KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How to Build an Authentic Brand Through Your Personal Story

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

Summary:Entrepreneur and real estate professional Lisa Song Sutton shares her powerful approach to building an authentic personal brand by embracing your unique life story, including the hardships. She explains how vulnerability and authenticity are key to connecting with today's clients and building deep levels of trust. This episode provides agents with an inspiring message and actionable tactics on content creation, personal branding, and media outreach to help them stand out in a crowded marketplace by being unapologetically themselves.

You're going to love today's podcast with Amy Slate. She has a website called The Breakup Broker, and her specialty, her niche, is helping divorce couples go through that transition of selling their homes. And that's the path that she's decided to take her real estate business. So she's got some great insights of who would make sense to do this, how to do it, how to create your circle of peers that you need to have, your team. So stay tuned and check it out. Welcome to Real Estate Riches, where Kathy Burns empowers realtors to achieve the success they've always dreamed of. Starting her career at 55, Kathy built a thriving business that offers the freedom of time and financial independence. And now she's sharing her journey to help others do the same.

Whether new to the industry or looking to level up, this channel is your hub for proven strategies, inspiring stories, and the tools you need to grow your real estate business. Join Kathy each week to explore global opportunities, successful success. systems and expert insights to take your career to the next level. Get comfortable. Pick a video and start learning. Your journey to success starts now. Hey, everybody.

It's Kathy Burns here with Real Estate Riches. And today, my guest is Amy Slate. Really excited to have her on. She's out of Boston. And her niche is divorcing couples and helping them through it. So, hey, Amy. Glad to have you. Hi, thanks so much.

Yeah, I'm excited. And I'm going to give in full confession, because this is not the first time if you follow me that I have done this, I forgot to hit record. So who knows what's going to come on on this one? Hey, you know what? This is real. And we were talking about social media, which we'll get back to, but this is real life. So tell us a little background on you, Amy. You bet. So I've been in real estate for eight years now. I am based in Boston, Massachusetts. I serve all of Greater Boston. I'm also licensed in Florida and service clients there as needed. I love JetBlue is my best friend, and we fly back in for us a lot. Oh, wow.

Before that, however, I was in education for almost 20 years. I was a middle school teacher, and I'm convinced that if you can manage a classroom of 25, 13-year-olds, you can manage a real estate transaction. Oh my gosh, I guess. That's incredible. So how did you get into this particular niche? Funny, not funny story. Last spring, I was surprised with a divorce from my soon-to-be ex-husband. And I had this, oh, shit, moment. And I kind of packed up my life in Florida and moved back to Massachusetts and was doing some soul searching and said, okay, you are the only paycheck now. You've got to build your business.

You know what you're doing. But like, let's figure out a way to really level things up. And as I was thinking through this, I'm like, okay, there's a ton of agents in Boston. How do I differentiate myself? Right. And what is that niche? The riches are in the niches. They always say, which I hate because it's pronounced niche, not niche.

you'll never take the French teacher out of me. So I just was thinking about it and having this moment of like the whole turn lemons into lemonade thing. And I was like, you know what? I got hit with this divorce, but I'm not going to let it derail me. I'm actually going to take it to power me to level up and figure out what that next, you know, Amy 2.0 looks like and acts like business like. And you know, selfishly, it's something that was kind of near and dear to me. It was something I was super passionate about because I'd been through it and I felt the emotions and I understand the stress. And there were so many moments where I'm going through the divorce stress and handling some real estate personal real estate transaction stress. And I'm like,

this is a lot for me and I do this for a living. So, you know, for other women or men or anyone separating or divorcing going through this who doesn't do real estate, I can only imagine the like exponential amounts of stress that real estate transactions on top of divorce happen. So I'd lean into it and make it my niche. Yeah. So that's how we say it. Niche. Yeah. Was I saying it wrong? Both, no, both ways are correct. And you've been saying niche, but that's saying the riches are in the niches. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's just saying in the business. Nice. Yes. Okay, good. So, all right. So were you licensed in Massachusetts when you moved up there? Yep. I've always, I'm born and raised in New England. So this is where I started my business in

Massachusetts. This is where I've always been. I did a short pandemic stint in Florida for a couple years just to we were here. We were stuck inside. It was cold. We're like, let's go to Florida. So we went to Florida. And then when the world, when my personal world imploded, I said, I got to go back home. I need to be around my people and, you know, back to focusing on my Boston business, really hardcore. Well, that's great. And you're still doing it in two different states. Yep. Wow. That's impressive, girl. All right. So tell me, we talk. We talked, earlier about having an army of support for you because just as you said in this particular niche that you're doing, you need different qualified people who understand that as well.

