Gabriela Pulido Talks Branding & The Importance In Real Estate

All right. Welcome everybody. Welcome to the remarketing podcast. My name is Jerome Lewis. I am your host for today. The remarketing podcast is a podcast where we talk marketing tech and bus marketing tech and business leadership. We talk about these topics for real estate's agents, real estate investors and entrepreneurs.

The remarketing podcast has two purposes. Purpose number. to spotlight you, your business, your service, or your product in a way that provides value to you, including market exposure and content creation. That's for you, Gabriela, and number two, to educate and inform our audience and our listeners. All right.

So I'm excited today. We have Gabriela Polito. Did I say that correctly? Perfect. Perfect. All right. Awesome. Gabriela is a creative and serial entrepreneur with more than 30 years. Emblematic brands. She is a passionate believer of the power of brand with a strong purpose while doing good. She has a assertively built brand strategies to scale businesses successfully for more than 400 brands, such as Amran Shelton academy and CIG I impressed polar mass me can tell Nestle others and seeking partners with clients for long term for long term.

Prompt mother of four and part of endeavor.org mentor network. Gabriela, welcome to this show. Excited to have you here. Thank you so much. You're very excited. I'm excited too. So, so one of the things that's interesting about you is that you are, uh, you said you are immigrant. Could you tell us a little bit about that please?

Like from your perspective? So my, my perspective is coming and having brought up in Latin America, coming into the us. So I have like the best of both worlds coming in from inter entertain or seeing things, the different angle, different, uh, resources utilization, basically, and the faster speed of, of, uh, of trying to figure out the way to grow.

And then coming into the us, I've been here for the past five years. I went to the. In New York also. So I I've been around the us for many years, but coming from that angle from Latin America, coming into the us and figuring out what are the key things to scale companies and scale businesses and entrepreneurs, it brings me a breadth of, of angles or, or insights as to how to approach that, uh, those type of problem.

Awesome. I'm looking forward to our interview today, and I appreciate you sharing your time with us. Uh, when I was doing your intro, I stuttered a little bit because of the diff the language barrier. And I wanna get into that a little bit later, so sure, sure. No worries. And you did great. Thank you. Thank you.

I tried, but I know I'm messed up. So we're gonna get straight into like the business questions. We have some business questions for you. We have personal questions. Then we have like our final, final round what we call the closing table. So, okay. That being said, the first question that I kind of have for you around business entrepreneurship leadership is in your field of expertise.

What's a common myth that people perceive so that, uh, a brand is a logo. Okay. And, uh, show me and draw me something. Draw me this. I need a logo for my company, for my business card or for my real estate development. And we perceive the brand as, um, a big asset to scale companies. And, uh, you must treat it as such.

It's a, it's a property. It's something that it needs to be taken care of and ha needs to have a strategy. It needs to have, uh, a consistency. and, and you win in, in a way of, of that being treated as, as, as an asset in your balance sheet. So coming to terms with that, and, and most likely some people come in and say, okay, why don't you draw me this little thing?

Like, it's not this little thing. It's your, your image, your presentation, and another presentation, the way you want your clients or your consumers to think about you. So that's a pretty. Myth and oh, pretty common that I received that. And once they understand the value of it, they now turn into, okay, this needs to be taken care of a different.

Thank you and you, you kind of defined it a little bit, but I want to, uh, I guess I wanna simplify even more and I wanna like gear it towards like the clients that we work with typically, which are like real estate agents. Right. So a lot of times people are like, oh, I wanna be with this brokerage. I wanna do this.

I wanna do that. And, um, I, I call them like, there are people that. In our industry and they want to hide, right. They wanna hide and say, I'm with this company, I'm with this, these companies have already built brands, per se. So from your perspective, what I want to hear from you is, is it important for me or somebody like me as a real estate agent or a real estate investor?

Is it important for them to have a brand as well? Or should they stick to the company's grant? What's your perspective on that? My perspective is the relationship you have with your. Okay. So how is that important? That's important in your image and how do you present you if it's you as a person, because we're talking about brands, it could be a personal brand company brand.

It could be a nonprofit brand. So the way you present as a, as a broker or as a, as a developer's important. So if you have a sponsor or you have a company that's backing you up, if you're part of this. Everything needs to be taken care of. And you need to be super clear with your audience of your clients, where you're coming from, um, in this misses, uh, it can be a bit not obscure, but not, not as transparent, maybe for some people, but for others, the ones that I see winning the ones that are as super straight, what are the, you don't have crystal balls and how is the market gonna come up or down?

