Let’s settle this once and for all: you don’t need a client to create content. You need content to get clients.

In this episode, Chelsea and Kayla are breaking down why waiting for business to market your business is keeping you stuck, plus giving you a step-by-step game plan for turning your quiet season into your comeback story. (Plus, giving you about 3 months’ worth of content ideas, as usual!)

The Summer I Turned Pretty (Spoilers Ahead!)

We had to talk about the Conrad vs. Jeremiah debate that’s currently tearing the internet apart.

We’re both Team Jeremiah, but after those first two episodes, we’re kind of over both of them.

The whole spring break situation was giving major Ross and Rachel vibes, and we were literally waiting for someone to call it out. Like, surely Taylor would’ve been like “you’re really reminding me of Ross right now,” but no. Missed opportunity!

We love shows like this one because of the conversation they create, which brings us to our marketing segue (because we always have a segue): The Summer I Turned Pretty didn’t just randomly appear on Amazon Prime one day. We’ve been waiting and waiting, seeing Finch College sweatshirts pop up everywhere, watching the countdown, seeing the reels and memes.

We even used it to promote our “Summer I Turn Local” content theme this year.

The marketing for this show has been incredible, and speaking of marketing (another segue!), we get this question over and over every Marketing Therapy Thursday: “What do I post if I don’t have any clients or listings?”

Our answer: Literally everything else!

Instagram Is Not Your Trophy Case or Reality Show

You don’t need clients to create content, but you absolutely need content to get clients.

If you don’t have any clients right now, you actually have a huge opportunity to leverage social media to build your pipeline. And we’re going to walk you through exactly how to do that because we never want to hear “but I don’t have anything to post” again.

Let’s talk mindset first. There’s this belief that if you’re going to be an agent, you have to show everyone what you’re selling. You need these trophies on your Instagram so when someone looks you up, they think “okay, she’s doing well, I should hire her.”

But you don’t need a client to connect with someone, inspire someone to want to buy a house, or share about where you live and why someone else might love it.

For instance, do you have a front door? Open it and take a B-roll clip. No one knows that’s your house. Chelsea records “prepping for a showing” content in her own home — turning on lights, hitting play on Spotify, lighting a candle.

Dio you have a first-night-in-a-new-home story? Do your parents have one? Your friends? Use those stories too! Focus on the emotions tied to moving instead of contract terms or industry jargon.

Find Your Angle Through Friends Characters!

What’s your angle? Everyone has their own personality in relation to home, and the characters in Friends are actually the perfect way to think about this.

If you’re the Monica: You’re obsessed with cleaning and organizing. Your angle could be having an organized home, a clean home. Your B-roll could be as simple as setting your phone on your counter and recording for 10 seconds while you spray and wipe your counters. (That’s actually really satisfying to watch for some reason.)

If you’re the Joey: Think man cave, loungy vibes, wanting to sit on a recliner and watch Baywatch. You could showcase the cozy part of your home with content like “what to watch tonight, homeowner edition.”

If you’re the Rachel: Fashion, having a place to store all your clothes and boots and shoes. Or like Chelsea, you don’t have enough space so you have bins in your basement!

Real example: One of their members, Nikki, found her angle: normalize regular houses. You don’t need a perfectly white updated kitchen to love where you live. You can make your brown cabinets cute, light a candle, romanticize it.

There are so many different angles, and if you pick one and put your stake in the ground with it, your content becomes repetitive (in a good way), fun to watch, inspiring, and it still has that content cocktail.

You don’t need a client for this, and even when you do have clients, you can keep this rolling because people are going to love it anyway.

You want people talking about your content. No one’s going to share your content and say “you should follow Chelsea, she just posts every day.” You want them to say “Chelsea’s always the one that shares something like this” or “you’ll love her kitchen” or “you’ll love the way she talks about how she preps snacks for Henry.”

Give them the reasons, give them the words to say. You’re telling them how to talk and think about you.

In Chelsea’s saved folder, she found so many different angles: one girl’s “welcome to my starting over condo” series after a breakup, another’s “assembling the first piece of furniture that arrived in my Carrie Bradshaw apartment.”

People love real estate. So why are we talking about it in a way that makes them run the other way instead of lean in?

Document Your Client Experience (Even When You Don’t Have Clients Yet)

You don’t need a client to show people what it’s like to work with you. Just document what you would do when you have a client.

Start with your process. Open your notes app and write down: if a client reached out right now, what would be the first step? Would you send them a buyer questionnaire? Is there a fun question on it you want to share. (Chelsea loves asking for their dream home Pinterest board!)

Do you always meet at the same coffee shop? Go there, take a B-roll shot of you sitting down with your coffee, and caption it with what it’s like when someone reaches out about buying a home.

