KGCI: Real Estate on Air - The Blueprint from Single Mom to Real Estate Icon

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

Morning Primer is your weekday boost from Mindset & Motivation Monday—quick, focused, and made for agents by KGCI Real Estate On Air. Give yourself a daily mindset reset for the daily direction you need to show up sharp and ready to win.Start your morning ahead of the market and ahead of your competition every day with KGCI Real Estate On Air. Summary:This episode is an inspirational and tactical deep dive with a top-producing agent who began her career as a single mother with limited time and resources. She shares the powerful story of her journey and, more importantly, the specific, non-negotiable systems she created out of necessity to build her empire. Listeners will learn her "Daily 3" checklist for focused prospecting, her low-cost strategy for dominating open houses, and how she turned extreme empathy into a client service model that generates massive referrals. Ready for more? Subscribe now and tap into our Always Free Real Estate On Air Mobile App for iPhone and Android, where you’ll find our complete archive and 24/7 stream of proven real estate business-building strategies and tactics. 

Morning Primer, your daily boost for the mindset and motivation Monday. Quick, focused, and made for agents by KGCI, Real Estate on Air. Welcome to Real Estate Real World, where we talk to the movers, shakers, and leaders that are getting it done right now in the real estate industry and beyond. I'm your host, Marguerite Chris Villo, and I started this podcast simply dedicated to calling people about what's really happening in this crazy roller coaster ride of Real Estate. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes. and stay up to date on the newest stuff by adding yourself to the list at www.w.com. Now let's dive into the world of real estate. Hello, hello everybody.

I am Marguerite Chris Fellow and thank you so much for joining me with Real Estate Real World, where we get to talk to all the cool people. And this one is no different. This is actually a good personal friend of mine that I have known for a while and I'm just so inspired by her and what she has done that I've been also trying for quite a while to get her to get on my podcast. So I'm really happy that she's here. So let me tell you a little bit about her and we're going to bring her up. So Kelly Zimmerman is a 10-year real estate veteran based in Wheatland, California, and she brings a heart-driven approach to her work, helping 30 to 40 clients annually

reach their real estate goals. She is a five-time icon award winner here at EXV and a recipient of the Congressional Woman of the Year Award in 2022. Kelly is deeply rooted in her community, and she began her career as a single mom, overcoming personal challenges and juggling multiple jobs before finding her calling in real estate, a journey that profoundly shaped her values and a commitment to her clients. Today, Kelly's mission extends beyond transactions. She strives to support local businesses and community causes, sharing her network and resources wherever possible. Known for her dedication to sellers, Kelly personally, stages many of her client's homes, using her creative talents to make properties shine.

Recently, she and her husband realized a long-time dream of owning a vacation rental called the Beach Barn along California's Lost Coast, a project made possible through her icon stock. Kelly is passionate about helping clients through life's transitions, ensuring their real estate journey is as smooth and rewarding as possible. Her standout focus on community care and resilience defines her unique approach to real estate. Welcome. Welcome, my beautiful friend, Kelly. Hello. Hello. Hi, how are you? I'm good. I'm doing good. I'm so happy to have you here. You've done so much during this time that I've known you and I'm constantly impressed and proud of you. I'm always like, oh my gosh, that's my friend. She's such a rock star. So super proud of you. So Kelly, tell us a little bit about your

background and what got you here? How did you end up in real estate? Number one, I was broke. I love that. No backup plan. Yeah. So, yeah, I was struggling for a while as a single mom and one of my neighbors was selling real estate and I asked Charles, do you think I could do what you do? And she encouraged me and that's how I ended up here. That's awesome. So tell us a little bit about what you did before. I know you have a pretty inspiring story that I'm sure a lot of single moms would love to hear about. So tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. So I married my high school sweetheart and we were actually married, I think we were together 17 years when I left.

And it was, it was a pretty toxic relationship. He was an alcoholic. I didn't realize how like the lack of confidence I had. My whole world revolved around his addiction and making sure that my kids were safe. And so I never really developed or learned about who I was as a person. And one day, I call it like a light switch moment. I just decided I was done. And the thought of staying was scarier than the thought of getting out and trying to figure out how the heck I was going to do.

how the heck I was going to do life and raise kids. But one day I just woke up and I was done and one foot in front of another, I got out of a really, really hard relationship, which left me as a single mother. And I actually moved to a new community. My best, my childhood best friend, the house right next door to her was for rent. And so she said, just come here. And so we moved to Wheatland. and I did all kinds of jobs.

