In conversations with 100s of agents since the May 1st release of The 13% book, here's what jumped out.

Top agents strongly resonated with one element of the 'FIRE' analogy.

It spoke deeply to their current challenge, and revealed a lot about their mindset and daily discipline.

But new and average agents resonated with a different element because they have a completely different challenge.

So in this episode, we flip the script, with producer Matt Johnson interviewing Lance about The 13% book and lessons learned from real agent stories.

What You'll Discover In This Episode

• How the FIRE analogy reveals your current stage and your potential

• What to do once you know your current stage

• How to build focus and resiliency

• The element that separates the top .1% from the 'rest of the best'

About Your Hosts

Lance Billingsley is a seasoned real estate professional with over a decade of experience in agent development and business coaching. Since January 2021, he has served as the Vice President of Agent Development at Navi Title Agency, where he leverages his extensive industry knowledge to mentor and support real estate agents. Before his tenure at Navi Title, Lance co-owned a top-performing real estate team at Realty ONE Group, achieving recognition as one of the company's top five teams. He also served as a business coach for Tom Ferry.

Dave Richards is a well-respected business coach working with CEOs, entrepreneurs, mortgage and real estate professionals, and others. With over 25+ years of executive leadership experience, he coaches and consults with the top professionals and organizations in their respective industries. Capitalizing on his certifications in Human Behavior, he specializes in building and optimizing high-performance teams and tackling difficult decisions that hold his clients back. He easily connects with entrepreneurs to help identify and communicate their vision, define their culture, and increase their profits and growth in today's dynamic marketplace.

Check out this episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and don't forget to leave a review if you like what you heard. Your review feeds the algorithm, so our show reaches more people. Thank you!

What if your content is making buyers and sellers less likely to reach out to you?

We're living in a world where younger consumers assume every review is faked. What if agents are creating content that worked 10 years ago, but comes across as inauthentic and condescending today?

In this segment, we revisit a conversation with Tessabella Jelten, marketing strategist, real estate coach, digital marketing educator, and founder of The Neighborhood and House of Agents Academy.

Tessabella shared her unique insights on how to shift your content for buyers and sellers in 2026.

You'll discover…

• how to be more positive and authentic in your content

• how "teaching" erodes trust accidentally

• how to make people feel seen (not less intelligent)

Guest Bio

Tessabella Jelten is a widely acclaimed marketing strategist, real estate coach, and digital marketing educator, and the founder of The Neighborhood and House of Agents Academy. She has been working exclusively in the real estate space for over eight years, managing more than 450 agent accounts, including TV celebrities on HGTV, Bravo, and Netflix. Her journey began directly out of high school, when she began her career as a bootstrapped real estate investor with no money to her name, sitting at her laptop trying to figure out the best way to acquire properties, raise capital, brand and market them, and understand the ins and outs of real estate. Through this process, she successfully built a name for herself in the valley, remodeling and restoring historic properties. The entire time, she was documenting the process through social media and building a brand that later became a residential real estate team partnered with the NBA's Phoenix Suns. Through years of real estate and marketing experience in the field, Tessabella developed a unique approach to building, scaling, and branding real estate companies. Through strategic networking, years of hard work, and a relentless passion for her work, she's gone on to work with some of the largest names in the industry to build entire marketing suites, lead generation funnels, and commercially recognized brands. Through the years of trial and error, she eventually cracked the code and has since been on a massive growth trajectory, helping real estate professionals around the world through her signature success 4S Formula. Follow @tessaabellaa on Instagram.

About Your Hosts

Lance Billingsley is a seasoned real estate professional with over a decade of experience in agent development and business coaching. Since January 2021, he has served as the Vice President of Agent Development at Navi Title Agency, where he leverages his extensive industry knowledge to mentor and support real estate agents. Before his tenure at Navi Title, Lance co-owned a top-performing real estate team at Realty ONE Group, achieving recognition as one of the company's top five teams. He also served as a business coach for Tom Ferry.

Dave Richards is a well-respected business coach working with CEOs, entrepreneurs, mortgage and real estate professionals, and others. With over 25+ years of executive leadership experience, he coaches and consults with the top professionals and organizations in their respective industries. Capitalizing on his certifications in Human Behavior, he specializes in building and optimizing high-performance teams and tackling difficult decisions that hold his clients back. He easily connects with entrepreneurs to help identify and communicate their vision, define their culture, and increase their profits and growth in today's dynamic marketplace.

Real estate agents are taught to build their business like independent entrepreneurs. But independence can become a ceiling when the agent is trying to generate leads, nurture relationships, manage transactions, follow up, keep up with technology, and deliver a great client experience all at once.

In today's market, the agents who grow are not always the ones with more hustle or more leads. They are the ones who learn how to build leverage around themselves through better systems, better support, better follow-up, better technology, and a clearer understanding of the environment they actually need to perform.

Because as competition increases and consumers expect more transparency, the lone-wolf version of real estate is getting harder to sustain.

In this episode, we're joined by Jason Aleem of Redfin to talk about what agents at any brokerage can learn from more systemized models of real estate, why some agents stall before they scale, how AI is changing the way agents work, and why the future may belong to agents who can combine independence with leverage.

What You'll Discover In This Episode

• Why agents hit a ceiling when they try to build the business entirely on their own

• What agents can learn from more systemized brokerage models, even if they work at a traditional firm

• Why more leads do not matter if the agent cannot convert, nurture, and service them consistently

• How leverage changes an agent's ability to produce at a higher volume

• What separates an agent doing 10 to 15 deals a year from one who can grow into 40, 50, or more

• How to think about the trade-off between independence, support, structure, and scale

• Why the agent is increasingly becoming the quarterback of a larger transaction experience

• Why consumer choice and transparency are reshaping how agents need to communicate value

• Why industry headlines can distract agents from the work that actually keeps them in business

• How AI is already changing search, follow-up, listing prep, and productivity

• Why agents should think of AI as leverage, not a replacement for the relationship

About the Guest

Jason Aleem is the Chief of Real Estate Services at Redfin. Jason leads Redfin's nationwide salesforce of real estate agents. He oversees the brokerage's client service and sales strategy as well as agent training and development. Since joining Redfin in 2010 as the company's first hire in Texas, he has been instrumental in growing the company and has held numerous leadership roles.

About Your Hosts

Lance Billingsley is a seasoned real estate professional with over a decade of experience in agent development and business coaching. Since January 2021, he has served as the Vice President of Agent Development at Navi Title Agency, where he leverages his extensive industry knowledge to mentor and support real estate agents. Before his tenure at Navi Title, Lance co-owned a top-performing real estate team at Realty ONE Group, achieving recognition as one of the company's top five teams. He also served as a business coach for Tom Ferry.

Dave Richards is a well-respected business coach working with CEOs, entrepreneurs, mortgage and real estate professionals, and others. With over 25+ years of executive leadership experience, he coaches and consults with the top professionals and organizations in their respective industries. Capitalizing on his certifications in Human Behavior, he specializes in building and optimizing high-performance teams and tackling difficult decisions that hold his clients back. He easily connects with entrepreneurs to help identify and communicate their vision, define their culture, and increase their profits and growth in today's dynamic marketplace.

Check out this episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and don't forget to leave a review if you like what you heard. Your review feeds the algorithm, so our show reaches more people. Thank you!

Most agents think leadership starts when they build a team, open a brokerage, or finally have people reporting to them. But leadership starts much earlier than that.

It starts when a buyer is scared, the inspection gets messy, the lender needs one more thing, the client does not understand what is happening, and the agent has to decide whether they are going to panic with them or lead them through it.

For real estate agents, leadership is not just about managing people. It is about how you show up when people are looking to you for steadiness, clarity, and direction. Clients are making one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives, and many of them are terrified, even when they do not say it out loud.

