The top producers of the past worked hard, using strategies like door knocking, open houses, cold calling, billboards, and grocery cart ads. Basically, if it put their face somewhere, they did it. And it worked… for the life they were willing to live.

But the game has completely changed. And we think most of those agents, if they heard what’s possible now (attracting clients from the comfort of your own home, using just your phone), would wish they had had that option!

In this episode, we’re redefining what it means to be a top producer in the modern age, so you can build a brand that works for you and doesn’t take over your life.

The Old Definition of “Top Producer” — And Why It Doesn’t Have to Be Yours

When most of us picture the top producer of the past, we picture someone crossing their arms on a billboard, having open houses every weekend and answering the phone no matter what time it is. Yes, they built something real, but what did their daily life look like?

Kayla grew up watching this firsthand. Her mom has been an agent her whole life, and she remembers driving to the grocery store to pick up the hot sheet because the internet didn’t exist yet. That was the world those top producers were building in. They had to outwork everyone because showing up physically was the only way to be seen.

The irony isn’t lost on us that some agents today still resist getting on camera or showing up in their stories, when the alternative used to be putting your face on a grocery cart. We’d take Instagram any day.

To be clear, those agents aren’t wrong for what they built. They focused on something, did it consistently, and grew their business because of it. But what it took to become a top producer 15 or 20 years ago is not what it takes now. The opportunities have changed. If you’re still following an outdated playbook when a better one exists, you’re making things harder on yourself.

The agents who seem more successful aren’t working with more time — they’re spending it differently. We’ve both watched people experience real success and felt genuinely inspired by it. But we also had a moment where we heard someone mention they paid someone else to wake up their kids in the morning and tuck them in at night. That was enough to make us ask: what are we actually willing to trade?

For some people, that trade makes total sense. No judgment. But you have to ask the question. Is it your time? Your energy? Your weekends? Your presence at dinner? One choice isn’t better than another — you just have to know what you want and build accordingly.

How to Reverse Engineer Your Dream Real Estate Business

Before you pick a marketing strategy, pick a destination. Whatever your dream business looks like has to line up with how you’re marketing yourself right now. The two are connected in ways most agents don’t think about.

Think of it like a road trip. You could take the freeway (fast, direct, a little stressful) or you could take the back roads (slower, more scenic, a lot more enjoyable). Which route is objectively best? Depends entirely on how soon you want to arrive and how you want to feel when you get there.

If your dream destination is more referrals, clients coming to you, no open houses on weekends, and the freedom to take a real vacation, ask yourself whether your current marketing is actually pointing you there. If your feed is nothing but just listed and just sold, you’re building a trophy case instead of referrals, and a trophy case doesn’t make someone pick up the phone and call you because their neighbor mentioned they’re thinking about selling.

Also worth looking at: what you’d eliminate if you could. Pull up the last 12 months of clients. Who were the most draining or time-consuming? Where did they come from? Are you paying for leads from a source that keeps bringing in the wrong fit? Doing open houses in towns you don’t even want to work in? Spreading yourself across eight zip codes when you could go deeper in one?

Sometimes the path to a better business is about cutting what isn’t working so you can put real energy behind what is.

The Best Marketer Wins — Not the Hardest Worker

You can be the best agent in your market and still lose. If no one knows you exist, or can’t remember your name when a friend asks for a recommendation, you don’t get the business. The most skilled agent doesn’t always win. The most visible one does.

We want to push back on the hustle mindset here, because we think it’s doing a lot of agents real harm. The idea that if you just outwork everyone you’ll win — it sounds motivating, but in practice it leads to exhaustion, not results. Stop measuring success by hours logged and start thinking about how to get more out of what you already have.

There’s also something we’ve noticed, especially among women in this industry: a guilt that comes with finding an easier way. Personal branding doesn’t require away-from-home hustle. It doesn’t cost a fortune. It doesn’t mean missing dinner or grinding until midnight. So when people see the results of it, they assume you got lucky because the work doesn’t look like what they’ve been told work is supposed to look like.

