John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the MarTech podcast, hosted by my friend, Ben Shapiro brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network with episodes, you can listen to in under 30 minutes. The MarTech podcast share stories from world-class marketers who use technology to generate growth and achieve business and career success. Recent episode, one of my favorite extending the lifetime value of your customer. You know, I love to talk about that. Listen to the MarTech podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:44): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Ivan Astrada is a business leader and real estate broker with extensive experience in the industries of real estate and finance. It's a sought after public speaker on topics of branding and marketing, personal development and real estate. He's also the author of a new book called brand with purpose. Find your passion, stay true to your story and accelerate your career. So Ivan, welcome to the show.

Ivan Estrada (01:14): Thank you, John. Thank you so much for having me. Let's just

John Jantsch (01:16): Get this out of the way right off the bat. The category, the book category of personal brand is become a crowded space. It has very hot topic and you touch on some themes that I think are very common. We'll get into a little bit. So I guess I want to give you the chance to say, but here's the new stuff I'm bringing to it. Obviously you, you, even in the subtitle stay true to your story. A story is a huge part of personal brand. Well, maybe let's start there. What do you hope to accomplish or, or bring new to the topic?

Ivan Estrada (01:46): Absolutely. Yeah. Uh, regarding with branding and marketing, as I was writing this book, there's a ton of books out there that give you the advice of this is what you need to do. This is what you need to post. This is what your marketing needs to look like. Mine is more about going inward and doing a lot of personal development work. I realized that for me personally, and for a lot of colleagues of mine, is that in order to show up as an authentic brand, if you own your own company or you're working under another company is getting over a lot of the shares. There was a lot of shame that I was holding onto for many years, as I was showing up and building my company, I wasn't really building my company authentically. And so what I had to do was I did a lot of personal development work if going inward and figuring out why am I ashamed of X? Why am I ashamed of why? How do I overcome those obstacles? So that, that way, how I brand myself is who I truly am and not what the environment or my family or my friends or society's telling me, I need to be like, okay,

John Jantsch (02:49): It sounds painful actually. Or at least hard. Yeah.

Ivan Estrada (02:54): It's not, it's not easy. I will tell you that, but I promise you that the results that you get, honestly, it's when you're, when you're really branding yourself authentically, it's easy, right? There's yes. There's all these things that you can learn about during podcast or trainings. And these are the colors that are working, and this is the tic talks and the digital media reels and all the other stuff that works. But in order for all of that, to really make sense and to resonate with your audience, you really need to know who are you like, who are you? And who are you trying to connect with? So that way there is a clear connection between you and your audience, because if not, then you tend to just do whatever is being told either by your who your, your chief marketing officer or your coach is telling you to do. And if it's not sticking it's because it's not who you really are.

John Jantsch (03:45): Speaking of the topic of story, are there any, are there any kind of core stories from your upbringing, your family, your culture, that, that I, that you lean on that to tell to, to help people get your Y?

Ivan Estrada (03:59): Oh, absolutely. As a kid, I grew up in Eagle rock, California. My dad was a janitor. Still is, my mom was a seamstress. And growing up, I realized that we didn't have much, but what we did have was I was a great salesman. I knew that as a kid, cause I got away with a lot of things as a child. And my sister was a great artist. She knew how to draw. And I remember one day I thought, okay, if we want to go to college, we're going to have to start saving up now. And, and I had my sister start drawing the neighbor's home. She would draw them out and I would go up to their door. I would knock. And I would say, hi, my name is Ivan. This is my sister vianet. We are saving for college. And we are wondering if you would like to buy this house that we had this picture that we drew of your house.

Ivan Estrada (04:44): And so that was the story that people can emotionally connect with. And absolutely we were selling them for like $2, a piece, a dollar or $2 a piece. And every single homeowner bought or $2 drawing. And I thought, wow, they connected with our story. They're connected with our cause it's not really about the product. It's about the story behind it. And for me, that resonated with everything that I did along the way as a young adult. Cause even in school like John, I was a hustler. I used to sell power ranger cards, porgs, candies, you name it. I, I, and not just myself. I actually recruited students in the playground that hung out with different people in the playground. It was like I was expanding my team and my brand and I would hire them and they would get either paid through candy or whatever the product was or I would pay them as a kid. I was like eight, nine years old. I'm surprised I didn't get in trouble, but that's kind of like, I just knew that there was a story to it. We hadn't needed to attach a story to anything that we were doing that people could connect with and it worked.

John Jantsch (05:45): So here's what I really need to know. You gave your sister 50 cents. You kept a dollar.

