Create, Don’t Copy, JUSTIN KONIKOW, PRIME REAL ESTATE BROKERAGE & PRIME MEDIA

Every mar­ket is flood­ed with cook­ie-cut­ter videos, cap­tions, and mar­ket­ing.

Agents seem more con­cerned with get­ting views and fol­low­ers than ac­tu­al­ly be­ing good at their craft, know­ing the mar­ket, and fol­low­ing up with clients.

Why?

Com­par­i­son is the thief of joy.

We live in a world ad­dict­ed to in­stant grat­i­fi­ca­tion and al­ler­gic to ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Peo­ple want it cheap and fast—or do they? Think about the brands that tru­ly stand out
as orig­i­nal: Apple, Patag­o­nia, and Tiffany’s.

All three dom­i­nate their niche and charge a pre­mi­um.

Not be­cause Apple sells phones.

Not be­cause Patag­o­nia sells jackets.

Not be­cause Tiffany’s sells jew­el­ry.

It’s be­cause every sin­gle one of them sells iden­ti­ty.

You buy Apple to sig­nal you are tech-for­ward and part of an elite group. You buy Patag­o­nia to align your­self with a com­mu­ni­ty of con­scious ad­ven­tur­ers and ac­tivists. You buy Tiffany’s to sig­nal lux­u­ry and ex­clu­siv­i­ty.
How­ev­er, those iden­ti­ties would be ubiq­ui­tous with­out what makes those com­panies unique:

Apple knows they have the best ecosys­tem.

Patag­o­nia knows they have the most loy­al com­mu­ni­ty built on shared val­ues.

Tiffany’s knows they own “Tiffany Blue.”

Every de­ci­sion they make is based on what makes them unique—not chas­ing what their com­pe­ti­tion is do­ing be­cause it’s trend­ing. They are mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar com­panies be­cause they have been con­sis­tent for long enough to be­come un­de­ni­able.

You should do the same.

Maybe you grew up play­ing hockey at a high lev­el and had a pas­sion for the sport but nev­er went pro. To you, that might feel like a fail­ure; to the world, that makes you more re­lat­able than you can imag­ine. If you sim­ply leaned into that side of your person­al­i­ty—telling sto­ries about how it shaped the way you see the world to­day—you’d be shocked at how hu­man it makes you.

I once shared that I strug­gled with ad­dic­tion with a very un­like­ly au­di­ence: a dinner with AAA TV net­work heads. When I first ar­rived, my in­se­cu­ri­ty crept in. We were dis­cussing the is­sues fac­ing many cities re­gard­ing ad­dic­tion and home­less­ness, so I shared some in­sight into that world that was unique­ly mine.

My in­stinct was to as­sert my cre­den­tials—who I was and why I de­served to be there. In­stead, I chose to be vul­ner­a­ble. It led to some of the most in­ti­mate and hon­est con­ver­sa­tions I’ve ever been a part of. It led to some­one shar­ing that they had a fam­i­ly mem­ber strug­gling and didn’t know what to do. It led to us be­ing real.

Since then, my re­la­tion­ship with those peo­ple has led to in­cred­i­ble op­por­tu­ni­ties.

It wasn’t be­cause I pre­tend­ed to be some­one I wasn’t; it’s be­cause peo­ple felt they actu­al­ly got to know me. I learned things about them that they like­ly wouldn’t have shared had I not made “be­ing real” com­fort­able for them.

The Chal­lenge If you were to share more about who you tru­ly are, in­te­grate that with what you are good at, and stack that onto the work you love, mar­ket­ing your­self would feel weight­less. It would re­move all the pres­sure of so­cial me­dia.

You would find no dif­fer­ence be­tween who you are on­line and the per­son I would meet at a cof­fee shop. You would at­tract more like-mind­ed busi­ness. You would build an ecosys­tem of real peo­ple ver­sus the echo cham­bers we see on­line that lack any real depth.

What if the suc­cess you are look­ing for in your mar­ket­ing is just on the oth­er side of be­ing who you re­al­ly are? What if it’s about shar­ing your unique per­spec­tive on com­mon chal­lenges?

I can tell you: it is.

The sec­ond you stop search­ing for short-term val­i­da­tion and stop car­ing what peo­ple think is the sec­ond their opin­ions no longer af­fect you.

Cre­ate based on who you are. Don’t copy.

SOURCE, by Justin Konikow, Founder Prime Real Estate Brokerage and Prime Media Productions

Monthly Contributor – Sales & Marketing

To learn more, visit PRIME REAL ESTATE BROKERAGE & PRIME MEDIA PRODUCTIONS