the crazy colors anymore. The paint splatters.
Speaker 2:It's like a sleek brand that, okay, can fit in now. So it. I have changed. Make it a lot changes of the brand too. Okay, to combat what my fear was is other people using your brand and not fitting with them. Yeah, okay, so now it's just like more. I'm called tattoo. This is my real estate group, so okay, so cool, so it's where it now, but it was scary. Like it was scary, I didn't know what I was doing.
Speaker 3:So 2024,. It has been a really challenging couple of years in the real estate industry. So where is the team today? How big is your team? We got 12 right now. 12, awesome.
Speaker 2:So I'm struggling right now because, I don't know, I just hired a sales manager but I don't know my team format is more of a brokerage format. So part of me wants to open my own brokerage. So I'm still struggling and if I did do a brokerage, I'm not going to name it Call Tattoo, it would be something else that could?
Speaker 2:fit more of a broader audience. Because now you're going for a brokerage, so I don't even know what I'm going to do with it yet, so but I'm, I'm having a lot of fun, like real estate's always been a joyful enjoyment for me, like it's not something that I wake up and like, oh, I gotta go work tomorrow.
Speaker 3:Like I'm excited to go to the office. Like we have a tattoo artist in our office, we have a barber.
Speaker 1:Our office is not like a traditional real estate office.
Speaker 2:There's like graffiti on the wall. It a fun vibe um tvs, music it's very cool, visually appealing. In the back of it I wanted to create like a speakeasy type real estate office where, yeah, it's a real estate office, but when you go through the back, we have a tattoo artist there, we have a barber there, we had a stylist. So now it's like I'm trying to change the feel of a traditional office.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of changes sounds like we need to come by no yeah's open to everybody.
Speaker 2:I used to have a someone's renting it now, but I had a conference room and I opened it to everybody.
Speaker 1:I said if you guys, need a conference room.
Speaker 2:it's a 20-seater. It's a big conference room. It's open to everybody. I don't care what meetings you have, because my thought process is I just want to be in front of everybody, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So what was the, what was the worst comment in Russell Shaw's post, going all the way back to the beginning of our show here, where you said there was, there was all of these haters in that like what, like what, go back to prison.
Speaker 2:I feel sorry for his kids, like there was just all these things. What pissed me off is you're seeing someone smile and that's what you're depicting them as because of the tattoos, and that's why one of those six-step processes I was talking about. The first one's the real why. Everyone needs a real why because why is always family and kids, and to me I was like Mike. That was the worst point in my life and I still kiss my kids every night.
Speaker 2:I read them books, took them to Disneyland, loved them to death. If real estate failed tomorrow, I'll get three warehouse jobs to support my kids. So they're not going to be my why ever. It's my obligation. So my why was to shut people up. It was those ignorant people that have that kind of mindset where it's like you can determine who somebody is just by looking at them. That's the most arrogant thing I've ever heard in my life. So it's more to shut people up and those are the people I will call out Like I will save their name, go back to their page and throw it in their face, cause to me it's just. It's the most arrogant, ignorant thing to say is judge somebody just by their look.
Speaker 3:Well, on social media is really kind of given way to that right, Because people feel like they can they can like throw a punch and then run away Cause there's an internet wall in between I get it, I get it.
Speaker 2:I got my face tattooed Not a lot of people do I get. There's a might be a stigma behind it, but at the same time, in my position, the way I think is like you're making fun of me, you're talking about me but you're going to hold the door open for a child molester, like you don't know who anybody is and those are the people that can hide who they actually are. Like I'm not hiding anything. Or I go in a restaurant and you guys stare at me but you'll wave to the guy who beats his wife Like you don't know anybody. So for you to just determine who I am based on a, a billboard or a look or a social media post, like it shows your arrogance, not my negative that you're trying to point out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that real why I had is what drove me in the very beginning was like I just wanted to shut people up. So those comments were ignorant. But now I've got the agents that commented on that one where I changed the billboard around. So when agents start doing it, those are the ones that kind of hurt the most. I'm like why are you? You should be supporting all other agents. There's too many catty people in this industry. Oh, for sure, yeah.
Speaker 1:I want to help everybody.
Speaker 2:There's money out there for everybody and I know like my looks not gonna hit certain people and those ones gonna go to you. Yeah, but nobody's look hits everybody. I got young people that I work with who won't use the older agents that have been in the industry for 40 years. I had a team full of women. Like one of the girls on my team, she looked like a supermodel. Women didn't want to work with her like single women because they were intimidating and married couples.