I was a Meals on Wheels coordinator. I flipped furniture. I would buy and sell vintage and set up at like vintage flea markets to sell things. I got really good at using social media. So I would have a goal. Like maybe I needed groceries or maybe I had a PG&E bill that I had to pay or rent was coming up. And I would figure out that I could buy a dresser. on marketplace or a thrift store for 20 bucks.

I could paint the thing in about two and a half hours and I would style it in my garage and I'd post pictures on Facebook and I would usually sell it by the end of the day. Usually within a couple of hours, I could sell that, make a couple hundred bucks, pay my bills. And so I did that for years. It wasn't enough. It was like a constant struggle of I got to do this. I got to make time for this.

I felt like I always looked messy. I was always covered in paint. My hair was always passed up in a ponytail. And I wanted more. And I actually started working for the school during this time. I did yard duty, which my son absolutely cringed at. It ended up being good. You're embarrassed for kids.

That's the best thing you can do. And they needed me to fill in for a janitor that was on vacation. And I absolutely hated that job, cleaning the bathrooms and the kindergarten area of elementary school is definitely not something I wanted to continue doing. I made the leap and I tried out real estate. I got licensed and went to just a little boutique brokerage here in town and I realized that nobody was using social media to sell real estate. I was in a small community and a lot of people already knew me because I was selling the furniture. So I started throwing things on Facebook. And I remember walking into a house that came on the

market. And I think I had closed one deal at this point. And I walked into the house and I just knew I was going to sell it. I don't, I didn't have a buyer at the moment. I just walked in and I convinced myself I was going to sell the house. And I went to social media and I posted pictures. And sure enough, I had a friend come into my messages saying, hey, we've been thinking. about buying a house. Do you think you could help us see if we could buy that one? And we did it. Like in 30 days, they had keys to their house. And I was like, man, I could keep doing this. And I immediately stopped the janitor job. I did try to keep up with furniture for a while. But as more deals came in and my business grew, I did have to let that go. But I'm a very creative

person. So that was hard to, it was really hard for me to give that up. But it worked out because I started selling lots of real estate. Well, and I love the story of how you ended up at EXP because it's kind of comical because will you tell the story of you and Mitzie? So Mitzie Dela Cruz, she got her, I think she might have been like a year ahead of me. She got her license a little bit before me. She was also using social media and she had started posting in the community group, which was my community group. I started it to sell my furniture and had over 4,000 community members in there. And she started coming into my group trying to sell real estate and say that she was a realtor. And so I banned her from the page.

And she immediately sent me a message. Why did you do that? And we went back and forth. And then Mitzi says she revenge friended me. She sent me a friend request after that. And I accepted it. And we started engaging with each other on social media. And one day she said, let's meet for lunch.

Let's meet in person. And at that time, Lily was, I think she was like just a couple months old and tiny. Anyway, we were in the restaurant for about three hours. So by the end of that, we were best friends. Really, we realized that we had so much in common. We kind of came from the bottom and started having some success. And, you know, we just hit it off. And she continued to ask me if I wanted to join EXP. And at my current brokerage, it was very small and very outdated. I don't think we even had websites. So we never had weekly. or monthly meetings. I actually, the only way I could remember what files needed to be in a file

in my file at the end of a transaction was from a TC on another transaction. He said, you need all of this by closing. And I stuck it on my wall and I would use that to figure out how to close the deal. So when I started learning about all of the perks of being with EXP Realty, I realized, hey, I could do this. My only fear was that I really wanted to be an office environment because that's how I had started my real estate career. And I worked from home for years, painting furniture. I wanted to get out of the house.

I did not want to be there. And so we actually figured out how to open a branch office. So I rented a little spot in our strip mall. At that time, I just rented a portion. of a building that they said was unrentable. It had been a tanning bed, like a salon. And so it had all these little teeny tiny rooms where the tanning beds were. And they couldn't rent it.

So they actually let me rent 500 square feet of it. And eventually I was able to take on the whole thing. And I sublease with contractors and tax people to help pay the bill. But that is the environment that I work best in. and I really enjoy having that little office there. So it's been great. That's so cool. So you've now been with EXP, what I think, six years, seven years?

Yeah, 2018. That's so cool. And I love your little office and I love all the community stuff you do. Like you guys just got done having your Halloween event or all festival. Your one? Safe trick or treat. Yeah, safe trick or treat. And you guys take over the whole parking lot, right?

