Develop Your Master Message and Attract Your Most Desired Crowd!

Welcome back to the real value podcast, the podcast about business, life, success; about finding value in anything and everything, and about creating absolutely as much of it as you can with the time we have! Good morning my friends and thank you so much for stopping by the Real Value Studios to hang out with me again this week. My name is Blaine Feyen and I am your host for this and every episode of the real value podcast. The pleasure is always mine when we get to hang out for a bit and swap value, if you will.  I thank you for giving me the opportunity to be part of your lives and businesses each week and I truly hope that you are getting some value from our time together. 

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I don’t know about all of you but this past month has been record breaking for us here at the Real Value Group. I’ve communicated with a good many of you over the past few weeks and I know many of you are having smashing success in your business as well and I love to hear about everyone’s successes because it helps to reinforce the message that there is business going on somewhere! If you spend any amount of time on any of the industry related forums, you chat with a representative number of appraisers wherever they may congregate, and you will typically hear a message of doom and gloom, there’s not enough business for everybody, appraisal waivers, legislation, Fannie Mae, corrupt realtors and lenders, bifurcation, Taco Bell employees as reviewers, and so on. There is enough negativity in this industry for 5 or 6 other industries to share and I, personally, don’t fully understand where it comes from and why its so persistent. I mean, I know where it comes from, it’s a personality quirk that tends to be present in a certain type of individual that is either hatched into the appraiser world or is drawn toward, like a moth to a flame, the appraisal industry. I just don’t fully understand why its so persistent when there is so much business out there for appraisals, agents, and lenders who have their heads screwed on straight, who don’t wallow in lack thinking, and who are constantly on the lookout for ways to be of service to others. It simply is my friends. I’m not naïve, I don’t have my head in the sand, and I tend to believe I stay on top of what is going on in our industry and the greater world around us. I see it all. I see the changes. I see what Fannie Mae is saying and doing. I see the push toward bifurcation and hybrid reports. I see the appraisal waivers on deals. I see the push toward using non trained Individuals for inspections and data gathering. I see it all my friends. And I just had one of the best months ever in our business. I know what the more negative of the listeners will say when they hear that. “Just wait Blaine, its coming to you too! Its coming! You’re not immune to it and I cant wait to see what happens to you when it does!” Yeah, maybe. There is always somebody standing around with nothing to do but bitch at people who are actually getting things done. And I learned long ago that if you let these people infect your thinking or your attitude, you’ll eventually become one of them. They’re like zombies; if they bite you you’re infected and on your way to becoming just like them. And what do zombies always do? They travel in packs and seek to bring down anything living that crosses their path. If you want to stay among the living you have to develop some tactics to deal with the undead. And by the way, I believe ‘undead’ is a great way to refer to people like this because their attitude would indicate that they are simply waiting to die. They’re still alive, they’re just in a rut, have a bad attitude, and are simply waiting for death. Unfortunately, people like this are always seeking others to support their position and justify their existence so it is up to you to prepare your sharpened wooden stake, wrap your baseball bat with barbed wire, and do whatever they do on the plethora of zombie shows and movies to stay safe from the hoards of undead, metaphorically, of course!
 
The burden is on you my friends to protect yourself from the infection that the undead wishes to spread. You must protect your thinking, your attitude, your mindset, and your business at all costs from people like this. They are everywhere and in every industry and they’ll have you preparing your own noose and looking for a tree branch strong enough if you’re not careful. Don’t engage if you don’t have to because the undead are far better at being undead than you may be at defending yourself against them at this point. You may need some more self defense training and some kind of tactical advantage before you try to do battle with these kinds of people. Distance is your friend against the undead and your continued growth and success is the sunshine they so vehemently hate to see. They cringe when they see it and, like roaches, they scurry to the darkest corners they can find. This is usually a basement somewhere with a keyboard, a computer, and an internet connection. I’ve said it many times on this show, be careful who you listen to and follow my friends. The undead are everywhere just waiting for something to take them out of their misery and they’ll gladly take as many of you as they can as they go. There are some of the undead who haven’t quite crossed over completely yet and can still be saved but it will take a very strong individual with a powerful vocabulary and message to turn them. Be careful if you think this is you because it may be a ruse. A tactic of the undead to lure you into their lair only to chomp down on your neck at the first opportunity and turn you to the dark side.
 
