The Biggest Mistake Almost Every Real Estate Agent Makes (and how to make sure you don’t)

You’re listening to Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent with Jennifer Myers of agent Grad School dot com. Today’s episode is called the biggest mistake, almost every single real estate agent make. And I’m going to tell you how you can avoid it. Here’s a quick hit. The riches really are in the niches. Let’s go Welcome to this episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent with your host, Jennifer Myers from aging Grad School dot com. Learn the secrets of real estate success that no one else will tell you. No fluff, no theory. Only exactly what’s going on in her own record, breaking business right now in today’s market. Yes, you can have the real estate business of your dreams. Here’s Jennifer hello? All you agents who rock it to me. Jennifer Myers from agent Grad School dot com. Thank you for joining me today. On another episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent I apologize in advance. If you can hear some banging around behind me, the show must go on, but there is construction happening next door. We’re just going to keep moving and hope that it doesn’t distract you from today’s message. I get so jazzed up when I talk about this concept, okay, here’s the deal. If you want to be wildly successful in the real estate sales business, there is a one thing that you have to do first and foremost, and it is one of the biggest mistakes that I see almost every real estate agent make. They’re not doing this and not doing this one thing stops them in their tracks. They flounder. They don’t know how to get from where they are to where they want to be in their business. And if you can’t have the business that you love, it’s hard to have a life outside of your business and your work that you love. Whenever I think about agents who aren’t doing this one thing I’m going to tell you about here. And just a second, I know this is a huge buildup, but you know that bit Moji, its like the struggle is real, right? So if you’re feeling that way at all in your business today’s episode is going to help you get, get around it, doing it is kind of like the thing that turns the engine over in your business, whether you’re new and struggling or even if you’re successful and just not really truly loving your business. My intention for this podcast episode is to help you create a real estate business that you love full of clients. You love working with that you attract easily so that you can have the life outside of your real estate business that you really love and cherish. I mean, frankly, that’s what it’s all about. We’ve got to get your business. Your real estate sales business needs to be growing and flowing with ease and doing this one concept and applying it to your business really is that loud bang that will get your business avalanche moving. So after all this buildup, what is this one thing I know when I say it out loud, you’re going to fight me on it. You’re going to say can’t be it. That can’t be the thing that makes everything flow. And I’m telling you from my personal experience, not only in a way I own a business, but helping agents, the coach in their businesses. This one thing is like, pull it the pin, like pulling the stick from the Boulder that needs to roll down the Hill. This is the same, the thing. And that thing is learning how to niche. Yep. That is right. The riches truly are in the niches. So today we’re going to talk about three things. Why is this concept of niching down and choosing a target audience really is the key to success when it comes to your real estate business. And I’m going to tell you why this is so important. I’m trying desperately to convince you that this is the place to start. And I hope today’s episode will do that. Number two, I’m going to help you decide on how to choose your own niche, your own target audience. I’m going to help you go through the exercise that I went through. And then I take my agents that I coach through. I’m going to take you through that same exercise. So hopefully by the end of this episode, you’ve either chosen your niche or you’re going to spend some time choosing your niche. When you have some quiet time. A lot of times I’m thinking you guys are hearing this podcast, hopefully when you’re driving around from client to client. So if you can’t just kind of go through the exercises with us, think through them, but then to spend some time going through this, you know, when you can write some stuff down when you’re not just like running around in the car and the third thing this episode is going to cover is what to do once you’ve chosen your niche. So I’m going to explain why you’ve got a niche I’m going to help you decide on your niche. And then I’m going to tell you what to do once you’ve chosen is in your niche. So let’s get started. Okay? So more than anything that I want you to take away from today’s episode is why I niching and choosing a target audience, choosing a client, avatar. It really narrowing your focus of who you want your ideal client to be. My hope is that even if you don’t choose your niche today, even if you don’t know what to do once you’ve chosen them. If you can just understand, this is the reason that you’ve been struggling, if you have been struggling or this is the reason that you don’t love your business, or if you want to one day stop paying for online leads and create your own clients that you can actually create rather than having to pay somebody else for them. I want you to understand this is, this is how to do it and that’s niching. So let’s dive into the first promise of this episode, why this concept is so important to your success in real estate. One of my mentors and it really, this is her saying, this really helped me understand what, why niching is so important. She says, Marie Forleo is one of my business mentors. And she says, if you are talking to everybody, you’re talking to nobody. And this concept certainly applies to real estate agents. It cannot be more true for real estate agent. If you are talking to everybody, if you are trying to be the agent for anybody and everybody, you are literally falling on deaf ears, you are talking to nobody think about it. If every real estate agent can sell any home to anyone, why should somebody, why should a potential client choose you among all the thousands of other real estate agents out there? Why for me, any real estate agents being everywhere and sending a ton of money on advertising or paying for leads, that’s all good and fine, but that takes to have the money. And you just kind of playing the numbers. If you don’t have any money to spend on advertising or you don’t want to find clients that way, learning how to niche and talk to your ideal audience will create more clients than you know, what to do with. And that is exactly what happened in my business is this really, truly decide on who you are best at helping choose a winner