KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Dominating a Niche: How Graphic Design and Hyperlocal Marketing Drive $50M Production

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

Summary:Top agent Kati Spaniak details her rapid ascent from a $3 million first year to a $50 million annual average by leveraging a background in graphic design and "unique" marketing psychology. She emphasizes the power of "tight" target marketing, specifically dominating a single school district or subdivision to become the omnipresent local expert. Agents will learn how to manage businesses across multiple states, the necessity of extreme self-accountability in the face of thousands of rejections, and a rigorous vetting process for high-quality seller referrals.

Welcome back to the Realty Funnels podcast. And with me today is Katie Spaniak, who is a top real estate agent. And she is like me and Lisa in two different market areas. Her Chicago land business is where she grew her business. And she's also licensed in Florida. And she's a real estate agent focusing in on that St. Augustine market as well. Katie, welcome to the podcast. Hi. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here and to meet you. It's great to have you with us. So thank you. So let's give everyone a little opportunity to get to know you a little bit better. Tell us about yourself, how long you've been in the business and a little bit more about who you are. Yeah. So I got into the industry in 2012. I had just gone through a divorce and I needed to get a job, figured out that I was going to have a career. Now, I did sell for a couple of years prior way back in early 2000. And it's like, you know what? I'm going to go back into real estate. And so I was basically a stay-at-home mom, and I had to figure out how to sell real estate. And so I went from not making any money to actually having a sustainable life and making enough money to support my family. My first year, I sold $3 million in real estate, and then second year was $12 million, then the third year was $24 million. And usually I'd average somewhere between like $20 and $50 million, depending on the team members. that I had on my team.

That's wonderful. And I understand that one of your daughters is actually with you on your team. Is that right? Yeah, my daughter, Lisa, she's 24. And she's been with me about a year and a half. So she helps me work out of the North Shore Chicago area, and I live in San Augustine. So I have a team there, move to a new market, and it's difficult. I mean, it's very difficult.

There are definitely ways to do it and ways you don't do it. But that is something you can do. So I've been successfully keeping my business running in Chicago for a little over two years now as well. And that's similar to how Lisa and I have our team of real estate agents servicing the Tampa Bay Market. And yet we started spending our summers in the Seattle area back in 2020. And so I got my broker license in Washington State in 2020. And then just started growing my business in both states. And yes, it's possible.

and there are ways to do it right and mistakes that you can hopefully avoid. For sure. I know we can share a lot about that. So you really crushed it out of the gate. So $3 million in your first year is just a nice, solid start. But then $12 million in your second year, $24 million. Tell us what were you doing right to get it to Springboard so quickly? So I have a background.

I had a design firm, graphic design and marketing firm, and I say that marketing is kind of like my, one of the best things that I do really make a very strong, that's one of my best unique abilities is marketing. And so I really did, when I started out, focused a lot on open houses, and I would focus my business, any type of advertising I did, I picked a target market. Because I had sold previously, I understood that you could go in lots of different directions. And I mean physical directions. You could go 10 miles north. You could go 20 miles south.

And I had three little kids at home at the time. And I was like, I can't do that. I only want to sell real estate in my town. That was it. That was my goal. And so I ran numbers. And I realized that in my town, there were 1,500 transactions, buy and sell, not just sales, buy and sell. in the past year. And then I was like, oh, okay, so how much does the top agent have? And she only

had like 30 sales in the town and she was the number one agent. And I was like, well, I can do that. Like, that means nothing to me. So that was my goal. And so everywhere that I spent my money on advertising or my time was focused specifically on that town. In addition, it focused in the downtown area where I kind of lived. So I picked a very, very tight target market. And I just became that agent that everybody knew that I was selling in the school district. And people are like, you're everywhere. And I'm like, well, I'm actually only where you are. So that's how I really focused.

I went very, very tight on my target market. That's a real key that I see in so many of the agents that use realty funnels or the agents that I've coached is that if you were to look on, say, the Zillow map where it shows all the different transactions, the top agents are like tight. They're only in one core area. I remember a real estate agent that I really admired when I got into the business. And I started my career in Cleveland, Ohio. This guy was a legend in Philadelphia.

