KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Finding A Niche w. Felicia Saracino

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Enterprising Agent. I am very excited to have a special guest on this week's episode. I want to introduce to everyone Felicia Saracino who's going to be talking a little bit about how she got into real estate and more importantly, a unique niche that she has developed for herself. So if you are figuring out how to brand yourself or how you can set yourself apart, this is definitely an episode you're going to want to listen to. Felicia, thanks so much for joining us today on the Enterprising Agent. Talk to me about how your first year has been and what you found to be the biggest challenge in your first year in real estate. So this has been a very interesting. I have, you know, I was working full time and I was, I worked in senior living. I've been a senior living executive for years for over 10 years. I did it in Connecticut and I do it down here. So I work with seniors who need to, from some half a placement within.

you know, senior living, assisted living, independent living and whatnot. And so this year I was trying to learn and trying to get up to speed, but the market was moving so quick because there was a buying frenzy that happened. Everyone had that buying frenzy that happened. So I was finding myself working full time and then also trying to do real estate with friends or family members who are coming down and helping them and nights and the weekends and whatnot. That's a lot. Yeah. It's a lot. I do have a family. So it started to become just a lot of different, you know, you're pulled in a lot of different directions and I was working until eight or nine o'clock at night.

And, you know, I have a great reputation in the senior living industry. And I was always trying to figure out what my niche was. And I couldn't figure out what that was. I said, oh, I'm helping people, you know, move down from New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, you know, where my core, you know, friends and family are. are from. Right. And I just couldn't figure out, you know, how is I going to make this work? This is something that I really want to do. I love it. It's a passion of mine. I enjoy it. But how am I going to, how are they going to do this? So I've had a lot of doors that have opened for me. And I, you know, it's funny.

God has a funny way of opening doors. And I wasn't walking through them. And so I finally decided one day, I said, you know, God's trying to tell me something. I have to start walking through these doors. And I was approached by a colleague of mine, someone who I also consider my friend to come and help them. They need it. They have a growing business. And they helped seniors just like I had in the past because that is my background. You know, I'm a core trained administrator for the state of Florida. I'm also a certified dementia practitioner.

Okay. And she said, why are you still working in a building? I know you want to be able to say. You know, why are you doing this? You're driving yourself crazy. So what she does is she helps people regionally find senior living. So she acts like a broker of sorts. Instead of working for one place, she works for 91 buildings. So she helps families find exactly where they need to be at for what their level of care is. And it depends on price and location and what the care needs are. now and what they're in the future. So she said, I'd love to have you come and work for me. And then

when it's time for them to list their home, I could use you and give you referrals for that. And so I really sat down and, of course, you know, I think about it. And then I said, you know what, I've done so much education for senior living. I have helped so many family members and so many presentations. This is where I need to be. And this is where my next steps are. So I took the leap of faith about a month ago. And it is amazing how many doors have opened for me. And so right now, I am doing everything that I've always done before with helping families and coaching them and making sure that the loved one or the senior themselves is getting

the care that they need. But now I'm helping them on the other side because a lot of families don't live down here in the Naples area. They live up north or California, all. over the country and they go, what am I going to do with this house? Right. And now I say, well, listen, I can come in. I'll help you to clutter it, stage it and we'll list it and get it on the market so that it's one less burden you have to deal with. Some families still want to use the house so they have somewhere to come visit. Right. A lot of families down here have multiple homes. So it is a predominantly

senior area, southwest Florida, as we know. There are thousands of agents just within the Naples area And so this has really helped me to figure out how I'm going to help my clients and fulfill that need that I've always helped people in a crisis period. So I'm still doing that for them. And I'm helping a lot of families right now who just don't know which way to turn. It's overwhelming. If your loved one falls and ends up in the hospital and they tell you you have three days to find the right place for them to move into, where do you start? Yeah. And that's fantastic that you've been able to find the way to marry a little bit of your previous experience and your expertise and translate into something very directly related to real estate. And I think it's really impressive that you're only a year in. Most of our listeners are brand new agents. Most of the agents that I coach are brand new agents less than two years. I want to ask you, there's so much confidence in your voice and there's so much control. You know, my dad needed to go into assisted living and we were selling. his house and I wasn't an agent, I'd be like, oh, she's going to take good care of them.

And a lot of brand new agents get really wrapped up in, you know, the red tape or the nitty gritty or the, I don't know everything about everything related to real estate. They kind of stop themselves in their tracks. And it sounds like you were able to kind of get over that hump that a lot of new agents face. So talk to me a little bit about how you continue to kind of educate yourself about real estate while realizing that this door was opening and still maintain that, that, that confidence and a little bit of that fearlessness. Yeah. So thank you so much. I appreciate that.

