We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jessie Lockhart a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jessie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s something you believe that most people in your industry (or in general) disagree with?

Real estate is a very “old school” industry and most agents who’ve been in the industry for 20+ years are struggling to modernize their businesses. I believe that social media, Instagram in particular, is a very relevant platform where you can generate leads and connect with potential clients.

The issue, however, is that when most agents take to Instagram they keep their profiles very professional and only talk about real estate related topics. The problem with this is that most users on Instagram are a much younger generation and this type of content doesn’t resonate with them and is, quite frankly, boring.

My strategy with Instagram is to take a mixed approach; sharing both real estate related content AND aspects of my personal life to further connect with my audience. It’s my goal for my potential clients to get to know who I am outside of just being a Realtor. I want them to know who I am as a human.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

In February of 2019, I quit my full-time leasing agent job in Phoenix, AZ and immediately enrolled in real estate school. I knew the corporate, 9-5 world was not for me and I had so much more potential. It only took me about a month to finish school, pass my exams, and obtain my real estate license, however it took me another 14 months to close my first sale.

I attribute this massive delay to 3 major things:
1 – My mindset and the belief in myself to succeed was zero. I had no self-confidence and kept telling myself a very negative story which manifested in no real estate sales for over a year.
2 – The real estate team I started on and was surrounded by didn’t fully support my goals. Their energy really weighed heavily and negatively on me.
3 – I had just moved to Phoenix, AZ less than a year earlier with my husband. We left behind all of our family, friends, and network in Utah so I was truly starting a new network here in Phoenix.

In early 2020, I was approaching my one year anniversary of getting my real estate license and felt very frustrated because I hadn’t closed a deal yet. I wondered if I was truly capable of being a successful real estate agent.

As the world exploded in March 2020, I took to TikTok (as did so many others) and started posting videos about buying your first home. And that’s when the momentum truly began! I closed my first two real estate sales in May 2020 and proceeded to gross my first six-figures between May & December 2020. I was able to achieve another six-figure gross income in 2021 as well by continuing to bring value and education to my ideal clients through social media.

In November 2020, I launched a podcast with my mentor and business partner, Stephanie Mainville, called Socially Modern. We currently have over 75,000 downloads and have maintained a top 25 rank in the Marketing category on Apple podcasts. Our Socially Modern episodes are all about how to use effectively social media as a real estate agent to attract leads and grow your business.

I’m also a team leader and mentor of the Socially Modern Collective; a nationwide all-female real estate group housed under the Socially Modern brand and brokered by eXp Realty. We focus our trainings and resources around, you guessed it, social media. We currently have 40+ members spread throughout 14 different states in the US.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I really attribute this to sharing my story and journey with others on social media. I take a personalized approach and don’t limit myself to only posting real estate-related content. I talk about my likes, dislikes, my dogs, my interests outside of work, my relationship with my husband, and what goals/aspirations I currently have. People find my social media platforms through the value-based content but they stay because they connect with me on a human level.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

This isn’t as much of a lesson I had to unlearn as it is a story about myself I had to stop telling.

Over the last several years, I’ve truly come to know how powerful our mindset is. If you become hyperaware of what you’re telling yourself, you’ll see how dramatically negative we are toward ourselves. And I had to believe that if I could be that negative about myself, surely I could flip it on it’s head and be that positive about myself.

I started using positive affirmations, reading mindset/personal growth books, and taking care of my body through weight lifting to improve my mindset; and it worked.

The negative stories I was telling myself had then become positive ones. And that’s when my entire business took off.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://msjessielockhart.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msjessielockhart/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/msjessielockhart
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1K7T-vtDiL98NCA7WCuUNw