17. My niche discovery journey and what I learned

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It dawned on me that my journey as an agent had countless pivots driven by passion, frustration, and yes, pure serendipity. Today, I’m diving deep into why finding a niche isn't just a business strategy—it's about finding what makes your heart race in this field.

Navigating from student government red tape to the throes of real estate, I’ve discovered what works and what doesn’t through real, sometimes painful, experiences. Have you ever felt overwhelmed juggling too many tasks and wondered if there's a simpler way out? Trust me, I've been there—and then some.

In this episode, we uncover why honing in on a niche can be your lifebuoy in the swirling sea of general transactions. From thriving with student rentals to first-time buyers and luxury markets, what lessons have truly stuck with me? Grab your coffee, and let’s explore how you can turn your unique experiences into powerful connections that resonate with your ideal clients.

Join us in our agent Facebook group for a daily discussion—because sharing our journeys makes us stronger together. And don’t forget to check out the 7-Day Funnel Challenge if you’re hungry for more innovative ideas.

Business Systems for Realtors Facebook group: https://facebook.com/groups/bizsystems.
7-Day Funnel Challenge: https://orbit.realestate/cnfin7days
Explore how you can team up with us at eXp: https://alexarosario.com/exp.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 0 (00:00):
I was thinking about just recently all of the niches
that I've sort of jumped throughin the last 12 years of my
career, and it's interesting how, when I think about it for
myself, every single niche thatI've taken on has been something
that really resonated with me,and also the ones that I kind of
went after because it wassounded like it was going to be

(00:20):
fun were the ones that I kind ofwent after because it sounded
like it was going to be fun,were the ones that I struggled
with the most, and so I hopethat, in sharing my own story,
that this becomes a little morepractical and a little bit more
helpful for you in helping youchoose a niche and really
identifying the one that isgoing to be the best fit for you
.
So when I started in realestate, I have to go all the way

(00:43):
back to the beginning for you.
So when I started in realestate, I have to go all the way
back to the beginning.
I was still in college and Iwas planning to go to law school
and I wanted to negotiatecontracts for mergers and
acquisitions and venture capital, and so I was in the business
school at the time and takingall the classes and all of that.
And I was super, super involvedin student government.
And so in my journey throughstudent government I really

(01:05):
learned how much I hatedbureaucracy and I hated the red
tape and all that came withdealing with institutions.
At the time I was the directorof program board on campus and
so we had like a half a milliondollar budget for the year and I
was managing people and havingto deal with administration and
getting all the signatures andgetting everyone to buy in was
like this is not what I signedup for.

(01:25):
I wanted to just negotiatecontracts.
And so I called my mom one dayand 20 year old me was like I
don't think I want to go to lawschool anymore.
I don't think I want to do thisanymore.
I want to like negotiatecontracts.
I want to work with people, butI don't want to have to deal
with institutions.
And she's like well, you canstill negotiate contracts, just
work directly with people.
And I'm like how?

(01:46):
She's like you can still go tolaw school and in the meantime,
like you can start developingsome of your skills by getting
into real estate.
And I was like, ew, I don'twant to be a realtor.
All the old ladies do thatright.
And at this point I thinkduring this conversation I was
still, I was maybe 19 and I wascoming into 20, I think, if I
remember correctly.
So a couple of months later Icalled my mom and I'm like hey,

(02:08):
mom, guess what?
I'm going to get my real estatelicense.
She's like great idea, honey.
So I got my license.
The broker that I signed up withvery small brokerage I'm going
to do another episode one day onwhat I call Goldilocks and the
four brokerages.
That's always been a fun littlejourney of going through
brokerages as well, but todaywe're talking about the niches.

(02:28):
And so I started doing openhouses for him, and it was
almost every single weekend thatsomebody would walk in and
they'd be like are you even oldenough to have a real estate
license?
And I was like, okay, well, weobviously need a new approach to
finding business, because thisis not going to work Right.
And so I started creatingcontent.

(02:50):
This is when Facebook groups hadjust kind of started and this
was when, like Facebook was justsort of blowing up, and so I
started pretty much justcreating like long form content.
I talked about my experience oncampus.
I talked about all the thingsthat I knew about the campus.
I talked about all thedevelopments that were going up
around campus and then Ibasically teased an IDX site for

(03:13):
student rentals and so I didlike a five day email launch
sequence.
I had no idea what I was doing,but it just felt like this was
kind of the way that I hadpromoted events for program
board and I'd had an email listof a bunch of students that we
had been collecting their emailswhen they came to events and
just to keep them up to date,and so when I left that was my

(03:35):
list.
So I used that as kind of mylaunchpad for promoting Boka
students and so I ended up withI think like 150 leads in like
the first three days, and so Iwas so overwhelmed it was, it
was crazy Like I did so manystudent rentals I don't even
remember how many at this pointand it was interesting because a
lot of the agents who didrentals in the area started to

(03:58):
know me because I was workingwith so many student renters and
I would come with their parentsco-signing.
I would come with their packagealready complete, and so A lot
of landlords were like Itypically don't rent to students
, but because this package is sowell put together, we'll accept
it.
And so I was the one who wasable to place a lot of student
renters and then I startedmatching students who needed

(04:18):
roommates, and so it turned intothis whole thing Right.
And so one day I woke up and Iwas like sick, like just beyond
sick.
I was so stressed I wasn'tdoing well in my classes and I'm
like I need to not do studentrentals anymore, wasn't doing
well in my classes and I'm likeI need to not do student rentals
anymore.
And at the time I didn't havethe like bandwidth to be like,
hey, I need to hire help.
Because I honestly just wasn'tthinking that like, to me,

