We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nicole Briggs a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Nicole, appreciate you joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? We’d love to hear the backstory the illustrates how you grew the firm
October 2019, I had been a Full-time Realtor for 13.5 years. I was 44 years old, my last 2 kids were going to graduate High School in the summer of 2020 and I knew they would be going off to college. My kids were very involved in High School Sports and Competitive teams which took us all over the country. Because of this drastic change in my life I decided I needed something more. Something to occupy my time and give me another purpose to focus on. October of 2019, I decided to begin building a Coaching Business. Aside from running my own Real Estate Team of 3-5 Realtors, this was the only experience I had. Although I had been a Top Producing Realtor for nearly 8 years, I was ready to begin sharing how I built my 6-figure business. In July of 2020 I was doing some research on building an online business and discovered I might want to build a Facebook Group and build a Community of like minded individuals who shared a common goal or passion. It seemed very clear at the time, I created a FB Group Titled “Real Estate Talk For Women”. When I launched the group, I can remember thinking I am the only one in here posting and commenting… it seemed silly but I kept at it. I remember January of 2021 after picking my son up from college for the holidays, my group finally hit it’s 300th member… My son was super proud!
Within 30 days it seemed like something began to change. I began having 15 people a day, 30 people a day and over the next couple of months over 50-60 people requesting to join each day… Sounds like a great problem however who knew that today we are just about to turn over 60,000 members. I’ve had a waitlist for over a year now to get into this group because I want to maintain the authenticity of the group and its members.
Since creating this group, I have develped an email list of over 50,000 Realtors and working on growing my Instagram and scaling it with a larger reach as well. One of the most successful ways I built the group and it’s following was by writing and selling a low ticket e-book of 80 pages titles Next: The Woman’s beginners guide to real estate. I wanted this e-book to have everything in it I wish someone would have told me when I first started… So I packed it with MASSIVE value for $5.00 but not too much that my audience would want to find me or follow for more.
In addition to creating digital products to share with my audience, I have been on Podcasts and Summits as a guest speaker sharing, collaborating and contributing to the education and success of Realtors around the world. I’m extremely grateful for the growth of the group which represents over 100 countries and a unique opportunity for me to connect with others in my industry.
I have done so many things wrong which have led to many things right but in the end, I always go back to the name of my platform which is “Show Up”. I know there are Realtors out there who follow me and are counting on me to share my knowledge and I strive to deliver the information and knowledge in an easy consumable way. One of the many hurdles I had to endure was the loss of my FB group at 26,000 members. Unfortunately someone hacked into my account and took over which left my group running without admin for nearly 2 mos. There were many many emails to FB, calls and DM’s trying to get someone to hear my pleas for help. Ultimately, I was able to take it back and begin managing it again… I can remember I was so relieved but exhausted from all the stress knowing nearly 2 years of work was almost lost.
Today I continue to show up for my audience and coach them bi-weekly on Tuesdays for a Free Masterclass, staying current with the trends in marketing and in Sales, while delivering to them products and coaching to implement the systems, processes and skills I used to build my 6-figure business year after year. I strongly believe as a woman in Real Estate we don’t need to feel guilty we may not be able to work a traditional 9-5. I know you can build a profitable, successful, repeat referral business by focusing on specific tasks and executing them and… still have time to do the things you want with the people you want to. It doesn’t have to be either or, you can have anything you set your mind too.
I will continue to scale my group Real Estate Talk For Women as Realtors continue to request to join, I’m super grateful. I can see in the future, scaling this business to encompass the entrepreneur /digital marketer My goal for 2024 is to begin sharing with others like me who want to build an online business how to scale a community and how to scale products online. Since July of 2020 in less than 3 years, I found success but it definitely has taken hard work, systems, research and a willingness to never give up. It definitely has been worth it and I am very grateful to the women in the industry who allow me to hold a space for them to learn, share and support each other.
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?
The problem I solve for is “Real Estate is a Secret”. Best tips and advice on how to navigate this business is lacking in our industry. We can hold a license yet we weren’t given any information about selling, customer service, relationship building, closing or any skill sets needed to build a profitable real estate business. I coach and share best tips, practice, advice and products to implement in terms of systems and processes. I created the FB group to have a platform to share it to and find others who were in need of the same things I saw were lacking. Turns out, there is a STRONG desire for a group like this and because of this it scaled quickly.
My brand Show Up Nikki B. is built on the premises of Show up for people, in business and in your life and as a reminder to still show up for myself. All too often we as women tend to put ourselves on the back burner so to speak and my platform name reminds me to not do this… no matter how hard or busy life gets.
Have you ever had to pivot?
When I began I really had in my mind I wanted to create a Signature digital Course. Of course this was a higher end product and despite all I had learned about launching a digital course, I was so naive and still so new at all of this… I literally spent 2 years in the making which is crazy… Once I created it, I didn’t have near the response as when I launched it beta. This was a huge blow as I had spent almost 20k creating and running ad spend to it. In tough times comes clarity though and I realized I needed to take a different approach. I pulled my course apart, created more valuable content within each topic and scaled it way back and offered it at a much lower price… #success
It turns out this was a much better way to move my client through the value add ladder and retain them as a client and a customer.
What I regret the most is thinking someone else was going to be able to do it. In the end I ended up doing it myself, creating the offer and launching it. yes, we need to hire others to scale however if we don’t understand the inner workings of our business you will always feel out of control and in the dark. If you better understand how something is created you would be surprised how you brain may find other opportunities to capitalize on or to sharpen. This was probably my most costly error but in the works still and still moving up the value ladder, is going to prove to be my most profitable mistake.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
I would have to say my ability to “Think Big” has been one of the key resources in both finding success in my Real Estate Business and in my Online business (products) and my coaching platform. I built a following at the age of 45, most people may think you are too old, not savvy enough, not successful enough, etc. I had a goal, I knew it was possible to build it out… I just needed some time and resources to do it. I have self funded my business over the last 4 years. I have 0 debt on this business and I’ve always wanted to keep it that way. The Book that was a huge part of my mindset is called “The Magic of thinking Big”. David Schwartz
The second book I call my life bible but has everything to do with mindset is called “heart talk” By Cleo Wade. This is a book of poetry but reads a page at a time. Small excerpts when in need of motivation, positivity, a powerful thought you can pick it up and open any page and find what you are looking for. It’s a special book to me, one I refer to often, share with others and will forever continue to read. Mindset is everything. Anyone can start a business, your ability to keep your head straight, stay positive, persevere and then fail and start again are the winners. When you truly understand that every failure is a win, it sounds so cliche but it is true. The more you believe it the less you have to fight through it, you almost expect it with a plan in mind to get you out of it faster. I always thought when I built a successful real estate business I would feel “Successful”. It isn’t something that you feel in a moment, success was in the ride to get there. I believe this is why I started again ultimately, I love to create, build, work hard and conquer. Building a Coaching business and a presence online has definitely proposed the challenges and I look forward to continue working through them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.nicole-briggs.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/showup_nikkib/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/showupnikkib
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWmqieQjt0gs8lhkL5QKQdw
- Other: Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/realestatetalkforwomen/
Image Credits
@bcourturephoto