And he was right in the center city of Philadelphia. And all of his business was one building. He just took the elevator to all of his listings and his showings. And he was crushing it. And these things. top agents, that's what they have found, is that they pick a niche, they dial in super tight, and then they just, they're omnipresent, they're everywhere in that area, they really make it seem like they're totally dominating. So that was a very smart move on your, how did you figure

that out so quickly? I told you the marketing is like my unique ability. Like I'm just, it's, it comes very, very naturally to me. So, and I had this business that I did before, but the marketing, And understanding people and their psychology is something that I've just had innately. In addition, I'm a very, very good salesperson. Like, I've taken a lot of sales classes, but I can sell anything. And so those two things combined together, just I feel was so strong for getting into real estate that I just, I killed it coming out of the gate. Yeah.

That's wonderful. And from that, you're able to leverage, you know, that growth very quickly. because then you can reinvest in yourself, more training, more growth. Which I've spent a lot of money. I've spent probably, I mean, I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on coaching and training and education. And I would not go back and change that. I mean, yeah, it's vital to becoming a great agent, I believe. You know, you think about other industries.

And I only really know real estate very, very well, but I have friends. and other industries, you know, other industries are constantly reinvesting in their plant or their infrastructure or training or whatever it is. And real estate agents need to have that same mindset where we're just going to go in and reinvest in our core product, which is ourselves, and then just go out there and apply our knowledge, our skill, our experience so that we can really have a positive impact in our local communities. For sure. Yeah. And so that's what I did. And I became passionate about it. And I always believe that selling real estate changed my life.

The reason to change my life was not only financially, but because, you know, as a real estate agent, I've sold over 100, sorry, 700 homes. And if you think about like you, I'm sure you know as well, you've sold a lot of homes, is if you think about how many times you've been rejected or how many deals didn't go through, we're talking thousands, like thousands of rejections. And so when you get rejected, selling real estate, you don't recognize the impact it's going to make on you just personally, like mentally. And you have to really have the ability to pick yourself back up. You have to be self-accountable. And so selling real estate made me incredibly self-accountable, but it made me pick myself back up. Because you can't get rejected thousands of times and not really take a look at who you are. inside and be like, you know what, I did not handle that correctly. You know, I was not appropriate,

or I gave them the wrong information, or I said the wrong thing, or yeah, I was really just completely rude. Like, you have to do a lot of self-analysis when you're getting rejected that many times. At least I did. And so I believe that selling real estate has made me a better person in my life, a better mother, a better spouse. So, you know, I think that it's life-changing, selling real estate. I agree. And what you're saying is so correct. And it sort of teases the notion of real estate is a really special industry because there's no ceiling on us.

Nobody's stopping Katie and saying, Katie, you've sold too many homes this year and we're going to put the brakes on now. You know, leave some for the other people. nobody's saying to you, you can't expand to Florida. Right. No one's stopping you. And so really, what's so great about real estate is that as much as we want to invest in our own growth, we can. As much as we are willing to grow, we will. Right.

And there's just no limit to, you know, how many people you can add to your team and how many people they can help. and how many of those clients are going to talk to you at some point just to get a second opinion or a little bit of extra guidance along with their agent who's on your team. I mean, it can grow exponentially and no one is stopping you from achieving whatever your goal might be, whether it be time freedom, financial freedom, mobility, which is something that was important to me and Lisa, and obviously it's important to you as well. I love it. Yeah, yeah, me too.

I love selling real estate. Changed my life. I remember when the real estate market was really challenging in like sort of 2010, 2011. Like the credit market collapse had happened in September of 2008. Everybody was sort of dealing with it. It wasn't until about 2010 that it became really like, this is tough. Home prices are really down. This is really a challenge.

and I was running real estate offices at that time in Tampa Bay, and I got offers all the time to run mortgage companies, to run insurance companies, to do financial advising. And I just like, I don't love that stuff. I love walking into a home and helping people find the place that they're going to go home to at the end of their day. Absolutely. I love it too. It's a really special industry. So tell me a little bit more about how it is that you transitioned from North Shore of Chicago to Florida, St. Augustine in particular.

Were you vacationing down there? What was that all about? Yeah. So my daughter is at every riddle in Daytona Beach and came down, moved her in. And we had talked about buying a vacation home. So we ended up when she came down here buying a condo. in St. Augustine and kept it for about two years. And then we were like, you know, we just love it down here. And also, we were working a lot more remotely. So I really felt like maybe there's a way to do it. You know, maybe there's a way to transition it. And so that's how we did it. And we finally just bit the bullet. And honestly, everything had to go the way it went. Otherwise, we would never have left Chicago because selling real estate, you have to really be in your location. We had a couple things happen. We ended up putting our house on the market and we had like a two and a half percent rate. And when we put the house on the market, the rates were like three. We sold it and we did a two-month rent back. And so we were sold it. We came down. We started looking at homes. So the week we came down, the interest rate skyrocketed in that July market. Yep. So we got caught in

that. And then the problem was, and this is for everybody who's thinking about moving to another another area, and I'll tell you this, is that we got denied from our mortgage. And the reason why is because they would not use any of my Illinois income for Florida. And so, you know, I did not, my mortgage broker was not aware of that and did not tell me that. And so we had sold. We literally had no home because we're going to buy and now we're told we can't get a mortgage. And I don't think I've ever had anybody actually not, like, be able to get a mortgage. And I'm thinking this is absolutely ridiculous. And it was very stressful. But if he had told us, you know, there's a chance you might not get that mortgage when you move down there, we wouldn't have gone. Right.

We couldn't have risked that. So, you know, we got here a lot of crazy ways, but we're here and love it. Absolutely love it. You know, it's so interesting. When we were talking about reinvesting in yourself, I was actually thinking about the the travel, the airplane industry. You know, they're constantly reinvesting in those jets. They're constantly rebuilding those jets. But I didn't say that, but it's interesting. Your daughter is in that world.

So you got licensed in Florida. And so are you servicing a lot of home seller and home buyer clients in Florida in addition to Chicago? So I kind of took the same path that I wanted to take in Chicago. which was only focusing on my specific area where I live. There's about 2,600 homes in this area. You know, I don't have to sell that many to have a lifestyle that I want. But in the meantime, I was also working on my YouTube channel.

So that kind of took off. And so the homes I need to sell in my area, I literally do not want to leave my subdivision. Like that is my goal. And so far, it's working. That's great. And it's one of those areas where you're going to be able to really help people understand how to move to that area because many people are relocating

from up north and where I am in the Seattle market. I'm looking out my window and where Mount Reneer would be visible. It's too cloudy today to see Mount Reneer. Yeah. But it's also a, it's a master planned community just southeast of Seattle, east of Tacoma. Currently has about three, 3,800 homes built all in the last 12 years. And there will be a total of over 10,000 homes built in this master plan community. And my whole goal here is I don't, I could walk. I could walk to all my appointments, you know. Exactly.

You have to envision what you want your business to look like, you know, and just dream. You know, my dream was that when I first started, I wasn't going to have to leave my town. and I pretty much didn't. And I became one of the top agents there in my town. And then my dream here is to say, I know this community really, really well. I'm learning it more. And I can accompany all my showings because I can get my golf cart and just drive down the road. You know, so it's just, you know, if I could say something to people listening is plan the career and the life that you want it to be and then work hard to get there.

Yeah, and begin with the end in mind. It's one of my favorite seven habits of highly effective people from Stephen Covey is begin with the end in mind. And I think, and I'd love your thoughts on this as well, but I think in our industry, far too many agents just see how it goes or they try to figure out what they can do or they'll take a listing where they can get it. And, oh, you have a car wash to sell? Sure, I can help you with that. Oh, you have a warehouse to sell? Yeah, I'll help you with that. And a single family home down the street? Yeah, I can help you with that. Right. You're not achieving mastery that way. Right. Right. Absolutely. And I think it's important that you really dig in and you do your education. I always say that real estate agents need to do two things in order to be successful. One is the activities and one is the education. The activities are, making your calls, you know, doing your marketing, things like that. And the education is learning how to be a great agent. And that, you know, that I feel is definitely missing from the industry is how to be a good

agent, not just how to sell, you know, not how to close a deal, not how to get more leads, but how to actually sit in inspection, how to price a home. And the problem is that as agents, it's all understanding it on the fly. and you're a little training very little training the barrier to entry is very low and it's it makes people look bad it makes us look bad as agents and so then I say you know if you're a seller you really need to be looking at an experienced agent and then you know these agents will say to me well how am I supposed to get any experience if nobody's going to hire me and I say well you go and get on a team or you get a mentor you co-list like you take 10,000, you take 10,000,

percent of a deal that that great agent is willing to give you to run, to run and do errands. Like that is what you have to do. You have to pound the pavement. And you take those opportunities because you'll be involved in all of those listings or all in those buys. You don't know what you're doing. That's the problem is new agents don't know what they're doing. They just don't. I was there.

I knew. I thought I knew what I was doing. And now I realize every deal, I learned something new. every single transaction. I'm still learning something new. Every time. And I'm open for that. I'm totally fine with that.

You know, my ego is low to the ground. I am open and receptive to growth and to learning. And I also look at the people around me and say to myself, everyone around me can educate me in some way. I just need to be open for it. I want to sort of look for it. I remember when I was probably eight or nine years old. I came home from school and we were having some work done at the house. And my mom was having a

cup of coffee with one of our roofers and who I knew from church as well. He's a great guy. And he said, so what do you learn at school today? And I was just a little kid. I said, oh, nothing. It's like, well, then you wasted your whole day. And I was sort of like, okay, well, hold on. I'm going to put the cereal back and the milk back from my after-school snack. I want to hear what Mr. Omer has to say about it. But I sort of thought, you know, it was just another day of school. But he's like, no, every day is a day for you to learn and to grow. Absolutely. And that's this industry. No question. Yeah. And there's no limit, too. You know, we talked about this already, but the reality of it is if you wanted to pivot and you just were in love with office buildings or tenant rep or landlord

representation, great, go for it. But dive in and say I'm fully committing to it. I'm going to get all the education I can. And what we were talking about just a minute ago, the word that popped into my head was proximity. If you're a newer agent, you want to be in proximity to those people who are out there like Katie, crushing it in two market areas, figure out a way that you can get closer to her. Right. And then just be a sponge. Right. I guess, you know, that's what I say. And also, I, when I was doing really, really well in Chicago and I was super busy, the market was crazy. I had this new agent reach out to me and he wanted to sit two listings on Saturday and two listings on Sunday. And he would schedule with me three weeks out and we'd have them on the calendar.

He'd do four open houses a weekend. In his first year, he sold $12 million of real estate. It's almost like you could predict it. It's easy. Yeah, if he was going to do that much work, he was going to happen upon some activity. Absolutely, $12 million in his first year. I have a quick little way of training real estate agents who would come into my office. I spent years as a managing broker and a corporate executive for some of these larger brands.

And agents would come into my office like, oh, Kev, I'm having a hard time. And I would say, okay, here's what we're going to have you do. We're going to get together next week and go over this, but you have to commit to it. I get their buy-in and all this stuff. But I'd say, okay, first thing you're going to do is go out and meet six new people every day. Just, you know, find people. You're out walking your dog. You're at the coffee shop.

You're at the grocery store. You're at the hardware store. Whatever it is you're doing. Find and meet six new people. Get to know them enough that you have their contact information. Right. Reach out to 12 people that you already know and just check in with them. Grow that relationship.

Be a benefit to them. Find out how they're doing. See if there's anything you can do to help. Then, and this was, you know, I've learned this from when I started my career in 1999, but I would say write 18 handwritten notes. Now, nowadays I'd be fine with you sending an email or text, but it has to be personalized. And who do you send 18 notes to?

