KGCI: Real Estate on Air - The Wheelhouse Method: Mastering Lifestyle Consulting for Long-Term Client Loyalty

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

Summary:Kim Costa returns to provide a tactical deep dive into her "Wheelhouse Method," a framework that shifts the real estate conversation from simple bedrooms and bathrooms to deep lifestyle alignment. By evaluating eight key areas of life—including career, finance, and social needs—Costa teaches agents how to help clients decide whether to stay, renovate, or move. Listeners will learn how to use "Wheelhouse Triangles" to calculate drive times to essential locations and how to ask provocative, introspective questions that uncover a client’s true needs, ensuring long-term satisfaction and reducing buyer's remorse.

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Kim joined us earlier on the podcast, and we had so much to cover. I wanted to ask her to come back so we could dig in even deeper. Kim is a top-performing realtor with Atlanta Fine Homes, Sotheby's International Realty. And she's the creator of the Wheelhouse Method, a framework designed to help people align their home with the life they truly want to live. We're going to dig into it even more so today. Kim, welcome back to the Realty Funnels podcast. Thank you so much.

I'm so happy to be back here. Well, it's my pleasure to have you back. And for those people who didn't catch you on the very first of our podcast episodes together, why don't you just give everyone a quick overview of who you are and what you do? Sure. So Kim Costa and I live in the north side of Atlanta. I have been a realtor since 2017. And prior to that, I was in residential construction, design background, and also human resource

development background. So all of the things that help me help people maximize their potential and their homes potential. Well, it's so great. There's so much more for us to cover. So let's just jump right back in. Tell me a little bit about how you would use your wheelhouse assessment to help a first-time home buyer, for example. Oh, yes. I'm working with a two or three right now. It's so lovely,

you know, getting, you know, have gotten married, having babies and all of that. So, you know, I, in, in my area, it's a slightly more affluent area. And then the surrounding areas have a little bit more accessibility for the younger people. The town's not quite as established, but it's up and coming, and the prices are just a little bit lower. So I will have to talk about their budget and get them pre-approved. And so in my particular area, they might consider, if they don't have children yet, a townhome, or if they have one child, a townhome, and then they have a couple of extra bedrooms and it has, you know, a swimming pool and things like that that that they can meet other people or moving over to an area like Woodstock, which is near me, that has a lot of like

homes and neighborhoods. And so we talk about how long do you want to stay in your first home? What types of things do you need offices? Are you planning on any additions to the home in the near future? Do you have a dog or are you waiting to get a dog? How close are the relatives you want to be near? So that's the friends and family spoke. Do you have other friends in the area you want to be close to, especially when you start having grandchildren is, is, you know, grandma or grandpa down the road where they might be able to come and help a little bit. That's huge thing. So we kind of go, you know, do you go to church and how close do you need? You know, I call it the, there's the work triangle in the kitchen. And then I have the wheelhouse

triangle, which are what are the three things, places you go to that are the most important to you? So I'm in a Bible study, but we all go to the same gym. And so we have, you know, home, work, gym, and church. And so those things are important to all of us to be able to get to. And hopefully, you know, when those people are making that move and to buy their first home, they have to be educated a little bit to, okay, I know your work is here, but you go to the airport. We have to go through all the things.

Who needs what? And then oftentimes if they're a young married couple, it's a compromise. For me and for Lisa, when we are looking at real estate and we've bought and sold, we've renovated a bunch of homes, we've moved across the country a few times. We've had a lot of fun with our real estate purchases. Yet we always are looking to see where is the nearest Whole Foods? Where is the near Trader Joe's? Yes. And so for us, we don't mind if it's 30 or 40 minutes away.

We just want to know. That you can, I mean, you can just stand right at a house and then input how far away it is. I do that for grocery stores. I love Trader Joe's myself at the bat. I love cut flowers. Though I go there quite often. Friday morning is the best day, by the way. It's a good day to go.

So, I mean, you have to find out what people, you know, what they like to do. you know, we're kind of near a big horse farm area. And so it's our veterinarians and feed stores close by. Of course, veterinarians, they travel just about anywhere I sold a home to a veterinarian last year. And I was so shocked about where she would be when I would call her. She'd be an hour away taking care of a horse. And so, you know, you just have to really talk about what is your lifestyle. It's not about what everybody else is doing.

It's not about what Instagram says is popular, in my opinion. It's about what is important to you as an authentic individual. And what matters to you? What are those things that define who you are, how you live? Yes, Lisa and I think about that all the time. You know, when we leave the house, when we're not necessarily working with a home seller or a home buyer, it's largely to get groceries. It is.

