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“Would you list with anybody but me?”

I asked her that on camera.

Not to fish for a compliment. I asked because I wanted you to hear the answer from her mouth, not mine.

She laughed like I’d asked if water was wet.

No. She wasn’t listing with anybody but me. Africa, Antarctica, wherever I was, she was going to wait. And she did.

In Part 1, I told you how I came home from Morocco with two listings. This time I’m opening the books: the touches, the calendar, the math, and the part nobody wants to hear about, which is the part you have to do yourself.

Grab your pen. This one’s a working session.

Relationships Trump Conversations. Every Single Time.

People ask me what skills they need to win in real estate.

Two. Relationship skills and conversation skills.

And if I had to rank them, relationship skills win, hands down.

Saying the right thing won’t carry you. I’ve watched agents memorize every objection handler in the book and still lose the listing to the agent who sent the seller’s mom a get-well card. Having the right heart, the right motivation, and a real connection with people will take you places a script never will.

Real estate is nothing but relationships and conversations. But the relationship comes first. The conversation just tells you where the relationship already is.

How A Keller Williams Buzzword Turned Into My Whole Business

I didn’t come up with the idea of touching your database. I want to be clear about that.

When I was with Keller Williams, they talked about touch points constantly. It was everyday business. Touch your database. Touch your sphere. Hit your touches.

So I knew about touch points.

But somewhere along the way, I started asking a different question.

Touching people is one thing. How do I actually connect with them?

Because I can tell you to touch a client 36 times a year, and you can lay out 36 touches by Friday. Thirty-six emails. Done. Box checked.

But 36 emails from somebody you don’t know is called spam.

Thirty-six touches from somebody who knows your kids’ names, remembers you were thinking about Alabama, and invited you to their birthday party? That’s called family.

Same number. Different depth.

That question, touch versus connection, is where my database was born.

I Had To Put A Number On Love

This part might sound cold. Stay with me.

We all know SMART goals. Specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound. We use them for sales, for income, for weight loss, for paying off the car.

When I decided I was going to build relationships for a living, I realized I’d never set a SMART goal for a relationship. “Build better relationships” is a wish, not a goal. It’s not specific. You can’t measure it. You can’t tell in December if you did it.

So I had to quantify it.

How many touches? What kind? How often? Documented where? Followed up when?

Some folks hear that and think it makes relationships fake. I’d argue the opposite. Your grandmother didn’t love you any less because she had every grandbaby’s birthday written on the kitchen calendar. The calendar is how her love showed up on time.

The system is the calendar. The love is still yours.

Every Touch Is A Deposit

Here’s how I want you to look at your database from now on.

It’s a savings account.

Every time you contact somebody, that’s a deposit. A drop in the bucket. Small on its own. But it earns interest, and down the road, it’s something you can withdraw from.

Some of y’all grew up around a susu, or a sou-sou, or a partner hand, or whatever your family called it. Everybody puts in a little every week. Nobody gets rich off one week’s deposit. But when it’s your turn, you get a lump sum you never could’ve saved alone, because you were consistent and so was everybody else.

That’s a database.

My client got deposits from me for five years. Newsletters, neighborhood updates, birthday texts, quarterly calls, conversations. Not one of those touches sold her house.

All of them together did.

And there’s a rule for any savings account: if you don’t record the deposit, you can’t prove it’s there. So every touch gets documented. Every time. More on that in a minute.

The 36-Touch Plan, For Free

I promised I’d give you free game, so here it is. This is the skeleton of a 36-touch year.

Touches One Through 12: The Monthly Newsletter

Twelve newsletters a year. One on the first of every month.

You don’t need to write a novel. Cover what’s happening in real estate, what’s happening in their local market, and something useful for their life and their house.

If you don’t know what to put in it, here’s a starter calendar you can steal:

→ January: Your local market recap from last year & what to watch this year

→ February: Love your home. Small upgrades that make a house feel new

→ March: Spring cleaning checklist, room by room

→ April: Gardening & curb appeal basics

→ May: Check your home insurance before storm season

→ June: Summer energy savings & AC maintenance

→ July: Cookout recipes & hosting tips

→ August: Back-to-school organization for busy households

→ September: Fall maintenance. Gutters, filters, & furnace check

→ October: Mid-year market check-in & what your home might be worth

→ November: Holiday hosting, plus a recipe or two

→ December: Year in review & a thank-you to your clients

Don’t want to design one from scratch? You can buy newsletter templates on Etsy for about $3. Three dollars. Stop telling me you can’t afford a newsletter.

