The Work From Anywhere Agent
Welcome to The Work From Anywhere Agent with Alexa Rosario, where we’re redefining what it means to succeed in real estate.
This podcast is for agents who dream of having the freedom to work from anywhere, scale back their hours without sacrificing results, and ultimately build a practice they can sell.
Join me as I document my journey, sharing practical insights and strategies to help you systemize your business, leverage your resources, and shift your mindset from agent to business owner. I don’t have all the answers, but I’m figuring it out—and I’m bringing you along for the ride.
If you’re ready to break free from the grind and create a real estate business that works for you, this is your place to start.
The Work From Anywhere Agent
17. My niche discovery journey and what I learned
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.
I was thinking about just recently all of the niches that I've sort of jumped through in the last 12 years of my career, and it's interesting how, when I think about it for myself, every single niche that I've taken on has been something that really resonated with me, and also the ones that I kind of went after because it was sounded like it was going to be fun were the ones that I kind of went after because it sounded like it was going to be fun, were the ones that I struggled with the most, and so I hope that, in sharing my own story, that this becomes a little more practical and a little bit more helpful for you in helping you choose a niche and really identifying the one that is going to be the best fit for you. So when I started in real estate, I have to go all the way back to the beginning for you. So when I started in real estate, I have to go all the way back to the beginning. I was still in college and I was planning to go to law school and I wanted to negotiate contracts for mergers and acquisitions and venture capital, and so I was in the business school at the time and taking all the classes and all of that. And I was super, super involved in student government. And so in my journey through student government I really learned how much I hated bureaucracy and I hated the red tape and all that came with dealing with institutions.
Speaker 0:At the time I was the director of program board on campus and so we had like a half a million dollar budget for the year and I was managing people and having to deal with administration and getting all the signatures and getting everyone to buy in was like this is not what I signed up for. I wanted to just negotiate contracts. And so I called my mom one day and 20 year old me was like I don't think I want to go to law school anymore. I don't think I want to do this anymore. I want to like negotiate contracts. I want to work with people, but I don't want to have to deal with institutions. And she's like well, you can still negotiate contracts, just work directly with people. And I'm like how? She's like you can still go to law school and in the meantime, like you can start developing some of your skills by getting into real estate. And I was like, ew, I don't want to be a realtor. All the old ladies do that right. And at this point I think during this conversation I was still, I was maybe 19 and I was coming into 20, I think, if I remember correctly. So a couple of months later I called my mom and I'm like hey, mom, guess what? I'm going to get my real estate license. She's like great idea, honey. So I got my license.
Speaker 0:The broker that I signed up with very small brokerage I'm going to do another episode one day on what I call Goldilocks and the four brokerages. That's always been a fun little journey of going through brokerages as well, but today we're talking about the niches. And so I started doing open houses for him, and it was almost every single weekend that somebody would walk in and they'd be like are you even old enough to have a real estate license? And I was like, okay, well, we obviously need a new approach to finding business, because this is not going to work Right. And so I started creating content.
Speaker 0:This is when Facebook groups had just kind of started and this was when, like Facebook was just sort of blowing up, and so I started pretty much just creating like long form content. I talked about my experience on campus. I talked about all the things that I knew about the campus. I talked about all the developments that were going up around campus and then I basically teased an IDX site for student rentals and so I did like 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 had promoted events for program board and I'd had an email list of a bunch of students that we had been collecting their emails when they came to events and just to keep them up to date, and so when I left that was my list. So I used that as kind of my launchpad for promoting Boka students and so I ended up with I think like 150 leads in like the first three days, and so I was so overwhelmed it was, it was crazy Like I did so many student rentals I don't even remember how many at this point and it was interesting because a lot of the agents who did rentals in the area started to know me because I was working with so many student renters and I would come with their parents co-signing.
Speaker 0:I would come with their package already complete, and so A lot of landlords were like I typically don't rent to students, but because this package is so well put together, we'll accept it. And so I was the one who was able to place a lot of student renters and then I started matching students who needed roommates, and so it turned into this whole thing Right. And so one day I woke up and I was like sick, like just beyond sick. I was so stressed I wasn't doing well in my classes and I'm like I need to not do student rentals anymore, wasn't doing well in my classes and I'm like I need to not do student rentals anymore. And at the time I didn't have the like bandwidth to be like, hey, I need to hire help. Because I honestly just wasn't thinking that like, to me, hiring help meant like you had to 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't want to do rentals anymore and I basically burned Boca students to the ground. And to this day I still regret that, because that could have been something that had grown drastically to serve that community and maybe ended up becoming a brand that could have been sold and all those fun things. But that's neither here nor there.