Ivan Estrada (05:50): I probably, yeah, three years younger. She, she was fine with a quarter actually, but I, I probably did give her fifties. It's actually, you know what? I was a really good brother. We shared everything 50 50. We had these two little piggy banks and we would put it in the piggy bank. So I, I was a pretty fair brother. I think.

John Jantsch (06:08): So another thing that obviously people common advice in, in personal branding work is this idea that you have to stand out. You have to be different. But again, I find that that's where people, people getting that and realizing, oh, I need to be this. Or I need to do that. Or I need to have this color hair really is, is it can be a way to stand out. Cause also be a really easy way to be in authentic. But how do you marry those two things of the need to stand out, but then not just for standout sake,

Ivan Estrada (06:37): Right? That's a good question. So this is actually an exercise within the book that I thought was very good for personal branding and to figure out what your strengths are and what are the things that you want to highlight was I would draw out a timeline and I'd go back as far as I can remember. And at the top of the line, I would put some very pivotal moments of my career. Like for me, I was in the music industry. Like the moment I was signed to the record company, boom. Um, when I graduated from USC, from the Leventhal school of accounting, boom, when I got my CP license, boom, like all these different things that for me were like milestones and, and, and huge accomplishments. And so those were the things that, for me, that I attached to my personal brand, I know friends of mine who are in, in, in the real estate business.

Ivan Estrada (07:25): A lot of them have a huge connection to horses. They rode horses as kids. They ride horses. Now that's part of their brand. A lot of people, there's another guy here at my office who loves cooking. And so cooking he's been, uh, he's. He actually had a restaurant, two restaurants actually. And so he attaches that part of the, the cooking part to his real estate business. And so I think you need to find things that are there that are unique to you. And not that are unique to other people because if you're trying to copy other people, it's like, those are not your gifts. Like, think about the gifts that you've gotten through time that you can be really proud about. And how can I embed that into my brand, into my narrative, into my story so that I can connect with other people who resonate with my cause or my story or my narrative.

John Jantsch (08:15): Yeah. And the view that example you used as a cooking thing is, is not only is that, Hey, that's different, but it also is an opportunity for people who share that to connect to isn't it

Ivan Estrada (08:25): Exactly. We do business with people that we like in all honesty. It's true. Like with anytime I pass out a referral for a vendor, they might not be the best vendor, but they're a vendor that I connect with that I know if my client worked with me because of my personality or my brand, that they're also going to like this vendor, because we're very similar. And I think that that that's always the best way to assure yourself as much as possible that you're going to have a successful, a successful referral or relationship someone that you pass your business on to because you like them because you like how they run their business. You run you, you like how they run their marketing. And they're very similar to you. This episode,

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John Jantsch (09:55): Let's talk about tools. What are some of your favorite tools for, for telling and sharing the story? Obviously we've been focusing on developing the story. How do you, how do you get it out there? Obviously I think one of the challenges right now is there are a lot of ways. And how do you, how do you get some momentum in one or two or three? I'd love to hear kind of your, your approach when people ask that question, cause I'm sure you get asked that

Ivan Estrada (10:18): All the time. So a great way to make sure that you can broadcast your story. As much as possible is through video. I started using video 13 years ago. Uh, when some of my colleagues were saying, what are you doing? You're wasting time that doesn't work. Just stick to what you know and what works video. And there's so many different platforms. Obviously we have YouTube for a longer kind of long medium. We have obviously like tic talk and Instagram reels that are vertical video shorter. And to the point you can also attach a video to Instagram as on, on your actual wall or on your stories or on Facebook. I would really try to focus on, for example, in my business, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube has been a huge hit. So we repurpose what we do in video on all of those three platforms. Now, the important thing is as the brand, I encourage you to be able to have as much face time and, and talking points on your videos, because I still know a lot of people who are not doing video.

Ivan Estrada (11:23): They're afraid. They're afraid of how they sound. They afraid of how they look. They think they're going to do it wrong. That's why other than the book brand with purpose, I have my course brand with video and this course module per module, we start breaking down your fears. We start building your brand pillars. We start putting content together. Um, and especially with, with all these different mediums, it's figuring out, okay, I have an idea, like how do I execute it? And how do I make sure that I'm not wasting my time wasting my money? And obviously this answer, I can go for hours talking about this, but just video, literally just grabbing your phone, going alive and doing it on your Instagram, on your Facebook, because that helps you with your algorithm and just putting yourself out there. Right? I think it goes down to that point of being vulnerable and knowing who you are, because I've noticed people who I've coached and friends of mine who have really done the work that when they start shooting video, they're a different person there. They really show up and it's not just this very shy. And, and this, this person that doesn't really seem like they know what they're talking about. Cause that's also, you don't want to seem like that on camera either. You want to make sure that people see the confidence and the poise and the command that you have in your type of business,

John Jantsch (12:37): This one up. But I'm sure somebody is you when you've given that the exact same answer, somebody said, well, that's great. But video is just not for me. What w what would you tell that person? And, and I think there are a lot of people that just don't want to be on camera.