And if you are one of the undead and you’re listening to this episode, just know that there may still be hope for you. You may just be in a rut, which is just a grave with the ends kicked out, and you can be saved and brought back to the light but its going to take some work on your part. We have to first deprogram you of the dark, horrible, lack consciousness and lack thinking that runs your life. Then we have to replace your old thinking and behavior patterns with new thinking, new tactics, new words, and a new view of the world around you. It can be done, I’ve seen it with my own eyes and I’ve done it personally with lots of the undead. But you have to want to. You have to want to see something better than what you’re seeing right now. You have to want to believe in something better than what you’re believing in right now. I’ll help, but it’s ultimately up to you to come toward the light and realize that its not all doom and gloom and you are doing nobody any good by telling everybody else just how bad it is. I know, you think you’re doing everybody a favor by steering them away from the industry or encouraging them to leave as fast as they can. You’re not. Unless you’re encouraging other of the undead to move on and infect some other industry with their thinking and attitude, you’re not helping yourself or anybody else. Nobody needs your advice on the topic and you only expose yourself as somebody who cant think creatively, is stuck, and should probably move on for your own well being. For all of the 1%ers listening, do your best to avoid these people at all costs and keep doing what you’re doing! Hopefully everybody listening understands I’m speaking metaphorically when I use the term undead and compare them to zombies. No religious or metaphysical connotations meant by my use of those terms. Just a stern warning, once again, to be very careful what you allow into your mind, past the mental guards of your conscious mind and into your subconscious mind where a negative mindset and attitude can take hold and all but ruin you.
 
Alright, enough of the Walking Dead references my friends, lets get to the good stuff! In the last episode we talked about the hero’s journey and how that form of story telling or story arc can be a powerful way to look at your business and, more specifically, the message that your business is sending to the world. I talked about how every story that follows something of the hero’s journey story arc has a reluctant hero, a wise mentor or guide, an adventure, a big problem to be battled or solved, a reward, a return journey and a slip back into normal life for the hero. What I hope you got from that episode is that many of us tend to think of ourselves as the hero in our story. We like to think about how we built our business, how much good we’re doing in the world, protecting the public trust, making sure the loans that are being made by the clients we work for are well supported and the risk sufficiently mitigated based on the information we provide via the appraisal, teaching other individuals how to appraise like we do, giving other people careers in a great business and industry, and so on. Who wouldn’t want to think of themselves as the hero in their own story? We all do it and its built into the story of the entrepreneur. We see our colleagues talking about it all the time in whatever forum they all congregate in. They don’t use the word hero but they use language and talk about issues that would suggest that they are fighting battles on a daily basis and dealing with stuff that only hero’s, or somebody with a very strong set of shoulders and intestinal fortitude, could possibly handle and that, my friends, at least in their minds, is a hero. The story of the entrepreneur, the one who bucks the trend of working for somebody else. The one who bootstraps their way through the tough times and builds something of significance and helps the world be a better place. The rugged individualists who don’t need anybody or anything to help them make the climb to the top of some metaphorical mountain in pursuit of profits, freedom, the ability to make our own choices and decisions, and, at the end of the day, pat ourselves on the back for making shit happen, battling all of the demons in our path, saving the girl or the guy, and getting our just reward. The story of the entrepreneur is the story of a hero and it takes a tough individual to tackle all of the tasks and challenges that entrepreneurship entails. One of the problems with this mythical story, however, is that its not all based in historical truth nor fact. Entrepreneurs since the very beginning have needed others to help them. They’ve needed bank financing, resources, people, friends, family, investors, a willing market, and a whole slew of other things that are often left out of the story. One of the most important parts of the entrepreneurial story is, of course, the guide or the mentor that has been helping the entrepreneur along the way giving them advice and guidance when they couldn’t see the forest for them trees. The guide was there to help them see obstacles when the entrepreneur couldn’t and the guide was there to offer a much needed kick in the pants when the entrepreneur was being obstinate, arrogant, and conceited. You see, my friends, depending on how you see yourself, your market, your clients and customers, and your story, the guide or the mentor is often the real hero of the story. They’re often the unsung hero of the story because they don’t seek recognition.
 