Yeah. It's not just because I remember coming. a couple years ago and it wasn't quite as big now it's gone crazy. Huge. It's huge. Yeah, we, it was, I modeled it. I basically duplicated an event that somebody else was doing in another community. I remembered taking my kids and letting them trick or treat through local businesses and all the business owners would come out in costumes and it just seemed like really special. And so I went to all the businesses and I said, hey, I want to do this event. it's free for the community.

All you have to do is dress up and bring the candy. And all the businesses were in. It came together so easily that first year and then it continued to grow. Our biggest one was COVID because I really, I did not want to skip a year. And I was able to go to my county to Health and Human Services. And I beg for them to let us have this event during COVID. And they gave me like a list of rules of all these things like we had to have. have masks. So we had to have sanitizing stations and we had to have these special signs and we could,

we had to have spoons to put candy in people's bags. And that was the biggest one ever because I think people were so cooped up in their homes. They wanted to get out and we hadn't been able to have any community events. But and it was a Saturday, which I think made it even more successful that year. And I think we had over 500 people that year. And it. It's still, I think that was, you know, a special moment because we were all tired of being in our houses, but we still had probably around 350 to 400 people this past month. And that was our seventh event. Wow, that was awesome. So tell me a little bit about your beach barn. And because that was a long time goal. Well, first of all, let's talk about Mike, because your husband is the best. He's awesome. How did you guys meet?

So the best friends that I rented the house next door to, Mike was her son's basketball coach. And she said, whenever you're ready, I know exactly who I need to hook you up with. She's like, I know you guys are supposed to be together. And so it took a little bit of time. And eventually we went on a, on it like a, it wasn't really a blind date because we actually met each other the week before secretly. we were friends on Facebook and then we met each other and then we went on our on our first official date and pretty much the rest was history.

That's awesome. Yes. And it's so funny because we and so I had three kids. I have two sons and a daughter. And Mike was a single father with three boys. He raised all three of his boys by himself. So when we eventually blended this family together, we're like the Brady bunch except we have five boys and one girl. And that was had a lot of challenges also. But they're all adults now.

And we get to enjoy grandbabies. But I love Mike because he's had a similar past as me. So I feel like we connect on that. And then he's also a very creative person. So when I was flipping furniture and trying to figure out how I pay rent, he actually would come and build farm tables. And I'd sell the farm tables. And that was how I paid rent for a while. That was when we were living in separate homes, but he's always supported me, supported my career, whatever I'm doing. He always wants to help me be successful and great guy. And what I love is all of your crazy ideas that you come up with that are design features and stuff like that. I would love to, maybe we can get a few pictures that we can add into this

podcast of some of the walls that you've done and some of the creative stuff. And because I'm like, How the heck did she come up with that idea? And even some of the colors, I'm like, are you sure you're going to put that on the wall? And then it looks amazing. Everything I've seen that you do is just incredible. And how did the beach barn idea come about? Because you guys went over the top in redoing that place. It's incredible. If you guys are not, if you guys have time, we'll post in our show notes. The website is, it's the beach barn, right? It's rentbeachbarn.com. Rentbeachbarn.com. And you can go check it out. It's stunning. I still haven't made it up there only because I have an electric car. So I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to rent a car and go over there or but I'm excited to go check it out. So tell us about how that all came about. Okay. So well, during COVID, once again, we'll go back to that. I actually had the, I sold like almost 80 houses in 20. That was my whole team. I was a part of 80 transactions. I think it was 62 personal transactions. I had acquired a lot of stock. We get company stock with EXP, and every transaction

we close, we give 5% of our repurchase stocks, so 5% of our commission. And then every time you make your icon award, then you get a portion of your cap back. You have the opportunity to earn all of it back, which is about $16,000 a year. So during that, time of COVID and all of the busyness in real estate, I ended up with quite a bit of stocks. And so we had purchased a few rental properties and we were able to flip a property, which was a lot of fun. I just have so much fun designing and choosing the tiles. And then my husband puts it all together. And so we had, I think we purchased a total of three at that point three investments and we still had a little bit of money in that stock account and we started

dreaming about a vacation home. And so we were going on Zillow and we would look for any house that had a view of water. And so we would go all the way around California looking at what was available in a lower price range. And we came across this little place it called Shelter Cove. And I'd never been there. and I love going to the coast. I thought I had been to all northern coast beaches, but I was wrong. I'd never been to Shelter Cove. So we actually drove out there and looked at a couple fixer uppers,

but the minute I saw the beach barn, and I called it the beach barn, the very first day I got there because it had a gambrel roof, so it looked like a barn. And it had an ocean view. And I just, I knew that it was something special. It had been abandoned for,

about five or six years and it needed everything. It needed the ocean weather had taken its toll on the house. So there was a lot of salt damage and dry rot. So it needed a new deck, new roof, new siding, new window. It needed everything. And we actually tried to negotiate the deal and we couldn't put it together. And so I tried to forget about it for a couple months. And then I went back and I saw it was still active on the market. And I was like, I am getting this house. Like I just read my mind. I was going to get that house. And we did.

