Welcome back to the She’s Wild the Podcast for Women In Land & Development. Today’s guest is Jaimee Reinertsen. Jaimee is the co-founder of SparkFire Branding, a full-service agency specializing in marketing mixed-use and residential real estate. Jaimee is an award-winning creative director, and has been using her passion for place-making to help developers build distinctive brands for over 20 years. Before opening SparkFire Branding in 2015, she was the Vice President and Chief Creative Officer of Wallace & Company and Ecendant Interactive, as well as the Vice President of Milesbrand. She is an active member of the National Town Builders Association and Vice Chair of the Urban Land Institute's Community Development Gold Council.
In today's episode, Jaimee and I talk about SparkFire Branding, the real estate marketing agency that she and her husband created to combine their talents of technology and design. Jaimee walks us through some of the projects she has worked on over the years. Listen in as we discuss her career path, as well as things that she's seeing in her business right now. Jaimee is an incredibly talented individual with a passion for helping businesses grow. It was inspiring to chat with her about all of the work that she and her team are doing at SparkFire Branding. It's clear that they are making a big impact in the real estate industry, and I'm excited to see what they do next!
Memorable Moments:
9:05- The name of the game in the last few years has just been being as nimble as possible. So, we're looking at things week to week with what's the engagement level in the market? What websites are people spending their time on? What are their questions? What are the frustrations they have? How can we communicate better? And it's really been such a dynamic time in the last couple of years, that it's just been so unpredictable and fun in that regard.
12:01- Because of COVID, people really started to think very critically about what their home allowed for, what the shortcomings were, and having kids at home through school. So there were just so many different decision-making factors that went into it. And that really altered and I think, made the buying decision so much more urgent.
13:22- For a while, it felt like the computer was the thing the world lived in because that was your interaction with humans. So changing how we took information centers, basically online, and created virtual presentations, that you would have always wanted to be in person before.
18:44- At the end of the day, we want to work on places that everybody's committed to be proud of. And it just makes for a much more collaborative, enjoyable, and creative experience.
21:34- We're always trying to get people to change the value equation from price per square foot to quality of life. And the more we understand how the developer came to it, the more we can help build that value.
26:36- Our motto is to share recklessly, because we want to give back to the industry that, you know, has been so good to us.
26:57- It's such a long game with business development in this industry because it's all about relationships, and things come back, and we truly believe that. It's fun to just share with people; it's something we love to do. It kind of all comes back around. So sometimes, we need advice from people, and we want people to share with us.
27:41- The most fun I have is traveling to places I would probably never get to if I were vacationing, right? Like I probably wouldn't necessarily end up in Liberty, Missouri, for a vacation, right? But I remember going there and meeting the people, and we were doing a city rebranding, and just hearing about their history and what they're proud of, and what they love.
35:10- Real estate's such an interesting thing to market because most of the time, in the early days, as you know, we're talking about things that aren't there yet, right? And we're asking people to trust us that they're coming.
Connect with Nancy:
Instagram: https://instagram.com/nancysurak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancysurak/
Website: www.nancysurak.com
Connect with Jaimee:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimeeabbott/
Spark Fire Branding Website: https://sparkfirebranding.com/
Jaimee’s Book Recommendation:
HANDLING YOUR FIRE: Passion, Burnout, Routines and Resilience
https://robbell.com/audio/handling-your-fire-passion-burnout-routines-and-resilience/
She's WILD Sound Production by:
Luke Surak, Surak Productions: surakproductions@gmail.com