Speaker 0:So then, when I decided that I didn't want to do rentals anymore, I decided that at this point I was probably 21, 22 maybe, and I decided that I wanted to go after first-time buyers, because I knew a lot of my friends were graduating college and I knew that they had siblings and friends that were going to be buying property. And so I started a meetup group and got a lot of the students who were on my email list to join my meetup group and within like six months we grew it to like a thousand members on the meetup group and so we started hosting get togethers and really built a great community. And a lot of my first transactions came out of that meetup group because I was just constantly building relationships. I was always sitting down, meeting new people. It was, I mean, it was great. So and I did that for like five years and it was called SFYP, south Florida Young Professionals, and then we turned it into MEB, which was Millennial Empire Builders, because we started blogging and our content was growing and reaching like all different countries and everything, so we ended up changing the name.
Speaker 0:It continued to evolve and grow and then my price point started increasing and so I started taking on some luxury transactions and I was like, oh, this is fun, I want to do more luxury. And so I really pushed into the luxury space. I got the luxury designation, I got involved in the sports and entertainment division of my brokerage at the time and that became the next sort of mission that I took on the sports and entertainment side. My former partner he played for the NFL and had a lot of connections in that space, and so that was kind of like my next frontier that I wanted to focus on. But honestly, that niche I went after because of the financial opportunity, not because it was something I was like emotionally invested in, emotionally connected to, and so I really was spinning my wheels around that. And so I think the lesson that I learned in that was if your niche is not something that you can passionately talk about, it's really hard to come up with content, ideas, it's really hard to resonate with the audience, it's really hard to build relationships with the avatar if it's something that you're not genuinely interested in.
Speaker 0:So then my dad passed away and we went through the probate process and that was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. When you're grieving the loss of somebody that you love and in his case it was completely unexpected and you're fighting over assets with his wife and his other children and all of that and that process took us almost two years to go through. During that time was taking clients basically from the closing table to the estate planning table and I'm like, let me tell you why you need to do this. And I walked them through my story of my whole experience with my dad and they were like OK, so we started building relationships with estate planning attorneys and our clients started referring us inherited properties and so we started to build this kind of experience around inherited property, where we got to know the problems that they were going through very, very intimately, the main one being cleaning out the property is the most overwhelming part of the process. In the same way that in Boca students, I was able to get really connected to their problem, which was that nobody wanted to rent to student renters, and so we built the experience around getting their package together so I knew that their offer was going to get accepted. With young professionals, I knew where their pain points were because it was new to them, and so we built all the education around the experience for them so they felt comfortable with it. In probate it became getting the property cleaned out, getting them the education to be the personal representative or be the trustee of the estate.
Speaker 0:So what I've learned through this journey of building my business around niches is the reason I'm so crazy passionate about it is it makes it so much easier to connect with your audience and come up with endless amounts of content because you genuinely have a deep understanding of the issues that they're going through. And so, like when you really connect with somebody who falls within your avatar, they've consumed a bunch of your content, they've watched all your videos and now they're like, oh my God, like this is exactly what I've been looking for. I didn't even know the questions that I needed to be asking. I didn't even know how to put my own problem into the words that you're putting them into and you're giving a name, you're giving a voice to all this anxiety that I'm feeling. Right, that is the most powerful place to be able to influence somebody, and so you can't do that as just a general agent, and I get it. There's a lot of agents who are like oh, I just meet people and sell houses. That's great. Definitely continue doing that.
Speaker 0:But if you really want to build meaningful relationships and you want to be able to get referrals that people are like you are the only person I want to talk to, niches are the way to do it, and it doesn't mean that you alienate the other clients that you're working with.
Speaker 0:It just means that you start to build layers to your business where people go, oh yeah, like she does regular transactions, but she specializes and she has a special process around a specific type of niche. And so, with that in mind, I hope that the lesson for today is not just in saying, like, here's all the niches that I've been through, but for you to start thinking about the types of clients that you've really loved working with, the ones that you have such an intimate understanding of the challenges that they're going through and what unique solutions that you're able to bring them, so that they can actually accomplish the goal, and you can tell those stories in a way that they're like wow, I really need to be connected with you. And so that's the episode for today. As always, join our daily discussion in our agent Facebook group. I'm really excited to have you there and I will see you in the next episode.