The real estate properties in Florida are well in the whole us, but here in, in Florida, they're, they're like amazing. There's no inventory and you have to be straight clear as to what it is that you're facing and what you know, and what you don't know at skeletal. We have like this value to be humble, confident.

We understand what we know and we understand what we don't know. And we get advice towards that. Thank you. I appreciate that. And, and you, so you mentioned scoo. Could you tell us a little more about scoo? What it is, how it started? Yeah. And just give us a little bit history from, so I am, I am, um, like you said, it's serial entrepreneur, which is fun in, in a way that I came out of, of, from my, my background for management consulting, and then went to branding agency.

st and then came COVID: 2020

So scale high or scale. Oh, nice. Yeah. That's where it kids come from. So my, my background is helping companies and we have, uh, real estate PropTech companies that we, we, we were helping now coming in from Germany, coming to Miami, um, arena and help companies scale in that sense with, uh, uh, a sense with a scaling mindset with a, the right mindset.

Um, and then having the right, the right narrative, the storyline and the branding, and then the experience. But the, if you over promise, it's the worst case of all you have to pro what you promise you, what you, what you see is what you get. That's what, uh, we have in the back. Thank you. I appreciate that.

And my next question for you is kind of cuz in my experience, right, some people have different experiences, but in my experience, us, us real estate agents, we can be a little bit difficult. Right. So my question for you is what is the biggest challenge that you face when taking on a client such as myself or someone like from the real estate space?

Well, I hear for you guys, it's really hard work and being a real estate broker in this time and. Because it's it's time consuming and then you have, the client is always right, but then again, the client is not always right. Right. And then you have to deal with all these things at the very end. It, it, it is rewarding, but at the same time, you have to put a lot, bit of effort the same way as, as we have, we have clients that they don't know what they don't know.

And, um, and coming, this is like a black box because in real estate, you. house. You have a, an apartment, you have a commercial properties, you have this, in my case, it's just creating the right strategy to see how eventually they would her, they would grow and, and scale. So first leveling the field as to what the understanding, what they might get from us and what they.

The second is clarity. And once they figure the aha moment, which I love in the case of, oh, this is my growth opportunity. This is where we're heading and when everybody's aligned and the communications is aligned. It's amazing that that for me, is the biggest reward ever. When you see the client aligned towards one goal, with a clear mindset, and then the branding follows and, and pushes and drives the growth.

And then you see companies coming from like zero market share to 81 market share for one of the cases that we dealt with in, in south America and coming from strong is just, they couldn't, they couldn't explain it. And, uh, I said, yes, it's something that has the right strategy in place. So that's for our typical problems and, and is, which is good to have is like, they don't know what they don't know.

I started my first company in: 2000

And now they're taking three months. So they, the faster paced technology speaking in a lot of the slack that we had before and, uh, they want it for now. So now they, the patient size is working towards nine months is not even six months is not three months. Is that one 10 in a week? It's like, no, you can't have.

nice. So we are, we're talking a lot about branding and, uh, you, you defined branding for us a little bit earlier, but what I would like to hear from you, your perspective is there you have personal brands and do you have business brands? What is the difference between the two? And do you have a preference of one over the other?

I think there's no difference between personal and professional brand. I think, um, If, uh, say, I don't know, Tony Robbins, for instance, it's his personal brand, but it's a corporate, it's a corporate brand also. Okay. Um, and in a way, the way I treat my, my clients and the way uh, it's you are in the game and people are trusting you because we are more into B2B.

So service based companies. And so the service is people and the people behind it. And how do you deal with the culture, how to deal with it? It's the value of, of, of, uh, the top, uh, of executive team going into the, the rest of the team also. So you say, okay, the difference between personal and and business decisions are the same.

You need to have a strategy you need to have, what are your motives? What's your essence? I dunno if you know Simon Sinek, but the, the essence and the why, why what's your, why what's your company? Why is that? because people are gonna know people. It shows when your company, when you, your values are align with the values of your company.

And so that for me, of course, the resources are different. Um, you wouldn't use a public advertising or any, you would use your Instagram or your Twitter account, personal level, and then you would use your company, but their channels are different, but the, in essence, the strategy should be in place. Okay.

