How to Build Authority That Makes Business Come to You | Dana Flanagan

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Dana Flanagan (0:28)

High Five Casino Trust is not transferable and you can't have AI take that over for you. You can build a brand through AI, you can build a trusted brand, logos, pitch decks, things like that. But as a person and as a human being, we still want to know that we're talking to a real person. We want to have a connection. If you need capital and you're having trouble getting in front of investors, you need to invest in somebody like myself that has all of those connections and is readily available to put you in front of the right people. We're not talking about throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks and sending you 50 contacts. That's not what we do. We actually go through and understand your business. Take a deep dive and we put you and place you with people that understand your business and are going to be viable for you in moving the needle forward.

Justin Colby (1:25)

Now, if you're struggling in business to figure out one simple thing, how do you build more authority, credibility and influence? You are going to want to listen to this guest. She's absolutely phenomenal, has done hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate across the country in the commercial and global markets, but also was able to just recruit 70 agents in 90 days, where I know a lot of realtors are struggling to recruit seven agents. But the reason she did any of this and why I bring this up is because my guest also is known as the authority architect. She understood what it took to create authority for herself, to reach the goals she wanted to reach. She's here to talk to us about architecting our authority. Dana Flanagan is here. How are you?

Dana Flanagan (2:08)

I'm great. Thanks so much for having me on the show.

Justin Colby (2:10)

I'm excited about this. We've had many conversations off camera and finally we're bringing it to camera. We're bringing it to the public.

Now, I want to just understand, this is not a podcast episode about real estate. This is a podcast episode about business, authority, credibility and how to be able to get what you want if you do this right. Take me back 15 years, 20 years. Where did this start for you where it clicked? If I do X, I receive Y.

Dana Flanagan (2:42)

Yeah. That's a great question. I started in real estate about 25 years ago as a residential real estate agent.

I'm really dating myself here, but I started posting on Facebook and social media.

I still post on Facebook. Well, right. No, we do. Right. But this was when Facebook was like brand new, right? So I started posting my daily activities in real estate and my business and using it as free advertising. What that got me was visibility. And so I soon realized that it's great to run at the time. We were still obviously running newspaper ads and all of those magazine ads and people did the placemats, right? And the little diners and things like that. But I got so much, like I attracted business. That's what I found is that I was attracting business.

The visibility is what got me seen and got me known for my craft and what I do. So I picked up on that early on. I mean, I was pretty young. I was in my early twenties and I just started utilizing social media to be visible everywhere. I branded myself not with the company that I was with, but as a, you know, as what my brand name was at the time. And as that real estate agent, that is the obvious choice in your market. So when people thought, oh, I need to buy, sell or invest in real estate, I'm calling Dana. And so business came to me. That's how I built my clientele for buyers and sellers.

But then as I got into the real estate world and joined a company that had a revenue share model, which is where you get a little piece of everything that the realtors that have signed up underneath you at that particular company, when they sell, you make a little bit of revenue from that. So I started attracting agents. And agents started saying, hey, I want to do what you do. I want to work with you. I want to come to your brokerage. So it was always an attraction based model that I built. And now I teach other people how to do that. I mean, the word that you see most of the time, like on LinkedIn is business development, right? I mean, we need somebody to do business development. And I basically work with companies now as an executive advisor, strategic positioning, where I help businesses and individual CEOs, founders, be seen, visible and in the right rooms. And we know a little bit about that too, Justin.