They guide and mentor for the internal gratification they get from helping another individual out. The mentor can appreciate the struggle and the climb because they’ve been through it and they know what’s ahead. The success of the student, the entrepreneur in this story, is reward enough for the mentor and they seek no pats on the back, they need no adulation for a job well done, and they ask for no recognition of the role they played in the hero’s success. The question we asked in the last episode was, which one are you being? Are you always trying to be the hero or do you see yourself as the guide for your clients? Really, at your core, do you seek and need the pat on the back for a job well done or are you happy standing off to the side while your clients get the congratulations, knowing full well that they wouldn’t be where they are without your help? These are vital questions to ask yourself because when we start to unwrap what we actually think and believe on this topic, we get some vital insight into how we speak and act toward the very people who pay us for our services. And another way to think about our services as appraisers, real estate agents, and lenders is guidance. The market has an extremely wide set of options when it comes to who they can hire to do an appraisal for them or sell their house. In lending situations, I get it, the client doesn’t get to choose. But they got to choose their agent and their lender, and their lender chose you to some degree based on whether or not they’re a direct lender you work with or the AMC panel you’re on. Nevertheless, with such a wide variety of choices available to the market, services look like services and when theres no differentiation everything tends to look the same and when everything looks the same, people tend to buy based on price alone. We talked about this extensively in the episode on commoditization of the appraisal and the appraisal process. When there is no differentiation from one appraiser to the next then, in the minds of the consumer, there is no differentiation between the appraisal that ends up on their kitchen table. This is true for real estate agents, lenders, and hot dog stands as well. When you add in all of those who think they are the hero of the story you end up having a big battle of egos, the likes of which add no value whatsoever to the end user or investor in your product or service, in this case, the appraisal, your listing and buyers agent services, or your offerings as a lender. Ego may get you out of bed in the morning because you like a challenge but it adds nothing whatsoever to your product and, in fact, likely detracts from it. Your client wants a trusted guide and mentor through the process. They don’t want a hero, they want to be the hero. Even if they don’t know it, one huge market advantage you can have is to be the one who makes every client a hero at the end of the story. There are a variety of ways we can do this and I’ve discussed many of them in past episodes but, of course, we’ll keep talking about them and we’ll be talking about some more of them in future episodes.   If you don’t remember any of them it’s because you weren’t ready to hear them. You didn’t have the right mindset to be able to absorb them or put them into action in your business and that’s ok. Its one of the reasons I do the podcast: so I can keep reminding you about this process, the mindset shits necessary to become the authority and leader in your market, and enjoy the process much more than you might be right now. Once you make the mental shift to thinking like a trusted guide and mentor I’m going to suggest going back and re-listening to the past episodes because I give lots of tips, lots of tactical and practical, and lots of million dollar ideas for how to do this.
 
So what’s the value of making the mental shift from being the hero to becoming the guide or the mentor in the story? Well, the value is massive and you wont know until you make it but I would suggest that it will absolutely become the very thing that separates those who have duplicatable businesses and command the absolute highest fees from those who don’t have repeatable and duplicatable businesses or can only command the absolute lowest fees. I want to say that again because you may have missed the key words I used. I said the value in understanding why its so important to become the trusted guide and mentor for your clients instead of being the hero is the difference between having a business that is duplicatable and one that is not. This word duplicatable is super important because it is one of the foundational principles I teach to anyone who is open enough to hear me. Doing business for business’ sake is an exercise in futility. Its how most people operate but that’s not how or why the 1%er operates. If what you’re doing can’t be duplicated in another market or taught to another person and have them do the same thing in their market then its more or less a waste of time and valuable life energy. One of the longer term goals of what I teach is to free you up for more important things and higher paid activities. I can teach you how to be a much more efficient one person appraiser shop and you’ll make considerably more money in less time but that may not be addressing the real issue. If you’re not enjoying the process then what good is it to teach you how to be better at doing something you don’t even like. But if we can free you up to be doing more of the things you truly enjoy and are good at and less of things you don’t then it might be a worthwhile exercise to see what that would be like. The way we do that is by developing systems and processes that are fueled by a principled mindset and vision of making every client the hero of the story. Being the trusted guide and mentor in your market is one of the most valuable ways to do that and always leads to the highest paid work in every market and I’ll tell you why. One of the reasons, and it’s a powerful one, is called the law of reciprocity and it works pretty much flawlessly in human beings. If I do something for you, you will likely feel compelled to return the favor or gesture, and that goes for both good things and bad things. If I harm you in some way or do something bad to you, you’ll feel compelled, at some level, to want to do the same to me. I didn’t say you’d do it, just that you’ll want to do the same. But if I do something good and positive for you with no expectation of return, you’ll be more likely to want to return the favor, even if you don’t know how and never actually do. The point is not that people do actually return the favor, it’s that when you do something good, positive, and nice for another person, especially if it wasn’t asked for, you activate the law of reciprocity within them and they want to return the favor.
 