And so we eat a really interesting plant-based organic diet. Love it. And so we know of all of our favorite food co-ops. And how are we from our favorite food co-ops, from Whole Foods, from Trader Joe's, Costco. Even Walmart has some great organic selections. And so we just simply want to know what are the drive times to those places so that we could see if that would work for us. And you know, a bonus in a lot of areas, certainly in this area, are the farmer's markets

where they're bringing in local, local organic food and you're just buying it, you know, their farm is a couple, you know, 20 minutes up the road. It's so interesting how we have all of our favorite vegan or plant-based bakeries that are near to farmers markets. And so we know what we're doing on Friday morning. We're going to have that wonderful plant-based bakery breakfast. Then we're going to walk down the street to the farmer's market and get these amazing produce items here in the Pacific Northwest that we couldn't get in Florida. Wow. And then we head home. We pack our cooler bags in the trunk of our car with ice so that we aren't in any rush. Oh, but there's a car show this weekend. So maybe we'll go to the

vegan bakery on Saturday morning, the farmers market on Saturday morning, and then the car show on Saturday morning. And it's just sort of how we live our lives. And it's seasonal. But it's, you know, this is really how people need to be thinking about where they live, you know, as sort of to use your hub and spoke notion. I mean, their home is. the hub. It is. Yeah. And they can reach out to all their favorite things. And for us in Seattle, we love to go to museums, and we love to go to various bookstores. And so we know where all these things are. And so, for example, if we want to go to IKEA, we know that that's also near a bookstore. And so that's, we never go to the bookstore on a different day than we go to IKEA. We just do them

on the same day because they're right there. It's right there. That's efficient and fun. It's like a planned adventure, which are the best kind. Absolutely. And then we also look at how far are we away from other cities. So we can drive down to Portland. We can drive up to Vancouver, British Columbia. You know, these are different things where for us, and I would imagine for a lot of people, our home is just the home base for all of our fun adventures. That's the way that it should be because, you know, it's not just about the actual home, but the community that's close by. And for us in Atlanta, we have a great airport.

And so it's very easy to travel almost anywhere in the world. Even as close as I was surprised, they had a direct flight to St. Simon's Island, which my stepdaughter, Charlie and her family moved there. And so I was like, oh, my gosh, we could be there in an hour and a half. Yes. That's amazing. It's such a blessing. I know you love to travel.

Atlanta's a great hub for world travel. Now, that's Delta, right? It's Delta's headquarters here. Yes. I know lots of Delta people. They're a fun crowd. And you can get anywhere in the world out of it. Atlanta very quickly. You can get anywhere in the world out of Seattle pretty quickly. You can get to a lot of the world out of Tampa. So these places where we have lived have had these sorts of considerations as well. Yes. And Tampa, isn't that a big boat boating? The big boats, the carnivals and the ships? Sure. There are plenty of cruises that go out of Tampa. Yes. They depart on 30.

Thursday, we can watch them go under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge about 45 minutes after they depart. And then we see them Sunday coming back in. It's sort of this regular thing that you see. If you're anywhere in Tampa Bay, you know that those cruise ships are coming and going. Yes. Yeah, Tampa, we loved living in Tampa. It was such an easy place to travel, you know, direct flights to 118 U.S. cities and a lot of international cities as well. So it was fantastic. Yeah. I mean, so if those things are important to you,

then, you know, that's something that that would fall under the fun and entertainment bucket. Or it could be career also if you're traveling for your career. Absolutely. It's important to have a city that you can get to other cities fairly easily. You know, it's so interesting. One of the positive things that occurred after, you know, all of the work from, home movement is everybody got much more comfortable on Zoom and conference calls and now working from home and the remote work lifestyle. You can live almost anywhere for many, many types of jobs. So that probably comes into your whole wheelhouse notion as well. It does. And so that also means having space at home that's professional and not noisy,

either exterior or children or dogs in the house. Although I never mind for some reason when I hear noises from a dog or something in the house. A lot of times it's now with the new technology, they say, I'm so sorry, my dog is barking. And I'm listening. I'm like, I do not hear a dog. That's amazing. And they're like, oh, gosh, it's so loud. Well, no, the technology knows to cancel that out.

So that's been a little bit better, but adequate lighting. and, you know, I have a podcast studio set up in my office and a writing space. And then I need also a place to just sit in crunch numbers sometimes. So what you do for a living also dictates what kind of space you're going to have. You know, a creative person might have a couple of projects laying around. And you better believe you might want to shut that door to that creative person's space. And someone who's perhaps a bit neater in the home, they want to, tidy things up. But if they took the creative person's project and put it away before they were

finished, it kind of kills the project. So understanding people's personalities is the first step in the wheelhouse process for me. And mostly it's about understanding yourself and what makes you happy. And so that's something I do intuitively with my clients. I can sense what's important to them. And then I just, you know, flat out ask questions and listen to what. they enjoy. What lights them up or if they walk in somewhere and they're like, oh, I love all the light in here and they love an open concept, right? And so if they're a little bit more introverted, they might want a little bit more traditional floor plan so they have somewhere to get away from the five kids and the dogs and the white, just for a minute to decompress when they get home

