How to Reach Your Target Audience Effectively? #EveryNeighborEveryZipCode

Question came across my messages, and you know how much I love answering your questions about real estate. This question came from a REALTOR® and she said, Leigh Brown, how do I reach the Latin community? Now, first of all, I'm thinking, well, I'm honored that you asked me because obviously I speak a foreign language to some people. I speak Southern and not everybody understands what I say. And for some of y'all, you just need to probably take your 1.5x speed speed on your video back down to 1, then you'll get me. But the reality is, I was thinking about reaching any community of people, any group, and what we can do well and where we make missteps. And I got to thinking about this amazing agent who used to work in the office that my dad and I owned when we were with RE/MAX. She was so highly educated. This woman had a PhD. She was an engineer. She had hit the highest levels in her former professional life, but like so many people, she had gotten exhausted by the corporate world and decided real estate looks fun. So she got into real estate, and this is a woman whose heart is as big as Texas. She wanted to serve and love on people, and as many of y'all know, that is the very personality trait that can make you skilled at real estate and can also cause you to burn completely out because you're so willing to go past your own boundaries and go past your own strength to serve people. So she had gotten into the business and she was experiencing some success and just doing a wonderful job. Whether people that called her were English-speaking or Spanish-speaking, she just took care of everybody. She was wonderful. And then one day she came in and quit, and she sat down with me and my dad and said she was getting out of real estate. And we said, please don't get out of real estate. You're so good. 'Your clients are so cared for. This profession needs people like you that are meticulous.' And she said, 'I can't handle it anymore.' And here's why. She had the mindset of serving everyone, and instead she had gotten pigeonholed into one specific area. And she was working with Spanish-speaking buyers who were having trouble with credit scores and having trouble getting into their first homes. For whatever reason, a myriad of reasons, she had become known as a problem solver in the Spanish-speaking community. And so her client base was expanding, but it was all expanding in terms of the people who need a REALTOR® most, frankly. But that can be a huge drain on energy, and it just burned her out. And then she made another comment. She said that when she got calls from other agents, they often made the assumption that the Spanish-speaking buyer community in Charlotte was all first-time buyers, that it was all opening price points. And she said, "That's not every Spanish-speaking buyer in Charlotte, because I am," I'm quoting her now, "I am one of those buyers. I am not a first-time buyer. I have great credit. I have a great income. So why are people getting lumped in together?" So my answer to how do you serve the Latin community is going to be, Step number 1 for serving any group of people, whether you want to serve a language group or you want to serve an ethnic group or you want to serve a price point or a demographic, whatever it is, whatever you've defined as the place you want to serve, don't make assumptions about that group. Last time I checked, our immutable characteristics don't actually define us. We are all unique and different, and we have different dreams and hopes and skills. We have different family relationships. We have different history relationships. We have different relationships with money. We have different relationships with future casting a vision. There's so many things that people look at when it comes to real estate, because real estate is so much more than the monthly payment or the price of the house, or even the neighborhood. It's all of those things wrapped up together. And when you look at the area you'd like to serve or the group you'd like to serve, if you start pigeonholing people and telling them they are something, you're going to miss a huge part of the market. And the aftereffect of missing a huge part of the market is you might get completely burned out because you don't get that joy that comes from a diversity of your client base and a diversity of thought and process and dreams and hopes and just a diversity of fun people. By the way, friends, don't miss my brand new coaching program at answers.realestate where you can have access to Leigh Thomas Brown, Submit your questions, have them answered, meet like-minded professionals, have an entire library to help you build your business no matter what happens in the market. Get signed up today. I promise you'll be glad you did. And so the second part of serving the Latin community, or replace Latin for anything you want, is get out into the world where you are and go beyond your current environment. You might be surprised at how many Spanish-speaking people I know, and I do not speak Spanish. But I spend a lot of time around people that are not in my normal circles, 'cause I love going out and about. And yes, I love mixing it up and meeting people. And if you're in real estate, I hope that's one of the things you enjoy too, is being out and about, getting to know people. The third thing I would tell you is that if you want to serve a specific group, then showcase whoever it is that you want to serve in a breadth of your marketplace. Don't let anybody tell you that this group or that group buys this house in that neighborhood and this price point. That's just not so. It's amazing what kind of opportunities are out there if we do a better job in our marketing of showcasing those opportunities. There's another little asterisk I'll add here, 'cause another question had come in in regard to my presentation on fair housing, which was part of our REALTOR® Code of Ethics class. And as y'all know, my favorite hashtag is #EveryNeighborEveryZipCode. And I even have merch, you know, I have my little sticker, #EveryNeighborEveryZipCode. And this person said, how do I market to every neighbor in every zip code? And frankly, I think this applies to also that agent's question about how to serve the Latin community. So how do you serve any neighborhood and every neighborhood in that, every neighbor in that neighborhood? Well, what if you start thinking about the reach that you have. I always look at my Charlotte area market and then Concord in specific where I'm located, and we have a wild diversity of housing. There are some tiny houses now that weren't here before. We have properties with accessory dwelling units. There are single wides and double wides. There's even a triple wide if somebody really wanted to get expansive. There's stick-built, there's millhouses, there's luxury homes. There's a little bit of everything. So if you really want to serve every neighbor in every zip code, start by learning your zip code really well. Learn all of the product in it. Don't fall into the trap of only showcasing the easy houses. And by easy, I mean new construction, the vinyl villages, Pop-Tart houses that show up out of nowhere, and they're very similar. That's easy. But fair housing isn't always easy. Fair housing sometimes asks us to think outside of the place where we grew up and experience so that other people can feel like we've gotten enough knowledge to serve every neighbor in every zip code. So get out there, go learn your area better than anyone else, and talk about it as you learn about it. And by the way, I'm just going to add one more thing here. Don't make fun of houses that you don't live in. I get a little crazy train when I look at some of the Facebook groups of REALTORS® and the way that they smack talk other people's homes, other people's neighborhoods. Stop all of that, because you might live in a very fine house now, but you maybe didn't live in that house growing up. And maybe part of this is a defensive mechanism for you to not think about your past. But why do we look down on certain kinds of housing? I find that to be the only area where you can make fun of something and not get taken down by the political correctness police. What if we just stop it? Because trailers, mobile homes, manufactured homes, that is the original affordable housing. Nothing wrong with living in that. That's somebody's house. Quit talking smack about it. And for me, I'll never, never apologize for serving every neighbor in every zip code because that's how my daddy raised me. In fact, I said it before, I'll say it again. The first day I got into real estate, my dad told me, and he told me every day until he honorably retired from this profession, Remember that when that phone rings, that person could have called anybody and they chose you. So show them the kind of honor that goes along with being their chosen REALTOR®. That means we never discriminated on price point or anything else. Just look at everything as an opportunity to serve, and that'll expand your marketing. It'll also expand your space in any niche that you choose to pursue. Look at every human as somebody who deserves a pathway to the American dream. Whether or not they choose to take it is up to them, but it's up to you to show them the path. And then the Latin community will be better, or the old people community, or the first-time community, or whoever it is you decide to serve. And then take care of everybody who calls you, because that's how we roll.