It's something that I do work on every day. I have a mentor. And my mentor helps me every week. We have a call. We have a team call. And she helps me a lot with making sure that, you know, when you're with a client and as we all have, we've all had professional careers before. And as a new agent, you have to find that grounding for you. You have to find what, I don't know everything and I'm still learning every day. But at the end of the day, the things that I do know, I have to be confident in front of my clients or they're not going to use me, just as much as I'm confident when I talk about senior living. But I've been doing it for 10 years.

You know, I've been an executive director. I've had hundreds of people work for me. So you have to take that knowledge that you know, harnesses, it, learn it, memorize it, know it. And you have to move forward. I also go to lunch and learns, you know, for real estate on a weekly basis and coffee and collabs every other week. I am not as confident there as I am here in a room full of other agents. And my mentor has brought that up to me. And she says, I notice a difference in you. And I said, because I am not the smartest person in the room anymore. But sometimes that's a good thing. Yeah. That's okay. I have to learn.

And so I am very good at being a chameleon in that sense. I know when to be forward and to be that forethought person to think, but then I know when I need to sit back and know my place. So as I gain that experience and knowledge and then more deals I have that are under my belt, so to say, I'm going to build that confidence within real estate. take for instance i did get a referral from another ex p client and they need some help with a friend of theirs whose mom is going to be selling their condo in this area and you know she asked me a little bit about my background and i told her and she said i think you'll be perfect and so i talked to the family and when i was talking to the daughter and just trying to understand kind of where they're going at everything for senior living kept pop so i was able to

to, you know, because I don't know, I'm not the best person at CMAs and, you know, I'm learning and I always show my mentor. I was able to kind of pivot that into the area where I am an expert at and gain her confidence. She sent me a message later on thanking me for taking the time to speak with her and look forward to working with me. But she also sent the agent that referred, gave me the referral a really nice note that was forwarded to me. Oh, lovely. That helps me a lot. you know, to make sure that I am on the right path and I am helping people. And real estate is no different than networking. If you can network, you can talk real estate to anyone.

And as we all know as new agents, you take the course, you take the test course. Yes. And it teaches you laws. How to not get sued. Yep. And other than that, you're done and you go, now what do I do? Right. And I was with a different brokerage at first who wasn't really helping me.

I didn't have a mentor. And then I switched over to EXP in April. And I have a mentor now. And I am so thankful for the opportunity to do that. But it is overwhelming because there's so many things coming at you. And it's like, oh, do this training. And here's great cardone. And I'm like, what am I supposed to do?

Yeah. Sometimes too many opportunities can, you know, create. distractions. I just recorded an episode. I tried to do on this podcast a like a weekly or biweekly little motivational moment, just a real short, you know, eight to 12 minute. And it's so funny, all the things that you are, or a lot of what you're saying are things that I brought up about, you're never going to know everything and that's okay. It's okay to not be the smartest person in the room. We all have some sort of experience we can bring to the table yours with a specific demographic. You know, mine comes from a lot of customer service background. It comes from,

you know, my personal experience. I love telling first time homebuyers a story that when I decided to buy a house, I was rocking a 5-10 credit score and I had to like buckle down. And so finding those people that can relate to you, your expertise and your story, I think is what really helps bring those niches to light. So, you know, especially my first year, I was the first time home by our whisper. I was the credit whisper. I was the one that didn't tell anybody no. And sometimes just coming at it with that level of service and kindness and going, I understand where you're coming from and we're going to get through this together no matter what the situation is. And I think especially in the realm that you primarily work in much more so because it is so and can be so

emotional because you're dealing with, you know, the idea of an aging parent and what that means just in terms of quantity of life and quality of life. You're dealing with the memories in this house. This may be a house they've been in for 50 years that they brought kids and grandkids and had you know, Christmas parties and maybe lost a spouse and, you know, there's a lot that goes into it beyond just the transactional nature. And I think it's lovely to think about, you know, that kind of universal idea of, you know, houses are more than just, you know, the, the bricks and the frame and the roof and the foundation. And if we treat our clients in that same way, that's where success and those referrals and feeling good about yourself at the end of the day is

really going to come from. And I think you've definitely tapped into that, especially being a brand new agent. No, thank you. And we help people all the time, you know, when you work in senior living or if you work in customer service, you know, we're here to help people. And people just want to be heard. And sometimes they don't need a solution. You just need to have consensus. And one thing that I noticed, you know, I've been selling for years and I sold something that was undesirable. So nobody wakes up in the morning and says, I'm moving to memory care today. I'm moving to senior living. Nobody does. No one goes and looks because they just want to explore what their options are. Right. They're prompted because of a medical.

