Luke:
Your brand director at MAXA said that you contribute greatly to your branding initiative, which is some of the boldest, most beautiful and intelligent branding that MAXA has seen in the industry
So where do you find your inspiration for your branding and marketing direction?
Taylor:
Our inspiration for our brand really stems from our owner, he's the visionary, he's very involved in the marketing process. Everything that we do, even our logo, the one, there's a little one cut out inside of the one, so everything has a meaning within a meeting. And so we are instilled with that from day one at Realty One Group, and it just kind of comes out. We bring in a variety of different people from all different backgrounds, and I think when we mix that around, we get the outcome of what Realty One Group looks like.
Luke:
What inspires you personally then, within what you do?
Taylor:
What inspires me personally within working with Realty One Group, and what I do for my role is helping our sales professionals. So I love working individually with all of our real estate agents, with our broker owners, understanding what their goals are and helping bring in the right partner, defining the right program that's going to help them take it away. They're entrepreneurs, they're creative people on their own. It's just about giving them a little bit of confidence or the right partner that can help them achieve their desired goals.That's one reason why we chose MAXA. You guys have a very good design background. Starting right as a design agency, we're so lucky to be able to work with Austin at MAXA. He's the lead designer on our account, and from day one, he just grasped our brand. We went through a design exploration call where they really ask questions around masculine, feminine, how minimal, how maximal is it? And we have a good time on every call. We meet once a week, and he's pushing our brand forward along with our marketing team.
Luke:
So how important is it for any brokerage and their sales associates to stay on top of their marketing initiatives?
Taylor:
It's extremely important. It's all about positioning yourself in the market, having a cohesive brand, having a brand statement of your own. So at Realty One Group, we have the Black and Gold, we have our six C’s in our mission statement and then we have our One Lux division. It's about taking that and making it custom to me as a real estate agent and to my market and MAXA allows the agent to do that. Brand consistency is very important for the consumer to understand who you are and what you're delivering.
Luke:
So hearing you say that, it's a fast moving industry and it's a very complex and crowded industry. You mentioned a mission statement. What else is it from your group, your team, your leadership that helps you stand out?
Taylor:
We have our mission, our vision. We have what we call our six C's, and everything that we do aligns with one of those six C's and we communicate that constantly. If you go on our Instagram, you'll start to see what we do in the community, what we do around one cares, how we talk about commissions. And what happens is while there's six C’s and that's core to who Realty One Group is, one or two or maybe three of those C’s is really going to matter to an individual agent, and they're going to hone in on that aspect of that brand and be able to talk about that confidently and deliver that in their brand messaging.
Luke:
Okay, what would you say is your favorite feature of the MAXA platform?
Taylor:
It has to be one of the new features, so we love our circles. Every one of our marketing elements has a circle. So for example, if you all stand in a box, someone's behind and someone's on the side, but we do everything in a circle. How we brainstorm, how we think, how we work together. At Realty One Group, we stand shoulder to shoulder in a circle. So that's a big piece of our brand. And again, with the meanings behind the meanings. MAXA had just launched the ability to implement a circle and drag and drop a photo in there, and that is a game changer to our brand in particular.Yeah, but along with that, we've been partners with you all for three years. And so I think it's quarterly we get those updates from James, the CEO, on everything that's been worked on and oftentimes it's things that we talk about in our weekly meetings with Brooke and Austin and we see them actually get implemented. So just the fact that the system continues to progress, that doesn't happen in every partnership that we have. So that's really valuable to us.
Luke:
That's good to know. And it's important on our side at MAXA as well, because I talk with Brooke a lot. And Maddie, you might not know who Maddie is, but she's been there since day one with the whole build of the platform and also everything that gets implemented moving forward, plus the development team. And it is client requests or even ideas that come from you the client which is what helps MAXA to grow and move forward.
Taylor:
That's really valuable to be able to be a part of that process. But along with that is the collaboration with Brook and Austin. We start our calls with, okay, what's going on? Like, what are your initiatives this month? What's your company focusing on? Because we're constantly pivoting with the market and maybe sometimes changing a little bit of our focus to make sure that our agents and our brokers can always stay ahead. And so we have those conversations and we go, what marketing collateral is needed? What can we do in the system that's going to support that? Because with every initiative we have, it needs to get to the hands of all of our people, the 18,000 agents, and we're able to do that through the MAXA platform.So that's something that is really exciting. I love the way that the company is able to pivot with the market and make sure that we're always staying ahead, one step ahead.
Luke:
Can you give us some advice or a tip that other brokerages or sales associates could implement into their branding, marketing or their communications?
Taylor:
Something to implement into your marketing and communications? One thing that we're focused on, I guess I can mention, is we're getting a lot of requests for more team.
Luke:
Thank you. What is something that you would say is done consistently through marketing and communications? That's extremely important and key to the success of Realty One Group?
Taylor:
I think it's sticking to, I'm going to go back to the six C’s again! Those were developed from the beginning, 16 years ago, when we developed the brand, the six C’s were started. And while some of the messaging around it has evolved, maybe the look and feel of it has evolved. Every year, a new piece of it comes into the six C’s. That's our core. That's the consistency. That's what you can rely on. What some people say who have joined Realty One Group is one reason why they joined is because from the franchise perspective, they saw what we present online and then they got to meet the team, and I think one of our trainers always uses the statement, I want to make sure I say it right - ‘that the audio matches the visual’, how we portray ourselves on our website, on our social media on our advertisements and branding. When you open the curtain behind the curtain, everyone at Realty One truly lives by the six C’s. Every decision we make is from the six C’s, so the audio always matches the visual!
Luke:
I'd love to know what are you working on right now or in the near future that you're really excited about?
Taylor:
There are two things we're working on right now. So we're currently using the MAXA platform for our luxury professionals. We started it with that group, that segment of our agents, but we're getting raving feedback and we're seeing very high usage that we've decided to double down on our partnership and we're launching access to everyone at Realty One group. And we announced that at our recent event, One Summit in Las Vegas last April, and we got a standing applause for that. So I'm so excited. It's just weeks away launching this platform to everyone, with all new designs created by your team that's going to take us to the next level. Another thing that we're working on is building out new coaching programs that are going to help our agents stay ahead. And when I say that, I mean knowing that where the market is today, everyone knows it's starting to shift. Interest rates are rising. We're still at low inventory. So how do our agents stay ahead? We're developing the right coaching programs for different markets and we're starting to get our brokers together on a weekly basis and talk about those programs and really deliver on it.collateral. Teams are very big in the industry, they always have been, but they're difficult because they work differently amongst every brokerage, every MLS. But I think having more team collateral or collateral in a platform that's flexible for people to operate like a team is something that every brokerage should be focused on in a way to retain agents and really give them the system that they need to successfully run it to you.
Luke:
Yeah, I really like that. You just made me think, because in MAXA there's wide open opportunity for teams and people working together on the front end design and the in back end to be following up with each other as well.
Taylor:
Yeah. You guys have the partner feature, the my team feature, and even the shared folders and I see those features being used a lot amongst our teams.