Awesome. But I'm, and in terms of, of, of scout dog, it goes beyond the brand. So it goes, it, it says, okay, you have a strategy, you have a brand and then you need to communicate it accordingly. So all these three steps need to happen. Okay. So strategy brand, and then communication of, and then communicate and experience.

Yeah. And to have the experience of the grant. Awesome. So from your perspective, I would like your expertise on, uh, are there any popular brands that you would recommend someone model themselves after or their company? Well, they, in this day and age millennials and, uh, the generations coming they're much more into purpose driven brands.

Okay. So there, there are brands that say are good for the environment or are good for. Uh, communities ESG, they're talking about a lot of, of, uh, social, environmental, and social and government, um, uh, work, um, in, in essence brands that mimic that world and wanna make a difference. I really love, so I usually use, uh, well, the typicals that, that, that, that cliche ones are apple in terms of the market cap and how the, okay.

How, how that, and then you go and see what's the why of apple. okay. Think different it's think different as opposed to a make amazing products, amazing design, uh, products, or, or I know you go about it and you see what's happening in the crypto world or in the NFT we see. But then you go in, in your real, in, in real estate, you see compass trying to figure out a way to revolutionized or, or apply technology to the marketplace.

That's, uh, that's crowded. That might be mature. Uh, and my, my two transform it. So bra brands that I like are the brands that have a purpose brands that are making a difference and that are challenging. Um, the ways things work with technology. Thank you. So the next question is what's one lesson about branding that you have learned in that you think everyone else should know about branding and communications is that you need to be.

Consistent throughout and true to your message. Um, I don't know if you've read the book on Dante, which is, uh, about, um, well, it's not in your, in your area. Maybe it's, it's more the, the flavored water. Okay. So that it it's hint water, it's flavored water and, and. And she has this recently launched, both said it talks about why she was true to grant true to her values, one ingredient and all natural ingredients that within the all natural ingredients in the product.

So she went over her way, try to figure out the way that her water had all natural ingredients in it through. And it, it takes a toll because sometimes he was like, oh, nobody's gonna notice. and no, they, they notice and I have entrepreneurs, which I mentor at endeavor, which I mentioned. Um, and, uh, I, I train them.

I, I, I mentor them. It's like, okay, you say you wanna be just one brand, just one ingredient. Okay. You have to stay stick to that. If not, you change your brand, but, or change your essence, but because the customer eventually, or your client eventually is gonna. Awesome. So if I were to come to you, I'm like all frantic.

Oh my God. I'm trying to figure out my business. What do I do? I wanna stay true to my purpose and my brain, but I wanna change it. What would your advice be for me? So I would first get is where you are and how, how, what is your business model? What are, what are your growth opportunities? Where do you see that your value pro.

Sticks out. So it completely stands out, stands out with the competition in terms of what are the trends what's happening. So start figuring out an abstract where you, and how might you change to be three steps ahead as to where your should be going and those growth options, then we say, okay, is your brand aligned to those growth options?

If not, maybe say it's antiquated or it's, um, you wanna go high tech and it's super. um, fact or, or it's, it's, it's more meaning it's more diminished or it's not aligned with that. Or you wanna say it's more addressable to, to Latin and you have, uh, another type of word. So the idea is see how that alignment works and then get the right narrative.

Gotcha. Because if you have, you don't have the right narrative, it doesn't, it, it, something stays in a book. It doesn't, uh, portray. Okay. And then that, and from, from your perspective, right? Um, I've heard different answers. Branding is simple. Branding is complicated. Some people have said it's right in between.

What's your perspective? Is it simple? Is it complicated? Is there in between or nets answers work? Um, well, I don't see. It's complicated. I see it as fun. Okay. I love it. I'm I'm really excited about when I see a problem or challenge. Our brand is like Amran a brand was needed to change because it has to cut ties with the previous owners and, and have really cut ties or in signal.

Um, it, it comes with a, a name. How do you generate a name that generate traction with, with the cus with their clients and their employees and all that. So it's a manner of approach. How do you approach it? How, how you systematically. Think of all the variables and put it together and say, okay, this is where the right space I should occupy and how consistent I be.