need or they've had a fall or they had a scare or their neighbor had a scare. And now they want to make sure that they're prepared. So I was always in a really tough industry. It's a very competitive industry. You know, I had 36 competitors within a 15 mile radius of me. And I had to justify why I was thousands of dollars higher than someone else. You know, I think down the road and and make sure that they can get the same thing in their mind for a cheaper price. It's no different than explaining why your commission is X and your other person that they talk to is a point or two less than yours. You have to understand that you're still selling a product and why you're good at selling

that product and you need to get them to understand that you're the best option for them and in the end, you're going to service them the best. It all comes down to customer service. Absolutely. Because someone could say, you know, I'm just throwing it out there, the average is 6% for commission. Well, I know a lot of places in time that are doing four and five percent commission. And they go, well, why? Why are you so much more?

And then I explain to them and I show you them the value, which is explaining your product to them, no different than I've done in senior living. And then I'm not here to convince you. I'm here to educate you and give you the facts. and that's just how I've sold my whole life. And either you understand that and you go, yeah, that sounds like a great idea or no, it's not for me. And that's okay if it's not for you because that's another sign from God that, okay, maybe not the right client for you right now. So it doesn't always work out the way you want it to.

And there are a lot of road bumps that have come up against, you know, me along the way. Assuming that we get everything with a little bow on this one deal that we're trying to get closed out, of course, the most difficult one. this is about to be my hundredth transaction in just under three years. And, you know, even me, there are times where I have questions and I got to go to someone who has a little bit more experience or maybe he's a bit more specialized in that sort of thing. Like when I wrote my first farm and ranch contract, I'm a city girl. I don't, you know, I don't play in dirt. I don't like nature, you know. And so going to someone who is like, hey, I've never done farm and ranch. I know how to write a contract. I understand the concepts. But there are things here that I don't understand mineral rights,

things like that. Can you make sure? that I'm relaying to the listing agent what my client is intending for me to relay or even last spring being in this crazy market and learning how to write an offer when I never had to before. And I'm the 25th offer that went through. So, well, I hope I did that right, you know. And if you don't have a mentor to review everything for you and to make sure that you did put in everything that you need and you told your story the way you need to for your buyers, you're not going to excel.

So I really made that great decision to come over to EXB and get that mentor because now I have that. And I must text her about 15 times. Like my agents do with me. That's okay. And being on the other side, you know, it's great to hear someone who is, I'm going to make an attempt. And I know that I have someone or maybe even several someone's behind me that is there to make sure that I am not going to fail or that I'm not. not going to feel like I'm left on my own. And even me who's, you know, talking to our broker, you know, because I'm, you know, I am now a mentor and will be on the mentor program, but even

going to our brokers and knowing that we have that support system of, hey, I've got a dumb question or, hey, I think I messed up. Can you tell me if I messed up and what my options are to fix it? Yeah. And being okay with admitting what you don't know, because the people that are there to help you and have volunteered to help you want you to succeed. I tell my agents all the time, ask questions. Again, no such thing is a dumb question. I wouldn't have invested so much time. I wouldn't sit you down, you know, once every 30 days for an hour goal setting session and putting together an action plan if I didn't want you to succeed. So it's okay to not know everything. Make that attempt and I'll help fill in the gaps for you. And I think that's such an important thing that

It doesn't matter where you are in your career, having someone or several someone's or resources that you know you can come to to keep you motivated, accountable. Again, knowing someone who is smarter in the room than you are is what makes people successful because you don't get complacent. You don't go, well, I know everything. I have nothing else to learn. That's where people get stuck. One of the other points that I did this year, too, is you've been in marketing and doing

marketing plans and campaigns for years. you know, of course for in a different industry. And so what I did was I took as many classes as I could with my schedule. And then I set up social media accounts, really Facebook and Instagram. And I started to give education and information. And one of the things that I've done this past year pretty successfully, but still, I'm not the best person out there, is push myself to do videos, do live videos, to do when I go to a new construction, do a video walkthrough and put that up on my YouTube page,

I am getting more consistent at it, but it does make a difference. Right now I have almost 700 followers on Instagram, which I just started about a year ago. So it's pretty good. But I was not getting the referrals that I thought I was from them until I started doing videos. And so I started explaining my niche on my video and sharing. it to my personal page because I have personal pages on both of them. Right.