Speaker 2:The wife didn't want to work with her because now it's like I don't want my husband to get off early and go see homes with you, like, but that was a real thing that she faced. So just as much as I got judged like nobody in this industry gets everybody. So, yeah, I didn't think it was like a. Now I think it's an unfair advantage to be different so.
Speaker 1:So the first level of why are you able to get to share with us the other five? Oh yeah, I could briefly touch on it.
Speaker 2:So the second was perception, and perception I say because there were certain things that changed the whole outlook of my business because of the way someone perceived something I did. The very first open house I did was a $3 million mansion and my whole thought behind it was I wanted to show that I'm getting business and I was in a hot tub in this $3 million mansion. I was fully suited with a glass of wine. I treated the video like it was a Tinder video. I said ladies, you love rich men with beautiful houses, swipe right. And the girl that was filming was like no, justin, it's for your open house. But I put that video all over social media. So all over social media.
Speaker 2:So now this is a video made to announce an open house. How does it have 30,000 views? Like it's shared 600 times? It's just an open house video. So then that perception of me, I was like, oh, like the end, like I'm thinking like an agent, that's what wholly can change my, my thought process. Behind it is now the next week I did it at $900,000 mansion, 800,000. So I'm getting flooded with DMs talking about like, how did you get that listing? It's not my listing.
Speaker 1:I'm holding an open house but.
Speaker 2:I didn't tell them that. I said come, bring me a buyer, I can represent the buyer. So the second process was perception, because I knew it's what people perceive, not what it is.
Speaker 2:Third was think like a consumer and give you some examples of that. Four was social media. Five was rip off and duplicate. And six is attention. I mean attention is like one of the biggest ones because it's not about like I'm reaching a broad audience, Like I'm not trying to dial a specific message into a small group. I'm just hitting as broad people as I can and they'll funnel themselves in where they need to. So the attention came because, like I bought a limo people as I can and they'll funnel themselves in where they need to.
Speaker 2:So the attention came because I bought a limo. It was $5,000. I wrapped it and took my kids to school to it and now, fast forward through time, kids were running up to the fences every time. I dropped my kids off and picked them up and my kids would be like are we rich? I'm like no. Who said that? Everyone thinks we're millionaires? I'm like their mom's camera costs more than this limo, but it's the perception of what the kids were. They're seeing kids going to limo and that's the whole reason I wrapped a limo, because it was like everyone looks at notice it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so I'm gonna wrap it and uh, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I started making kids shirts and I went there for one of their events and I saw eight kids wearing my shirt in the school. So I'm like like the whole attention thing was what I was riding. From that point on, yeah, you've mastered that. I had two kids from their school. I sold their parents' houses because I gave away T-shirts and they were like oh, the tattooed realtor came by and he's got a limo and all this stuff. So now you got kids like advertising for you. So the sixth one was attention, and you just always try to figure out how to create attention because it just gets eyes. But those were the six. They were like an hour each. I can explain them all, but those were like the big six where I had zero in escrow.
Speaker 2:I didn't know the business, I knew nothing about real estate, no pipeline to closing $1.8 million the next month, and that was during COVID, when now I'm scared, I have no business, nothing in the pipe, too close than that because of those six steps.
Speaker 3:So if you could go back to the point in time when you decided to become a realtor, what advice would you give yourself? Would you do it all over again the same way? Yeah?
Speaker 2:because it was so much fun.
Speaker 3:It really was.
Speaker 2:I've never made money before, just the fact that I can give away, like all the people I was helping, giving money to my mom and this company and doing this for the kids. I remember the first december.
Speaker 2:I was like I've I've lived paycheck to paycheck my whole life like I remember when I was married my wife hit a curb and it popped the tire. It's 160 to change the tire and we got in a fight at night because of it. That led into the grocery store to like why can't get that Like we just got. So I'm like we're we're creating this turmoil in our house because of the stress that $160 tire put on our entire relationship, kids, family, future, everything. And I was like I'm not living like that anymore. So like it. So it was just like a big change in my lifestyle, so like Christmas. I remember going to Walmart filling up four carts full of toys and clothes and stuff and donated to Jacob's Mission. I didn't post it, I didn't tell anyone about it, I just did it. But I felt so good. I was like I didn't even look at the receipt, I didn't, I just knew there was money in my account, so I went and bought it.
Speaker 3:And I was like it's like that's the life I want to live, like you live in.