Six people you just met, 12 people you just connected with. And then go out and preview six homes every day. And that's 30 homes a week. And so 6, 12, 18, 6. And I'd say, can you commit to doing that? And they're like, Kev, I need to. I'm going to do it. I'm like, okay, great.

Let's connect next week, same time. I want to hear how it went. one of two things would happen. They would either call and say, hey, I need to reschedule. I was out previewing homes. I met somebody that she rolled down her window. I was out in front of a home. I was about to walk into preview.

And she said, hey, are you an agent? And I said, yes, I am. And she says, you know how much this home is? And I told her the price. And she said, I'd love to see it. And I said, come on. And now I'm working with her, Kev, so I won't be able to meet with you this afternoon. Great.

Or they'd come into the office and I'd say, so, how did the service? How did the 612, 18, 6 go? And they're like, oh, I knew you're going to ask me. I said, oh, it sounds like this is going to be a short meeting. Are you going to commit to doing the 612, 186 next week? And that, when you're just going to bump into opportunities. And, you know, selling real estate is really hard. And the reason it's so hard is you have to be self-accountable.

And so, you know, not, you know, and everybody's personality is, different. And so therefore, there are different lead generation activities that those people should be doing. I operate on the disc profile. But, you know, so there are some people who don't enjoy that, right? But you have to force yourself into doing it. It doesn't mean you need to do it forever, but you have to flex into these different areas. And, you know, that's why selling real estate is so hard is because people do not maintain self-accountability. And they don't understand the effort that goes into being rejected thousands of times. I mean, you just added it up.

How many times would somebody be rejected if they sent out those postcards and nobody responds to them? No big deal. No big deal. Keep going. Yeah. And to have that thick skin,

I would think the only reason I'm able to have thick skin about that is because I know that I'm playing a long game. Long game, for sure. If you're playing a long game, then what's great about a long game is you can write your own rules. Right. You can do it however you want. You can do it in two market areas.

You can do it in multiple market areas. You get to write the rules. Now, if you're playing a short game, you have to play by everybody else's rules. Right. So we were talking earlier about relocation. And I deal with a lot of that. People are moving to this part of Washington State, typically from California or Arizona or Las Vegas. And then in our Florida market, they're either following I-75 down or they're following I-95 down into Florida.

And so we're dealing with a lot of opportunities where people would buy a property in my local market area. But I would want to put them in touch with a great agent back in New York, back in, you know, Sheboygan. I would want to make certain that they had a great agent. Are you dealing with a lot of reload? Yeah. So on my YouTube channel, we do a lot of referrals. So in the past two years, I've done about 2,000 seller referrals. And not all agents who you refer to are equal. And in the beginning, not that I thought they were equal, but I didn't really understand the specific things that you need in order to make sure that you're going to close on that deal. Because ultimately, what you're doing is putting your referral in somebody else's hands. And so in the beginning, I tried it a couple different ways. And then I was trying to refer only to one and be like, okay, I'm only referring to you. You've got this. This is yours. Well, then ultimately, they'd forget about it. So since we've done that so much, we've now sort of come up with this

process on how we find great agents. And so as somebody who's referring, and I'll give examples, if you are referring somebody to another agent, I would honestly pick three, two to three agents that you refer to and let them fight it out because you do not know that agent on the other side. You don't know how busy they are. You don't know what they have going on. So I would always say choose two to three agents and let them go in and do their work. So as somebody who's looking for that, what you need to be looking at is how many transactions that have they done? because, you know, people who post on like Facebook or social media saying, I'm looking for an agent and such and such. Like that is the wrong way to get an agent.

Absolutely. Like you have to go in and see who are the community experts in those areas. And I'm of the mindset that I want somebody who sold 150 homes in the last five years. So I want somebody who really knows them. And then what I'll do is I'll go into like Zillow and I'll look and I'll see, did they sell a home super close to? to this home. You know, just like you're talking about that location that you're at in Washington is that, you know, you're an expert there. Like, I want somebody who's an expert who's not going to lose the listing. So referring, you know, and then on the other hand, what I want to say to you,

agents is that don't underestimate your photos. Like if we want to hire, if we want to refer an agent and we're looking at photos and they've got two bad houses, we're done. They will not get a call. They will not because the photos are the most important thing. Fully agree. And they're so easy to make nowadays. Nowadays it's so easy to have them look great. For sure. So photos are the main thing.