How this works in business and in what I teach is that by becoming a massive resource in your market by providing information, talks at real estate and lending offices, producing educational videos, reviewing appraisals for agents, being willing to take time and talk with agents and lenders about specific principles and practices within our trade, and doing it all for free, you are constantly activating the law of reciprocity within those individuals and they will want to return the favor somehow. The best way for them to return the favor is by referring you when the opportunity arises. One of the ancillary benefits of following my method in this regard is that by becoming a trusted guide and mentor in your market, you are always top of mind when the conversation about value and appraisals comes up. We get calls literally every single day from our lender and realtor clients, as well as all of the people they’ve referred, because these discussions are happening all of the time and, when they do, they think of you and your name and number gets passed along. When we have a new trainee or staff person hear these conversations going on all the time they inevitably ask, as do many of our clients, how can you do this every day? How can you take all the time that you do to talk with all the people who call and email with questions about appraisals and appraisal topics and do it all for free? And my answer is simple, ‘how can we not do it?’ It is the very fuel that drives our business! And its not for free. Its an extremely valuable investment of time in a very profitable future benefit which is their trust, their appreciation, their referrals, and having a new defacto salesperson for my company out in the world spreading the word about how helpful we are, how much time we spend educating, and how willing we are to have those conversations. This is how you make your business duplicatable my friends. You simply become invaluable in any market as the go to resource for information and education on the very thing you do as an income producing activity. Drop me and my template into any market in any country and I will have a profitable business up and running within a few weeks and ready to sell at a large profit within a year. How? By becoming the go to resource for that community for that thing that I am selling, producing, creating, or providing. In this case, its appraisal services. Do I go in and start offering appraisal services? No! Absolutely not. I go in and start booking myself solid for talks, classes, meetings, lunch and learns, coffee chats, appraisal reviews for agents and lenders, I create a website with educational content, a private Facebook page with educational content for those people, a whole slew of video training sessions, lots of handwritten notes and personalized video responses, and simply become the go to resource for that group and community on the topic of appraising. I say simple, yet its not that simple. If it was, everybody would be doing it. Thankfully for you and I, they aren’t.
 
So that’s a little of what becoming the trusted guide and mentor, instead of always trying to be the hero, sounds and feels like. So how do we craft our master message with all of this in mind? As I promised, this is what the main topic of this episode is about so lets get into it. It is, quite simply, a three step questioning process whereby you ask of yourself and your business these three questions, the answers to which become your master message. So, right now, when somebody asks you what you do, we typically say something like, “I am a real estate appraiser” or “I appraise real estate” or “I’m hired by the banks to give a value for the houses they’re loaning on.” I know, some of you have some more creative responses than that, but for most of you its something like that, and even the more creative answers tend to be tinged with the curse of knowledge. Do you remember what that is? We talked about it a couple shows ago and its where we tend to speak and use the words we’re comfortable with based on our level of expertise. The problem being an obvious one. The people we tend to speak to have little to no understanding of what it is we do so when we’re speaking to them at a level 8 or 10 in appraiser speak, most of it is going past them or they simply shut down and are no longer listening. Most people buy at levels 1 and 2 so speaking to them at anything above that is futile. We owe it to the very people who want to invest in and with us to speak at their level. We can get very used to thinking of our clients as the bank and the AMC, and we’re speaking to them every week so the language we use, the problems we’re solving for them, and the specifics of each of those transactions tend to be framed in a professional way that the appraiser and the bank understand, but maybe nobody else. More importantly, most homeowners, realtors, some attorneys, estate planners, and the plethora of potential private clients don’t really care about the technical side or the minutiae of the appraisal process, at least not explained at a level 8 or 10 in appraisal speak. Most of you are dealing so much with banks and AMCs that you tend not to care all that much about framing what we do in terms of the individual who might have a use for our services, or know somebody who does, at some point in the future.
 