We wrote an offer. And we wanted to hurry up and get it renovated so we could get it on Airbnb and all the vacation rental sites. So my husband actually went and lived there for six months with his son. And they redid the entire house. And I had the time of my life decorating it and designing it. and designing it. And I still, we get to go there every month and visit it and continue to make it even better.

The landscaping and we added the hot tub. And yeah, we bought a beach house. And I never thought in a million years, I would have never saw that was going to happen. Way back when. And what I love is you've done so many creative things in that house with small spaces, right? Like it's like the where you did the dark wall when you come in that you can hang stuff on. on your like coat rack wall. I'm just amazed at what you've done with that.

And I can't wait to go see it myself. You guys are definitely going to want to check out the pictures online and show and see what she has done with that with her design talent. It's pretty, it's really impressive. Yes. We can't wait to do another one. We're looking all the time because we want to do another. I was just going to say what's next. And it sounds like you're already going to do that.

You've already got plans. So where have you been looking? So we, now that we have the coastal house. Now we feel like we want something in the mountains or near a lake. We've been all over in northern California. We're trying to find something two to three hours away. You've got to make sure that you're going to make money on it. So you got to make sure it pencils out.

And there's just not a whole lot of options at the moment. But we keep our eye on it. That's super exciting. So what's next for you in the real estate world? What are your goals for the upcoming year, 2025? We actually have a pretty awesome group of agents in my organization and we've all this, we're calling at the agent club. We're all individual agents, but we are combining our resources together to help support all of us grow our businesses. And one of the cool things that we just did is we finally put a really fancy sign out front of our office.

So we never had a sign. It just was something that never happened. I don't even really know why. We just started selling real estate, never put a sign up. But the girls wanted to have a sign. And we want to be proud of our office and our brokerage. So we all had set some money aside throughout the year. And we just got our sign up.

And we have done, we've added on some new community events. And it's more collaborative to where it's not all on. me to figure this out. Like it's everybody working together. We're really excited about continuing with community events and trying to create something special so that agents, if they want to come into our office and be a part of our brokerage, where they really feel like they're being supported as an individual agent. They're not working their tail off to make somebody else rich. We want each person to be successful. And so we really try to support each other. more of that is what I want to do. That's super exciting. Are you looking at expanding outside of your

area right there in Wheatland? We have talked about a potential satellite office or we have an upcoming class that we're going to be able to host in Yuba City. So yeah, we're wanting to get in other areas and really grow this to a bigger scale than what it is in little tiny Wheatland right now. But Wheatland's such a great community. So you've done an amazing job standing out in that area. And I think one of the things that I love the most about EXP is the collaboration over competition, right, is being able to all work together towards a common goal. And that's what I really love. I love being able to go in workplace and do a couple searches. If I have an idea on, hey, how do you, how would, how could you plan this event? And you could usually search a few

keywords and find some type of post where somebody has shared. And then you can reach out to them. And it might be an agent in New York or Massachusetts or wherever. And you have the ability to reach out and say, hey, I noticed that you have done this in your community. Would you be willing to share with me so that I can do this here? And like the response is, it makes me feel so good to be a part of EXP Realty because everybody truly.

does care about helping others and the collaboration is incredible because why you reinvent the wheel every single time if you can just duplicate what somebody else is doing in your own neck of the woods. That's exactly true. And you're getting ready to make Icon for the sixth time, right? Yes, I'm so excited. Two transactions. Kelly, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy community schedule to join us today on Real Estate, Real World. I'm always inspired by you. and you always make me happy when I get around you. So that's a positive, right? I feel the same way about you, Marguerite. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you again for joining us, Kelly. I'm really excited to see what you

do in the future. And I've got to make a reservation to the beach barn. I'm excited to do that. So thank you again. Yeah. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us on Real Estate Real World. where, of course, we get to talk to all the cool people, including beach barn owners and six-time icons of Kelly. And thank you again for joining us. We did just come out with a really cool new special report that you can get access to called the 10 fatal mistakes real estate agents make that's holding them back. If you want access to that, head on over to my website at margueritecrestvillo.com, and you can just enter your name and email. We won't spam me, I promise.

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