Real Estate Marketing: How to Stand Out and Become the Obvious Choice

Hannah Levine (00:00)
Exactly. That’s the goal. And interestingly, you know, now it’s not just about if the client, like if a pr if a potential, you know, buyer, capital partner, fill in the blank, looks them up, but also what’s being communicated to AI. Like if your positioning is not sharp, your positioning is what AI is pulling and providing information to others about. So

It’s it’s really like anywhere where your company is described and where you are putting your expertise that’s related to what your company does out into the world, like that’s my realm.

Meghan Escobar (02:06)
Hello everyone, welcome back to Real Estate Pros Podcast, hosted by Investor Fuel. I am your host today, Meghan Escobar, and I have the pleasure of sitting down with an incredibly talented woman today. And I’m so happy to have her on the show. She’s gonna bring some great insights and some gems here to the audience. And I believe that you will all definitely be able to walk away with some knowledge here. So have your pens out or your your your notepad on your phone.

And take a listen in. I have on the show with us today Hannah Miet, and she is the founder and owner of HMC.

Her focus is really coaching and consulting and focusing in on 90 a lot of majority of her businesses servicing the the service people in the real estate industry. And so I have her here to tell her own story because who better to tell it themselves, right? So go ahead and tell us, you know, from a 30,000 foot view, those folks who might not be familiar with.

what it is that you do or your name. What are you focused on these days?

Hannah Levine (03:12)
Yeah, thanks for having me. so I am a positioning and thought leadership coach and consultant for real estate companies. And essentially what that entails is I help companies describe what they do in a way that differentiates them from their competitors. You know, in the real estate industry, there’s especially on the services side when you’re talking about brokers, consultants, advisors,

There’s a lot of the same language is used and it makes it so that people have a really hard time telling what makes one provider or company more special or the easy and obvious choice when compared with another. And so I help founders and companies bridge that gap and really find what makes their offering unique, what makes their brain, their expertise special.

And and not just drill down on that in pitch meetings and you know in their online presence, but also be use their expertise to become thought leaders and to become associated with their point of view on their industry.

Meghan Escobar (04:26)
Love it. And one thing that caught my attention was during our little discovery conversation there was

We t we talked about kind of like personal branding is really what you do as a whole. But there was also a specific touch that you put into it. And I think that’s something that’s important and worth talking about. Do you mind sharing what that is? When like in comparison to somebody who, you know, is a personal brander, helps people personal brand, how do you do things differently?

Hannah Levine (05:46)
Yeah, that’s a great question. So I’m really focused on helping companies grow, commercial real estate companies grow through their their owners, their founders, getting their ideas out there. So it’s not so much just, let me post on LinkedIn, let me get out on social with photos of my team and you know, just like content for content’s sake, which I think is what a lot of

personal branding work does. It’s more focused on idea and point of view development. So I’m working with a founder, they have a company, let’s say it’s a brokerage, they’re, you know, they’re leading the brokerage. They have a very specific niche that they have a lot of interesting ideas about, but they’re not associated with them. When you think of let’s say like mixed use in a certain

area, a certain type of neighborhood, you don’t think of them, even though that’s what their expertise is about. I help those people become associated with that and more visible around it. So it’s promoting their work directly. It’s not like just them as as sort of a I don’t know, a a business, like it’s it’s focused on their business. I think what it would distinguish it from

just posting online, which I think is what a lot of people associate sort of personal branding with.

Meghan Escobar (07:16)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So if somebody goes to search somebody or an ad is running and they click on you’re one of your clients, they’re gonna know exactly what it is that they do, who they’re helping and who their avatar is.

Hannah Levine (07:32)
Exactly. That’s the goal. And interestingly, you know, now it’s not just about if the client, like if a pr if a potential, you know, buyer, capital partner, fill in the blank, looks them up, but also what’s being communicated to AI. Like if your positioning is not sharp, your positioning is what AI is pulling and providing information to others about. So

It’s it’s really like anywhere where your company is described and where you are putting your expertise that’s related to what your company does out into the world, like that’s my realm.

Meghan Escobar (08:07)
Okay. Perfect. And how long have you been servicing or or consulting?

Hannah Levine (08:14)
Yeah, so I started the company in 2022. I was leading content for the US at JLL before that. And I came into that role after a career in journalism where I was covering commercial real estate and brought The Real Deal, the real estate publication, The Real Deal from it was in New York and Florida at the time, and I expanded it to the West Coast.

and founded its LA bureau, and kind of then went directly into the industry from there and started the consultancy in twenty twenty two.