So you took it to a whole new level. Yeah. I mean, if you think as agents, we have all of our trusted professionals. We've got the inspector. We've got our stager or our photographer, our declutterer. We've got all these people that we refer to our clients, right? Being in the divorce niche is no different. there's just another bucket of professionals that you need to have.

You know, I've been, I've spent the last nine months really building a strong network of divorce attorneys, divorce coaches, forensic accountants. I'm trying to think who else is in my world. Divorce lending professionals, you know, a lot of professionals and kind of people that if you didn't go through a divorce or know about divorce, you wouldn't even know existed. Like a forensic accountant was not a person I ever knew existed. in this world until I needed one. Right.

And I think as a real estate agent, when your clients are looking to you for expertise, referrals, all that, having those trusted professionals just like the home inspector, but here's my forensic accountant. Yeah. That helps them, that saves them a hassle and a headache to be able to say, like, here is somebody I know and I trust and I'm passing them to you. Right. Well, and I think they don't know what they don't know that they need, too.

I think I saw on your website that you had a booklet that they could. download. Is that a different point? Like, here's what you need to think about. That one is specifically kind of around, like, if you need to sell your home, like, here's the kind of stuff you need to think about. Okay, okay. But that's a whole other thing. Like, you know, as real estate agents were like, okay, you've got to prep it for sale. You've got to do some fixups. Maybe do some curb appeal. But when you're divorcing, you're not necessarily like raring to go for the sale. So there's a whole emotional piece that I talk about like separating yourself from the emotions and taking those memories and just being able to like mentally prepare for like this isn't going to be my family

home anymore. Right. You know. I had a client this year. No, last year. And they were, it was a multimillion dollar house. They'd custom built it. They raised their kids there. And he wanted the divorce, not her, both successful in their own rights. And their house was very full of family memorabilia. I mean, walls of pictures. of the kids almost like they were adorned. And you could tell, well, she said to me right on the very first day, I don't want to sell this house. I'm like, well, do you need me here?

I didn't know initially that they were going through a divorce. And then, because they didn't share that right off the bat. That's an important piece that I think clients need to do. And so anyway, she kept sabotaging all the showings. And now our listing is running out. And I think we had six days left to go. And I said, like to meet with you guys and sit down and have a conversation. And I said, I said, you fought me on the

price. You've resisted the showings. I said, I need to know, are you selling this house or not? And she said, yes, we're selling the house. I said, then I need you. And I'm going to right to her. I said, you need to stop sabotaging the showings. I can't get anybody in to see the house. And she goes, well, I have the dogs. I said, you also have pets that are that you've been paying for as you go to work. You can make this happen. I need to know that you're going to do this because this is something that I'm investing in for you. We're a partnership. I said, I need your support if you still want to hire me. You know, I said, we've got to decide are we going to even go forward? We've got six days less than the deal. I'm going to need it extended, but I need to know you're going to play fair.

And I didn't do it like I was accusing her in a sense, but I was being firm. because I needed her to understand. I can't sell it. You want to move to another state. Well, you can't move to another state. You got to detach, like you said. Yeah. But because that's not my niche,

I wasn't as soft maybe as I could have been. I related more to him because he was more level-headed for the whole thing. Well, he wanted it, but he wasn't bad-mouthing her. They were respectful of each other. That was a joy. But she was just, she didn't want to sell that house. it was painful. But once we got it under contract and now we're packing things up and now I had someone who was the packer. I said, this was I think an 8,000 square foot home. I said, listen, this is going

to be emotional for you. Do you want me to bring in a packer who is, she's soft spoken, she's really very soothing and help you with all this packing and she was. And so she hired her and that Packer really helped move that whole transition. So I remember that for me, because that's stressful for a lot of people whether they're going through a divorce or not, but you take it to a whole new level. She invited the Packer, the owner of the company, out to her place in Virginia, all kinds of stuff. I said, great.