And then my phone started to ring. So I wasn't for about almost nine months. I was posting things. I was posting every day sometimes two, three times a day. And I would get people to like it or to comment. But I wasn't getting to the next step. And my mentor told me, you are not showing enough about your life. You can't make it all about real estate.

you have to do more live videos. And so now that I've started to do that, I'm now seeing that come through. Because people want to hire a person. They don't care about, you know, the logo on your sign. They don't care about where you hang your license. They don't hire a brokerage. They hire you. And even if it's from a referral, it's because someone told them, oh, she took such good care of us. Or, you know, I love telling the story that I had one buyer that we were working with for the long. longest time and she sent me three of her friends and coworkers that we closed before we ever were able to get her approved for a mortgage and why talk to Stephanie you know she's working with me she hasn't given up on me and that's what I would hear over and over and it's really about letting people know

who you are you know what your vibe is you know if you're super business minded you're going to get those business minded folks if you are super fun and personality and you know you're for me it's let me you around my great city of San Antonio and all the things that I love to do and highlighting local businesses. And so I get the small business owners or the San Antonio natives. I have, I know one agent who also has a like a pet sitting dog walking business. So she gets all of like the folks that donate to the main society. She gets all of the pet owners. They just gleam on to her. And I think you're right that letting people know who you are and what you're about and a little bit about just kind of where your values are at and not even in a, you know, a big picture sort of way.

just what do you enjoy? Because you're kind of married to these people for 30, 45, 60 days while you're getting them through this transaction. So you want to make sure that during the good times, that the two of you just enjoy each other's company and conversation. And through the bad times, you can kind of see eye to eye. And having that personality come through or, you know, what your, what your hobbies are, who you are as a person beyond just being this real estate robot is so, so important. And I think a lot of agents miss that, especially, you know, going back to the, I have to know everything before I take that leap. I don't, you know, I've never done every type of transaction in my whole real estate career. And so now I'm too afraid to do anything. No, get out there,

let people know who you are, what you're about, and people will just become attracted to you and the anticipation of the level of service that you're going to provide. Yeah, absolutely. And And that's important. And it's outside of my comfort zone. Mm-hmm. Because I'm the editing queen. So I always make sure it's all edited perfect. Yeah.

If I'm doing, and this has just been my whole career, you know, if I'm doing a picture, do I need to Photoshop it? What is the case? Right. I'm also been doing graphic design. And so for me to post a Instagram video live with a filter on it, if I don't have any makeup on, that's a huge leap for me. And I've done it.

But it's not, it just shows more about you, who you are. Right. It's not this perfect, pretty picture of this person or this perfect edited video of this person who is just reading a script or, you know, you've memorized what you wanted to say. So I do, I try and do things off the cuff. I do a lot of it in my car because that's when I think the most. Same. So people always see me with a seatbelt on.

But I'm starting to do more and more of that. and get back into that groove of trying to do, you know, a couple of times a week. So it's due. So where do you want to take your business in the next 12 months? So within the next 12 months, you know, I want to still be able to help the senior population. That's generally what is down in the Naples area right now. I do want to try and attract new agents to come work with us on our team. That's a goal of mine to make sure that, you know,

you're getting the most out of the brokerage that you have. With switching within a brokerage as quickly as I did, it's made such a big difference to me. So I've already attracted a couple of local folks here already to make the move. And they're so grateful that they already have. So I want to be able to do that. Yes. And really just grow my name as more of a staple within the community,

but then also as an education source and as an expert within my field. Wonderful. Well, if people want to reach out to you to talk about real estate opportunities, whether they're an agent or they're looking to find a solution for a family member or just general questions about real estate in the Naples area, where can people find you? Sure. So you can always go to my website, which is Felicia's Luxury Listings.com. If you want to follow me on social media, my social media name's a little different because it's Naples Paradise Living. And I do showcase a lot of what Naples and Southwest Florida has to offer with some local business spotlights.

Wonderful. And we'll put all of your contact information, your website, and your socials down in the show notes. So if you want to reach out to Felicia, just click on the show notes and you'll be able to find her. Felicia, thank you so much for joining us today on the Enterprising Agent. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate this.

And I'm glad we were able to connect. Same. Thank you. Thank you for joining us on this week's episode of the Enterprising Agent. Go check out our brand new website. still under construction, but you can visit the enterprisingagent.com. That's where you can sign up for some coaching sessions, as well as some free resources that we're going to be rolling out over the next few weeks to help you build your real estate business.

For The Enterprising Agent, I'm Stephanie Stone Robb. Now go out and tackle your day.