and then communicate only too that niche, that client, why you are the best agent to help them specifically. Now I know what you’re thinking. If I choose to work with only one type of client, if I niche, I’m gonna have less claims, Not more. And that truly cannot be further from the truth and that right there, thinking that if you niche down, you’ll have less clients than more. That right there is the biggest mistake. I see every real estate agent Makes, even those who are outwardly successful. If they aren’t absolutely in love with their client. And if they can’t create their own clients, like if you’ve got a pay for leads, you, right, I really need to implement this into your own business. Cause you should be able to do create your own leads and not have to pay somebody else for them. Here’s why niching makes you there’s three reasons. Niching makes your marketing super easy. Once you know who you are trying to reach everything about what you’re doing well, or you’re going to be posting messages where you’re going to be sending any advertising where you’re going to be sending postcards. What you’re going to be saying to them, what to post on social media niching makes your marketing decisions super clear and super easy. I’ll just give you one example for my own business. I target first-time home buyers in DC. That is my niche. And once I made that decision, guess how easy it is to decide what to post on social media. It’s so easy to know exactly. Yeah. Are you what to post or what to talk about once you’ve decided what your niche is? Everything. Okay. It became so much easier. And I didn’t sit there for hours thinking, should I post this? Should I post that? You know, what’s going to resonate with my clients. First. I had to decide who my clients were in. Other reason is you really stand out from the crowd. Once you niche your able to answer the question, why should somebody choose you among all other real estate agents? Here’s the thing you have to answer that question for people. They don’t even know. They’re asking that question. They’re not even realizing, but really, truly there they are asking that question. Why are you any different than every other real estate agent out there in order for you to be able to answer that question and attract your ideal client, you first have to decide who it is that your ideal client is. And then the third reason is if you tell them why they’re going to naturally want to seek you out, they’re going to naturally choose you. You’re going to stand out from the crowd. And you’re seen as not just another real estate agent. Now I get it. You’re skeptical. Real estate is a competitive market. And depending on where you’re operating, you probably have got thousands of thousands of real estate agents. Now I chose my niche in a very saturated market. There are so many real estate agents where I’m from in Washington, DC, where I want to be the most competitive area is for real estate and real estate agents in the country. And I swear I was struggling early on because I was trying to be an agent that anybody could use. But here’s the thing I want to take you through the exact steps. This is the promise. Number two that I want to deliver in this episode, I want to do to take you through the exact steps that I took to find my niche and want you to answer these questions for you so you can choose your niche. So you first need to ask yourself a very simple question. What do you want to be known for when it comes to real estate? I know that’s a really hard question to answer, but here is exactly how to find that answer and then therefore find your niche. What do you love about your real estate career? What part of the process do you love more than anything? What type of buyers or sellers with type of clients, do you really enjoy working with? What experience do you have in real estate that could help your ideal client? Is there a particular experience that you’ve gone through? Like for me it was, I had just bought my first house and it was a complete disaster and I didn’t want that to happen to anybody else. Is there any experience that you’ve recently gone through it that, that dealt with a real estate that could really, you could help and apply to your ideal client? Now don’t panic. If this takes a while for you to find the answers, it took me at least two years to get this, figured it out for myself. It also took several iterations of the answer until I finally landed and I just knew I had it. So here’s another way you can answer this. And I know that sounds strange, but just take a minute and just visualize this for a second. Imagine there’s a line of a hundred real estate agents and there was one client standing in front of all of them. Every real estate agent in that line gets 10 seconds, two to stand in front of that client and say why that client should choose them instead of every other agent in that line, how would you answer their question? Why should I choose you among all those other agents that are standing in front of me? Is it that you’re hardworking, friendly, committed? You know, those things sometimes just is what everybody else says. Those really aren’t good enough answers. I need you to dig deeper and really figure out your answer to that question. Why should somebody choose you among all other options, including doing nothing at all that is called your unique selling proposition. And that is that answer. If you could imagine a hundred agents lined up and one client that’s actually what’s happening every single day, whether we like it or not, or whether we know it or not. So that’s what I did. It, it took me a while to figure out. And finally, I decided that the reason that somebody should choose me is because I specialize in first time home buyers. I know more about the first time home buyer programs that are available to people who want to buy homes in Washington, DC than any other agent. And I can show them exactly how to go from being a renter, to being a homeowner for more affordable than they’ve ever thought possible. That’s my answer. I want you to figure out what your answer to that question is. I tell you a little bit more about how I came up with my answer to that question and how I niched and what my business looked like before, which was terrible. And after which was awesome. I started niching. If you go to the show notes for this episode, go to agent Grad School dot com, go to Podcast and then click on the one called the biggest mistakes. In that those show notes will be a chapter or a free chapter of the book that I wrote coauthor, excuse me, called shift happens. And it talks about my struggle and how I niched and what happened to my business before and after now, step three, once you’ve chosen your niche, you’ve got to start talking about it everywhere. My hope is that you understand now why niching is so important. You’ve gone through exercises and answered the questions. Why should somebody choose you among all other options? You’ve