Adrian Rae: Cultivating a Magnetic Real Estate Brand and the Power of AI in Creative Innovation
Feb 08, 2024
David McIlwaine
Unlock the secrets to standout real estate branding with Adrian Ray of HeyRays Creative, as we dissect the crucial elements that can elevate your investor appeal in a fiercely competitive market. Our conversation navigates Adrian's own metamorphosis from commercial arts into the dynamic realm of real estate investing, emphasizing the profound effect that polished branding and compelling messaging have on nurturing investor confidence. Delving beyond the visual, we examine the essence of brand authenticity and the storytelling that underpins your business ethos, ensuring you leave with actionable strategies to distinguish your brand and captivate your audience.
Embrace the future with a nuanced look at artificial intelligence in creative pursuits, appreciating its role as a tool rather than a replacement for the irreplaceable human touch. We discuss the inspiring practice of crafting a Vivid Vision to steer your career trajectory, encouraging you to break free from conventional paths and ignite new professional ventures guided by your passions. Moreover, Adrian generously extends an olive branch to Race Fest participants, offering a chance for a transformative brand audit. So, if you’re ready to reshape your brand's narrative and inspire investor confidence, Adrian's insights await to propel you forward.
Unlock the secrets to standout real estate branding with Adrian Ray of HeyRays Creative, as we dissect the crucial elements that can elevate your investor appeal in a fiercely competitive market. Our conversation navigates Adrian's own metamorphosis from commercial arts into the dynamic realm of real estate investing, emphasizing the profound effect that polished branding and compelling messaging have on nurturing investor confidence. Delving beyond the visual, we examine the essence of brand authenticity and the storytelling that underpins your business ethos, ensuring you leave with actionable strategies to distinguish your brand and captivate your audience.
Embrace the future with a nuanced look at artificial intelligence in creative pursuits, appreciating its role as a tool rather than a replacement for the irreplaceable human touch. We discuss the inspiring practice of crafting a Vivid Vision to steer your career trajectory, encouraging you to break free from conventional paths and ignite new professional ventures guided by your passions. Moreover, Adrian generously extends an olive branch to Race Fest participants, offering a chance for a transformative brand audit. So, if you’re ready to reshape your brand's narrative and inspire investor confidence, Adrian's insights await to propel you forward.
There, everybody ever felt like you're nailing it and are totally having a tremendous career. However, when it comes to investing, it feels like you're reading a book upside down. Welcome to Breaking your Golden Handcuffs Podcast, where we educate, inspire and hopefully, along the way, assist you to transform those commission checks and bonus checks and every other check you get into financial freedom. Every week we'll deep dive into the world of investing literacy. Being uninvolved in your investing life will not get you to financial independence. I'm here to guide you step by step from understanding the basics to mastering the advanced strategies. Stay informed, stay empowered and I'll catch you on the next episode of Breaking your Golden Handcuffs.
Speaker 1:
Hey everybody, david McElwain here with another great, exciting episode of Break your Golden Handcuffs. I'm really excited to have with me today Adrian Ray. Adrian is the founder of HeyRays Creative and she and I are friends. She's helped me in a lot of my marketing and we've done some deep diving and I'm really excited to have her on today. Anyway, for Adrian, her bio after an exciting career in the commercial arts industry, starting off as a producer and ultimately closing out that chapter as an agent for commercial photographers, adrian brings over a decade of experience collaborating with artists, ad agencies and to add agencies to the real estate industry, helping operators and capital raisers build meaningful brand identities and create effective content that converts sidelineers to active investors. Hey, Adrian, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, david, so I'm excited to have you here. We met through, I guess, a mastermind I lost the brain, I lost the word. We met through a mastermind called RaiseMasters. Tell me what attracted you to the idea of raising capital and syndications in the commercial real estate space?
Speaker 2:
Well, I actually thought it would be a good balance for me, considering I don't come from a finance background. I don't have a ton of experience in real estate. What I have much more experience in is just simply dealing with people. So I thought this would be the way that I could bridge the gap between my inherent native skills that I have and my passion for real estate, and I love that experience in RaiseMasters. It really provided a lot of the tools to get me started. So I thought it was a great experience and no matter what you're doing, whether it's real estate or another business venture there's always going to be a need to learn how to market, how to sell, how to raise capital for those endeavors. So it was extremely invaluable for anything that I have coming on in the future.
