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Welcome and Happy Wednesday! We’re going to talk about branding today. Now, I don’t mean the kind with pretty logos and color palettes. I’m talking about your name: what it stands for and what people think of the second they hear it.

If you need a masterclass in branding, watch Madonna show up at Coachella. Madonna has been famous longer than some of y’all have been alive, and she’s still commanding attention. What I love is not that she stayed the same, but because she never did. Reinvention is her brand. She changes the look, the sound, the era, but the throughline’s always there. You know it’s Madonna the second you see her. Madonna is so thoroughly Madonna that she doesn’t even require a last name!

That did not happen by accident. No, ma’am. And that’s what I want for all of you. In real estate (and frankly, in any business where you’re the product), you don’t get the luxury of being forgettable. You don’t get to blend in and expect people to pick you anyway. If they don’t know what you stand for, if they can’t place you, if they can’t remember you, they can’t hire you.

Let’s get into it.

P.S. To all the kids at Coachella who didn’t grasp the magnitude of the Madonna moment with Sabrina Carpenter, your parents failed you.

STORYTIME WITH GLENNDA

Do y’all want to know the number one question I’m always asked? “Glennda, how many star sweaters do you own?” The answer is… too many to count. That’s because wearing stars started being my personal brand decades before I even knew a brand could be something other than “Kleenex” or “Coca-Cola.” Years and years ago, my mother told me, “Baby, you’re a star, so you should dress like one,” and I took her literally.

So today, let’s talk about building a personal brand. I feel like a lot of people hear the phrase “personal branding” and and immediately assume it’s something reserved for celebrities and professional athletes. I promise that couldn’t be further from the truth because a personal brand is for anybody whose name is attached to how they make a living. (Last I checked, that is all of us.)

Now I believe I’ve told y’all before about Jay-Z and how he used branding to become Jay-Z. See, he decided who he was going to be before the world caught up to him. He didn’t sit around, waiting for a record label to validate him. Sometimes when you wait for external validation, you can spend your whole life in flux.

Jay-Z decided to co-found Roc-A-Fella Records when nobody was handing him a deal. That man pressed his own CDs and he quite literally put them in people’s hands. But he did more than that. He took consumer psychology into account, so he created scarcity. While he didn’t create the scarcity model, he leaned into why built-in exclusivity is so effective.  What’s fascinated me so much about his story is that he made himself look “bigger” than he was until he actually was, with the cars and the heavy gold chains. This was his was of signaling to the marketplace, “This is who I am.” In proactively calling his shot, he bypassed the process of waiting for the world to catch on. Oh, my stars and stripes, that was flat-out brilliant and it’s still one of the most powerful strategies. (Of course, it worked because he had the skills to back up the promises.)

I want to share another example so you can understand how universal the idea of branding yourself really is. Let’s take a look at Oprah. Her brand is not “talk show host,” even though that’s how we all got to know her. Instead, her brand’s based on trust and authenticity because she spent decades being consistent, so much so that we don’t even question her. If she selects a book for her club, everyone knows to clear their Sunday because they won’t be able to put that book down. If she deems something her “favorite thing,” it’s going to sell out lightning quick because it’s high-caliber.

So, what do Oprah and Jay-Z have to do with you, sitting here trying to figure out how to get your next deal, your next client, your next opportunity? Well… everything! The fact of the matter is that whether you’re intentional about it or not, people are already forming an opinion about you. The question is, are you guiding it or are you just crossing your fingers and hoping for the best?

When I started in real estate, I didn’t have the luxury of a long resume. I didn’t have a college degree. I’d not yet established any sort of bona fides, nor did I have a built-in network handing me business. I had a baby, some spare Huggies in my briefcase, and a lousy apartment I could barely afford. Because I was starting out so far behind the eight-ball (no connections, no credibility), I had to be strategic about how I showed up.

Back then, the very first thing I did was make sure people could recognize me. I’m not kidding y’all; I put my face on everything. I understood that familiarity breeds comfort. That is why I parked my car in the neighborhood I wanted to farm and I strolled tiny baby Victoria through there every single day. I’d wave and chit-chat with everyone and I became a fixture. My rational was that if someone saw me enough times, they start to feel like they knew me. When people feel like they know you, they’re a whole lot more likely to call you. That sounds basic, but so many agents skip right over it. They hide behind logos, team names, generic branding that could belong to anybody, then then they wonder why nobody remembers them.

If you want to build a brand, step one is to make yourself visible in a consistent way. This can be as simple as posts with the same photo style, same tone, and same general look. You don’t need a photoshoot every week, but you do need to stop looking like a different person every time you show up. (For me, my visibility was a fresh onesie, a big smile, and the same walking route every day.)

Step two is deciding what you want to be known for. Agents can get tripped up here because they don’t want to limit themselves. When you ask them about their expertise, they’ll say, “Well, I can work with first-time buyers and luxury clients and investors and relocations.” This is where it’s important to simplify and pick a lane people can understand. Does this mean you can only ever do that one thing? Of course not! It only means that when someone thinks of that thing, they think of you. Expand later, but don’t try to start as everything to everyone.

For me, early on, I wanted people to associate me with activity. I wanted to position myself in the middle of everything happening in the market. So, I created that perception. Every sale in the brokerage became a touchpoint for me to show up in someone’s mailbox. I asked for my broker’s permission to send out mailers with every sale our agency made.  Mind you, I wasn’t claiming I sold every listing so much as I was making sure my name was connected to the idea of selling.

Step three is credibility. Do not sleep on establishing credibility! And don’t fall into the trap of thinking you need years of experience before you can present yourself as credible. I stacked credibility from day one. I joined every association, every board, every organization that would have me, and I put it all out there. While I didn’t have a track record yet, I had I had proximity. The signals I put out said, “I take this seriously.” Agents today are so lucky, because y’all have more access to credibility now than I ever did. You’ve got testimonials and you’ve got social proof. With a single click, you’ve got market data at your fingertips. So borrow it, build it, and then replace it with your own results as you achieve them.

Step four is consistency in behavior, not just appearance. A brand is not just your colors and your fonts. You strengthen that brand by how you show up when things are easy and when they’re not. Your brand is how you communicate. It’s how quickly you respond. It’s how you solve problems. You cannot market your way around bad behavior, so make sure your service matches your image. Otherwise your brand will collapse under its own weight like a dying star. I’ll refer you to Oprah again here because if she puts her name behind it, that expectation matches the experience every damn time.

Step five is storytelling. I like to say that facts tell, but stories sell. If all you’re doing is posting listings and market stats, you’re giving people information. Info is important, but you also must give them a reason to care. People will follow you and remember you because they feel something. Like, talk about the deal that almost fell apart and how you saved it. Tell them about the first-time buyer who cried with such joy at the closing table that everyone needed a tissue. Talk about what you’re seeing in the market and what it actually means for someone trying to make a decision. Creating that emotional connection is how you move from being just another agent to being the agent.

Finally, understand that your brand is a long game. There’s no finish line where you get to say, “Okay, I built my brand, now I can relax.” Your brand is something you maintain, refine, and protect every single day. Every interaction either reinforces what people believe about you or it chips away at it.

Your name is an asset. Just like any asset, it can appreciate or depreciate depending on how you manage it. So, if you’re sitting here wondering when you should start building your personal brand, let me make it very simple for you: you already started. The only question is whether you’re doing it with intention.

Now go figure out what your version of a star sweater is!

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GLENNDAISM

Today’s Words of Wisdom

GLENNDA BAKER & ASSOCIATES

The Perfect Place to Make Your Own

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