WS771: How To Stand Out, Protect Your Future, and Have Repeat Investors with Stace Caseria

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication.

And now your host, Whitney Sewell.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:00:24] WS: This is your daily Real Estate Syndication Show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today our guest is Stace Caseria. Thanks for being on the show, Stace.

[00:00:33] ST: Hey. Thank you, Whitney, for having me. It’s great to be here.

[00:00:36] WS: Stace is an award-winning writer and branding expert with 20 years of experience, but he’s also both an active and passive real estate investor with properties in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Georgia and actually hopes to be a syndicator someday as well. He’s going to help our listeners today understand the value of building their brand and specifically how that brand can help bring in more investors, more quickly and help syndicators earn more by being able to command a premium. Stace, that all sounds amazing. I’m looking forward to getting into this. I know the listeners are desiring information and guidance on those things exactly — you know, like what is the brand and how do I build this thing? What does that look like? Do I need this? I mean so many questions around that and it’s so important. So looking forward to just you sharing your expertise and helping us get there. Give us a little more about your background maybe in real estate and then let’s jump into your expertise and your specialty that can help us.

[00:01:35] ST: Sure. Thank you. Thank you. So I bought my first investment property in ‘97 on the advice of my mother who was buying properties at the time. She started a few years before that and she owned her own business at the time and she really encouraged me and my brother to invest in rentals just so we would have that passive income, but also that we wouldn’t have to rely on a W2 job if we didn’t want to. In that time my brother and I have owned six buildings together and we’re actually in the process of selling some of those off now. The market’s pretty good. And I still own a small apartment building here in Massachusetts. I’ve done every aspect of property ownership from the dusty, dirty renovations, to lease ups. And while I love it and the freedom that it gives me and my family, it’s not my day job at the moment, but I absolutely love the people that I meet and the opportunities to learn more about real estate.

[00:02:29] WS: Cool. Well, so it’s not your day job, but what your day job is and what you’re an expert in is what’s going to help us today, right? Tell us a little bit about that and what you do, and let’s jump in.

[00:02:40] ST: Sure. So for over 20 years I’ve been a professional writer. In fact, I got my start at Mad Magazine 25 years ago. I don’t know if any of your listeners grew up reading Mad Magazine.

[00:02:51] WS: I remember that.

[00:02:53] ST: I did. It was one of the greatest moments of my life, and I’ve lived the dream of every 12 year old boy to be a writer at Mad Magazine for a little while. But most of my career has been helping businesses reach their ideal customers and create life-long, mutual, rewarding relationships. To that end, I recently launched my own marketing agency to bring those two passions together. It’s a branding agency that focuses on helping real estate syndicators and entrepreneurs create those strong connections with investors and potential customers.

And I know I’ve heard you on your show talk about not having enough investors or customers in the pipeline will likely be one of the largest hurdles any business has to overcome, because if you don’t have people you can offer your product or service to, you can’t make a sale. And if you’re not making sales, you’re not moving forward in life or in business.

[00:03:45] WS: You’re always selling, aren’t you? I mean no matter where you’re at, you’re always selling who you’re speaking to.

[00:03:50] ST: That’s right. You always have to move forward. And looking at how to help syndicators, I said, “Well, what am I going to focus my new agency on?” And I decided to call the agency Trust Deep Brand Consulting. And as you can tell from the name, we focus on helping businesses like syndicators build the most solid foundation there is, and that’s mutual trust. I do this by helping syndicators create their own unique brand by establishing their personal brand. Syndicators have an incredible advantage over people who are working in the same space. And there are a couple of high-level benefits I can mention for why a brand is important.

So a brand gives you a way to get your message out consistently. Brand helps you build credibility and trustworthiness. Also, it helps you supercharge your marketing giving prospects a better way to relate to you.

[00:04:46] WS: They need to relate, right? And that goes back to kind of niching down and knowing who your customer is and some things like that too.

