Gratitude and personal connections are clearly two of the core beliefs that center and focus Alexis Hirsig.

Alexis grew up in the "far western" suburbs of Chicago. She was earning her degree in Business Administration—minoring in Marketing Psychology— at Mississippi State University when she met her soon-to-be husband, John Koester. "He was hired by Kohl's corporate," says Alexis, "so they expected him to move to Milwaukee. So I said, 'You might as well take it and see what happens.'"

It worked out. Alexis' parents, Chris and Trish Hirsig, moved from Illinois to Milwaukee the year before, so there was a kind of kismet in the move. Now, Alexis just needed to discover what she wanted to do.

She says, "I had interned at Kohl’s corporate in 2019 and quickly realized that corporate life was not my jam."

Earlier, when Alexis was seventeen, she interned with Diane Anderson of Baird & Warner Real Estate in Chicago. "That was my senior year of high school. Diane sold my childhood home in Illinois and got to see the entire process."

While interning with Diane, a gentleman told Alexis that he wished he would have started this career when he was her age instead of waiting until later in life, like he did."

Clearly that stuck with her.

She began studying for her Real Estate license. "I spent the entire first summer in Milwaukee sitting back to back with my mom in her home office as I completed my course and studied for the exam."

But Alexis clearly had an obstacle to overcome. Both she and her husband were new to Milwaukee. She had no friend-base or network to pull from.

"Knowledge is power," she says, "and when we challenge ourselves to learn something new, we gain so much value in our lives compared to taking the easy way out." 

She learned that from her grandparents. "They showed me what running a business was like."

"My grandpa refinishes sad broken furniture into something beautiful and my grandma really demonstrates the term 'one man’s trash is another man’s treasure' as she would roam through garage sales for antique items and resell them. She was really the first person in my life who showed me what level of hard work, dedication, and passion are needed to run a successful business."

So Alexis took this obstacle as a reason to learn more about the business. "I told myself when I first started that I wanted to have the knowledge of a 4th year agent in my first year to put my career in the fast lane."

She continues, "I hate nothing more than not knowing an answer to something or getting something wrong —we are our own toughest critic— so I made it a point in my business to soak in as much information and see what benefits I can gain from it."

That's when she decided to embrace social marketing. "Wondering how I could get to know people without meeting them in person is what turned me to Instagram. That was a huge step in how I built my business." In fact, over 60% of her closed deals come from clients through Instagram.

The two people who Alexis credits for starting her career are Craig and Dana Sommerville, from eXp Realty. "I started on a team with Craig and Dana, and I truly believe I would not be where I am today without them," she says. "They built my foundation and believed in me at the beginning of my career."

"I valued being on a team so much, I started my own form of a team to be able to coach and mentor other agents and teach them all about how I built my successful business on Instagram."

That team is The Powerhouse Collective. "That's the future of my brand," says Alexis. "It’s a collective —not really a team— made up of five incredible badass agents who all bring a different perspective and background. We don’t operate as a traditional team, as my goal and focus here is to coach and mentor agents so that we can all collaborate and build up each other’s businesses."

"In the end," she says, "If someone is feeling like they are just spinning their wheels, not getting any traction, or aren't reaching their goals to the extent they would like to, I want them to reach out to me on social media or through email, and let's have a conversation."

"I love to serve as a mentor and coach to help people take their life and business to the next level anyway I can. Sometimes we just need a good friend to talk it through with and never know what kind of impact it can make until you have that conversation. I enjoy doing that because I believe everything comes full circle in life when you're just kind and help other people."

Full circle. With gratitude and holding those personal connections dear, we can do just about anything.