There’s a restaurant in our favorite Florida destination called Pickles. We drove by it for years and talked about it constantly. My family and I (hi, it’s just me Chelsea today!) thought about it every time we wanted a cheeseburger. And then one day, we finally walked in, and it instantly became one of our all-time favorite spots.

Pickles became our favorite restaurant before we ever became customers.

That’s exactly how familiarity works. And in this solo episode, I’m making the case that consistency on its own is not the goal. Familiarity is. The kind of presence that makes you the only agent someone can possibly think of when the moment arrives… whether they’re ready to buy, refer, or just ready to finally reach out.

Stop Chasing Consistency, and Start Building Familiarity

Something I hear all the time inside Modern Agent Social Club and Camp Modern Agent: “I just need to be more consistent.” And I get it. It feels like the answer. If you could just post more regularly, just show up more often, everything would click into place.

But consistent does not automatically equal referrals and clients.

I realized this so clearly on a trip to Door County, Wisconsin. We stumbled across a condo for sale in the building we were staying in, and I had absolutely no idea who to call. I did a quick Instagram search and couldn’t get a feel for anyone — no personality, no point of view, nothing that made me think, that’s my person. And I’m literally someone who teaches agents how to build brands. If I couldn’t find my go-to in a quick search, your sphere is having the same experience when it’s their turn.

So instead of asking yourself how can I be more consistent, start asking: how can I be more remembered? How can I be the one they think of first?

The method that is both easier and more effective than just “posting more” is this: be consistently familiar.

What Familiarity Does to the Human Brain

Familiarity is defined as the cognitive bias that causes us to trust, prefer, and feel comfortable with things we’ve encountered before.

Read that again. Trust, prefer, and feel comfortable. That’s exactly what we want our future clients to feel when they think of us.

Your brain is incredibly lazy, so it loves a shortcut. If it’s seen something 47 times, it’s like, yep, I know what that is, feels safe, let’s go. That’s why Pickles became our instant answer for cheeseburgers in Florida, even before we ever sat down to eat there. We’d seen it, talked about it, and thought about it so many times that it lived rent-free in our heads. When it was finally time to choose, there was no choosing — it was just obvious.

That is what you can become for the people in your sphere. So familiar that when the moment arrives, your name is the only one that comes to mind. They’ve already decided. You’re already their agent. They just haven’t called yet.

Most agents get stuck because they treat Instagram like a billboard, and then nothing happens, so they conclude that social media doesn’t work. But the agents who are truly getting results aren’t using it like a billboard. They’re using it like a neighborhood coffee shop. You keep seeing them, you know their order, you know their face, and eventually it just becomes part of your life.

Your Point of View: What Do You Want to Be Known For?

The first thing you need to create familiarity through your content is a point of view, something specific you want to be known for as an agent.

This could be a price point or property type you specialize in. It could be an opinion you hold strongly, like the fact that sellers should always repaint before listing, or that buyers should reach out six months before they’re ready. It could be the objections you hear constantly from clients, the ones where you know the right answer, but it’s hard to say in the moment. Those are gold. Lead with those.

Think about what you want people to say about you when you come up at a dinner party or in a group chat. What reputation do you want to have? You can build that through your content, but only if you’re specific enough.

There was a creator who recently went viral by getting crystal clear on one very specific thing: talking on camera. She coined a term, stayed completely focused on that one idea, and turned it into a seven-figure business in a short amount of time. People had been talking on camera for years. She just got so precise about it that her audience could not confuse her with anyone else.

The more specific your point of view, the more clearly people can hold it in their minds, and the more impossible it becomes to forget you. Going broad to appeal to everyone is actually what makes you forgettable.

One of our members did something brilliant with this. She started talking about how it’s okay if your house doesn’t look like an Instagram kitchen. It’s okay if you have oak cabinets. You can love where you live, even if it isn’t perfectly curated. What an angle — because the truth is, most of the homes we’re showing every day aren’t Pottery Barn. Giving someone permission to love their home anyway is a point of view that resonates, and it’s one that no one else in her market was owning.

Show Up Local and Let Your Brand Cues Do the Rest

Once you have your point of view, the next two pieces are where it really comes to life.

Local content is one of the most powerful things you can do for your brand, and it doesn’t require becoming a local events page. It just means documenting where you actually go. Where did you get the takeout pizza? What coffee shop are you working from on Tuesday? Which ice cream place do you take the kids after baseball practice? When your social media aligns with your actual social life, it becomes effortless and completely uncopyable, because no one else has your exact life.

I used to always go to Roots Coffee Bar when I started in real estate, so I became known for it. You can do the same thing with one spot, one event, one recurring piece of your week. And when you pair that kind of local presence with a niche focus — like one of our members who stopped trying to serve all of Austin and went deep on Pflugerville — the results can be dramatic. More followers and real conversations because she stopped being a tiny fish in a giant pond and became the obvious choice in a smaller one.

The third piece is brand cues — the visual, repeatable elements that make you recognizable before someone even remembers your name. Bright pink lipstick. A Diet Coke in every reel. Always filming in the front seat of your car. A rotating collection of whimsical coffee mugs. A specific color palette you wear on repeat.

These things sound almost too simple to matter, but they compound. Stephanie Schutt of the Pretty Vocal podcast always wears sunglasses in her face-to-camera videos, and when she launched her podcast, sunglasses went on the cover. The podcast looks exactly like her content, because she understands that familiarity is the whole point. BryAnn Buhl is the same way: the chocolate browns, the warm neutrals, the corner workspace. Her account is so cohesive that you could recognize a piece of her content in the wild without ever seeing her handle.

Your brand cues don’t need to be elaborate. They just need to be consistent.

Your Action Plan: One of Each

Before the next episode — which will teach you exactly how to weave all of this into actual content — pick one of each.

One point of view. What do you want to be known for? What could you talk about over and over, connect back to real estate, and make completely yours?

One local angle. It doesn’t have to be a whole strategy — just one spot, one event, one recurring place that’s already part of your real life.

One brand cue. One visual thing that starts showing up consistently in your content so that over time, people recognize you before they even register your name.

The results won’t show up overnight, and that’s the point. As The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson teaches, the most successful outcomes come from simple habits that are easy to do but also easy to skip. The agents who win on social media aren’t doing anything wildly complicated. They’re just doing the small things on repeat and letting the results compound.

Pickles became our favorite restaurant before we ever became customers. Your people will think of you first long before they’re ready to call. Good marketing works that way, and the only question is whether you’re showing up consistently enough, and familiarly enough, to be the one they think of when the moment finally arrives.