Speaker 2:Where you can give.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love that, but I especially love that you didn't post about it, because that's everybody tends to want to show off how great they are, yeah, how generous they are.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to use it as like I'm trying to get.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:This is not for real estate, this is for me, yeah. So now I do, like here's what I'm going to do if you guys want to donate, because now that four grocery carts can get, now I fill the bus. So I have a mini bus that I bought and now we try to fill it from bottom to top front to back full of toys during the holidays. That's awesome, so it's still like I still do it, but now I post it because I want to bring everybody else into giving.
Speaker 3:That's amazing. So to kind of wrap things up so how important is personal branding for your?
Speaker 2:success Like life change for me. But you just have to have a clear vision Like what is the goal? Like why are you doing it for?
Speaker 3:one.
Speaker 2:And then, like what does it mean? Like what does branding mean to you? Does branding mean you put your sticker on a water bottle and hand them out at open houses? Because that's not branding. That's like what's it called?
Speaker 1:like advertising or something like that. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Branding is like who people know you by what they know you for. So brand is not just like a logo, color designs, all that plus. Like you, you represent your brand.
Speaker 3:Well, it becomes your persona, right? Yeah, but even colors like it goes down to colors.
Speaker 2:Like I looked up psychology behind colors before I branded myself and remember I'm a truck driver, I don't know any of this stuff, so I'm reading all this stuff online. I'm like, oh, colors, colors matter. So I started looking. There's psychology behind colors.
Speaker 1:I didn't know any of this stuff.
Speaker 2:So now I'm reading that and now I've become interested in subjects I didn't even like. But red is the most attention getting color. But I was like I don't want red because everyone uses red. And what's the next most attention getting color was pink against black, hot pink against black. I was like that's my color. So I knew pink was, and then blue was the opposite of the pink. So that's how I went about. Even branding my colors was like what's the most attention getting colors?
Speaker 2:and I started looking like. No one uses pink and blue in real estate like it. It's all like the same color. So now it was like I remember there's a hair dryer in Walmart and it's got pink, blue and green splatters all over it and those are my colors and I got sent that hair jar like 250 times text messages.
Speaker 3:But I was like I love, I love that because it's like your brand.
Speaker 2:it's working it is.
Speaker 2:It's sticky. They thought about you and they looked at a hair dryer. Yeah, that's so. That's pretty awesome when I tell agents. It's not just like your name is what are you gonna do with the name? Like what is the purpose of it? We're gonna do with it because that green mango truck me seeing it. They got my business for 12 years. So I know branding does work and people do trust a brand and I went to a branding like a mastermind and 70% of people trust a brand. They'll always buy from a brand first.
Speaker 1:So now, like now that I'm in the world of branding and marketing, like I realize, like how in-depth some things go like, with their thought process behind why they do certain things so, but your branding, I mean it's been it really not been around all that long, but it's been extremely successful for you. Yeah, I never like you guys have no that long, but it's been extremely successful for you. Yeah, I never like you guys have no idea. It's amazing. It's amazing, it really is I like it's a inspiring story.
Speaker 2:I'll go to a gas station, park my car, get whatever, and I'll see someone delivering and I was like I will sit there and feel guilty, cause I'm like this, I know what they're just going through today Like. I know whole day and I'm sitting there like now. I'm getting emotional because I'm like I see this guy working his ass off. So I never thought I could be this person. I never thought I'd have a billboard or commercial. So it's all still new to me, but it makes you extremely grateful for what you came from.
Speaker 1:So just this whole industry changed my life.
Speaker 2:So I'm like so grateful for just even being on a podcast. It's like, why do these people want to talk to me? But it's life-changing. This is why.
Speaker 3:Well, we appreciate you taking your time to be on our show. Really appreciate you for setting an example a great example for our industry of knowing who you are and running towards that being the genuine article and not faking it. I think a lot of people in our business could take some notes on that. I think that would go a long way in our industry. So, yeah, I really appreciate you being here. We're going to have all of Justin's contact information in the descriptions. If you're watching on YouTube, please hit that like button. We'll have Justin's contact information down there. If you're looking to buy or sell real estate, please look up Justin. His team is awesome. They do a great job, they know what they're doing, and that's hard to find, I think, in the industry these days. You want to work with somebody that doesn't just have amazing branding but really do know what they're doing from a real estate perspective.
Speaker 1:So check them out. It's the Call Tattoo Real Estate Group. It's the Call Tattoo Real Estate Group.
Speaker 3:Thank you, but I appreciate everybody for watching and look forward to seeing you guys on the next episode. See you you.
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