Meghan Escobar (08:49)
Beautiful. So it’s safe to say that you’ve got the experience to back up the work.

Hannah Levine (08:55)
Yeah. You know, I’m I I know what cap rates are. It’s like there’s not there’s there’s a lot of providers that maybe touch on the industry, but don’t really know a lot about every corner of it because it’s a giant industry. Yeah. Like I at least have a passing knowledge of every one of those corners at this point.

Meghan Escobar (09:19)
That’s wonderful stuff. And you know, every operator or entrepreneur that I’ve had the opportunity to sit and chat with, and it’s been quite a few, there’s always something that I like to bring up that I feel like is not talked about enough. It’s it’s the moment where things got real or you know, the time where you might have felt like, Is it is this all this worth it? Let me throw the flag in. I I know I’ve been there quite a few times. So

Would you mind Hannah sharing one of those moments for you?

Hannah Levine (10:23)
that’s a really good question. I’m more like I think these happen often, you know, I think that they’re like, I don’t know if I have one moment, but series of moments where you have doubts, and then that kind of shows you how important your vision actually is. I I’ll say, like, you know, my background is is as a writer and as a journalist, and I’ve moved into strategy work, you know.

helping companies really think through their marketing strategy, but even more than that, like how their company fits into this larger ecosystem and how they can position it to really, you know, stand out in a very crowded market.

Meghan Escobar (11:08)
When you’re you every client I’m sure, you know, brings on new responsibilities, new requests, right? And so was there any specific time you you may have been dealing with a client when you transitioned into entrepreneurship? you know, was there a specific moment that you can recall that you felt like overwhelmed but overcame?

Hey. Yeah.

Hannah Levine (11:30)
I think, you know, so last year leading into this year, I lost two of my clients that were kind of like bread and butter clients and that I’ve had pretty much since the business started. And you know, it was interesting because I was already revamping the business to focus more on the strategic work that AI can.

never replace in at least in my opinion or at least in its current capabilities, it certainly can’t. Right. And removing some of the work that was more simply business writing work. You know, it was like, okay, sure, I can, you know, ghostwrite for these founders. I still do that. But I don’t want to do that without also helping with the strategy that helps that work actually move things.

And that and it can’t move things if it’s not connected to their positioning. And so the foundational work is really what I focus on with folks, the foundational marketing work. and so I was already like in that transition, but I had planned to ride that transition with my staple clients along for that ride and transition slowly. And it just kind of ended up being like, well.

You wanted this and now the barriers have been removed to you entirely doing this kind of work because this like kind of lower hanging fruit work that you offer has been taken off the table. and you know that had to do with constraints at at the companies that I was working for, like it it didn’t have anything to do with with the work itself, but I also knew that that work was

Meghan Escobar (13:14)
Yeah.

Hannah Levine (13:17)
not really where I wanted to be moving. And so it was a crisis of like, wow, now this feels very intense of a transition versus the smooth, soft landing that I had hoped for.

Meghan Escobar (13:31)
Well, thank you for sharing that. You know, I think this is this the kind of stuff that most people don’t talk about enough, especially on the journey to what success looks like, or you know, taking the leap of faith and believing in yourself to follow your dreams and passions because we live in, you know, the highlight world where we see all of the screenshots and the snapshots of the success, but not the doors that close behind the scenes, right? So

Thank you. I appreciate that. And what are you focused on next? What’s the next big goal for Hannah and HMC?

Hannah Levine (14:47)
well right now, you know, I did all this work revamping just kind of the the positioning of my own company and and how that’s reflected on our website, on you know, anywhere that I show up. and now I’m I’m really focused on my core offers, which are positioning coaching, so working directly with founders, and teaching them how to do the thinking.

Like their frameworks that I have to position their business and to get out there as thought leaders and use like, you know, personal branding, but very specific to the the work that they do to drive pipeline, you know, to to find the right capital partners to really just become more visible in their industry. So I’m definitely looking for just

to keep working with more founders in that capacity. the results that we’ve seen are very transformational and it’s just work that I love doing so much. So that’s definitely where a lot of my energy is focused.

Meghan Escobar (15:50)
Beautiful. Alright, so if you guys feel like you need to need help standing out, can is your girl, make sure you holler. And you know

I think that that’s beautiful. Just to be so passionate about the work. You can tell that when you talk about it, it’s something you really enjoy doing. So bringing on new clients, helping them, you know, like you said, the the transformations are you have proof. There’s there’s proof in the pudding. a lot of people that are listening in are either very early on their journey or they are looking for

The next best opportunity looking to level up. And I I really think that they would benefit from hearing this when it comes to building relationships. We talked a little bit about some of the groups that you’re a part of in the rooms that you’re in. What do you feel has made the biggest difference for you, Hannah? Like with networking and shaking certain people’s hands?