[00:04:53] ST: That is incredibly valuable. Knowing who your customer is and knowing who you are. And that’s the essence of what a brand is. I love going to the real estate meet-ups, and unfortunately right now we’re not able to do that. I can’t wait to get back. But a lot of times when I go to meet-ups, I’ll talk to syndicators or brokers or other people in business and I ask them about their branding. I mean I’m super passionate about branding and what it means and how it can help businesses and sometimes I’ll say, “Hey, tell me about your brand.” And they’ll say, “Well, I’ve got a logo.” Or they’ll say, “I have a website.” Or they’ll hand me their business card. But a brand is more than a logo. It’s more than a website. It’s more than your business card, and those are elements of your brand, but not the brand itself.

So if I were to say to you, if we were thinking of an example we can both use — if I were to say Nike. Tell me what Nike is. Tell me what their brand is. And you wouldn’t say it’s their logo. You’d say, “Oh, Nike is a shoe company.” And if we drill down a little deeper you’d say, “Nike is an athletic shoe company.” If I said, “Hey, what does Nike stand for you?” You say, “Okay, Nike, after looking at their marketing and looking at their products,” say, “Nike is a brand that helps people be the best athlete they can be. It’s like they stand for helping everybody be a champion.” And that’s what your brand is. It’s the thing you stand for. And your logo or your website is just an outward expression of that, but ultimately brand is what you stand for.

[00:06:22] WS: That’s just neat to think about. What do you stand for and what distinguishes you from everyone else? What do you stand for? Think through that a little bit. I think that helps with numerous things, whether even developing things like core values or like thinking about what you stand for and can help you develop your brand too.

[00:06:41] ST: Absolutely. So that brand is your true north. It’s your mission. It’s the vision that guides you through every decision, every choice you have to make, and there’s risk in not defining what your brand is. One of them is, is that you’re going to struggle to articulate what your key differentiators are. So if somebody’s comparing you versus another brand, another choice, and we all have lots of choices in like whether we’re buying a car, or a pair of shoes, or working with a syndicator. Everybody has choices.

So the risk and not having your brand is that you may not be able to stand apart. But worse than that — the worst case scenario in my mind as a branding consultant, is that if you haven’t established a brand, you run the risk of being seen as a commodity. And it’s an interesting dichotomy between brands and commodities. So like a brand is a recognizable differentiated entity and it’s able to create desire for the people who seek it out, whereas a commodity, it’s just like somewhat generic or interchangeable with another commodity.

And if we can for a second, I want to break away from talking about real estate. I’ll just give you an example from like the real world about the difference between a brand and a commodity. So we all know YETI Coolers, right? So we see them around and we see them people carrying them to the beach or whatever, but before YETI, people probably didn’t give much consideration to the brand of cooler that they bought. So a cooler to the beach or camping or picnic was a commodity. Any product more or less did the same thing as any other, but YETI created a brand that stands for something, and that is the quality to survive your toughest adventure.

So a brand in many cases is able to offer a superior product or at least the perception that it’s a superior product and they have the ability to command a premium price and brand loyalty. And I just want to like make this real for a second. So I’ve seen my friends with maybe a YETI cap or like a YETI t-shirt. I’ve never seen anybody wearing an igloo t-shirt. I’ve never seen anybody wearing like a Coleman hat. And it’s like that’s brand loyalty.

[00:08:55] WS: Yeah. They even get stickers that say YETI own their vehicles.

[00:08:58] ST: That’s right. That’s loyalty. It’s like this isn’t just a product that I purchased. It’s like either a lifestyle or a belief system that I’m buying into. So they’ve gone beyond the transactional relationship with YETI to something much more personal or it has a deeper connection. So it’s like I have YETI in my heart. I mean that brand is part of me. I am part of it. And it’s fantastic because the brand is able to command that premium price and loyalty and build brand equity. Brand equity can be like worth billions of dollars.

Think about Coca-Cola. So aside from their revenue and the product that they sell, they have something called brand equity, and that is probably 20% of the total value of the company. So if you’re building a company and you’ve got a strong brand, let’s say someday you want to sell that company off, you’ve increased the value by 15%, 20%, something like that.