Don't underestimate it. And I think it's really smart too because we don't know when we hand off an opportunity to an agent in some other market area. We don't know what, I mean, they're not going to necessarily come forth and say, oh, you know, my daughter's having her wedding in three weeks and they want the lead. They may not necessarily tell us that. But we really owe it to our client who is on the receiving end of this referral that we've done a little bit of our sniffing around. Try to help them.

At Lisa and I always say, you know, we treat our clients like family. And if my sister or my brother asked me, hey, who would you? you recommend in this area, I wouldn't just sort of post it in social media. Right. I mean, that's my brother, you know. Right. But it's the same mentality I have for all of my clients. Right.

Exactly. So you want to make sure that the agent you're giving is going to be a good fit. And keep in mind is that you don't know that agent's personality. You don't know their disc profile. You don't know anything about them. So it may not be a match. Like that person may be really abrasive and fun and alcohol. going and talking all the time, and your client may not want that. And so that's the other reason

why you need to give a couple of choices, for sure. Well, and you also had your bet that they didn't like your one referral, and they found another referral that they were just totally fine with. Happens all the time. All the time. All the time. You'll find somebody else. And you miss out on that opportunity. Yeah, for sure. For me is, you know, I think that most home sellers, home buyers, when they're looking for a real estate agent, they've got a sort of a to-do list. You know, we need to pick up milk at the grocery store. We need to stop and drop off that package. We need to find a real estate agent that we want to work with. Well, once they find one agent that they're comfortable enough, check, they're done looking. Yeah, they're done.

They're not really open to another one. It's like, oh, well, now you. have to tell this other person my whole story again. Right, right. You want to reform both at the same time. Yeah. And then let the agents kind of, like I said, fight it out. Because we've had, I've referred a lot of people and the agents literally never call them. Never.

Stunning, stunning. Never call them, never follow up. And then you call them up and they're like, oh, man, I meant to. And it's like, that's unacceptable. So that's taking money out of my pocket. Absolutely. Because I chose the wrong person who can't close. Well, and then also you're risking your reputation.

Oh, totally. And it looks terrible when we're like, how did it go with the agents? Oh, only two of them called me. Wow. They go on our DNR list. Do not refer a list. No, I agree. Katie, I could talk with you all day.

Absolutely. I want to give everyone an opportunity to connect with you directly. So what's your best email address? Yeah, it's Katie, KTI at Tara Luxholm. Holmes, T-E-R-R-A-L-U-X-H-O-M-E-S dot com. You know, just reach out to me if you're interested in talking or you have a question or whatever. I'm happy to help.

And if somebody wanted to give you a call? Yeah, I'd say text is probably a little better than calling. 847-3-1-8-3431. Just shoot me a text and I'll try and get back to you, for sure. And we want to let people know to check out your really cool YouTube channel as well. Yeah. Yeah, so you're going to go to watch Katie. There's no E on the end of Katie, so it's watchkata.com.

That'll take you to my YouTube channel. Or you can just actually, I'll tell you, if you go to YouTube and you type in, sell your home, you're going to see I hit probably that very first spot. Just by simply going to YouTube. Go to YouTube and just type and sell your home. If you go to Google, you type sell your home and you go to videos, my videos are usually up top too. That's a real achievement.

Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Well, this has been an absolute pleasure. Katie Spaniak, just an absolute joy to talk with you. And I hope that people will reach out to you and just take advantage of your knowledge and all the different ways in which I just know you can help them. I know that there are many different ways where an agent could become in closer proximity with you.

So if you gel with Katie, definitely just reach out to her and connect. Katie, thank you so much for being on the Realty Funnels podcast. Yeah, I'm so glad we got to meet. Thanks for having me. Thank you.