Last week I had a great initial branding consult with a husband + wife real estate duo out of the Atlanta area.

Plenty of details stick out from our conversation, but one in particular made me reflect a little deeper.

At one point the husband, Ty, made a comment about their personal company approach and how they want to reframe the way that “ugly investor properties” are presented in otherwise beautiful real estate brand environments. We talked about how images of scrappy flips are either dramatically minimized, or intentionally hidden, from the online worlds of many agents who are out to present well.

Ty disagreed with this more bashful marketing approach and of course, so did I. He then said something along the lines of (and I still have his verbatim quote somewhere in my blue work notepad, in messy shorthand scrawl) — 

“You CAN bring dignity to your presentation of any kind of property. A big part of what we’re trying to do with this brand change is be brave enough to bring dignity to areas where other agents think too small about their presentation.”

This just resonates. Even now as I reflect on our chat, I’m flashing back to a quote by Carl Jung that I encountered recently:

“We all walk in shoes too small for us.”

The idea of confining our feet and constraining our gait is such a rich metaphor for us in our personal lives (how are we restrained by certain social norms? how are we complicit in them?), but I love to center it squarely in the company context, too.

It’s strange that we choose to do this to ourselves in small business. And we do it OFTEN. For anyone, at any stage of professional growth or change, this preference for too-small shoes is tied up with fear itself. That we’re scared to liberate ourselves and move forward without restriction.

When Realtors at critical inflection points keep themselves from investing in big brand changes, it’s for one of two reasons. If the bottleneck ain’t budget, it’s all fear.

“I’m the only one who can do things right in my marketing, so I should try to keep doing it all,” is a mega story agents love. Some of you get a lot of juice out of this story and it structures much of your marketing behavior (and arguably, parts of your overdrive personality that do help you be wildly successful in high-risk sales spaces). This mega story also cuts you off from expert support. Creates burnout. And is only true because you make it true.

Our worst marketing stories sit on top of fear:

Fear of loss of control of how we’re perceived, fear of loss of approval, fear of being so creatively different that other agents swipe our sweet new models, fear of loss of safety as we contemplate stepping far outside of (tired, TIRED) real estate brand “norms.” You may work hard to keep this story alive in your head, scanning for facts to litigate it as true in your marketing:

“I’m the only one who fully understands how this email connects to yesterday’s post, so I’m going to stay in charge of all our copywriting, as per usual.“

Or “The team is going to misrepresent the brand if I’m not there stewarding the whole campaign from start to finish.“

Or “I can’t imagine another creative or agency coming in and actually GETTING us, so I need to keep driving this bus and tinkering with the visuals and copy until it feels right.“

Etc, etc.

Not only are those stories not quite rational, they leave you feeling depleted and resentful as company founders.

The reality is that our stories make us who we are, both on the personal and business side of life. We’ve inherited them from our own worldviews, or professionally, we inherit them from old, disabling industry norms.

The kind of disabling norms that embrace mediocrity and disrespect their audience in the process. I’m talking about the Soulless Agent Stuff that has lost its brains, beauty and personality in a bet with roofline clip art logos and stolen AI company messaging scripts.

But many of us are ready for new and better stories. Original ones.

We’re ready to step into the larger shoes that the winds of change in business are asking of us. We realize some stories, like shoes, need to be stretched. Rewritten. They don’t fit anymore.

The Realtors who come to us, ready to engage, want to write more expansive business stories. They’ve already thought a lot about their own fears — not only how anxiety keeps them from progressing, but how it can spur them into wrong defensive actions that become missed opportunities.

Like Ty’s highlighting of rundown investor properties that so many agents hide away, when in fact, the graceful alternative is to intentionally reframe your messaging + visual language around tricky marketing categories like this…

…so you can reach more people, celebrate the fuller extent of your capabilities and knowledge base, and create space for more dignity in your marketing.

How can you keep stretching the shoe and telling another kind of story?

So much of what I do —what I’m up to in this “Realtors only” studio work and overcaffeinated musings here on the blog — circles around my desire to be a really whole, creative person in this very niche space. Like an actually imaginative person who believes that “real estate branding” doesn’t have to absolutely suck.

It can SO give a damn, yeah?

And in that process, I don’t always want to spend time unraveling the archaic marketing assumptions still fueling much of the real state space today…I just want to freaking go in, be human, and do it differently out the gate and without permission. That’s what I’ve done so far. Our marketing templates take this stance, my emails and phone calls and little annoying push-backs to agents asking for feedback on this and that, all take this stance.

Because rebrands are reincarnations for our Realtor clients. And to do that well means abandoning potent industry lies — and ditching dehumanizing brand assumptions about how agents can and cannot speak in a market that can feel hostile to their very existence, at times.

It means putting on bigger shoes, and letting them reanimate and refashion how we do our work.

So I guess today, I’m inspired again by Ty’s desire to buck an agent trend and present ALL things within the framework of beauty and dignity. He wants that desire to make him braver in business; I want to keep fostering the same longing in myself.

And I want to keep fostering it in you.

Fear-based marketing says big changes are too big and unmanageable, that your confidence level isn’t up to all that. It tells you to hide out, hang out and stay entrenched in old-world agent marketing stories.

It keeps you small.

Are you feeling ready for a more expansive fit in 2026?

Even if big brand changes initially breed some agitation in your backend, or put your campaign plans at risk while you roll out the shift, or just makes you feel downright vulnerable until the transition has stabilized…

…what would it look like to do it right for once, and step into larger shoes? 

If you’re ready to move a size up (or two, or three) heading into the new year, shoot me an email at hello@blueprintbrandstudio.com and let’s chat about how to stretch your brand shoes in 2026. We’d love to support your best stories for a brave new year in business.

P.S — What’s BLUEPRINT, again? 

We’re a gaggle of designers, writers, and creatives on a mission to change the branding narrative in real estate.

We offer a signature branding service and the industry’s most elegant and high-converting digital products to help modern, stylish Realtors do three things:

➝ Communicate their worth;

➝ Become the obvious choice;

➝ Tell the right stories to stand out + SELL more.

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