Speaker 1:
So you said earlier you wanted to get into real estate as a full-time investor. Tell me a little bit about that journey.
Speaker 2:
Well, it started in single-family homes and building up an Airbnb portfolio, and this has been awesome. But multifamily has always been the focus and it's not on the back burner, it's still very much the focus. But I decided to bring my skills into the real estate industry and build HayRays to address a need that I saw, that I felt like I could really contribute to and make a difference, and that's provided.
Speaker 1:
What was that need that you saw? I don't mean to cut you off, sorry, I was kind of curious. You left that big hairy matzo ball out there. I saw this need, so tell me about the need.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's helping people identify their brand and how to communicate. This was a huge part of what I did. Working in advertising and working with creative directors and brands is taking that their initial concept for a commercial promotion and advertisement, whatever it may be, pairing that with the artists that can execute it and then often helping them refine the message through visuals. So so much of what we do in marketing for raising capital right now is through visuals A lot of words and a lot of visuals now in social media. So keeping that message consistent and building a brand that resonates with an audience is really important for getting your message clearly across to your potential investors and keeping the ones you already have as well.
Speaker 1:
So this might sound like a rude question, but I really don't want it to be. So what? So this isn't the deal. Just about the numbers in real estate, and I've seen a ton of presentations and a ton of real estate companies that have very poor brands and as an investor, I always think too sexy a brand is too much show, and as an investor someone who throws a terrible PowerPoint against the wall I also think ugh. So what's the sweet spot in there?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think the sweet spot is identifying what your unique brand is.
Speaker 2:
For some people that have maybe a legacy experience in this industry, or they've been in it for a while, they've got very deep personal relationships.
Speaker 2:
For them, the brand may not matter so much to get them through from one deal to the next and at a certain level it doesn't matter too much.
Speaker 2:
But when you're trying to break in and set yourself apart from a lot of other investment opportunities that are out there now, it's time you need to spruce yourself up and get an image that looks professional and that does speak to your audience that you want to target.
Speaker 2:
If you have a base of investors that you're moving on from one project to the next with and they don't mind what your branding looks like, then that's awesome. But if you're going to try to go out there and bring in some new investment dollars, go from retail investors to institutional family offices, or if you're trying to expand your retail investor base, you're going to need to appeal to that larger, newer audience somehow. And if you can't get yourself in front of them one at a time, you're going to need to appeal to them one to many, to the masses, and that's really where you're going to need to land on your branding and your messaging to speak for you. So now the landscape has just kind of changed, where there's a lot of players in this field and you have to do something to stand out.
Speaker 1:
So, as an investor, why do I care about this?
Speaker 2:
Well, to each their own. Maybe you don't, but I think it is important, as an investor, to consider the messaging and how the operators that you're considering present themselves, because it's how you do one thing is how you do everything and if they have a sloppy approach to their own presentations, to their own branding, their own messaging, perhaps that can carry over into their numbers and I'm not saying it does all the time, but it's something worth considering. If they're not willing to invest in themselves and their presentation, there could be some gaps there that are worth looking at, worth considering.
Speaker 1:
I love that phrase. How you do one thing is how you do everything, and I think that's very apropos For some of my listeners. They may know this. I had a long career in advertising and marketing, so this is a subject near and dear to my heart. My belief is that if the deck is sloppy, the work's going to be sloppy. The results will be sloppy. If the deck is 100% short and doesn't have any minutia, what's the communication going to be like? As an passive investor, I've seen this before and before, where I get horrific communication from some of the investments I'm in. I've got guys who are 100% analysts and they just send me the. Literally I get the checkbook statements from the property management company and in order for me to really dive into that, I got to go through and be an accountant. As a passive investor, I want to know some core metrics and I think this is a real indicator for me when I bring out an offering, to make sure that it's clear, concise and complete.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and a lot of that back into work is definitely worth considering as an investor as well. How much of that is going to be packaged up in a way that you can understand it? And if a company doesn't have their assets in order their and by assets I mean their documentation process in order, it's going to be really hard for them to deliver that at scale for individuals, for all of their investors. So if that's something that's important to you, if you don't want to become the accountant or know how to read through all those numbers, then yeah, it's worth considering.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I think it also for me. I use it as a weed out. I have a general partner that I invested with and now.
