We recently connected with Ines Gomez-Acebo and have shared our conversation below.
Ines, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
I never thought I would end in the Real estate business as I had worked all my life in the retail industry and my last job in Spain was in politics. I came to Miami as a project manager for a new project and six months later unfortunately the project didn’t fall through. I was afraid I would have to go back to Spain but I was very fortunate that my visa allowed me to apply for the green card. My immigration lawyer told me that until I received the green card I couldn’t work for anyone but I could work for myself. I couldn’t afford to spend six months without income so I had to figure out something to get going as a self employer. My lawyer who new my professional background very well suggested I look into the real estate business as I had a very commercial oriented profile. He said “look into it, try it for these six months and if you don’t like it once you get your green card you can go search for another job”.
That was 8 years ago and here I am with my own brokerage, I fell in love with this business!
Ines, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I began in the real estate industry as a realtor. My first years I worked at Optimar international realty. I chose this company because they were big in giving formation to their realtors, I had a coach once a week , provided by my broker, and this was key to reaching my full potential. At the beginning I worked with all type of clients as I needed to learn all aspects of the industry. I worked with renters, buyers, sellers and everything that crossed my path. My first client was a very good friend of mine that bought an apartment and I was very lucky she confided in me to help her with the search and process of buying. We got a great deal and from there referrals began pouring in, I was top producer that first year.
The next step was to define what I wanted to specialize in and what Miami areas I would be centering in. I decided I should center my expertise in the area I lived in, the upper east, as I really loved it. And I began working primarily with single family homes.
Two years after getting my license I decided I should get my brokers license as I already new I wanted my own brokerage in the future. I studied and passed the exam but I still wasn’t ready to fly solo so I stayed as a broker associate at Optimar for another 3 years. During this period I worked with several real estate specialized coaches and learnt a lot about the industry and about me while keeping my top producer status.
In autumn 2019 Optimar announced it was joining EXP realty and invited all its agents to follow. That was the moment I decided it was time to get going my own brokerage, I was confident I had the expertise required and what type of brokerage I wanted.
IGA Lux Homes was born. My brokerage is a boutique firm specialized in luxury residential real estate. I only work by referral As a brokerage I have expanded the areas I serve, now I work in the upper east, Miami Beach and Brickell areas. I do single family homes and condos. I’ve been doing a lot of new construction sales in luxury buildings like the Aston Martin Residences.
The focus of my company is to give a very personalized high end service. We don’t do many clients at once as we aim to provide the best quality service and our customer satisfaction is our main priority.
Our focus and dedication is towards providing a smooth and easy transaction while making it a very exciting journey! We adopt all cutting edge technologies and apply them through a team of outstanding professionals working at every field required to complete a perfect transaction.
And the most important part is we love what we do!!
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
As you know, since the beginning I worked with a coach in order to learn the industry. Social media and marketing are core to getting new clients and they are a showcase of your expertise. I will never forget my first session with Lola my coach at Optimar. She asked me to open an account in a platform called mail chimp so I could design and begin sending a bi weekly newsletter. I had to bring my list of contacts to the next session so we could begin working on this project. I had no list of contacts and had no idea where I was supposed to find them as I had only been living in Miami for less than a year and knew a limited number of people. She told me to get hold of all the business cards I had at home and all y contacts and see how many contacts i could gather, I came to the next class with a list of 120 people and i was very proud of myself. She then told me I needed to get many more contacts if I wanted to be successful with my newsletter so she suggested I ask my friends if they would share their contacts with me. I was in shock thinking this was too much to ask from a friend and I was also terrified to think I would be sending a newsletter twice a week to people i knew… I thought they wouldn’t be interested and would unsubscribed and that made me feel anxious. I finally found the courage to ask my best friend if she would be willing to share her contacts with me and she was very happy to do so! I was in shock at how easy it had been so I went to other friends and soon I had a 6,000 contact mailing list!!
I began sending my bi weekly newsletter and yes many people unsubscribed, but many staid and read my articles. This newsletter has ended up being a very important source of new clients. I remember receiving a referral from a contact in Spain for my first million dollar sale.
So I would recommend anyone starting in the business to build a good mailing list and never stop adding contacts to it as this is a very stable and good source of new clients and referrals.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Its not really what lesson i had to unlearn, its what lesson i needed to learn in order to know what i didn’t want. Once again I’m Going back to my experience working with coaches, this has been fundamental in my personal and professional development and i would recommend everyone to be coached at least once in their life. For me its been game changing .
Over the years I’ve had a variety of coaches all focused on helping me grow and learn about my business. My first coach was at Optimar and she showed me tons of things related to the business and she was very marketing and social media oriented. She also organized for a group in the company to attend a Tony Robbins event and this got me hooked on the importance of working with coaches. After a couple years with Lola I decided I needed a new coach that specialized more in other areas of the business so i did a sequence of courses with different teachers and acquired many certifications i thought important for my career, knowledge is power. I have a Price Strategy Advisor Certification, Luxury Home Marketing Specialized certification, a Mashore digital marketing certification and my most recent one a Crypto specialized real estate certification. All of these courses have been very enriching.
When i decided it was time to begin sketching how my brokerage should look like, once again, I began my search for a coach that could guide me and show me the route to my ideal brokerage. I invested quite a big chunk of money in enrolling with one of the top coaches in the country real estate related. I learned A LOT and spent a lot of money on marketing, digital, software… you name it!
And here comes the lesson, after going through all this process I finally understood that my brokerage wasn’t standard and most of the general technics that i had learned in order to get new clients, market myself and run the business didn’t apply. My business is focused on very selected clients, all by referral and a very personalized customer care. I had to spend a lot of time and money doing great marketing campaigns and what not in order to understand that that wasn’t what made my company thrive.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.igaluxhomes.com
- Instagram: @igaluxhomes
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/igaluxhomes
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/in%C3%A9s-g%C3%B3mez-acebo-calparsoro-22a60817
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/inesgomezacebo
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4qHLRk_IBmCLz9Nk0T92Vw