or on Sunday morning, that's their time. They need a space in the home to create a respite. So Kim, if a real estate agent wanted to learn more about your notions, the wheelhouse assessment, are you living in your wheelhouse, what could a real estate agent do to become more educated and a little more thoughtful along these lines? Well, you know, so there's the book that explains all of the frameworks, you know, the eight areas and then the foundation of the wheelhouse. and it will help them really understand their client more and maybe offer a few questions they hadn't asked before. And so it's just a guideline and a structure that they can become a little

bit well versed in, give the book or just keep the process in mind to ask them the right questions so that it takes a process that's already very stressful and helps provide a structure for that person. So they feel seen. The client feels seen. They feel like their needs are being addressed and that they're being prompted to really think about all the things so that they're not, they don't have buyers remorse once they move into the home, which is never a good thing. Because you know whose fault it becomes a lot of times. A lot of times. If something's not uncovered or discussed or one person compromises more than the other that becomes an issue later.

And so I think it's, you know, if they want to read the book and I'm going to have workshops coming up where people can attend, I've often thought about having a workshop for agents just to train them on the process so that if they want to hand, you know, their clients a book, even if they're not thinking about moving, it's a, where are you right now in your life? How are you doing? How's the house? Is it fitting your current lifestyle? What changes have happened? Let's talk about it. it's just a book, you know, that someone might send as a thank you or a happy new year or something like that. And then their client can skim through and read the book and keep it on hand. Like, oh, we might need that in a couple of years or we're not quite ready. Or yes, we are ready. Thank you for sending us this. We hadn't thought of these areas. You're really thinking about us.

So I think those are ways that they can use the system to help their clients, but also help themselves different. and be seen as a more client-focused realtor? I would imagine so as well. One of my favorite books, and I love architecture. I've loved architecture since I was very young. I took architecture classes in high school and absolutely fell in love with it, but I grew up around historic homes and very significant architecture in my childhood. and then as a young real estate agent in Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights, Ohio,

there's some beautiful homes. But then I found this architect named Sarah Suzanka, and she has a whole series of books called The Not So Big House. Oh, yeah. And a lot of people love the notion of having everything that they want in 950 square feet. Yes. Or, you know, some people love the notion of, having everything that they need in an RV, and they're just traveling and on the road.

And of course, they have a home somewhere, but then they also are comfortable in their RV so that they can just really explore. And all these notions of how a person might live today, in my opinion, it has significantly changed over the last six years, simply because people no longer had to be geographically. located for certain types of work. You know, if they were creatives, if they were intellectuals, if they were consultant types, suddenly they found themselves able to get out of Los Angeles or San Francisco or New York City.

Suddenly they could be anywhere. And then all of a sudden, it created these questions in their mind like, well, how do we want to live? Now that we can live any way we want to live, how do we really want to live? So tell me a little bit more about how real estate agents can help them probe that. Well, I think, like you said, there's so much more opportunity now, and that's a beautiful thing, you know, because we're not stuck in a certain style home. There are, like you said, RVs and tiny homes and plenty of large homes and medium-sized homes.

So it just becomes, I didn't, you know, growing up in a traditional home, I didn't realize there were so many options, you know, like RVing, what does that look like? And can I try it out for a minute? And then what do I do with my home, you know, back in my primary residence? And so we have to come up with options for all of these things. You know, do I rent it out for a year and then come back? So it's kind of our job to have the resources. and like you investigate architects and how people are living so that, I mean, I've met people who moved to Costa Rica from Great Britain this past year. And so they've just completely changed their lifestyle. And then hence part of their career. I have a nephew who traveled Europe for two years while holding down a very nice job and had a wonderful time. And so I think there are just so many.

opportunities available to change your life a little bit, not only where you live, but like maybe what they call a slash career. So I'm a realtor, author, speaker, like running workshops and someone else might be like a, so what did my nephew do? It's like he created software. And so he could do that on the road. And then he was also a photographer. And, you know, so it's the slash, what are you passionate about? So you do this for a living. I'm passionate about food. Okay, well, you should blog about food and travel and talk about restaurants and things like that. So I think that if we, especially the young people, you know, this huge transfer of wealth is about to happen. And these young people, they may not want to live in the 8,000 square foot house. they may want to have a small place in a city that has a good airport and they can travel and investigate and, you know, the world is kind of their oyster these days. So I think us coming up with what lights that person up. I mean, maybe the person's more of a homebody. And they do want a

larger home and they want a family and like lots of pets and things like that. Okay, well, let's find you a little place with a barn and they allow chickens in the backyard. Like what makes you, I just did that for someone. So I have lots of stories. I love meeting people and finding out what makes them tick. It's just really fun to like see their photos afterwards of how their life has changed and how happy they are. And so it's like, oh my gosh, this is great. Their home, their new home is perfectly set up for them to do exactly what was missing. It's so interesting. Lisa and I work with hundreds of home buyers and home sellers along the beaches in St. Petersburg and Clearwater. And so often we would have people who were coming down from the Midwest or from Canada.