Speaker 1:
I get updates that say we are going to be there the next several months and that means nothing to me, or we're going to do approximately 10 of this. That doesn't mean anything. What I want to know are hard and fact data ports. I think this is part of it. So tell me, as the founder of HayRays, what's been the most common thing you look for in working with clients, from a criteria to work with you, because I know there's a lot of listeners we have that are syndicators and a lot of them know that this is a void and it's something that you're specializing in. So what have you learned?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, when I'm looking for clients, I definitely want to work with those clients that are hungry to elevate their image. This is important. I will know there's a lot of talk out there about investing in your marketing, improving your marketing, but if you're not really committed to that, then it's going to be a bumpy ride. So you have to be open and willing to doing the work, because it really does take work. If you're pumping out generic information right now and you really want to fine tune that to make sure you're talking to the right avatar, your messaging is accurate, it really does take a dedicated process.
Speaker 2:
You have to sit down and think about yourself, which can be awkward for a lot of people, and then you have to think about where you want to go in your business, and that takes a lot of time and it's something you have to set time aside for, and if you aren't going to do that work, it makes my job so much harder. When somebody sits down and really pours all of their energy into we do a workshop session. When somebody really pours their energy into that session and gives me real nuggets to work with, we can craft a brand that's very authentically them, very uniquely them, and position them in their investor's eyes in a very advantageous way, just because they were willing to do the work and put it in the time that's required. So that's paramount, truly. Otherwise, you're just going to keep pushing out generic and that's not going to set you apart.
Speaker 1:
And that setting apart is a crucial element, because there's so much choice out there now and, as a passive investor, it's a definite decision maker for me. And if I get a deck that's asking for $250,000 and they've got seven slides in there and there's no minutiae, I'm not going to pay attention to it. And if I get a deck that's 55 slides and it's nothing but minutiae, I'm going to throw it out too. There's definitely something in there. So I hear a lot of people talking about artificial intelligence and AI doing all of the work for you. Where do you land on this iterative new technology?
Speaker 2:
I love it. I think it's amazing. I think it's moving so quickly, so quickly that it's a little bit terrifying. We're at a point where, if you can visualize what it is you want to happen, utilizing AI, it can happen, so that part is awesome. That being said, it's still just a tool and the tool can't think for you. It can only pull what's already been created and build on that. So I think that's important to keep in mind. And it scans a really broad database. So if you're trying to use AI to create all of your messaging, you're only going to get inputs that have already been put in before. It only knows what to create based on inputs.
Speaker 2:
So to create a unique brand and something that's authentic for you, to clarify your message.
Speaker 2:
It's not going to help you get past that hurdle.
Speaker 2:
What it can help you do is improve your message, to clarify your message, help your writing, give you prompts and ideas, and when you use it as a tool, it's extremely powerful. In that way, when you depend on it to be your marketing branch, your marketing department, come up with all your copywriting, you're selling yourself short and you're not really using the tool as intended, even though it's often marketed in that way, if you're not creating the inputs for the tool to specifically reference back to there are some applications out there that allow you to do that it's just going to be pulling from the internet. It's grabbing generic information and the whole point of creating your unique brand is to move away from that, so it actually only further exacerbates the problem. But I highly encourage people to learn how to use it as a tool and in that way. It's great as a little sidekick when you're copywriting to help you stir up some ideas, but then you got to put in the work yourself. It doesn't replace doing the work, for sure.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, nothing does right. That's one of the things about being an investor or a real estate professional or an agency owner is that work is a four letter word. For a reason we all have to do it. Yes, so, as I think about what we're talking about, if I'm a syndicator looking for this, what are the questions I should be asking myself to know if I need to do things to quote, elevate my brand, like you said, because that can be a very subjective statement, and someone else's beautiful brand is someone else's junk. How do we know the difference?
Speaker 2:
That's a really good question and one talk to your trusted colleagues. Get their opinions on how you are being presented. Ask some of your investors what do you think about our brandy, the ones that you trust that are in that inner circle.