For the first several years I was in business I never carried business cards with me because I didn’t want to give them out to homeowners when they would ask. I was still in the mindset of, ‘the bank and buyer are my clients and I don’t want to really have to answer your questions if you call so no card for you!’ Once I woke up from that nightmare way of thinking and realized the opportunity I was missing, I started carrying my cards everywhere and giving them out at every house I walked through that day, regardless of whether or not it was a refi, a purchase, a foreclosure, a divorce, an estate deal, or whatever it may be. And the calls started coming in. And what I learned from that experience was how to develop a good script, how to develop well written groups of answers to a variety of questions, how to set expectations at the face to face meeting about what I may be able to discuss and what I cant, how to send thank you cards, how to add people to a mailing list, and so on. In every case, regardless of what I was able to say or not say, when a phone call came in regarding a particular deal, I was always helpful in educating them on whatever they called about and you have an appreciative person on the other end of the phone at the end, even if they weren’t happy with what I had to tell them or explain to them. If done right and with empathy, almost every one of those calls can turn into a fan of you and your business methodology. And since what we talk about a lot on this show, and one of the things I believe I’m good at, is developing the non-lender and private side of your business, this idea of refining your message for those who might have an opportunity to hire you for your expertise is a big one! We need to stop speaking as if we’re talking to lenders, underwriters, reviewers, and risk mitigation departments deep within the bank. We need to replace the expert speak with words, scripts, language, and a message that speaks to the growing base of homeowners that can and will hire us for appraisal work. I’ve looked at and critiqued hundreds of websites, flyers, mailers, advertisements, and restaurant placemats and they’re almost always the same. They all speak in a language that satisfies our understanding of the process, maybe a banks understanding of the process, but explains almost nothing in the language of the novice and the one most likely to call us for our expertise. So, before we go into this three step process of developing your master message, I want to encourage you to rethink whom you believe you’re speaking to when you develop answers for questions, when you develop the text on your websites, when you make flyers, marketing materials, and explainer videos. We need to start writing and speaking in a language that makes sense to the lowest common denominator, not the highest. We’re not trying to get other Appraisal Institute members to hire us. In fact, we’re not even trying to get banks to hire us with our websites and marketing materials. Or at least we shouldn’t be! Do you think there are any banks out there scouring the interwebs for a good appraiser to add to their panel? Absolutely not! So why is all of our language about us, our qualifications, our years of experience, our designations, and what can sound like a convoluted valuation process filled with lots of stuff the average person doesn’t understand? I’ll tell you why, because that’s the way it has always been done and nobody like me has come along to tell you to stop it! So that’s what I’m here to do in this episode: to tell you to STOP IT! The banks and AMCs are not looking at your websites and flyers. Homeowners are and they are so damn sick and tired of seeing advertisements talking about how good a company is or how long they’ve been in business or how many credentials and designations they have. Its absolutely ridiculous! Have you ever seen a realtors business card or advertisement with a ton of designations after their name? CRS, MRB, CRB, ALC, CCIM, ABR, GRI, CRE. Do they mean something to the agent who earned them? Of course! Do they signify advanced study, commitment, and extensive investment into one’s career? Absolutely! But they say nothing to the average person about how you can help them with their problem.
 
All of your three and four letter designations as appraisers signify the same commitment, advanced training, and extensive investment in your career, but they say nothing about how you might solve someone’s problem when the time comes. They simply say, “I have lots of letters after my name.” Again, not saying they aren’t important, just that thinking they convey some kind of empathy with a potential new client’s problem is folly at best. Not saying don’t get the advanced education or the designation, I’m simply saying not to rely on it too much when trying to convey why you’re the most qualified to take care of a homeowner, a real estate agent, an attorney, an estate planner, etc. We’re talking primarily about private work because that’s who our websites and promotional marketing efforts are really geared toward or certainly should be. In fact, I haven’t said it yet so I’d better take this time to clarify an important point about your websites. Many of the appraiser websites we review lean heavily on the appraiser speak and appraisal for lending speak. Meaning, the language, the verbiage, the context, the accolades, the designations, the talk, all of it heavily focused on appraising for lenders and lending purposes. But that’s not who is looking at your website or seeking you out online. Banks are not searching the internet for new appraisers to add to their panels. Homeowners who need to get a home loan for a purchase or a refinance are not scouring the internet for an appraiser to hire for their home loan. Those people are searching the internet for Zillow, for the cheapest bank rate or lowest closing costs, or whatever might draw them to the internet to begin their search. Your website, even if almost all of the appraisal work you do is for lending purposes, needs to be geared to the private client searching for an appraiser who can solve their problems, some of which they probably don’t even know they have yet. Its your job to help them identify the problems they have and then propose how and why you’re the best at solving the problem and making them the hero of the story. If you want to be doing more local lender and direct lender work then your website better be a massive resource for that type of client. It better be filled with videos, audio, small training sessions for how to understand parts of the appraisal, what to look for when choosing appraisers to build an appraiser panel, and so on. Trying to sell yourself to direct lenders on your website, again, is an exercise in futility and a waste of internet space.
 