[00:09:57] WS: Wow. It’s interesting though that you bring up YETI. I’ve never owned a YETI before, but over the last month I’ve purchased 200 YETIs, but they’re investor gifts. And so it’s interesting. You think about just the quality or the thought of quality, whether it is or not, like it’s just assumed quality by anyone that sees that brand. But as an investor gift, I want it to be something of quality. And so that’s immediately assumed as quality. So that was a gift that we’re sending our investors actually now, 200 of them in our last deal. So everyone’s getting a YETI. It’s a really nice mug, but it also has our logo on it.

So think through that even as a listener. How are you caring for your investor? But even that gift, they see that. I’ve got so many emails yesterday from investors saying, “Wow! Thank you for this gift.” But there you go. It’s because YETI is thought of as such a great thing.

[00:10:54] ST: It’s special. That’s right. That’s absolutely right. And so you’ve made an impression by using somebody else’s brand equity as a gift. You’ve made a real impression on your investors, and you could have sent them anything in that same price range. It might not have had the same impact or value, long-term value. So of course it has your logo on it, but when people see that, they remember that Whitney gave this to me or being part of this group gave this – made it possible for me to have this. So that’s an interesting thing that you did for your investors there.

But YETI and brands like Coca-Cola or Nike, we think of those as like, “Okay, they need a brand,” and sometimes I hear from syndicators, “Do I need a brand?” Or real estate brokers, “Do I really need to be a brand?” And I would say absolutely. I would say any syndicator who wants to stand out today needs a brand. Any syndicator who wants to protect their future needs a brand. Any syndicator who wants to turn prospective investors into repeat investors need a brand. A brand gives syndicators the power to take investors down that path.

We talked about like knowing me, liking me, trusting me. A brand is going to help you do that. The mission is to generate authentic trust. That’s how mutually rewarding business relationships are made, and it’s not like smoking mirrors. YETI is not a brand that just a name. I mean those products are substantial. That mug will last through any adventure. Like you buy one of those coolers, you can like stand on top of it. Like you’re fishing, you can use it as a platform.

[00:12:30] WS: That’s right. I felt like it would be a waste of time if I sent a gift that was just going to break the next day or something they would not use, but that’s something the whole family’s going to see that and say, “Wow! I want to use that.” And like you said, it’s going to last for many, many years.

[00:12:44] ST: It’s going to last for many years, and the connection between you and the investor is strengthened that whole time. So you get the benefit of that positive relationship the whole time that somebody is holding that product in their hands. If we talk about like how did YEI become a – It’s interesting that we started talking about real estate and now we’re talking about YET. So it’s an interesting it’s an interesting brand and it gives all of our listeners out there a way to see how they came up with that brand. So what they did was the guys who founded that company understood like what they stood for, like what was important to them. Having outdoor adventures together, like these two brothers and their dad. They loved going out fishing. But they also said, “Hey, what matters to our customers?” And this is the same way that any syndicator or broker or real estate professional can develop their own brand. Find out what they stand for. Find out what your customers want. What matters to them? And you use that intersection to create your brand, because it’s got to be something real and authentic. So if you think about like the differences between brands, like Starbucks creates a feeling that Dunkin’ Donuts doesn’t. Dunkin’ Donuts creates a feeling that Starbucks doesn’t. There are people who are definitely Starbucks people and people who are Dunkin’ people.

If you think about like pickup trucks, like Dodge trucks stand for something completely different than Toyota trucks. Like they’re both vehicles. The Dunkin’ and the Starbucks example, those are both coffees, but they stand for something different. It allows people to associate with those brands in a way that brings them deeper than just making a transaction or buying a cup of coffee. People are buying into a brand or people are buying into a truck or it’s the lifestyle, the things that it brings with it.