Glad to be friends. So it is an emotional time. I'm going to think that a little clearer myself as I go forward of other people to bring in like that. I mean, think about just our kind of average clients. It's emotional. The buying, the selling, the stress, the, you know, I didn't get the house. I got the house. All the things. It's super emotional. And these are people who, like, have no other life trauma going on. Yeah. So add in someone who is surprised by divorce, doesn't want to sell their house, has 20 years of memories in this house. It is just like a pressure cooker waiting to just

Yeah. I'm wondering, do you, would you intertwine someone who had a death in the family, whose spouse died? I'm thinking, yeah. I mean, any sort of separation, right, where you are for something that's out of your control. Because typically when we meet with the sellers, it's like, we've decided we have to downsize or we need more space for our family. Like, we've made a conscious decision that we are selling this house. And when there's any sort of separation, divorce, death, whatever, someone, like, something is being taken. out of their control. They are now losing their home or, you know, they're almost being, let's see, taken away, but they are changing their home because of something that was not in their control. And that's

really stressful and sad and scary for them. And yeah, managing that with people is tricky business. Yeah, I have a friend who lost her husband a year ago. He died unexpectedly 48 years old. They were mid-construction on the house. He was a realtor. And he negotiated all kinds of things. to get a better deal. So the builder was ticked off that he wasn't going to be there to help promote him like he'd promised. So he wasn't kind of fulfilling his end of the deal. And she didn't work. She was as traumatized as she could be trying to take care of her daughter.

And I'm just a friend coming over trying to help. How can we get this to get the CEO? And do you want to even keep it? How are you going to pay the mortgage? You know, he was also a rascal Italian guy who believed that everything should be in his name. and no will, all this stuff, so she had to go through probate. Do you work with attorneys at all that deal with that scenario? Yeah.

I mean, because even back to your story about the wife in that case, sabotaging the showings, like, there are some times where it gets really dirty. And like a judge has to basically put on paper, like, this is how you're going to comply with the sale of this home. If you can't play nice in the sandbox, we're going to put some legalese in place to make sure you do it. Yeah. You know?

It's funny as we talk. I'm thinking of all the situations that I run into like this because I had another couple. They weren't married, but they both owned, they were co-owners on the house. And that was a $5 million house. And they had bought it. They had done all the decorations to match the unique design of the house. Well, before she listed with me, she went to her attorney and told the attorney that she wanted to draft something up, that I was going to be the realtor, that I was going to be the decisive. person if there was a disagreement of what they need to do with price, price reductions, repairs,

all that stuff. And she got him to sign that and did some threatening things with him, which was, I don't care. That's not my piece, right? And so he signed it and now I had it. And he picked the price of the house and which I struggled with, but I left it at because I wanted to give him some feeling of input and even it was off. But I got that price for him. I got a full price cash offer in 11 days. But then he did not want to do repairs and he was fighting me and that's when that letter came into play.

So it was non-negotiable. He had to agree. And actually he got a great house and she got another great house and they went on their way. But they were together probably 20 years. So even though they weren't married, it doesn't, it's not always a piece of paper. No, for sure. And I think what you just said remind me of another piece is that there's so many, and I'm going to super stereotype genders right now. But like in so many cases, the woman who is like surprised with a divorce has been the homemaker, the stay at home mom, the whatever. And he has been managing the finances, the real estate, the everything. And now she's like, I don't even know. I don't know what we have. I don't know how to do this. And so much of working with divorcing couples, particularly divorcing women, is just the education piece. And talking. through like here's what it is. Here is how this is going to go. Here are the options you have.

And empowering them to be decision makers by providing them information. Right. I know I met this woman as, I don't know how I met her, but she is a financial planner who works only with divorced women. Yep. I have a couple of those in my arsenal too. Yeah. Which is really good that you've got that whole army and team. So I can't remember if we talked about this on our non-recorded one or now. But I wanted to talk about giving some advice to agents that are thinking that this might be a niche for them about personality styles of being able to balance this because this is not just one to pick up and run with. This is a difficult one. Yeah. And I think there's two pieces there. I think the first is picking any niche, it's got to be something that you are passionate about, have an interest in. You know, I know plenty of people who do probate and are super duper successful. probate does not ring my bell. I'm not getting out of bed in the morning. I'm excited to do probate, right? And so that's not my niche, but that's somebody else is. And so I think if you do

want to get into this niche, you've got to really think through like, do I have a personal connection? Do I feel strongly about supporting people going through this? Like, what is my kind of background and expertise and knowledge in this area? And also, like, do you have the like wherewithal to kind of push through the mud because there are going to be some really crappy times? I mean, all of our transactions have some bumps in the road at times. But, you know, when you've got divorcing couples, emotions are running high. Stress is everywhere. You know, being able to maintain your own composure and your neutrality and your energy and not getting, you know, you've got that narcissistic husband and he gets you all fired up and not like letting him, don't let him see you sweat,

as they say. And so, yeah, if you do want to get into this niche, like, just maintain that calm exterior. You could be fired up on the inside. But like, like, You've got to adjust as a professional. Just be calm and cool and collected. And you mentioned you do a lot of meditation. I do. Every morning, every night, and sometimes in the middle of the afternoon. I get that.