(04:39):
hiring help meant like you hadto have this big, huge budget
and had to do all these things,and I just didn't have the
bandwidth to do that.
So I was like I literally don'twant to do rentals anymore and
I basically burned Boca studentsto the ground.
And to this day I still regretthat, because that could have
been something that had growndrastically to serve that
community and maybe ended upbecoming a brand that could have

(05:01):
been sold and all those funthings.
But that's neither here northere.
So then, when I decided that Ididn't want to do rentals
anymore, I decided that at thispoint I was probably 21, 22
maybe, and I decided that Iwanted to go after first-time
buyers, because I knew a lot ofmy friends were graduating
college and I knew that they hadsiblings and friends that were

(05:24):
going to be buying property.
And so I started a meetup groupand got a lot of the students
who were on my email list tojoin my meetup group and within
like six months we grew it tolike a thousand members on the
meetup group and so we startedhosting get togethers and really
built a great community.
And a lot of my firsttransactions came out of that

(05:46):
meetup group because I was justconstantly building
relationships.
I was always sitting down,meeting new people.
It was, I mean, it was great.
So and I did that for like fiveyears and it was called SFYP,
south Florida YoungProfessionals, and then we
turned it into MEB, which wasMillennial Empire Builders,
because we started blogging andour content was growing and
reaching like all differentcountries and everything, so we

(06:07):
ended up changing the name.
It continued to evolve and growand then my price point started
increasing and so I startedtaking on some luxury
transactions and I was like, oh,this is fun, I want to do more
luxury.
And so I really pushed into theluxury space.
I got the luxury designation, Igot involved in the sports and
entertainment division of mybrokerage at the time and that

(06:28):
became the next sort of missionthat I took on the sports and
entertainment side.
My former partner he played forthe NFL and had a lot of
connections in that space, andso that was kind of like my next
frontier that I wanted to focuson.
But honestly, that niche I wentafter because of the financial
opportunity, not because it wassomething I was like emotionally

(06:50):
invested in, emotionallyconnected to, and so I really
was spinning my wheels aroundthat.
And so I think the lesson thatI learned in that was if your
niche is not something that youcan passionately talk about,
it's really hard to come up withcontent, ideas, it's really
hard to resonate with theaudience, it's really hard to
build relationships with theavatar if it's something that

(07:11):
you're not genuinely interestedin.
So then my dad passed away andwe went through the probate
process and that was one of thehardest things I've ever done in
my life.
When you're grieving the lossof somebody that you love and in
his case it was completelyunexpected and you're fighting
over assets with his wife andhis other children and all of

(07:31):
that and that process took usalmost two years to go through.
During that time was takingclients basically from the
closing table to the estateplanning table and I'm like, let
me tell you why you need to dothis.
And I walked them through mystory of my whole experience
with my dad and they were likeOK, so we started building
relationships with estateplanning attorneys and our

(07:53):
clients started referring usinherited properties and so we
started to build this kind ofexperience around inherited
property, where we got to knowthe problems that they were
going through very, veryintimately, the main one being
cleaning out the property is themost overwhelming part of the
process.
In the same way that in Bocastudents, I was able to get

(08:14):
really connected to theirproblem, which was that nobody
wanted to rent to studentrenters, and so we built the
experience around getting theirpackage together so I knew that
their offer was going to getaccepted.
With young professionals, Iknew where their pain points
were because it was new to them,and so we built all the
education around the experiencefor them so they felt

(08:35):
comfortable with it.
In probate it became gettingthe property cleaned out,
getting them the education to bethe personal representative or
be the trustee of the estate.
So what I've learned throughthis journey of building my
business around niches is thereason I'm so crazy passionate
about it is it makes it so mucheasier to connect with your
audience and come up withendless amounts of content

(08:58):
because you genuinely have adeep understanding of the issues
that they're going through.
And so, like when you reallyconnect with somebody who falls
within your avatar, they'veconsumed a bunch of your content
, they've watched all yourvideos and now they're like, oh
my God, like this is exactlywhat I've been looking for.
I didn't even know thequestions that I needed to be
asking.
I didn't even know how to putmy own problem into the words

(09:22):
that you're putting them intoand you're giving a name, you're
giving a voice to all thisanxiety that I'm feeling.
Right, that is the mostpowerful place to be able to
influence somebody, and so youcan't do that as just a general
agent, and I get it.
There's a lot of agents who arelike oh, I just meet people and
sell houses.
That's great.
Definitely continue doing that.

(09:43):
But if you really want to buildmeaningful relationships and you
want to be able to getreferrals that people are like
you are the only person I wantto talk to, niches are the way
to do it, and it doesn't meanthat you alienate the other
clients that you're working with.
It just means that you start tobuild layers to your business
where people go, oh yeah, likeshe does regular transactions,
but she specializes and she hasa special process around a

(10:07):
specific type of niche.
And so, with that in mind, Ihope that the lesson for today
is not just in saying, like,here's all the niches that I've
been through, but for you tostart thinking about the types
of clients that you've reallyloved working with, the ones
that you have such an intimateunderstanding of the challenges
that they're going through andwhat unique solutions that

(10:28):
you're able to bring them, sothat they can actually
accomplish the goal, and you cantell those stories in a way
that they're like wow, I reallyneed to be connected with you.
And so that's the episode fortoday.
As always, join our dailydiscussion in our agent Facebook
group.
I'm really excited to have youthere and I will see you in the
next episode.