For staging agents: Walk into your own house and show “two things I would do if I was getting ready to show my house this afternoon.” Go to Target and capture “this would make a really good thing on a mantle” content. You don’t need a listing because when someone does call, you’re not filming during the appointment; you’re actually helping them.

The coffee shop method: Sit at your kitchen table and record from both sides—you as the agent, then flip and act like the client. Show the buyer folder, MLS search, questionnaires. Caption: “POV: you have coffee with me as we talk about your future dream house.”

Strategic lunch dates: Schedule lunch with friends for six weeks straight. You get into local restaurants, your friend doesn’t care if you snap pictures, and you’re reminding six people you’re building your real estate business. When someone mentions real estate at work or church, guess whose name comes up?

Daily activities to document:

• Pull up MLS and look at new listings
• Create home searches (“I’ve got a search ready for this price range”)
• Drive through neighborhoods and highlight houses you love
• Tour a different neighborhood each week to become the local expert

Kayla’s walking strategy: “I’m showing up every day until I’ve gone on a walk in every neighborhood.” Take your dog, share the podcast you’re listening to, mention how many dogs or strollers you noticed. That’s the content cocktail in action — personal, local, and real estate all in one.

This content is engaging and memorable because it makes people remember YOU, not just your houses.

The Psychology Behind Why People Follow You

Noone sees Instagram as their organized house-hunting headquarters.

Think about why you follow people. You don’t follow Jessica Garvin for the oils — you follow her for her style, her house, her kids. You don’t follow Taylor Swift just in case she releases an album — you follow her for behind-the-scenes content with Travis, what she’s texting Selena Gomez.

People feel the same way about you. You’re not Taylor Swift, but you still have a brand people are curious about. Through social media, people have a chance to connect with you, but if all they see is “here’s another house, here’s another house,” you don’t give them that opportunity.

Stop hiding behind the real estate.

The point is not to become an influencer, but understanding the psychology behind people’s behavior on Instagram tells you why your content will either help you or hurt you.

Your Ultimate “No Clients, No Problem” Content List

Here’s your master list of things you can document every single day that are real estate-related:

Daily real estate activities:

• Prepping buyer folders
• Cleaning off your signs
• Putting signs in your trunk (even without a listing to go to)
• Your lock boxes and materials
• Emails you’re sending to your database
• Behind the scenes of your weekly email newsletter

Market and neighborhood content:

• What new listings hit the market
• How fast things are selling
• Average price ranges in your area
• Home equity reports (create one for yourself and share why it’s helpful)
• Your favorite listing of the week
• Driving through neighborhoods and highlighting houses you love

Be the resource for everything:

• Where to get pizza or gift cards
• What color white to paint the living room
• Go to your hardware store and pull free paint samples
• Target shopping lists for staging (white fluffy towels, faux plants, diffusers, candles)

Lead magnets and calls to action:

• Home equity analysis (“my three-day equity process”)
• Custom home searches
• Buyer questionnaires
• Prep your home for sale guides

More daily content ideas:

• Coffee you pick up on the way to the office
• Walking into your real estate office (be visible!)
• Books you’re reading
• Favorite neighborhoods in town
• Your take on the market this summer
• Go-to pool snacks and sunscreen
• First thing you do when kids get on the bus
• Incentives your lenders are offering
• Broker opens and open houses you attend
• Vacant listings you can tour

There’s Literally No Excuse…

It’s almost like there are zero excuses for not posting real estate content.

Live in a house? Share your story. Live in an apartment? Talk about saving for homeownership, your goals, what you’re most looking forward to when you buy your first house.

If you think it’s the market, it’s your marketing.

We’re not saying things are flying off the shelves or that you’re doing something wrong if you’re not closing every week. We’re saying if you’re not in conversation with people and you don’t have real estate content to share, it’s not because the market is dead — it’s because of your marketing.

You can always find something to market, no matter the market conditions.

Modern agents don’t make excuses. If you get in your head that anything can be content with a little creativity and the modern agent content cocktail, you could literally have months’ worth of content after this episode, regardless of your number of clients (but you’ll get them)!

Your 90-Day Challenge: Pick Your One Thing and Commit

It’s been summer and we’ve been going easy on you, but now it’s time to get things back in gear for fall.

Your homework assignment: Pick one thing you heard us talk about today that aligns with your personality. Are you the Monica? The Rachel? The Joey? What’s your angle?

What’s one thing you could repeat every single week, with a call to action that invites people to take the next step and start the real estate conversation?

What is your one thing? Commit to it for 90 days.

Don’t do it twice and say it didn’t work — it takes consistency and time. Pick your angle, stick with it, and watch what happens when you show up consistently with intention instead of just hoping for the best.

The ideas are endless, but all you really need to do is take one or two of these ideas and run with them. Your future clients are waiting for you to give them a reason to choose you, so give them one!

This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz.