How Being Authentic Will Lead to New Clients and New Opportunities

In a conversation I had with Marie Dahl Kell, who is a Prestige Real Estate Consultant based in Denmark, I learned how being your authentic self ensures that you have a strong growing business, as well as have a positive impact on your personal life.

Two and a half years ago, Marie moved to France to start anew. She opened up her LinkedIn profile for the first time in 5 years, and she only had 130 contacts, 90% of which were friends and people she knew really well from Denmark.

When Marie came to France, she decided to forget about trying to instantly focus on getting French people as new clients and wanted to figure out how she could re-invent herself in a country that was not her own. She didn’t speak the language fluently, however, she did speak the language of real estate. Also, based on her knowledge attained from her worldly travels, Marie had a good understanding on what foreign people liked, and due to her lifestyle, she knew she had what it took to cater and relate to foreign people.

Therefore, instead of thinking she could beat the French at their own game, she decided to invent her own game. And the way that she did this was by simply being her true, authentic self.

As a result of following her own advice, she utilized LinkedIn as a platform to create and build an authentic brand for herself by simply posting content that was of interest to her. Flashing forward to the present, she has been able to go from 130 LinkedIn contacts to over 8,000 contacts. With this massive increase in her network, she has been presented with opportunities that would have never been possible. These include being asked to be a guest on a popular real estate podcast, a massive spike in new cliental and an overall increase in business. Marie has even created lifelong, personal friendships, been invited to Polo matches, fancy wine shops, and private lunches at restaurants, which in turn, resulted in more friendships and business relationships.

Marie strongly believes that we need to be our true selves no matter what the price is. She says that there is a lot of “peacocking” and fakeness in the real estate industry, which actually has negative consequences on both a personal and a business level. Instead of trying to be somebody else, or being what you think somebody else wants you to be, always stay true to yourself.

What are some examples of successes you have attained that can be directly correlated to you being your true, authentic self?