In this episode, we unpack what leadership really looks like before, during, and after the title. We talk about influence, presence, fear, emotional responsibility, feedback, team dynamics, and the shift from being a producer to becoming the kind of leader other people can actually trust.

About Your Hosts

Lance Billingsley is a seasoned real estate professional with over a decade of experience in agent development and business coaching. Since January 2021, he has served as the Vice President of Agent Development at Navi Title Agency, where he leverages his extensive industry knowledge to mentor and support real estate agents. Before his tenure at Navi Title, Lance co-owned a top-performing real estate team at Realty ONE Group, achieving recognition as one of the company's top five teams. He also served as a business coach for Tom Ferry.

Dave Richards is a well-respected business coach working with CEOs, entrepreneurs, mortgage and real estate professionals, and others. With over 25+ years of executive leadership experience, he coaches and consults with the top professionals and organizations in their respective industries. Capitalizing on his certifications in Human Behavior, he specializes in building and optimizing high-performance teams and tackling difficult decisions that hold his clients back. He easily connects with entrepreneurs to help identify and communicate their vision, define their culture, and increase their profits and growth in today's dynamic marketplace.

Check out this episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and don't forget to leave a review if you like what you heard. Your review feeds the algorithm, so our show reaches more people. Thank you!

In 2026, real estate agents have more brokerage options than ever.

Nice problem to have, but that doesn't make the decision less confusing.

There are different split structures, flat fees, 100% commission models, rev share, teams, virtual brokerages, boutique brands, mergers, and acquisitions.

So it's getting harder to answer the question: what brokerage should I grow my business in?

Do you choose the best split, brand, leads, community, or training?

The answer is…it depends. With so many brokerage options, the real deciding factor is if that model matches the season of business you are actually in.

The wrong environment can make this business feel heavier than it already is. You can have the license, the ambition, and the work ethic, but still end up isolated, unsupported, or surrounded by a model that does not fit what you actually need right now.

So what should you be looking for in your next brokerage?

In this episode, we unpack this with real estate leader and president of HomeSmart, Stacey Onnen.

Stacey has seen brokerages from almost every angle, so she understands how you can make the right choice. We talk about why the brokerage decision should really be about the season you're in, and how that can change the choice you make.

Guest Bio

Stacey Onnen is the President of HomeSmart and an experienced real estate executive known for driving growth, operational excellence, and innovation across startups, scaling companies, and mature organizations. She has led large-scale virtual teams and overseen operations for major real estate organizations, including eXp Realty LLC, one of the fastest-growing companies in the industry. Throughout her career, Stacey has built a reputation for helping companies scale in competitive markets while strengthening systems, team leadership, agent experience, and operational performance. Her work spans operations, sales, project management, public relations, employee development, and virtual workforce leadership, giving her a broad view of what brokerages need to grow and what agents need to succeed. With experience across national real estate brands and high-growth environments, Stacey brings a practical, behind-the-scenes perspective on brokerage models, agent support, leadership, culture, and the changing value proposition in real estate. Connect with Stacey on LinkedIn.

About Your Hosts

Lance Billingsley is a seasoned real estate professional with over a decade of experience in agent development and business coaching. Since January 2021, he has served as the Vice President of Agent Development at Navi Title Agency, where he leverages his extensive industry knowledge to mentor and support real estate agents. Before his tenure at Navi Title, Lance co-owned a top-performing real estate team at Realty ONE Group, achieving recognition as one of the company's top five teams. He also served as a business coach for Tom Ferry.

Dave Richards is a well-respected business coach working with CEOs, entrepreneurs, mortgage and real estate professionals, and others. With over 25+ years of executive leadership experience, he coaches and consults with the top professionals and organizations in their respective industries. Capitalizing on his certifications in Human Behavior, he specializes in building and optimizing high-performance teams and tackling difficult decisions that hold his clients back. He easily connects with entrepreneurs to help identify and communicate their vision, define their culture, and increase their profits and growth in today's dynamic marketplace.