And they had this notion that they needed four bedrooms, three bathrooms. And we asked them, and we just wanted to be serving them at a high level. So we asked them lots of questions. Tell me why is it you need four bedrooms? and why is it you need three bathrooms? Oh, well, we have, you know, two kids and they live in these other areas, and we want them to be able to come down. Okay, how often will they be coming down?

Oh, well, she works a lot, so it might be one week a year or so. How about the other one? Well, she's different. And all of a sudden we realized, you're probably going to be fine with a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath home. Yes. Because if needs be, there are 7,000 hotel rooms nearby. Lots of people like to come.

And then all of a sudden they realized, wow, we couldn't afford our dream house that we thought we needed. But my goodness, when we realized that we could put people up in a hotel or we could have the kids visit at different times and not have them all at the same time, all of a sudden we could get into a phenomenal home in our budget and, you know, a home. hotel room costs $215 a night. Right. And all of a sudden, they're thinking, okay, so for the one week a year, we're going to budget $1,500 for hotels rather than spend $300,000 more on their home. That's right. And then not use that space any other time of the year.

And then perhaps they got better amenities that they're going to use. Maybe there's a gym right there in the subdivision that they wouldn't have been able to afford previously. And it was so interesting because rather than being order takers, where we're just saying, how many bedrooms? Okay, check. How many bathrooms? What's your budget? How many bedrooms?

No, we really were having interesting conversations where we were helping them realize that they thought they needed something, but they could accomplish what they're trying to accomplish in a much more affordable way. because oftentimes we would deal with northerners who couldn't do everything that they thought they could do because the budget would be so high. But when they realized, well, we could be a little more realistic about how often our kids are going to be there. And then all of a sudden we have the best of both worlds. We have our home up in Sheboygan and our place down in St. Pete. Yes. And we love life. Yes.

And it was all because we asked the right question. That's the whole key. The whole key is about asking the right questions. And, you know, I wouldn't be able to ask all the questions in my book, because many of them don't apply to each individual as a whole. It's a conglomerate, not too many questions, but a conglomerate of questions that could be possible. And maybe you hadn't thought of. And there are just a few questions in there. I would never ask anybody because it's just too personal. So, you You know, perhaps I, you know, these are questions I've asked myself about life change and things like that. And as, you know, I wouldn't delve into my client's personal life. Sometimes, you know, we do talk about things or they'll like, they'll call me and they'll say, I know you're not my therapist, but this is, this is what I'm, well, listen, I'm right here. I'm here to hear you and help you figure this out. And so I do, you know, we do hear things and see things that we're in people's, you know,

personal spaces and we keep it to ourselves. But sometimes the question needs to be asked, you know, how is this going? And so the book asks lots of questions that are personal and some are fun and some are interesting and some are things you maybe haven't thought about, but that really matter. And so it's just, you know, a guide for both real estate agents to read and say, well, gosh, well, I know I can't ask them that, but I can't. give them this book and let them ponder and if they need to get back to me about something then they will put it as part of the solution to what they're trying to solve so it's just a guide you know we all need a guide and um there are many many guides for people who have had a death of a partner

unfortunately or how you know how to have a baby and um what to get for your new dog and all you know all the things. But there isn't really a guide for what does my house need to fit each stage of my life? And so these frameworks answer those questions or they provide the questions for you to answer them yourself. Just take a little time, be introspective for a while, be quiet with your thoughts and then allow the solution to just appear. Yes. And something about there's a place for you to write the answers to each section and to grade each section as to how it's working and why it's working or not working. And so once you see that on paper, you can't unsee it. And so you can't just blindly go buy a house because it has everything everybody else wants if it's missing something that you need. Well, Kim, this has been such a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for coming back and joining me another time. I know that everyone is getting.

a lot of helpful information from you. Where can people connect with you easiest? So I would say either my website, which is lifestylefoundations.com, I'll have everything about workshops, book, et cetera, and about myself. And then on the socials, which I'm pretty active on, like Instagram, you can find me at Kim E. Costa. That's the best way. Wonderful. Well, Kim Costa, Atlanta, Georgia. Thank you so much for joining us today. This has just been eye-opening. It's really powerful when you ask the right questions how all of a sudden the right solutions can become so quickly evident. Very true. I appreciate you having me. It's been my pleasure. Thank you. Marketing is hard. But I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out.

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