Speaker 2:
Secondly, a book came to mind as you were asking this question Vivid Vision. I think this is an awesome read. It's very short. It requires a lot of work once you commit to doing the work, but this is mapping out what a three-year trajectory looks like for you. Where are you going to be in three years? At this point? In three years, what do you want your career to look like, your life to look like as a whole? Take that compared to where you are right now and work backwards to build in the steps, and that might tell you where you have to go, and then we can align your brand to where you have to go. That could be a very insightful exercise.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and that's a great thing to do when you're trying to break your golden handcuffs. In general, I talk often on this podcast about it's not if it's when you lose your job and if you have golden handcuffs. The objective has always been to build your plan, and that Vivid Vision is a way to create your plan in addition to your job, because it may or may not be the core of what your vision is going forward as an investor. And maybe your vision as an investor is to do one flip every three years. Great, that will yield some results. It probably won't get you to replace your job, but maybe you don't want to. Or maybe the vision is to, as a syndicator, to go from offering one offering to bringing out five to market in three years, and there's a very different track and path for that. So I love that idea. It's supposed to be. I've heard of the book. I've never read it, but I know it's a great read.
Speaker 2:
It's a great read. It's a great exercise, and maybe that's why I'm here today. I did read that book. It was not with. It was less than three years ago and my full-time job, that lifestyle was not in my vision. Very clearly, nowhere was that life in my vision. I knew I wanted to build a business and I wanted to create something. I wanted to really sink my teeth into something and build it. So I think that has a lot to do with where I'm at right now. I'm on the path to executing my vision.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I love hearing that. And for those of you that are thinking about what do I do to get out of this rat race, Adrian's a good example of that. Many of the people on the show have been good examples of that, and it's not always about quitting the job either. I was talking today with a guy in Canada who lives by Niagara Falls and he has five different side hustles and keeps his job because he likes it. Very different scenario. We don't all hate the job. We don't all love the job. There's all kinds of different ways to make a life that is abundant and joyful and happy.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and I loved my job. It was really rewarding. I really enjoyed the people that I worked with. It just didn't allow for the freedom to pursue other passions and there's so much that I'm passionate about and I came to terms with the fact like, okay, I did it, I accomplished this, let's move on, let's try something else, let's tackle the next challenge.
Speaker 2:
I really had to separate myself from the idea that you're in a career for the lifetime, until you reach 59 and a half and you get to retire. I never loved that idea. Anyways, I always wanted to start something up, find success Okay, next one, okay next one. I didn't need to make a massive journey of that experience I'd put in the time. I reached goals that I didn't ever think of prior to getting into the industry and I was happy with where I was at. I had set myself up with some real estate Always a phenomenal idea. Get yourself some real estate in your portfolio and you've got some choices. But I did not have a vast portfolio at all. I have a relatively small Airbnb portfolio and it doesn't pay all the bills. But it certainly gave me the comfort ability to make some choices, and that's really what you want an opportunity to make choices.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's beautiful because it gives you the opportunity to choose where your values lie.
Speaker 1:
I talk about three kinds of freedoms there's economic freedom, there's time freedom and there's geographic freedom, and what you're saying is that the Airbnb's gave you a little bit of economic freedom to choose more in your life. Yeah, absolutely yeah, love that. So we've been talking now about 20 minutes and my question for you? I've always got a couple of questions. I ask you First, what's the best piece of advice you wish you had had 10 years ago? Anything you know today that you wish you had known a decade ago?
Speaker 2:
The best piece of advice that I wish I had known a decade ago. It kind of touches on what we were just talking about that it's okay to break the mold, that it's okay to do big, crazy, challenging things. A decade ago I was sitting what I thought was comfortably in a comfortable job and nothing really felt. It didn't feel right for me. I was talking about all of my goals, my future goals, how I was going to live my life, but I wasn't taking the action. I wish the 10-year ago me was more about taking the action. Right now, life is all about action and with action produces opportunities.
Speaker 1:
And action produces results as well. Yeah exactly, absolutely no doubt about that, the converse of that thing that you wish you had known, what's something you followed, that you wish you had ignored.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's a very similar situation. I actually I think this came from a place of. They had good intentions when they said this but if you don't know what to do, don't do anything at all, and I've come to realize that that phrase just keeps you on the fence. That was probably one of the worst pieces of advice I followed in life. I spent probably an extra year or two working in a company just sitting, thinking, stewing about things, when really just take a move left or right, pick one. It doesn't necessarily need to be the right choice, and this is the action. You just have to take a choice, make a choice and go down one path. If it doesn't work, you can always go down the other path. At least you're not stuck there forever. But sitting and stewing gets you nowhere besides more stewed, and nobody needs that.