Check out this episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and don't forget to leave a review if you like what you heard. Your review feeds the algorithm, so our show reaches more people. Thank you!

Real estate agents are always chasing a new marketing idea, trend or platform - and in the era of AI - another content prompt.

But you don't need that in this market, what you need is a system.

The agents who grow consistently aren't just posting more. They're building a repeatable way to attract new people, keep those people engaged, and turn attention into actual conversations.

That's the part many agents miss. They treat marketing like a collection of isolated activities, instead of one connected engine that moves people from awareness to response.

The real opportunity is not just creating content. It's learning how to use timely market information to stay relevant, give people a reason to pay attention, and then follow up when that attention creates an opening.

In this segment, we revisit a practical conversation with Jimmy Mackin, entrepreneur, real estate marketing expert, and founder of ListingLeads.

Jimmy lays out the three activities that drive growth for agents: attracting new people, engaging them with timely and relevant content, and converting that engagement through one-to-one follow-up.

He also shares a simple follow-up message agents can use to turn market interest into real conversations with potential sellers.

About Your Hosts

Lance Billingsley is a seasoned real estate professional with over a decade of experience in agent development and business coaching. Since January 2021, he has served as the Vice President of Agent Development at Navi Title Agency, where he leverages his extensive industry knowledge to mentor and support real estate agents. Before his tenure at Navi Title, Lance co-owned a top-performing real estate team at Realty ONE Group, achieving recognition as one of the company's top five teams. He also served as a business coach for Tom Ferry.

Dave Richards is a well-respected business coach working with CEOs, entrepreneurs, mortgage and real estate professionals, and others. With over 25+ years of executive leadership experience, he coaches and consults with the top professionals and organizations in their respective industries. Capitalizing on his certifications in Human Behavior, he specializes in building and optimizing high-performance teams and tackling difficult decisions that hold his clients back. He easily connects with entrepreneurs to help identify and communicate their vision, define their culture, and increase their profits and growth in today's dynamic marketplace.

Check out this episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and don't forget to leave a review if you like what you heard. Your review feeds the algorithm, so our show reaches more people. Thank you!

In real estate, agents are constantly searching for the next lead source, marketing tactic, or prospecting strategy.

But sometimes the biggest opportunities aren't new at all. They're tools and strategies agents already have access to, but don't fully understand how to use.

From pricing strategies that build credibility, to industry changes many agents resist, to referral systems that eliminate the need for cold calling, small shifts in how you approach the business can completely change how your pipeline grows.

The challenge is that many agents either overlook these opportunities or misunderstand how powerful they can be.

So how do you turn everyday parts of the business into real competitive advantages?

In this episode, three real estate leaders break down strategies that can help agents work smarter, build stronger relationships, and create more consistent business.

In this episode;

• Tom Canale on using CMAs as a competitive advantage vs. guessing and hoping you're right

• Debra E-Leon on treating iBuyers as a value-add, not the enemy

• Michael Maher on a strategy better than cold calling

About Your Hosts

Lance Billingsley is a seasoned real estate professional with over a decade of experience in agent development and business coaching. Since January 2021, he has served as the Vice President of Agent Development at Navi Title Agency, where he leverages his extensive industry knowledge to mentor and support real estate agents. Before his tenure at Navi Title, Lance co-owned a top-performing real estate team at Realty ONE Group, achieving recognition as one of the company's top five teams. He also served as a business coach for Tom Ferry.

Dave Richards is a well-respected business coach working with CEOs, entrepreneurs, mortgage and real estate professionals, and others. With over 25+ years of executive leadership experience, he coaches and consults with the top professionals and organizations in their respective industries. Capitalizing on his certifications in Human Behavior, he specializes in building and optimizing high-performance teams and tackling difficult decisions that hold his clients back. He easily connects with entrepreneurs to help identify and communicate their vision, define their culture, and increase their profits and growth in today's dynamic marketplace.

Check out this episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and don't forget to leave a review if you like what you heard. Your review feeds the algorithm, so our show reaches more people. Thank you!