 Hi everybody. So my name is Adrian. As you may have heard, I'm the CEO of Remax of Southern Africa. Now today I want to talk to you about something a little bit different. I'm not going to be talking necessarily about real estate. I'm going to be talking about standing out. Now you're probably wondering what this slide behind me is all about and it's a picture of Seth Godin. Now if you've never heard of Seth Godin, you probably don't work in marketing circles much but you might want to go and check it out. Hop on to Google and in fact, if you just type in Seth, his name will pop up and a whole bunch of stuff related to marketing, standing out, being different and specifically a book called The Purple Cow will pop up. So go and check that out. So I want to talk about Seth and how he got to writing this book and how many marketing executives and those who are working in marketing departments have used this material to be different whether they use it for themselves or for their clients to stand out. So let's talk a little bit about this. There was this family in New York that decided to go on a road trip out into the country and as you know, New York is built up, high rises, you don't get to see much greenery unless you're walking around in Central Park but they decided to go on a road trip in the country, husband, wife and the kids behind and we all know what those road trips are like, right? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Anyway, they were going along in this van and they saw a cow. In the middle of the field, there was standing one of these, I think that's called a Friesland cow, standing in the middle of the field and the kids had never seen one, they had grown up, they were little, they had grown up in New York and it was, dad, dad, stop the car, dad, stop the car. So he did, he stopped the car and they were taking photos of this cow out in the field which for you and me might seem really random but for someone who's never seen a cow before, it's a big deal, especially if you're a four or five year old, this thing looks like a monster in front of you and they were taking photos and so forth and eventually they moved on because they needed to, right? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? And as they were driving further down the road, what they noticed was, well, there were more cows that they were taking photos off and so on but there was another cow and then they saw another cow and then they saw another cow and then they saw another cow and then they saw another cow and then they saw another cow and eventually the cows became boring, right? Because it was almost like white noise, you know, once you've seen a cow and you've gotten excited about it and then you start seeing more and more and more and more of them, it gets less and less attractive or appealing, right? Bad news if you're a cow, okay? Bad news if you're a cow. So it got to Seth thinking, but okay, how do you then stand out in this crowd? If you're a cow, how do you differentiate yourself from all the other cows and what would make me stop and take photos again? What would make me stop the car, get out and my kids take photos again and they thought what if one of those cows was a purple cow? Can you imagine driving through the countryside seeing car after car and then all of a sudden there's this big purple cow standing in the middle of the field, guaranteed you pull over, guaranteed you stop and take a photograph and probably in these days, share it on Facebook and Instagram and social media and wherever else, definitely you would take a photo, right? And that was sort of the point was, well, in the world we find ourselves in now, what is it that creates that essence that the purple cow has in your world? What is it that makes it remarkable? And I emphasize that word remarkable because it's something that you would remark on, right? The word remark able. What would make people remark about what you're doing? What would make people remark about what your product is, what your service is? How do you stand out? Because if everybody is offering the similar or same type of service or it's perceived to be the same type of service or home that you're selling or the profile of buyer that you are, how do you stand out from everybody else? So we'll talk about that in just a sec. So Seth went and wrote this book called The Purple Cow. I recommend you go and get it. Nowadays you can get it at exclusive books and take a lot I believe and Amazon if you can't find it on take a lot, but go and check out The Purple Cow. We unpack this whole story but then talks about how to stand out in a world of vanilla, a world of freeze-land normal black and white cows. So what he did to promote his book years ago was very different to what most of us would do. He didn't just take it to a publisher and then decide to print it and then go to newsstands or the equivalent of exclusive books in the United States. No, the few things were different. One, the books were all put in milk cartons, as you see here. Yeah, that's right, milk cartons. And here's the thing, you couldn't just buy one book. You had to buy 10 more. So you had to buy 11 books in order to get Seth Godin's book. Why is that important? Well, you're not going to read it 11 times surely or 11 different copies. So why would he do that? To create virality around it. You'd buy the one and what would you do with the others? You'd give them away. You'd give the other 10 to friends who would then get access to it and so the virality would continue and they would share it and so on. And I guess that's why so many people know who Seth Godin is and why so many people know the story or have heard of at least the story of the purple cow. But here's the thing, you couldn't even buy this in bookshops or online. You had to go to Seth's site to buy this as well. So it became a bit of an exclusivity factor created around this. It was almost like the purple cow theme and marketing tactic was baked in to the book, the purple cow. It was already standing out. There's a book about standing out that was standing out in its execution of marketing. So anyway, a little bit of marketing mumbo jumbo there for you. Let me give you a different example. In the UK, there were these young guys that came up with this brand here called Innocent Smoothies. It looked like every other smoothie. It probably tasted like most smoothies out there. It was packaged until they changed tax likely. It was packaged like most smoothies out there as well. Until one day these two youngsters decided to do something completely different and what they did was put little beanies on their smoothies. Can you imagine walking through a store and let's take a South African context, walking through pick and pay or shop right or Woolworths and on the shelves are all the different fruit juices and smoothies that you could get. They all look pretty much the same unless you