In our latest real estate tech entrepreneur interview, we’re speaking with Brad Abernathy from The Faces Of.

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Brad Abernathy.  I am a Christian, husband for 24 years, father to 2 terrific girls, son, brother, friend, business partner, a Georgia Tech graduate, marketer, Realtor, and author.  I wear a lot of hats.  I am a full time Realtor and leader of a residential real estate group in Gainesville Georgia, about 1 hour NE of Atlanta.  I am also the creator of The Faces Of LLC.  This is a community and relationship marketing platform my group began in 2015.  With it our sphere of influence grew, our website traffic increased over 600% and our sales increased over 60%.  We created a way to help others (one per town) do what we are doing.

What problem does your product/service solve?

We help others solve the question of how to be more visible, more well known, more connected in their communities with relevance and influence.  Name recognition is vital in business.  We give one person in every community the tools to become a leader of influence in their communities.  Based upon a community service project we created for our own community and business we connected with the right people to scale our project for others to do the same thing.

We are enabling our partners to expand their sphere of influence in their local market through giving value to others around them.  We have a proven system that anyone can step into to become a true ambassador of their community.  In a world where marketing is everywhere our partners will embrace a wonderful collaboration of relationship and digital marketing that will make them top of mind in their local markets.

What are you most excited about right now?

I created The Faces Of Hall County Georgia for my local business.  The results were astounding.  Somehow I convinced myself that someone in every town should be doing this.  I set out to find a connection and team that could help The Faces Of expand into other towns by partnering with people that wanted to host this story.  I was excited when we got our first partner in another town in Georgia.  Then we added another partner in Georgia and another.  We were excited when we got our first partner in another state and then another.  Today, we have partners in 25 states.  I am most excited about the number of real estate coaches that love what we are doing and are offering it to their networks of agents.  I am also thrilled with the conversations we are beginning to have with agents in other countries.  We are creating closer communities from coast to coast and eventually across the world.  People are somewhat connected globally, but their true connections are hyper local.  Their local community is their family and their tribe.  Helping our partners be the most visible and relevant community member within their town is what we do, what we coach, and what are mission is all about.

What’s next for you?

We have 100 partners in 25 states right now.  We will continue making connections and adding partners in every town in this country and beyond.  There are over 3,000 markets in this country and every town needs their story told.  We were invited to speak at a real estate coaches conference this spring.  However the spread of COVID postponed that conference until this fall.  I look forward to meeting new people and exchanging ideas.  Our platform is not complex but it is phenomenal.  People should get back to making real connections.  Each opportunity we have to share this story we will take.  And each time we do we gain so much value from those we meet.

What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?

Actually, I could say a usual cause like Habitat For Humanity, but that is not where I have spent the bulk of my time or resources.  I love what they do, and I love taking part in the actual building process of homes.  However, my time and resources for the last 5 years has been with the Work Based Learning programs of four local high schools.  Through our local community project, The Faces of Hall County, I have been privileged to mentor 15 high school juniors and seniors in business, marketing, and journalism.  My children are 19 and 16.  The kids I have mentored have all been between those ages.  Teaching these students about the real world, why we do what we do, how to make an impact and give value to others has been very rewarding. We teach them about communication, interview skills, creative writing, the importance of hand written notes, being authentic, time and resource management, and marketing.

Thanks to Brad for sharing his story. If you’d like to connect, find him on LinkedIn here.

We’re constantly looking for great real estate tech entrepreneurs to feature. If that’s you, please read this post — then drop me a line (drew @ geekestatelabs dot com).