I get that. We also talked before about AI and you did it too with your LinkedIn and about just thinking outside the box. Go ahead and share that. I mean, so real estate is kind of a lonely business, right? You often are just you in your office at home by yourself. I am part of a team, but more often than not, I'm working by myself. And so I almost use AI as like a brainstorming partner. Yeah.

So I knew when I launched the breakup broker last spring that or last year, I wanted to start putting out some articles on LinkedIn about divorce and real estate and things like that. I'm like, I could sit here and brainstorm for like an hour about some topics I want to write about or I can take 37 seconds and ask chat GPT and I'm going to have 10 to 15 topic ideas that I can just then write an article about. And so I really just often use it as like a thought partner or a brainstorming. partner. I use it as a thought product. Like I did a 15 week article on Portugal because that's my love and I want to do outgoing referrals to Portugal and build a business there. So I said,

I need 15 articles about all the different aspects of wonderful things in Portugal. And so it gave me an outline. I said, okay, now, because it knows my style because I designed it to know my style. I said, okay, I want you to do a blog on it and I'm going to name you Betty the blogger, the chat thing, because that was before I could personalize them. So Betty, I said, Betty, here's your instructions. Here's the platform you're going to be putting it on. So at first it was just the blog on my website. And then I said, wait a minute, I could do an article on LinkedIn.

So then I said, all right, modify that so that it goes over for a three to five minute read over here and then do a synopsis because for every article you have to do. a post. And I said, then give me four picture ideas that I could use as a header. Then tell me where I can go get my pictures for free that I could use. And I said, oh, wait a minute. I want to do an Instagram post. I'll use that picture. But the algorithm is different. And I'm going to need hashtags for that and the post for LinkedIn. And each one may have different algorithms. And I want this all to be SEO strong. Give me the hook in the beginning on all these different components to pull them all in. And so I said, there's only 1,200 words allowed in Instagram.

So do all that. So now it doesn't. I said, now, Betty, remember this formula because I'm going to tell you each week that here's our topic. And now I want you to write the article and then do all the other components. And then I just go post. Awesome. That's rare. I mean, the time saver is amazing.

Yeah, I think so many people are afraid, much like when computers came around, right? Like they're going to replace us. They're going to replace us. AI is not going to replace us. I feel strongly about that. It is going to enhance our ability to work smarter and faster. Well, we just need to think bigger. Just like you said, we do need to think bigger and stop just minimizing what it can do for us. So that's a big deal. Well, listen, I'm curious about Portugal real quick. Oh. Do you want to move there? I might have a home there. Okay. Yeah, but I'm building businesses all around the world because our company is global. We're in 27,

countries now. Yeah, 27 countries. So I love the idea of that. Yeah. I, selfishly, I have an apartment in France. So I am, I'm all about the European real estate investment. Oh, yeah, girl. Oh, I love it. I've got some friends that live in France that I've met because I'm going to these different conventions in different areas. I'll be Portugal in June. So, well, thanks so much, Amy, for being on here. Really appreciate it. And I feel like lots nuggets were found. Awesome. Okay, great. So if you like this, you know, please subscribe. the channel and we're going to have all of Amy's information so you can reach out to her.

Remember, she's in Florida as well as in Massachusetts so she can help and she probably can do referrals all over the country, right? Sure can. And so anyway, stay tuned. Hope you loved it. And we'll see you on the next one. Thanks so much, Kathy. So now that'll end.

And then I'm going to, you can jump off and then I'm going to do the intro to it. And then I'm going to jump on to my next one. I'm goodness. I got a pee. Get the dogs out. Oh, goodness gracious. Thank you so much for understanding. Of course.

Thank you. Thank you. So thanks for joining me on this episode of Real Estate Riches. Wasn't that great? I'm sure you've got a nugget or two. I know I did. So if you liked it, please subscribe below. Share it with everybody.

Make some comments. We really find that invaluable. And if you're thinking that you would love to talk about this a little bit more, let's schedule a business strategy call. I'll have the link below. Let's see if we can't mastermind together. and super cannonpower each other. That would be great.

So until next time, signing off. Hope to see you on the next one.