So the three step process of developing your master message is based largely on a reasoning approach to problem solving devised by the 19th century philosopher Wilhelm Hegel called dialectics, or what has euphemistically become know as the Hegelian Dialectic, which is a fancy way of saying, problem, response or reaction, and then a resolution to the problem. Its typically shortened to just ‘problem, reaction, solution’. When Hegel developed his method he was developing a method to discuss a topic using logic and reason and come to some kind of resolution to the problem. If you think about the hero’s journey and the story arc that we talked about last week, the hero’s journey follows a similar pattern. There’s a problem, a challenge, something to be taken care of, then there’s the reaction to the problem; this is the adventure part of the story and the battles that occur, both internal and external. And then there is the solution to the problem which is the identification of our reluctant hero, the journey, and how the hero slays the dragon or saves the village from destruction. Problem identified, problem is agitated a bit, this is the reaction part, and then the solution that fixes the problem. And you may be asking at this point, ‘Blaine, it really sounds like I’m the hero in this story because I get to solve their problem, doesn’t it?’ And you’d be somewhat right in your thinking and in asking the question but here’s where the shift in thinking comes. Your client is made to be the hero because of the choice they made in choosing you. They do some research, they come across your info online or maybe a referral, and they do the difficult job of calling you, putting themselves out there to be embarrassed by their lack of knowledge, and you become the trusted guide who congratulates them on doing their homework, asking the right questions (which you’ll give them), and then answering those questions in a way that makes them feel unbelievably smarter for having called you. You’re the guide, they’re the hero for having made the right choice in calling you!
 
So we basically use Hegel’s same three step method to develop our master message and hopefully do it in a way that makes sense to the very people we want to speak to and whose problems we’d like to solve. And remember, its not the bank that we’re speaking to. When we speak to our lenders we speak using slightly different language than the language we’d use with a homeowner or an attorney or estate planner. We need to dial down the curse of knowledge and speak at levels one and two because that’s the level that our reluctant hero likely speaks at. So the very first step in the master message process is simply to identify what the real problem is from the customers standpoint. This is an extremely important first step because if you get this question wrong, you’ll get the answer wrong, and your solution to the proposed problem may be a solution to a problem they don’t have. So we spend a lot of time figuring out what the real problem is in the mind of the consumer. And of course, this is a perception issue so it may be different for some of you. The idea is to begin asking the question, ‘what is the biggest problem a consumer, a potential divorce client, a potential estate client, a potential FSBO client has and what it is we do to solve that problem. The reason this is so important is because, for all this time, you may have been speaking to the wrong people. As I mentioned, many of your websites speak to banks and AMCs, believe it or not, and they’re not the ones looking for you online. So in this first step, we simply ask, ‘what is my desired client’s problem?’. If you’ve read or follow the storybrand process that I mentioned last episode, their first step is to identify your customers problem. We’ve changed this just a bit because part of the Master Mission and Message process is to first drill down in your own back office and figure out who your most desired client is first. Many of you have never thought through this so it’s a worthwhile exercise. Once you’ve clarified who your ideal and most desired client really is then you can begin speaking to that person or people specifically instead of trying to speak to everybody. You don’t want everybody! Trust me when I say that! I’ll give you an example from Jolene’s styling business. When we went through this process with her business, and we’ve done it several times by the way and it evolves every time, she got to really examine more deeply what aspects of her business she’s really good at and really enjoys, which type of service and client are the most profitable for her, and what aspects of it she doesn’t enjoy and maybe what should be left for a different stylist with a different clientele. Once she knew that she could really begin modifying her marketing and language to direct it with more laser like focus toward the type of client she is best at serving. Not the least bit ironic, the type of client she likes to work with are more mature clients who recognize world class skills and a high level of service and are willing to pay for that service. They are, in essence clients who are willing to stay, say, and pay more; meaning they will be more loyal, thus staying with you long into the future, they’ll say more, meaning they’ll talk about you to friends, family, and colleagues, and they’ll pay more for that level of service. And not the least bit surprising, that is exactly the type of clientele that have been falling at her feet to get their hair done by Jolene since she went through this process and changed her message to attract her ideal client. It has been an interesting process to watch because one of the natural phases of really developing your master mission and then your master message is seeing how those who aren’t a good match for you after you develop you mission and message simply tend to slowly fade away. Her worst clients to deal with, the ones who are chronically late, never know what they want, bitch and complain when she gives them exactly what they ask for, and then complain about the price, they simply tend to move on on their own when she became much more clear about who her ideal client was and what problem she was solving for them.
 