I'll be in that space. How willingly are, will be in that space. So if they say for you, Jeremy, no, I don't. I, I, I don't like to be in real estate out of, of commercial just, and, and, and I just like residential a. And they put you in commercial. It's like, you're not gonna do that job. Right. You're gonna do what what's really works for you.

And in my sense, it's easy. Simple. I don't know. It just has to be done. Just has to be done. Just has to be done. I mean, get on. I like that answer. Yeah. I like that answer. It's it's essential. It's important. Doesn't matter if it's complex. Doesn't matter if it's simple, it's important. Get it done. Start. Get it done start.

And every, every entrepreneur that comes and comes to me and come, what is your narrative? What is your brand? What is it doing? Go back, see your strategy if it works, if it doesn't work. But, uh, I do have a platform. I do have a methodology program methodology that I work with, but the idea is that, get it done.

Awesome. I appreciate that. And of the mini and I know this is hard. But I'm gonna try to press you for an answer anyway, of the many projects customers you've you've had. Do you have a favorite success story? Do I have a favorites? Like every, every I'm a mother of four or every, every project that I have is like a baby.

I try to figure out a, a, a way, but, uh, yeah, the most exciting one has been. The one that, uh, I've got my team together working for and really excited to see it happen. So it was a project in, in, uh, here in Miami. Um, and, uh, it was trying to this Amin project that I had coming in, it was a legacy brand. It had to change a name.

It had to change everything just because of reasons of, of. Whatever government and, and, and political reasons it had to change. And I got my team working on the positioning, the name, the activation, and I came here and I said, no, it has to be done in, I don't know, in a year it got done in six months just because we put ourselves back together and working with the client and with the team, um, together.

So it was a great experience. Awesome. So the, the next question I have for you. Is, what's the biggest challenge you face when you are bringing on like a new customer or a new client,

um, leveling expectations that we need to figure out what we can do, what we cannot do. So we are super focused, hyper focused on, on branding and communications. We don't do supply chain management. We don't do, I mean, other type of issues or legal compliance. We, we have partners doing that. so leveling them.

And, um, and for us trying to get, I know, try, try to hit the ground running in a way. We do do a lot of work doing that. So for us, the challenge is not, um, bringing them on board. It's more, uh, dealing with the, let's say J in patients of the expect in patients that I wanted. I want, I was signed scout already, so I want it now.

No, no, no. It takes, it takes time. It needs to mature. Not time it takes. I know, I, I don't know, eight months, eight weeks or six weeks, depending on the timing, but it's not for in one week. Yeah, no, because they're used to putting in, in like lower generator, uh, That you put, and then you have immediate lower generators.

I'm not doing that if you want. Go ahead. But that I don't recommend that. Awesome. So the, the next question I have for you, these are never gonna get a little, we're gonna go personal for a little bit, then we can go back so personal. What is something that people misunderstand about you most about me that I'm too serious?

You serious? Oh, I like that. When I get that one a lot. I like that serious too serious. No, is that I really like to, I really like to learn, so I, I, I question I figure and what they, what they, what they're doing and maybe my face is serious. And the other thing is I don't have a poker face, whatever, whatever you you see is what you get.

So I get that. Oh, nice. I like that. So we have some similarities there. Yeah. Next for you. I have, if you could go back and give your 18 year old self, one piece of advice, let's make it business advice. Right? What would it be? You know, I was watching what is one of the Oprahs? I don't know, uh, what I, I listen on our podcast.

So one of them is like, my name is we, that's not my. When you're thinking about something that is a problem and try to take it a problem. As I think about world park, think about my name is west. That's not my mess. so don't take it. Don't don't, don't get into trying to solve that one. Gabriel, is it just, uh, that's that's a problem to be solved and, uh, listen to the person and, and figure that one out so that that's, uh, a good advice.

But the other advice is patients, um, it, this how also passed, so figure. Don't stress that much. It's not getting too. It's not getting anywhere. I know stress is a word that's very common in probably in all your podcasts, but the idea of trying to stress less than, uh, than I have done in the past. Okay, awesome.

So now we are what I like, cuz we're in real estate. What I like to call the closing table and I have three questions at the closing table for you. Then I got some bonus questions that I like to throw at my guests. Okay. To kind of knock 'em off guard a little bit, but so the. Question, uh, that I have for you.