But if we wanted to bring it back to the multi-family investing, I think to myself a lot of times – because I want to invest in syndicators and I’ve invested with a few, but there’s a similar pitch that most syndicators offer. And so my question is how do you generate awareness when you’re offering something that’s relatively similar to the next guy out there? How do you show potential investors what you stand for? You said niching down before, like how do you go about and set that up? And if I can, I just want to mention like what you do. Like you and your wife, Chelsea, you talked about a mission to help other families through Life Bridge. Because if I’m an investor who values family faith, spreading happiness in the world and I want to increase my financial security, Life Bridge Capital stands for something completely different than other syndicators out there.

So you’ve gone ahead and you’ve created a brand around something that’s completely meaningful and heartfelt to you guys, and it’s completely authentic to you. It wouldn’t probably mean as much if it was from somebody else who didn’t believe in it, and that’s why it’s important for brands to focus on the thing that matters to them and not what they think matters to other people. There has to be genuine overlap between what matters to me and what matters to my customers. That’s what builds strong, strong brands.

[00:15:50] WS: I would also add there that when we first started that or started that thought process of joining those things together, like it wasn’t even thought of that this is going to help us to get more investors. Like this is just something we’re passionate about and a way to make it happen. But then what I noticed, and I want the listener to think about too, is what I started to notice is that those connections when I’m networking and meeting all these people, it gives me something to talk about other than real estate.

If you’re at an event and you’re talking to – an investor is talking to 200 people potentially or even 50 and you’re all talking about multi-family real estate, they’re not going to have a clue who you are in 10 minutes. But when you talk about something you’re passionate about, they feel that passion and they see – And your passionate about it just comes out in you talking about it, and that sticks with them. And then they remember you. And when you have a conversation the next week, because you’re following up, like you need to, they remember who you are.

[00:16:48] ST: Oh, absolutely. So I mean and that’s when you’re fortunate enough to be in front of a group of people and talk to them one-on-one. But a lot of times the bulk of your investors or customers for any business are going to come through your website, right? Or they see your marketing or collateral somewhere else. They need to understand in an instant what you stand for. How are you different? And so the example you’re giving here is really valuable and it’s important for syndicators to think about. They’re like, “How will I stand out?” And not just in the – of course you need subject matter expertise, but how will I stand out and be more human?

We talk about we’ve got this trustworthiness equation that we work with here at Trust Deep Branding. We talk about credibility, plus track record, plus caring, plus alignment of interest. Those are the things that come together to equal trustworthiness. And like we all have maybe different variables and different amounts of each of those. So your track record is one thing, which you can’t fudge. People are going to know who you are and they’ve got to know what you’ve done and they’re going to – and your credibility, you’ve got to come across as understanding what you do being an expert, knowing your stuff, having it down. But there’s this other element of caring, and that’s what helps build trust. It’s like — are you human?

We look at brands. So sometimes we think, “Can a brand be human?” Absolutely. There are brands that act more human because they care about their customers in a different way — and then there’s also alignment of interest, and that’s what we’re talking about here where we’re seeing that you bring the caring part of it together and you say, “What do other people care about? What matters to them?” Of course it’s having awesome returns on this property. But we’re all people, and there’s more to our lives than just the return that we get from this deal.

[00:18:39] WS: That’s an interesting thought too, and we provide amazing returns for investors the best that we possibly can, but I tell you, an investor more times than not cares about the relationship and just how they feel about you more than getting a 8% preferred return versus a 7.5% preferred return. That relationship is crucial and just how they feel about you personally.

[00:19:03] ST: See? That’s it exactly. The thing you said, 7.5% to 8%. So what you’re creating, you’re not creating customers, you’re creating fans or followers. And I don’t want to sound trivial, but what you’re doing is you’re creating loyalty, that if I trust you and I enjoy working with you, the half percent difference this other guy’s promising that, it’s not enough for me to jump ship and go work with him if there’s a half percent difference, because I trust that you’re going to get me my 7.5%. And even beyond that, I trust working with you and I enjoy working with you. And it simplifies people’s decisions to find trust, find somebody that they trust and to work with them exclusively. We’re all looking to simplify our lives. And when you establish a brand, you’re helping people, first of all, understand what you stand for so they can so they can more easily make a choice. Like I’m going to choose A or B or C, but you’re also removing this thing that we call decision friction.