Speaker 1:
You get boiled up. You become the frog in the hot pot you just boil yourself out, right?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's fascinating.
Speaker 1:
A mentor and a student at the University of Colorado and he and I were meeting last week and he's studying real estate and he's studying finance and he's studying personal finance. So corporate finance and personal. He's trying to figure out what's path is going to go down. And I asked him why do you have to pick a path? Today You're 20 years old and it blew his mind because everybody was telling him he had to pick a path and I'm like for what reason? I think what that's really talking about is that you don't have to pick the path. You have to pick a path. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Stay in motion, do something, just start moving, keep moving and that's going to lead you somewhere else, and you're always free to change your mind and make different decisions.
Speaker 1:
I love that. Stay in motion. So that takes me to another question. Is there some sort of thought or axiom or quote that moves you, that you'd love to share with our listeners?
Speaker 2:
Sure, I stay in motion is definitely one of them. Something you and I talk a lot about is brick by brick, just lay a brick when there's this insurmountable goal ahead of you. One break at a time. I probably say that to myself every day.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, let's push it out a little bit. That's something. That's a really unique analogy, right? So I actually also, in case you don't know this, guys, I have a coaching business in 80, 90s and work together and tell me more about this brick by brick thing. What is that?
Speaker 2:
It helps me understand that every day, one brick at a time is going to get you to the full house. You have to lay the foundation first, and then just putting down one brick gets you that much closer to completing a wall and then completing a room and then the full house. If you're just aiming to put the roof on top, you've really missed a lot. So it just keeps me level and reminded that one break at a time is all you need to do today. Sorry about that.
Speaker 1:
One break at a time.
Speaker 2:
One break at a time. So yeah, that's been really powerful for me.
Speaker 1:
I love that and you know, I know we were talking offline and you've got an offer right now for people that you wanted to share with our listeners. What's the exciting new offer from Hayrays?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I'm really excited about this. So, coming into 2024, I realized that there is a huge need to help people expand their social media offerings and take a lot of that work off their plate. Using my team, my designers and AI as a tool which we do use as a tool we can help clients complete a full month's worth of content and be their social media marketing team. So that's really the newest package that we're rolling out in 2024. So that's really exciting, on top of doing all the other branding work and pitch decks and websites that we typically do as well.
Speaker 1:
Awesome, so social media content creation is part of the offering now.
Speaker 2:
And as a guy that hates that that excites me a great deal. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:
It's a little exciting. You know, and I know that we had talked a little bit more about the next race fest, which happens in a couple of weeks, and I think this time, where is it? It's in Phoenix, is that right?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's in Phoenix and actually we are running a promotion, if you will. I'm not really sure what to call it, but I just wanted to bring my unique ability to the conference which I went last year. It really set me on the right path. This conference is awesome. I owe a lot to the race masters community. It's just a great group of people. So I really wanted to bring my unique ability to this conference and help people out.
Speaker 2:
So what we're doing is we're setting up a photo shoot and I'm actually going to fly in one of my photographers. She's amazing and we have some time slots available in the morning on the 22nd and the 23rd and we just want people to freshen up their headshots for the year. This is always something that's on people's to-do list and it's a little bit miserable. A lot of people don't love being in front of the camera, but we'll make this fun. You're already going to look great going into the conference, so let's snap some beautiful images of you and you'll have a fresh image to add to your rotation of headshots for the year.
Speaker 1:
Sweet. So if you're going to be at race fest and you want some headshots to meet Adrian and her team, you can reach out to her here and tell us what's the best way to contact you.
Speaker 2:
Really straightforward. Hit me up on email. Hi at adrianraycom. Simple as that. A-d-r-i-a-n-r-a-e. I'd love to connect. If you want to do a little brand audit, let's chat.
Speaker 1:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Adrian, for joining us and we'll put all that in the show to the listeners. And you've been listening to another episode of Break your Golden Hand Cuffs. Thanks so much.