Ivan Estrada (12:52): Right? I first I would ask why, because I think I would want to really know the answer of, okay. Video's not for you. Like, I'd love to know why have you tried it? Is it something that just makes you feel uncomfortable? Is there certain things that maybe I can push you a little bit, because I'm telling you from experience. Some of my team members that's been the answer. I, I just don't feel comfortable. And obviously anything new is going to be uncomfortable. I just have to throw myself in an ice bucket for 15 minutes, two weeks ago. I didn't want to, but it was uncomfortable. I needed to push myself once I did it. I thought, wait, it wasn't that bad. I can do it again. And once I started seeing the health results that I was getting from it, I noticed, wow, this ice bath actually works.

Ivan Estrada (13:38): I want more of it. So first is finding out why, if there's a valid reason why they don't want to do video, there's so many other mediums, you could use your voice. There's, there's a, I'm trying to think of that, that new app it'll hit me, but so there's blogs. You can write blogs. We do that as well. And you can do that. Or if you feel comfortable, your voice, there's actually animated videos where you can use your voice and still connect with your clients. And it's using animation to take over that, that face on face contact, but the other others, um, there's just other ways. But I honestly feel that video is the way the future, like people want to connect with people and it's, it's, it's getting harder to say, I don't feel comfortable with that when everyone else is jumping on the bandwagon of all ages. And most importantly, like Pete, I'm a still considered a millennial I'm on the I'm on the cusp. But anytime I look for a new vendor, doctor chiropractor, whatever it is, I look for videos. And if I can't find a video, then I keep looking because I want to make sure that I can at least get a sense of who that professional is. And I'm about to hire, to see if it's going to be a match. And

John Jantsch (14:50): From obvious I'm a fan, but I knew that you get people probably ask you that question, but just from a trust standpoint, and it's just a great way to make a connection. I'll tell you another thing that gets people over the hump for me sometimes is when you talk about all the record, five minutes

Ivan Estrada (15:04): Of video and 15 assets, that you could turn that into, it can be a blog post. It can be an audio, you can cut it up into pieces. And so all of a sudden then it's like, oh, actually that would be the easiest thing. Now, now you can repurpose it in so many different ways. Yeah.

John Jantsch (15:20): So you are essentially, I think real estate has, there's a lot of design element of real life, real estate, or a lot of graphics in real estate. And people are essentially looking at pictures to make decisions in a lot of cases about things. So what role do you think design graphic design sort of supports or elevates a personal,

Ivan Estrada (15:40): You gotta have your colors. I, for me, it's always been the blues and the whites and the colors that resonate with me. I think the reason I like the colors that I like are through childhood. My room was blue. My clothes were blue. My dad's car was blue. It was, it brings me that emotional connection with the blue color. Cause it reminds me of home. And it's funny cause my sister, her room was green. She loved green. And for her marketing agency, everything's green. Right. There's a sense of, of, of emotional connection to that color. And so I think depending on which company or what kind of, I guess industry you're in obviously design like for real estate, for example, I know a lot of real estate because I've been doing it for 13 years. It's always about trying to not steer away from the actual product, which is the home.

Ivan Estrada (16:28): Like we use design to amplify the photography and amplify the video, but not take away from it. And so I think regardless of industry, obviously graphics, colors, all of that, your personal branding is incredibly important, but knowing that it's not going to be taking away from the actual product that you're trying to sell, because I've heard this many in many times before nobody cares about your logo, right? Like I care about it because it's my name. But like nobody really cares. Like you can put it on everything, that's fine. But it's the actual product that you're delivering that is going to make your client's life better. Like why are they buying your product or service? The logo is just part of your personal branding. That's great. Keep consistency so that they remember. But at the end of the day, it's about what you're selling and why.

John Jantsch (17:21): So we've talked a little bit about some of the social tools and the fact online, how you can build audience and whatnot, but there's still for a lot of businesses, whether this is building their personal brand or just building the business itself, not networking the last 18 months, not withstanding networking is still a tremendous, powerful way to grow a business. You, you, you spend some time on that. So how do you relate networking done right with

Ivan Estrada (17:49): Building a personal brand? That's huge. That's a great question. Uh, I learned the importance of networking at USC, which was the university that I attended for undergrad. And this was before Facebook, Instagram, all these other, like I would say digital platforms existed. So I learned the, the only way that I knew, how was you go to events? You take cards, right? And you try to be as intentional as possible. So I would make a list of at least I would do research first. Can I figure out who's attending this event? Okay, great. I have that list who were the five to seven people that I want to meet in that two to three hour period, because it's not about the quantity of people I get to meet. It's the quality, it's the people that I know that there's going to be some synergy between them and I.