Decision friction is that hesitation that happens anytime any of us have to make a decision, whether it’s choosing two products on amazon or whether we’re choosing to invest in somebody or buy a car, a pair of shoes or furniture or anything like that. This friction is happening subconsciously. But when you’re able to establish trust, when you’re able to stand for something, you smooth over that decision friction because somebody understands. They’ve created this preset in their brains, like I know that I can trust Whitney because of A, B and C. There are these factors. He stands for the same thing I do. We got the same values. We share these things.

So you’re making it easier for people to make decisions. You’re making it easier for them to go about and do the thing they’re trying to do. I’m trying to invest. You’re making it easier for me. If you had some convoluted explanation on your website and you didn’t really stand for something and I wasn’t sure what I was getting into, I’m going to have buyer’s remorse or I might not even take part in the deal to begin with. So you’re doing a service to your investors by spelling that out — what you stand for.

[00:21:06] WS: All right, Stace. We just have a couple more minutes before we have to move to a few final questions. What else do we need to know about brand and why it matters before we do that?

[00:21:14] ST: Well, so there are a lot of benefits. We talked before about the ability to create a price premium. If I can just mention that real quick. So if there are, let’s say, two syndicators and one’s established the brand and one hasn’t. If that syndicator needs 50 people to fill his deal and he’s only got 45, well, he’s going to have to either promise a higher return. Maybe he’s going to take a more risky deal. Maybe he’s going to have to take a smaller piece of the pie himself because he doesn’t have enough people to fulfill that deal.

Now if you’ve established a brand and you’ve got great name recognition and people trust you, they know you, they like you. Let’s say you need 50 people, but you’ve got a hundred people who are interested in partaking in that deal. Now you’ve got more options. So you don’t necessarily have to give away as much, as big a piece of the pie to get the 50 people that you need to invest. So there’s a real premium that you’re able to extract when you’ve established yourself as a brand and more people know you. The more people you know you, the more demand you’re going to have, the more you can charge and the happier people are going to be.

[00:22:24] WS: Stace, I believe anyone that’s successful in business must have a high level of self-discipline. How did you gain a high-level of self-discipline?

[00:22:33] ST: It’s funny that you ask that. So one of the things I’m working on is focus. I’m really working on focus. So when I said I was going to start an agency on my own, I said I’m going to take all the things I’ve learned in the past in every agency I’ve worked with. And I said, “Wow! There’s so many things I can do, but what’s the one thing that matters to me?” And I’ve always known that the personal relationships, trustworthy relationships, strong connections to people, that’s what I know matters and it helps not necessarily sell a product, but it helps create people who are happy on both sides of the purchase, the seller and the purchaser. So I decided to focus. So finding focus in life is something that has really helped me move forward and move away from the things that aren’t as important.

[00:23:26] WS: Are there a couple of daily habits that you’re very disciplined about that have helped you achieve success?

[00:23:31] ST: Yeah. So there’s a nightly habit that I have, and this is so simple. These things sound so simple sometimes, but creating a to-do list for the next day, creating a to-do list that is way more than what you think you’re going to be able to accomplish. And we got a joke here in the family. I made a to-do list one night and my daughter looked at it and she’s like – And it was monumental for like a Saturday and she’s like, “Oh! Only 15 items?” But it’s become a joke here. So the to-do list is huge and gathering my thoughts in the morning, like whether you pray or meditate or whether you just think out loud, gathering your thoughts and setting the stage for the day so we can make that day happen any way we want it to happen. And if we don’t have a direction, the day is not going to have a direction.

[00:24:18] WS: What’s the way you’ve recently improved your business that we could apply to our business?