This isn’t a shortcut. It’s a smarter direction for your effort, one that builds something lasting instead of something you have to recreate from scratch every month.

What Bees Can Teach Us About Building a Sustainable Business

Chelsea went down a rabbit hole thinking about what produces a lot in nature — and landed on bees. Stay with us, because it’s actually a solid framework.

What makes a bee colony such a massive producer comes down to four things: unwavering focus, clear delegation of roles, paying attention to what’s working, and a balanced approach to energy and rest. Those four things map almost perfectly onto what makes a modern real estate business work.

Unwavering focus means you’re not veering off at every exit. Not getting distracted by the new shiny strategy, or copying what the agent down the street is doing, or rethinking your niche every six weeks. You pick your path and stay on it.

Delegation means being honest about what only you can do and what you can hand off — at home and in your business. What’s keeping you stuck in the weeds that someone else could handle?

Paying attention to what’s working is huge for marketing. Are people responding to your content and starting conversations in your DMs? If not, something in your messaging needs to shift. You should never just be posting and hoping but making adjustments and doubling down on what lands.

The agents who sell a lot of real estate and still have a life do these four things consistently.

Why Your Marketing Needs to Be a System, Not a Single Post

Something we talk about a lot inside Modern Agent Social Club: you don’t need more content ideas. You need a system.

It’s easy to look at one post that didn’t perform and think social media isn’t working. But that post might have been the thing that got someone’s attention, got them to click to your profile, and started building the trust that made them say yes when they eventually saw your ad. Remove one piece of the system and the rest stops working the way it should.

We also want to name something called the Yerkes-Dodson Law, because it explains why so many agents stall on marketing even when they know what they need to do. Performance improves with pressure, but only up to a point. Too little and there’s no urgency. Too much and you freeze, spiral, and eventually quit.

When you’re trying to figure out your marketing completely alone, the pressure gets so high it creates paralysis. You do nothing, and then you tell yourself social media doesn’t work for you.

That’s why having a plan, a community, and some accountability matters. Not because you can’t figure it out on your own, but because the right structure lowers the overwhelm and puts you somewhere you can actually execute. That’s what Modern Agent Social Club is built to do, take the questions off your plate so you can get to work.

Attention is the other piece. The way we capture and hold it now is so different from even ten years ago. You used to be able to post “looking to buy or sell, call me” and actually get calls — because you were one of three agents in your area doing anything on social. That pond is a lot bigger now. Standing out takes something more intentional than a graphic with your headshot and phone number.

How to Start Showing Up as a Modern Agent

Start with your brand mission. If you wrote down what you want people to say about you based on what you share on social media, what would it be? Get specific. Are you the agent who knows every coffee shop in the neighborhood? The one who helps families find the home that becomes the hangout house? The one who makes people feel like it’s okay to ask about their oak cabinets? Write it down. That’s your filter for everything you post.

From there, document instead of perform. You don’t need to produce polished content from scratch. Set a timer on your phone once a day, and when it goes off, capture something. A photo, a quick video, whatever you’re doing in that moment. On your way to a showing, at your favorite coffee spot, waiting in line at the farmer’s market for the sourdough. That’s your content. That’s also what makes your brand impossible to copy, because no one else has your life.

Your online presence and your real-life presence should be feeding each other. Go to the slip and slide afternoon. Host the cookout. Show up at local events. You’ll connect with more potential clients and referral sources in one afternoon than a week of posting ever gives you. Then bring it back to your stories and your feed. Tell the story of who you are as an agent who actually lives in this community.

The modern top producer isn’t hustling harder than everyone else. She’s showing up more intentionally — online and off — in a way that makes people think, when I’m ready, I already know exactly who I’m calling.

The grass grows where you water it. Pick your spot and start watering.