As appraisers, we simply have to ask the question, what is our most desired client’s biggest problem that would cause  them to seek us out. Here’s an important point about this first step: it must be specific! You cannot be vague when it comes to this first step. You cant just say, “we provide value on real estate” or “we’re the home value experts” or “residential home valuation professionals”, which would have the average person wondering, ‘is that really what I need? I’m not sure, what is a home valuation professional?” This is far too vague and it makes your potential clients have to think. And when they have to think they get tired, and when they get tired they’ll tend to move on to the next line on the google search page and look for the line or website that speaks exactly and specifically to their problem. Somebody who needs an appraisal needs it right now. They need to have some questions answered regarding the real market value of their home, maybe a home they’re buying, maybe a home they’re renting and want to buy, maybe a home they own in a trust situation, and maybe a home they’re selling. It may be a contentious situation like a divorce or an estate settlement, it may be an all cash purchase that they want to make on a home and they want to know if they’re overpaying or getting a killer deal. Either way, they have a specific need, they need it now, and they wont need you again for 7-10 years. The important point of this first step in the process is to be specific and be sure its some kind of pain point for them in the process they’re going through. It’s a pain point because they know they cant do it themselves, or don’t want to do it themselves, and it’s a pain point because they know they don’t fully know the process. Which, by the way, may be the very aspect to all of this that you target with your message and that is the ‘do it yourselfer’, which in our world is the person who goes to Zillow, Trulia, Redfin or their local real estate agent to get a value on their home. We obviously know a few things about this process, don’t we? We know that Zillow is often wildly off and we know that real estate agents have an idea of what it could sell for but no real idea what the real market value is when tested against reality. I speak to agents every day and in real estate offices almost every week and, although I love them, respect them, and call many of them my dear friends, they are almost clueless to what the appraisal process entails, what a true comparable sale is, how to make adjustments, what real market value means, and so on. We also know that none of the options a homeowner may first search for are worth the paper they might be printed on when it comes to defense in a court or as part of a divorce, estate, financial planning, or even a cash real estate deal. That’s what you’re competing against my friend and that’s the message you have to craft to speak to their problem. So your opening line to your master message should start something like this: “people often search for their home’s value on the internet and are disappointed when a website or algorithm doesn’t get it right” or “You know how people like to use Zillow to see what their home is worth only to find that its wildly off?” Or “People often think they can save a few bucks by using their computer to tell them what their home is worth only to find out they have to spend double or lose tons of money because the computer was wrong.” And the list can go on for days. What I would recommend that you do is spend some time with pen and pad and just start brainstorming all of the problems that you think your desired client has, even if they’re ones your potential client doesn’t know they have. Don’t filter yourself, just write everything out regardless of what it is. When you’ve exhausted all of those, then go back through your list and dumb down any language that may be industry related or fall anywhere in the realm of the curse of knowledge, meaning its an appraisal or real estate related term that can be translated into civilian speak. Make it very understandable to your audience of non-professionals.
 