chosen your niche. And then this is step three. What do you do once you’ve chosen your niche? Well, you got to start talking about it everywhere, whatever it is that you like doing best, whether that’s through social media, whether that’s through one-on-one conversations, whether that’s through meetings, however, you are currently marketing open houses, you name it. I want you to apply. And it starts speaking to exactly who it is that your target audience is. Now we can talk about all the ways that you need to consistently communicate to your niche. That’s about three other podcasts, but I just want you to know that that is the next step you, but you got to choose your niche. First. You gotta understand that this is crucial for having a business that you love. You got to then choose your niche, and then you just have to start talking about it everywhere. That’s not what today’s podcast is about, but I’ll do one in the future. In fact, I have one coming up with an agent that I coach in my, how they did it series. And she walks you through exactly how she chose her niche, which is a completely different niche than mine and how she’s grown her business by communicating to that niche and all the different ways that she’s done that this concept of niching is so important that forbes.com recently asked me to write an article about it. And so I’m going to link to that also below and the show notes and other resource for you. You know, sometimes it’s helpful to read it more than once or here at once. Read it in another time. So take a look at the show notes on agent Grad School dot com for this podcast. And I’ll link to the show notes. They’re, I’ll be talking in so many upcoming podcasts exactly about how you communicate to your target audience. But my takeaway, my hope is that today’s episode, you realize that this is the crucial piece that your business is missing. That you’ve really got to niche down. And here’s just some other bonus materials to leave me with. Here’s some other niches that you can think about, get your creative juices flowing. Maybe you want to niche geographically. For example, there’s beach people. There is not people there’s people who want to live along a certain river. There is certain people that love Western facing windows, or, you know, love sunsets. I mean, you really can niche really, really down think demographically, there are billions of people in this world and you can’t sell to all of that. So narrow it down. Maybe it’s retirees. I loved, I forgot where I heard about her, but there is this agent who is killing it in the Florida market because she has niched to nudist retirement community. I mean that, and she has a business that is amazing. She is on fire, but guess what? She’s niche-ing ’cause, that is who she is. She’s a nudist. She is a real estate agent. That is her niche. And you know, I’m not joking. You know, it’s amazing. If I can find information about her business, I will link to it in the show notes. And this is the level of niching that we’ve gotten to get to. Now, if you’re not a nudist, don’t, don’t match to that. But I’m just giving you ideas about where you really can figure out what your niche is. And also don’t be shy about who you are and how, who you should niche to another way that you can niche is a stylistically. There it is some agents that I really admire that are niching with the type of house mid-century modern homes are really the rage right now. And there are people that you can make sure tracked by just knowledge of knowing about mid-century modern architecture. That’s right. It’s a great example of a way to niche. Now it doesn’t mean that they’re going to end up buying mid-century homes, but you’re attracting them because you’re communicating that. And that is what they’re looking for. It doesn’t mean that you’re only going to be able to sell the mid-century homes. It’s just a style. Well, that’s attractive to them. So truly the options are endless. And this one has the subset of people who want a real estate agent that understands their space civic needs. And that’s where you come in. Really, truly in that my experience, one of the biggest mistakes, almost every real estate agent makes is not niching. But the second biggest mistake is not believing that niching. And Not choosing to niche, bring in more clients, not less. So once you start niching, and once you learn how to communicate to your niche, which is for another podcast, but stick around because there are going to be plenty of them. Once you experience that dramatic shift in your business from choosing a niche, you will consistently have more clients than, you know, what to do with and in your business will continue to grow and grow year after year after year, I want from selling. I couldn’t even sell a house a year to all of a sudden when I chose to niche, I went then over a year period, I sold $30 million of real estate. And then that was a decade ago. Every year, it climbs and climbs and climbs. And last year we closed $80 million worth of real estate. And we have not changed our niche this whole time. It has been first time home buyers in the Washington DC area. There is no way that I would have the success that I have in my real estate business today, if it wasn’t for niching. So please stick around and stay connected. There are so much more that we’re going to be covering and upcoming episodes. So for example, I have one that’s coming up in my, how they did it. Series where I’ll be interviewing one of the agents I coach and how she chose her niche and went from not being able to sell a house in eight months to now making over $300,000 per year consistently just through her niche. And I’ll be digging deeper on key strategies that you can work on to build your real estate business. So please stay tuned. Subscribe to this podcast. You can also sign up for my free weekly trainings on agent Grad School dot com and then follow me over on Instagram at agent Grad School dot com and also over on Facebook every week, I post free trainings on there and I hope they help you in your own business. I look forward to talking to you soon. I hope you niche and niche and niche. I’d love to hear about your struggles. If you have any questions, please reach out to me. I can help you with your niche, but I can’t wait to hear about all the success that you have once you’ve chosen your niche. So I’ll see you next time on Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent Yes. Thanks for listening to this episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent with Jennifer. Myers be sure to head over to agent Grad School dot com or to leave a comment about what you’ve learned today and what you’d like to implement into your own business. Once you’re there be sure to sign up for Jennifer is free weekly training opportunities, exclusive content, insiders tips, and personal notes. You won’t get anywhere else. Let Jennifer help you make your real estate business dreams a reality.