Divas on The Katie Lance Podcast: Being Resilient, Activists & Parenting

The Divas joined Katie Lance on The Katie Lance Podcast to talk about being resilient, being lifelong activists, anti-racist work, parenting, and much more.

We are so honored to be on The Katie Lance Podcast. Katie Lance is a dear friend of ours, and we deeply admire her work. We’ve learned so much from Katie about social media and online marketing. Our conversations and friendship has deepened far beyond real estate over the years.

In this conversation, we don’t hold back! No topic is off limits as we dive into it all. We talk about the Divas’s background and how our ever-evolving team has grown through significant changes and challenges. We share how Chavi and Kim were able to bring their lifelong work as activists to their real estate work. This has benefitted their team members, clients, and community. Of course, this is deeply intertwined with being actively anti-racist. Then we shift gears and talk about parenting (and more specifically, parenting during a pandemic!). And it wouldn’t be a conversation between the Divas and Katie Lance without talking about innovative marketing.

You can listen to “The Katie Lance Podcast: Episode 101: The Personal is Political | Resiliency, Activism, Innovative Marketing, Parenting and More! | Interview with Team Diva Real Estate” here. You should also just subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts—Katie Lance is on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Spotify. Click here for quick links to everything!

Katie Lance’s Podcast: Divas Talk About Everything

First off, Katie Lance gave us an absolutely lovely introduction that you can read here. And in case listeners are not familiar with Team Diva’s origins, we start this podcast episode off by sharing how Team Diva came to be. We might have picked a bad time for Chavi to quit her job at Starbucks and join Kim’s real estate business. It was 2008 and the start of a long, hard recession. However, this challenging time gave us a strong foundation for how we would run our business through the years, recession or not.

“If you are able to invest in your community during tough times, you will come out even stronger.” – Divas

Supporting our community is a cornerstone of Team Diva, and we really embraced this during the 2008 recession. We hunkered down for 4 solid years to invest in our community, and invest in our brand and our innovative marketing strategies. We fully embraced social media, blogging, and content marketing. A lot of other real estate agents were not doing this yet.

Time and time again since then, we’ve had to rework things as we added team members and surmounted new obstacles. This practice of resilience helped us to be uniquely prepared to weather the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, in 2020 we had a 27% increase in business from 2019. Many others did not have the systems in place to help them succeed during the pandemic. However, Team Diva had already been through some dramatic shifts. As a result, the pandemic was not as shocking to our business as it could have been.

In this episode of the Katie Lance Podcast, we also dive deep into the pros and cons of Kim and Chavi being partners in life AND in business. We discuss relationship dynamics, how we’re able to work with each other, and much more.

Now let’s dive into this amazing conversation.

Divas on The Katie Lance Podcast Discuss Their Long History of Activism

Chavi and Kim were activists long before Team Diva existed. In this podcast episode they discuss their backgrounds, how being a lesbian queer couple has influenced their activism, and how they brought their values to real estate.

“I think those early LGBTQ activist days are so baked into your survival. You literally had to be an activist in order to survive and if you were going to be an out person during a time when it was illegal to be an out person.” – Chavi Hohm

For the Divas, being activists also includes being actively anti-racist. This means showing up in the real estate industry as outspoken advocates for BIPOC and communities of color. This has also meant lifting up BIPOC real estate agents and starting a mentorship program to nurture agents at their brokerage.

Chavi also shares observations of racism within the LGBTQ community and how she has observed her Black team members get treated poorly due to their race. This leads into talking about how people can support BIPOC and raise them up in the real estate industry, a space that is so frequently not inclusive.

Getting Political is Nothing New for the Divas

Kim and Chavi Supporting Marriage Equality

For years now it’s been natural for the Divas to “get political” in their real estate business, but they want to recognize that it’s not for everyone. Kim and Chavi recognize that although they’re queer, they have privilege in the fact that they’re white, middle class, in an urban environment, and also on a top producing real estate team.

“This is part of who we are, and if people can’t accept that, they’re not the right people for us.” – Kim Colaprete

Chavi also makes the point that:

“The personal is political. The act of doing real estate is political.” – Chavi Hohm

Even just being a member of the National Association of REALTORS® is a political act—NAR puts their money (which is also YOUR money!) behind political candidates all the time.

All of this is worth it when we’re able to make an impact. We were so happy to hear this from Katie:

“On a personal level, you’ve really inspired me over the last few years to take a stand, to be a little bit more vocal—to go outside my comfort zone.” -Katie Lance

Embracing Innovative Marketing & Reading the Room With Your Content

Katie Lance is the queen of social media and online marketing. We have learned so much from her, and in fact we even hired Katie a couple years ago to help us take our online marketing strategies to the next level. There are a few foundational ideas we stick to when it comes to executing our high-level marketing strategies. This includes having a plan and being consistent. It’s simple but it’s not always easy!

We also talk about the importance of “reading the room” when it comes to posting on social media. Yes, have a plan, but be ready to stay agile and alter that plan. Know when to dial things back when no one wants to talk about real estate (like during the onset of COVID-19, and during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020). Listen to the podcast episode for more marketing insights from Katie Lance and the Divas.

On Being New Parents During a Pandemic

In 2019, Kim and Chavi became guardians of their 11-year-old niece. This was another dramatic shift in their personal lives and in their business. Over time, they’ve learned how to better support their niece. Being able to stay home and be around their niece even more has been a silver lining of COVID-19. Spending more time at home helped Chavi and Kim better recognize ways that they could help their niece adjust and thrive. It has also helped them find balance in new important and ways as well.

Thank You for Listening to Team Diva on The Katie Lance Podcast

We are so honored that Katie Lance invited us to have this important conversation on her podcast. Together, Katie, Chavi, and Kim dive deep on topics like being resilient, getting political in your real estate business, activism, being anti-racist, parenting, marketing and more.

Check Out Other Moments The Divas Have Been Hosted by Katie Lance or on Other Podcasts

Divas Kim and Chavi on Agent Reboot Stage With Katie Lance

Want to really dive into how the Divas have dispenced their magic over the years. Check out a few of these recaps and podcasts that they have been blessed to be on over the years.