So that’s step one: Identify your most desired customer’s problem and create an opening line that identifies that problem. And again, it can be a problem that they don’t even know about or recognize but you know it. Your opening line can wake them up to that problem and get them thinking about it as long as its easy to understand and specific. The next step in the master message process is to then state what your plan is to help them with their problem. Again, you don’t want to get too technical or fill it with industry jargon, but you want to make them feel like it’s a revolutionary thing that only you do. If you have ever seen a beer commercial you’ve heard the terms cold filtered or frost brewed as if those are some kind of unique process that those beer companies use to make their crap beer special. Its not unique or revolutionary since almost all beer is cold filtered and frost brewed. Nevertheless, if you aren’t going to do the research yourself, which most people wont, then it sounds like its some revolutionary process. Well, most people have no idea whatsoever about the appraisal process so tell them what you do but express it in a way that makes it sound like its  something only you do. It has to be understandable, easy to read, and it must be relatively short and to the point. So if your opening line is, “People often think they can save a few bucks by using their computer to tell them what their home is worth only to find out they just lost a ton of money because the computer was wrong”, then your next line would start out with the words “i” or “we”, followed by how you can solve that problem. “We give you a 25 page detailed color report showing you exactly what your home is worth based on facts, not guesses” or “I do all of the research for you and give you a detailed market report with color pictures of your home”, or “we help by giving you a bulletproof market report that all but guarantees you wont lose money”. So you’ve got your opening line and now your solution. Simple, right? And it all may sound a bit strange and a goofy to you at first because you’re so used to speaking in a certain way about what you do that this all sounds way too pedestrian for you. You’ve gotten used to presenting yourself in a way that, after you say it, people still go, ‘what do you do?’ And then you have to explain it. It shouldn’t be that difficult and it needs to be reduced to the most basic explanation of what it is we do for the least knowledgeable among us. Once you have those two steps done then you get to wrap it up with step three which is simply describing a happy or successful ending to their problem. Step three typically starts out with the words, “so that…”, as in “so that you know exactly what your home is worth and you can take that to the bank” or “so that you don’t leave even one dollar on the table during negotiations” or “so that you can walk out of court with money in your pocket” or “so that you’re most expensive investment, your home, is protected.” It’s worth noting that if the clientele you are aiming for does happen to be somebody highly educated like an attorney or may some in the financial planning or estate planning business, you’ll want to tailor your problem, response, and solution to the language they speak and the specific problems they have. So if you specifically want to target attorneys and the type of work they would be hiring you for, then you must dig into what their biggest problems are specifically and speak to that thing. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression that all of your language must be so elementary and pedestrian that it speaks to nobody. That’s not the case. Your language simply has to be deconstructed from Appraisal speak and reconstructed into the language of the particular clientele you are seeking to attract and serve. The website and marketing materials of somebody who want to work litigation specifically will likely look a bit different than an appraiser who wants to work with agents or homeowners.
 
Let’s recap: step one is to sit down and think about what problem you really solve and who you’d most like to be solving it for. The second step is to briefly explain your plan to solve that problem. And step three is to put a bow on it by briefly expressing a successful or happy ending to their problem. Stay away from dreamy and vague statements like “we help families build happy futures by arming them with knowledge about their real estate investments” or getting too technical like, “we utilize the latest in mobile and information technologies to research and analyze all available market data and economic inputs to give you the most accurate real estate valuation that meets USPAP and FIRREA and Title 9 real estate settlements guidelines.” It has to speak in a language that is easy for their brains to comprehend without burning any extra calories. If they have to think, you lose! Your opening line begins with something like, “you know how people…” or “people often…”, followed by, “so we do…” or “we provide…”, and wrapped up by saying, “so that you can…” or  “that way, you get to…” or “armed with our appraisal of your home, you get to…” This is as complicated and as simple as developing your master message gets my friends! You have to take time to sit down and really think about what your master mission is first though so if you haven’t listened to the previous episode called “we don’t need another hero”, go back and listen to that episode before you do the master message exercise. You have to get clear on really what it is you do, what you want to be doing, what kind of client you want to attract, and what your business would look like if you were able to pull that off. Once you get more clear on that, then you can begin to break down your mission into a message that makes sense to the average person looking for your services and expertise. But let me caution you again, the reason you need to go through the master mission phase first is because we need to pull you out of it being all about you and start to get your brain thinking that its all about them! We need to make our clients and potential clients the hero of the story and that’s what the master message exercise then speaks to. Once we get clear on what we do we can speak it in a way that makes sense and tells our potential client how we’re going to solve their problem and make them the hero. The last line of your master message should say it all, ‘so that you can…’ or ‘with our appraisal of your home, you get to…”, and then you describe how they get to be the hero at the end of the story. You identify the problem, state how you can solve it in what sounds like a revolutionary way, and tell them how they’re going to be the hero. 1,2,3…
 
I’d like to thank you my friends for investing your most valuable currency with me again this week my friends and I hope that I’ve given you more value than the time you’ve invested and, more importantly, that you can get a fat return on that investment with the exercise I gave you today. I know for a fact that if you refine your message in the way that the last two episodes have laid out for you in detail, you win. Plain and simple. People are looking for a trusted guide and a mentor and not another hero. Make them the hero of the story and you win. State it in simple terms that the average person can understand and you win. Get this part of your mission and your message right, and you win my friends. You get the business and the life you want dealing with the kinds of clients you want and they’ll be people falling over themselves to refer you because of how well you guided them through the process. I hope I’ve been able to be your trusted guide in this episode and that after listening you feel like you can be the hero of our shared story. That is my hope and my master mission with this podcast so please take this information and don’t let it sit inside your cell phone or computer my friends. Take some time to actually do the work because I guarantee you will be richly rewarded when you do. Until next week, I’m out.