What are three other podcasts you would recommend to the audience and why? So I like, um, dare to lead bene brown. Okay. Um, just because you see a perspective of, in terms of leadership, in terms of different angles, uh, if she really helped me a lot during the pandemic, um, in terms of social working, I like pivot.

from Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher, which they have, uh, twice a week, I get like insights as what's happening in their criteria as to whether Elon Musk deserves or not to buy Twitter or yada yada. So they, they, they go super great. And I also like how I built this from an NPR. Okay. Um, and it's, it's I like to see that or, or masters of scale from.

Things in on a business perspective. And then I would go for meditative stories to, to figure out ways to, to embrace meditation and, and, and figure out a way to meditate more. Awesome. And so let me see, should I ask this now or, okay. So I'm gonna ask my, my stump questions, right? I'm gonna try to stop you and you have to answer the first question is how can someone bring immediate value to you and your.

Give me an idea. Give you an idea. Give me an idea. Give it's one word or two word. I don't know how what's. This is a rapid fire that a rapid, it doesn't have to be rapid fire. I just genuinely wanna know how someone a stranger or even myself can bring you value. Like what's something that you could really use right now in your business.

Yeah, it could be a client. It could be a book. It could be a reference, no ideas, ideas in terms of what's coming. What, from your, if you coming from real estate, what are your pay pain points. Okay. So I'd like to solve for that, those pain points I like to solve for like, uh, companies trying to introduce new products or.

Trying to go. Even a real estate group was calling me saying, okay, how can I differentiate this? This is really crowded market. So coming with a, with a problem and I will figure out if I can help you out in, in terms of, from my perspective, gives you an advice, awesome pain points. And I, I could probably get some people have some conversations with you about those pain points, for sure.

So I'm gonna see what I can do on that end. The next question I have is very similar, but this time it's not immediate value. It's long term. So the question is how can someone bring you learn? How can someone bring long term value to you and your business, obviously, in terms of, of, of having not type of lead generation, but more on having, uh, relationships or, or longstanding relationships with, uh, clients.

So for instance, if you refer somebody that you really trust and I can help you be better real estate broker. Okay. And that way that would be amazing because it's a win-win. So I I'm not into the gen if I would go for, I don't know, something, LinkedIn sales navigator and, and get, I dunno, a hundred thousand, whatever, a hundred leads, quality referral.

I know I want high cloud quality referrals that I can help you be a better person. I, I want to help Jerome. And that, that makes me happy. That that is part of it's people that I. Trying to help them in terms of the way the angle that I approach helping them in terms of branding and communications.

Awesome. Thank you. I appreciate that. So, uh, did I stop you a little bit? No, no, all right. So I got two more questions for you. And one question is what's one question you wish I had asked you and how would you have answered that question?

Um,

I, I don't know, the, the question is more as to why would they hire scale? Okay. Why would they hire us? And, and in my, in my sense is that you want trusted advisors or trusted consultants that really understand and gets we, we don't, we're not a huge agency or a huge company. We like to work directly with our clients.

And having said that, how do we work? We work one on one, but we do also work with a client work with the client, not for the client. So we work together in co-creation mode. That's, that's a biggest essence of ours and try to solve for the long term that terms solve for immediate lower generation, which I did once in my life.

And I, I don't wanna redo that again. I completely understand. And the final question that I have for you. Is where can listeners find out more about you online? So we have our website, which is Scotto S C a lto.com mm-hmm . And then we have, it's also, we are in Twitter and, and Instagram, and you can always meet, um, email me@gabrielapscotto.com and, um, Sooner we have, we will have another platform too soon to too soon to tell.

Awesome Gabriela. I really appreciate you. Do you have any final closing statements before we close out? I super appreciate your time. Your, um, I hear your pain points in terms of real estate. Um, you guys have amazing job and you guys are making a difference in this crazy market. and I hope for you guys, that inventory comes up because you follow more, more inventory and less.

Uh, but, um, and in another, in, in a case I'm here to help. I would love to have, uh, and figure out a way to, to help more of you and, and, and try to generate growth options because they're out there and we're, we always, there's always a. Awesome Gabriela. I really appreciate you. Thank you so much and hope to have you back in the future.

And I would like to see, you know, some of your success stories, maybe, maybe we can do like some case studies and some examples of the different brands that you've done in the past. So. Perfect. Super. I would. Good. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you so much. Absolutely. All right, take. Thank you.