Hannah Levine (16:46)
Yeah, I think you know, something that that’s really served me in my career is having a bit of a inherent ability to position. And when I say position, I mean like I’m going into a room, I have 90 threads that make up my career experience. I’m not gonna pull forth all those threads when someone asks, What do you do? I need to have a quick answer. However, I can

pull three of those threads that when connected make me seem like the easy and obvious fit for that particular room. And that is something, so kind of going into a room, knowing how to describe myself in a way that resonates with that audience, which is going to be different, you know, when it’s a room full of investors versus a room that’s, you know, full of brokers, things like that.

that has really, really served me. And that’s really how I started doing positioning work for clients, was experiencing the success of that and developing some frameworks to teach others how to do it or to come into companies and like lead that process of developing essentially the framework for all of their marketing and sales, which is positioning.

Meghan Escobar (18:11)
Yeah. Yeah. So would you say that it makes a big difference in being an entrepreneur to get out there and network and and meet people and yeah.

Hannah Levine (18:23)
Yeah. So basically what I’m saying is I think it’s so important to get out there and meet people, but also to know like what message you’re trying to convey about yourself. A lot of people are really good at networking in terms of, you know, maybe you’re a gregarious person. I’m not. I’m pretty shy when I walk into a room, but once I’m in a conversation with someone, it tends to go deep and I can, you know, I’ve

worked on my own framework for how I talk about my business in a way that like, you know, me and the person can kind of get into a deeper understanding pretty quickly. And so what I try to do with my clients is is arm them with that. Not like they’re reading off a script or anything, but just that, you know, one of my clients called it a personal framework for how he talks about his business. And that like

Once he had that he didn’t feel like he was bifurcated between like this professional self that kind of hated introducing himself in situations and this self that could kind of just take the positioning work we did, wear it loosely and go into any room and just be himself, and feel like

Meghan Escobar (19:36)
Show up with confidence, yeah.

Hannah Levine (19:38)
Exactly. So I think, you know, get getting clear, not yes, like I am a huge networker. I’m in two real estate networking associations. And then I also have other like, you know, business owner groups that I’m in. So it’s it’s I’m big on that, but I also think bringing some intentionality to it where you know what you are trying to convey.

Meghan Escobar (19:54)
Yeah.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Hannah Levine (20:08)
group of people, what are your goals and and also like the goal relationship building being a long term process is another thing. Cause when you’re in a a group of people networking, you can sniff out the people that are just quickly trying to like sales you right away.

Meghan Escobar (20:26)
Transaction,

transaction. Yes. And and the and the thing is is like first and foremost, if you’re listening to the show, you either have an interest in real estate or you work in real estate. And let’s face it folks, I mean, real estate is a people business. Yes. And so it’s a relationship business, right? So you’ve gotta be able to, you know, overcome the fear and and build the confidence to get into the rooms. Otherwise you’re not gonna last very long.

Hannah Levine (20:28)
Exactly.

One hundred percent. And I think that it’s like easy to think that, you know, so only the most extroverted people can make it in this business for that reason. But I really think that there’s there’s a role for the quiet expert who just really knows how to help people and ask the right questions and position themselves and

Meghan Escobar (21:13)
Proof of that. All right, Hannah. Before we wrap up here, if someone wanted to connect with you and learn more about what it is that you do or collab with you or hire you, what would be the best way for them to reach you? Is it socials, email, telephone?

Hannah Levine (21:30)
Yeah, well, you can shoot me an email. It’s Hannah [email protected]. love receiving mail, but also you can find me on socials Instagram and TikTok, it’s @hannah_miet. I’m a prolific LinkedIn person, more so for my clients than myself, but you can find me on LinkedIn at Hannah Miet Levine is my full name. And yeah, hannahmiet.net is my website.

Meghan Escobar (21:55)
Perfect. All right. Well, listen, I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to be here and service our audience with such knowledge and your perspective has been incredible. We need more people in the space who are doing things the right way. And I want to thank you again so much for being here. Absolutely. And for those of you that are tuning in, if you got any value from this, please be sure to hit like and subscribe.

Hannah Levine (22:12)
Thanks for having me.

Meghan Escobar (22:20)
We’ve got more conversations coming at you with owners and operators, just like Hannah here. So get out there, get get your business started, and we’ll see you on the next episode.