[00:24:23] ST: Yeah. Having a healthy respect for time. So we’re only given so much time each day and in our lives. And so I’ve come to understand that I can’t do everything myself. And so I’ve said to myself I have to delegate more. And I have to delegate more in a more thoughtful, purposeful way. So I used to hesitate to delegate, and I realized at one of my previous jobs where I was a manager of a number of people, I was a poor delegator because I wanted to do everything myself. I wanted it done a certain way. But I’ve learned that I can delegate and get the result that I want if I set people up properly, if I give them expectations and if I give them proper instruction. If it’s going to take me 20 hours to be involved in a project, I can spread those 20 hours out from beginning to end or I can front load it with time in the beginning to help somebody understand what I want on with the job. So that’s me having a healthy respect for time.

[00:25:22] WS: What about just from your experience with branding? You know, something that many of the listeners, as they’re trying to grow their brand or their business and get into syndication, they’re trying to meet new investors, right? And we’ve talked about this a little bit. But what should be their best source right now for meeting new investors just from your standpoint and from your experience?

[00:25:43] ST: Meeting people face to face is always a great, great way to build connections and that’s really a little bit difficult right now. I think people need to have a strong web presence. I think obviously you need a website. You need some place to direct people back to you so that you have credibility and you can explain what you’re all about. You also need to be involved in social media. So you need to be involved, let’s say, on Bigger Pockets. That’s one place where tons of people doing lots of activity there.

But also creating your own channels. So whether that’s LinkedIn, whether that’s Instagram, whether that’s – There are investors and syndicators on TikTok now, whether it’s Facebook.  You have to find where your audience is, the people you want to connect to, and go meet them there. But before that, you have to establish what you stand for. Because when you go to open your mouth and have that first conversation, you need to express what you stand for in a succinct, articulate way, in a way that matters to others.

[00:26:41] WS: What’s the number one thing that’s contributed to your success?

[00:26:45] ST: Well, I think, again, it’s one of those simple things, but it’s persistence. I work with a coach, and this is one thing he talks about. He talks about focus and persistence, and nothing is easy, right? The things that we want that are difficult to achieve are worthwhile. And you just need persistence and you need to just keep pushing every day and don’t assume that it’s going to happen with one, two, three pieces of effort. You need to really keep pushing over time. So it’s going to take weeks and months and years to get to where you want. But if you’ve set that goal and it is something that you truly have your heart set on, you’re going to achieve it through persistence.

[00:27:25] WS: How do you like to give back?

[00:27:28] ST: This is something that I really need to work on more. And so it’s like something I need to find more time for. And I don’t have a real structured way of giving back at the moment. Of course, like I could say, I talk to investors and entrepreneurs about branding. And sure, that’s giving back. And also, I volunteer at an auto museum here outside of Boston, because I’m passionate about cars. I love old cars. Anything with a carburetor, I’m all over. But I’m looking for more opportunities to give back, because I’ve received so much from others who have given me whether their advice or their time or their understanding, their empathy. So I’m actively looking for opportunities to be a more giving person.

[00:28:09] ST: Nice. Well, Stace, thank you for your time today and giving back to us and just your experience and your expertise. I know many listeners will be wanting to look you up and to learn more about how to have a better brand. And I like how you said, if you want to stand out, protect your future and have repeat investors, you need a brand. And ultimately branding can seem pretty overwhelming and especially in the beginning. And I think having somebody like yourself on their team can be just crucial and just put you just leaps ahead. And so tell the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more about you.

[00:28:42] ST: Sure, absolutely. The best place to find me is on my website, trustdeepagency.com. It’s one word, trustdeepagency. I’m also on LinkedIn, Stace Caseria. But from the website, you can get in touch with me easily that way. I’d love to give people a free consultation. Tell me their branding problems. I listen and I give people advice and help them as much as I can in that initial consultation.

[00:29:11] WS: Awesome. That’s a wrap, Stace. Thank you very much.

[00:29:13] ST: Great. Thank you very much, Whitney. Take care.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

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[OUTRO]

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