Ivan Estrada (18:39): And so then I would pick out the five to seven people and I would intentionally go up to those people and talk to them and try to connect with them in it. And I would always hear this from one of my professors saying, God gave you two years and one mouth. So you got to make sure that you listen first before you spend your time talking about what you do, try to make, make some, some good point of listening to them, what their business is all about. And then also most importantly, which actually this came up in conversation today is get to know what's behind the business card. Like, who are they? Where were they raised? Do they have any kids? Like, what is their favorite holiday, favorite vacation? Is there something that you can connect with other than just business and then after that's where the real work starts.

Ivan Estrada (19:27): So you just made a connection and then after that, you need to put a plan together of, okay, what's our next talking, what's our next, next meeting point. Are we gonna try to do a coffee? Are we then going to do a lunch? Am I going to invite them to a ball game? Am I going to invite them to a client appreciation party so that they can see how I treat my clients? Are, am I going to invite them to one of my networking organizations and try to build it's the followup, right? The keys in the followup of not just meeting them, getting their information, but really building a longterm relationship, which I know as a business owner, the longer you're in your business, the more people you meet, the harder it gets. So it's about really just building those relationships, sustaining those relationships, and then adding value as much as you possibly can to those people, either through direct referrals or, or either resources, information, or referrals to other people who can possibly refer them business.

Ivan Estrada (20:27): So it's, it's about like building this, this web of people who see you as a connector and not just about, especially with networking, I'm sure a lot of you can relate is you get that person just passing all those cards everywhere, as much as they possibly can. It looks like they're just throwing up, up, up in the air and hoping that people will pick them up the floor. But it's about really building that personal connection and, and seeing where it goes. Because again, back to we do with business people that we like, and it's been ordered to figure out if we like someone, we got to spend some time with them. We have to go out and, and before we send them business, really get to know who are they as people.

John Jantsch (21:09): So we started with the why we started with purpose for many people, their, their purposes, at least communicated or extended by some sort of community involvement, some sort of social impact that they're making. What, what, what role really do you feel that that plays in the personal brand to, to be able to tell the story about the impact that you want to make or the impact that you believe some important?

Ivan Estrada (21:33): Oh, that's huge. That's huge. Especially nowadays I feel like the world has become this very wobbly place in order to give back. We really need to figure out for ourselves. Okay. Our purpose is like, like for example, give my example. Like my, I was, I've been doing really well in real estate. And I got to the point where I just thought, man, like, is this it like, this is great. I'm making a great income. And I love what I do, but I don't want my tombstone to say he was the best realtor in town. Like that's not what I want it to say. I want it, I want it to get a little bit more deeper. I want to, to leave a legacy behind. And obviously this is why this book came into play of, of writing this book for the younger generation of leaders, but also trying to get it to as many kids as possible.

Ivan Estrada (22:20): Um, last week I spoke in front of 650 kids in south central, um, inspiring them about education and fighting for their dreams and allowing them to know that everything in anything is possible, as long as they work hard. And so adding that philanthropic component, I have to say, I wasn't seeking it. It, it sought me like it was something that kind of just jumped in front of me and I thought, wow, like I really connect with this. And I think there's so many other companies like Toms, who you buy a pair of shoes and they give a pair of shoes, another pair of shoes away. Like there's different companies who are adding this. I would say, I don't want to call it strategy. Cause it sounds bad. But more of like adding it to their mission statement right. Of how can we, we can become a great company and make a great profit and leave a great legacy, but we can also doing do it by doing the right thing and helping other people along the way.

John Jantsch (23:11): Yes. Awesome. So I've been tell people where they can find out more about BrandWidth purpose and the work that you're doing.

Ivan Estrada (23:18): Absolutely. It's easy. My website, Ivan astrada.com. That's my ecosystem, or you'll find my book and my courses and a lot of great real estate stuff to look at on social media. You can follow me at the Ivan Astrada at Ivan Estrada properties or at the real brand with, and that's where you'll find all the information for my books and everything else that I have to offer

John Jantsch (23:42): For something by the duct tape marketing podcast. And hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road. Sounds good. Thank you, John.

John Jantsch (23:49): All right. So that wraps up another episode. I want to thank you so much for tuning in and you know, we love those reviews and comments. And just generally tell me what you think also did you know that you could offer the duct tape marketing system, our system to your clients and build a complete marketing consulting coaching business, or maybe level up an agency with some additional services. That's right. Check out the duct tape marketing consultant network. You can find it at ducttapemarketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that offer our system to your clients tab.