have a particular brand that you like. But then somewhere on that shelf you see smoothies. You don't recognize the brand yet but have these little tiny beanies on. I guarantee even if you don't buy them you're going to walk up to them to see what's going on and why exactly they've done that. It was such a clever tactic. Now yes they did do it to raise awareness and to raise funds for different organizations. You see the aunties behind me that are knitting the little beanies and obviously they knitted big beanies to give to kids and underprivileged and so forth. So it had a great message and meaning behind it as well. But that aside for a second it differentiated them from every other smoothie in the UK. You might go well so what? Well that's so what. Innocent smoothies was bought by Coca-Cola for a hundred million US dollars. A couple of youngsters that started a smoothie brand that just changed something tiny in their business got to stand out, got recognized and were bought out for a hundred million US dollars. The purple cow effect, right? So here's the question we ask our people all the time. Guys is Remax remarkable? What are they saying about us? Is your service remark able? And what are they saying about you? And it's a question that we ask our team of broker owners, our team of agents on a consistent basis because we want to know what we could do right now. We need to keep evolving, right? We want to know what we could do right now that would make them talk about us and when I say them, I mean our clients and the people that we serve in the right way. We have to continue to listen. So let's put that in the context of real estate. How do you stand out as a purple cow? Whether you're a buyer, a seller or an agent? From a buyer's perspective, yes, it can be a bit difficult, right? And yes, there are a number of buyers in this market right now. In fact, we're seeing multiple offers on homes at the moment. Not so long that's going to last, but that's happening right now. So how do you stand out? Well, one of the things you could do is get pre-qualified. And what pre-qualified means is that you go to a bond originator and you get them to analyze your profile and your finances and they come back to you with a number that you can afford and make an offer on a home on. Why is that important? Because it gets you to the front of the queue. It gets you the ability to negotiate better than the person next to you unless of course they're offering cash. But I guess one of the ways that you could stand out and get yourself to the front of the queue and get yourself noticed as a purple cow amongst a sea of buyers is get yourself pre-qualified. So you might want to chat to the bond originators out there. We use a company called BetterBond. So I'm sure you can look them up on the website, betterbond.coza. If not, just ask one of our Remax agents and I'm sure they can help you. Now, what about a seller? Now, how do you stand out in a sea full of properties being sold at the moment? And there are. There are a number of properties currently listed. And I believe economic times are going to get even tougher over the next few months, which means more stock, we call it stock, properties come onto the market. How do you then stand out? Well, someone told me this story once and I think it's a great analogy. It was a story about a shop that was selling donuts, selling donuts. And they had these, they had them on a shelf, these donuts on a shelf. And all the donuts were priced at five rand each, except one donut. The one donut in the bottom right-hand corner was priced at seven rand. Now, that morning, all the donuts sold out by one. Which one do you think didn't sell? That's right. The seven rand donut, it looked, it looked the same. It would have tasted the same. It smelled the same, but it didn't sell because it was priced at seven rand while all the other similarly looking, smelling, tasting donuts were priced at five. And the next morning, when the baker came out and he put out some fresh donuts, he figured, well, I better change the price of that donut to five rand like all the others, right? Because otherwise it's just not going to sell today either. Well, here's the thing, that donut's now a day old. People want to know, people want to know why it didn't sell. And what tends to happen is those other donuts for five rand continue to sell and that donut remains on the shelf because people are skeptical about it having stayed there for longer. And also it's a little bit staler, right? Well, think of a home. If you overpriced your home when you're selling it, people simply won't come. And if they do come, they're not going to put in an offer because in your road, in your suburb, in your neighborhood, there are other homes that are priced at a fair market value that will then sell. And the problem with homes which are worse than donuts is that the longer they stay on the market, the more people think, hmm, is there something wrong with it? And there probably isn't. But that's the perception that gets created when a house stays on the market for an extended period of time. So as a seller, what you want to do to be a purple cow is make sure that you price your home correctly for sale. Assuming you're a serious seller, what else could you do? Well, certainly you could give your house a lick of paint. You could clean up the verge. You could plant some plants that flower nicely. You could internally take away all the clutter that's around the house and simplify it a little bit. Because once again, buyers are going to go through home one, two, three, four, five. And you want your home to stand out more than any other. You want to create that feeling when a buyer walks through your property. In fact, even before they walk through your property, when they're outside, they look at it and go, wow, this home looks great. And then they get inside and they can picture themselves and their family in that home. That's what you want to be doing to stand out. What about an agent? Well, from an agent's perspective, and I know there's some agents watching this as well, I always say that there's only one degree of separation between hot water and boiling water. It takes 99 degrees means you have some very hot water. But that extra one degree to take it to 100 creates steam and steam can move locomotives. A one degree of separation. And here's how you do it. You don't give clients just what they need. You should be doing that anyway. You shouldn't just be giving clients what they want. I mean, that's expected. What you should be doing is giving them what they need, giving them what they want and figuring out and giving them what they're not expecting. And that is the one degree of separation. And those seem to be the agents that get more listings, that do more sales and have more repeat business. So it's up to you. How are you going to stand out and be a purple cow in your environment? Moo.