Welcome to the B word, the podcast for women who want to unlock the clarity needed to put your big girl panties on and rock your real estate career like the true boss You are. I'm Joanne Bolt, your host, and together we'll dive in the things your broker doesn't teach you in order to own your own truth, disown the things getting in your way to finding your place,

and stop apologizing for the obstacles you have to overcome along the way. Hey, hey, it's time for another quick tip. Thursday, and this week's question was sent to us from MIA in Tennessee. Mia, ask Joanne, I am currently getting a divorce and I'd like to know, should I rebrand my team name, which has my married name in it to my maiden name going forth in the business?

Well, first I'd like to say, Mia, I am so sorry to hear about the divorce. I know that no one goes into marriage imagining themselves at the divorce court later, and this is a sensitive time in your life and probably an emotional one. So I'm glad that you asked the question and I'm glad that you're taking the time to really contemplate the answer and not just jumping into based on emotions.

And I know also there are probably a lot of other women out there listening to this question that need this answer and this permission to think through a rebrand because of a divorce. So let's get started. I've got three tips for if you're considering rebranding, what should go into your thought process while you're doing it? Number one, how big is your database and how do you follow up with it?

If you've been in the business for a hot minute, maybe 12 months or less, and your database has less than 50 people in it, which you hardly ever email, text, and or communicate to your database, chances are you can rebrand all day every day and no one will even notice. But if your database is large, let's say you've got a hundred to a thousand people in your database and you are a really good communicator through it.

So you send out a lot of emails, they are inquisitive, they get people to respond. People associate getting stuff from your database. Maybe you do a lot of mailouts, maybe you do a lot of text messaging, videoing, whatever your database looks like and how you use it. If you use it strongly with the brand, then you might wanna consider that it is probably gonna take a lot longer to rebrand and you have to really consider how you're gonna rebrand.

It's always okay to rebrand by the way, but the more people associate your brand name versus just you with the business, the more consideration you have to take into how you're gonna rebrand. And if your database is large, then it needs to have a lead up to the rebrand a long time of, Hey, follow us on the new or look out for the new name.

And probably an explanation of why you rebranded. Now you do not have to tell your audience, yeah, I got a divorce and that's why I'm rebranding. You could make the launch of a new brand super fun and maybe name your new team, something that doesn't even have your name in it, something that just has to do with your area or what kind of real estate you focus on and just make it a marketing tool instead of a,

we're letting you all know that I've gone from being, I don't know, the Mia Beckett team to just Mia and me or whatever you wanna name your new name. The second thing that you want to look at is, and this one is really probably your most important one to look at, what is your primary lead generation system? I use a sphere system for lead generation.

I work my sphere super, super heavily, so my people in my database know that they're going to get text messages from me, they're going to get phone calls from me, we're going to have client happy hours, we're going to have Mother's Day flowers and bouquets and chances for them to get together and for me to really love on them and be with them in presence.

I, because I do that could rebrand at any time. Why? Because my people actually associate me with my first name, my voice, the look of my photo. They absolutely know when they get something from my email address, who it's from, they know when I text them who it's from. And so for my database, because I'm very, very into a sphere based lead generation system going from my last name is Bolt,

so the bolt group to maybe Joann's and Associates really wouldn't be a big step from for our database because they already associate my first name and my last name and not just the last name. Now, if your lead generation is more of a transactional type lead generation, let's say you do Zillow leads or op city leads, or you cold call expires five hours a day,

or maybe you circle prospect and then you leave flyers on their doorstop or you send out postcards with a brand name on it, your logo for your team, that may be one where you have to really consider whether you should rebrand or not. Because if you have really put yourself out there in the community with the brand name leading first and not with who you are as a relationship person as a real human being,

then again, going back to number one with the database you can rebrand, but it's going to take a lot more effort and it's going to take a lot more thought process into how you're going to rebrand. I would start, if you're a postcard sender, I would include the new logo with the old logo and slowly start getting your audience really kind of visually seeing or verbally hearing if you're sending out voice messages or calling expireds,

verbally hearing the new brand with the old brand so that it's an easier transition and people realize who you are. Okay, our third thing to consider is are you a single agent or do you actually run a team? And with that, are you in production or not? So if you are running a team, let's say you have a team of three agents,

yourself, an admin, and two buyer's agents, and your buyer's agents use everything with the brand name of the team and as well do you, then again, it's really gonna be harder to rebrand because your clients that are in your database, they don't actually know you, is the team owner per se. They know your buyer's agents and the way that they know you Mia,

would be that they know you through the brand logo and the brand name. So you might wanna consider whether it's really important for you to rebrand if that's the case, especially if you are not in production any longer. If you're running a bigger team and you really oversee the day-to-day stuff and you are not working with clients any longer, then a rebrand may be a lot more difficult because your clients don't associate you with their transaction.

They associate the brand name and the agent on your team that they are dealing with. So again, we go back to that. This is gonna be a longer launch of a rebrand. You may wanna consider throwing a big happy hour party and announcing the new marketing, or you may wanna just send out a whole bunch of new marketing tools with your old marketing stuff to let people be on the visual lookout.

And the, again, have your team members maybe call everyone and just start to slowly put it out there that you are rebranding the name of the team. You don't have to say why again, it's really not people's business that you're getting a divorce. Make it more fun, make it a marketing effort. Keep it all about the client and why you're rebranding and let it kind of just be something that happens and make sure that your agents are all in the know of like,

yep, next time you put a sign in the yard, it needs to be with this brand. And you need to have a discussion with your clients on why it's gonna look a little bit different. Keep it fun. We're rebranding. Just consider that if you run a big team versus a single agent, it might be a little bit longer of a rebrand process and a little bit more difficult.

Okay, so now here's my bonus thing to consider and this, this probably isn't applicable to all of our women out there that get divorced in real estate and have to change their brand name, but for some of you it is if you are running a husband and wife team, then it gets even more interesting because what your divorce attorney probably isn't talking to you about or your broker definitely isn't talking to you about is how are you going to split up the database?

Who owns the past clients or who owns the team name? If you are husband, wife team and you used to be, I'll go back to my own last name, the Bolt group, and let's say my husband was a part of the Bolt group with me and we get divorced and we have to split things up, he naturally will stay a bolt for the rest of his life that is his last name.

I may or may not change my last name back to my maiden name, or if I were to remarry, I might change my name at that point. So the natural rebranding process when a husband and wife team splits up is for the husband to keep the name of the team. So you might wanna have a discussion with your ex-spouse or soon to be ex-spouse depending on how amicable you guys are at this point on should we both rebrand,

can we really show the world that we're two different agents and we offer two different sets of values to our potential future clients? How do we split up that database? Who do you get? Who do I get? How do we deal with the ones that wanna work with both of us? And let's make a strategy and a business plan moving forward as we split up so that we have a clearcut communication method and a clearcut way of handling our former clients and our future clients who have always associated our brand as a husband,

wife team, and now we aren't. So that's another thing. And just a little bonus tip of something to kind of put in your brain as you're moving forward in the process. I hope this helped Tamia and I hope it helps some more of our audience out there. If you have a question about being a woman boss owning your own business and how can we do that authentically for us,

go ahead and text the word tips to 678-736-8055 and I am happy to mentor, give some answers. And who knows, maybe your question will end up on air.