Touches 13 Through 36: The Neighborhood Nurture

My brokerage has a monthly neighborhood nurture. You put your client on it, and it automatically sends them updates on what homes in their area are doing, selling, and going for.

I run mine biweekly. Every two weeks.

That’s 24 touches a year.

Twelve newsletters plus 24 neighborhood updates. That’s 36.

How The Calendar Actually Flows

Here’s what a month looks like on her file.

→ The 1st: Newsletter

→ The 10th: Neighborhood update

→ The 24th: Neighborhood update

→ The next 1st: Newsletter again

Roughly every 10 days, she hears from me. And I didn’t lift a finger for any of those 36 touches, because they run on automation and AI.

When I pulled up her file on screen, that’s literally what you saw. Newsletter. Newsletter. Neighborhood nurture. Neighborhood nurture. Neighborhood nurture. Newsletter. A rhythm, like a heartbeat.

Then Comes The Part Automation Can’t Do

Thirty-six touches will keep your name in their inbox.

They won’t make you family.

So you add four calls a year. One call a quarter.

Monthly newsletter. Biweekly neighborhood nurture. Quarterly call.

That’s 40 touches a year, and that is enough to secure your pipeline for the future.

But I want you to notice something about how those 40 break down.

Thirty-six are automated. Four are you.

Ninety percent of the work runs without you. The 10% that’s left is the part that actually builds the relationship.

The Depth Ladder

Not all touches carry the same weight. Think of them like rungs on a ladder.

→ Rung one, automated and general: Newsletters. Market updates. They keep you present.

→ Rung two, automated and personal: Neighborhood values for their home. Birthday reminders. They show you know who they are.

→ Rung three, personal and reminded: A text you wrote yourself because your smart plan told you it was time.

→ Rung four, live and personal: A phone call. A real conversation.

→ Rung five, life-sharing: You invite them into your life. Your party, your celebration, your milestone.

Most agents live on rung one and wonder why nobody calls them.

The deeper you touch people, the more the relationship solidifies. And a solid relationship secures the business before there’s even a business to secure.

I Invited My Client To My Birthday Party

Let me show you rung five in real life.

Her birthday smart plan fired, like it does every year. I wanted to mail her a card, but I didn’t have her address on file. That’s a gap in my own database, and I’m telling you because I want you to see it isn’t perfect.

So I did something else.

I invited her to my birthday party.

My birthday. The same birthday that sent me to Morocco.

Sit with that for a second. The client who texted me her lockbox code while I was in Africa was invited to celebrate the birthday that took me there.

That’s not a sales tactic. That’s how I treat people I care about. But it’s also exactly why she knew where I was, why she wasn’t worried, and why she waited.

When you let people into your life, they let you into theirs. Including the part where they sell their house.

My Mother Isn’t Buying With Anybody But Me. Neither Are About 40 Other People.

If my mother buys real estate, she’s not calling anybody but me.

Obviously.

But here’s what I want you to hear. I’ve got about 40 people in my database who are just as locked in as my mother. They’re not doing business with anybody but me. I don’t care what happens in the market. I don’t care who knocks on their door with a postcard. We’re locked in.

My client isn’t the only one I have this kind of relationship with. My relationships with the people in my database go deep. I mean deep.

That’s when business gets fun. I don’t look at them like business. They really are like family.

What I’m doing from a business perspective is something I learned how to do a long time ago. Now I’m reaping the benefits of good relationships.

Do The Math On 40 Locked-In People

Let’s say you had 40 people who would never use another agent. Forty people on four calls a year.

That’s 160 calls a year.

Divide by 52 weeks.

About three calls a week.

Three.

Now compare that to the agent who’s on the phone three hours a day calling strangers and getting hung up on before lunch.

One Client Could’ve Fed Me All Year

I’ve had one relationship generate $192,000 in GCI over 19 months.

One relationship. Repeat business. Referrals. Family members. All of it running through one person who trusted me.

When I sat with that number, something clicked.

One client could have fed me for the whole year.

Think about what so many agents put themselves through instead. Three hours a day on the phone with strangers. Wondering if they’re good enough. Feeling like nobody’s talking to them. Doubting whether they picked the right career.

That emotional tax is real. I’ve watched it crush good agents. Smart, gifted, hardworking people who just never built anything that compounds.

And it doesn’t have to be that way. The answer isn’t more strangers. The answer is deeper roots with the people you already have.

Structure Is What Gives You Room To Be Creative

Some people hear “system” and think it’ll make them robotic.

Let nobody lie to you.

Without structure, you’ll never see creativity, because creativity with no boundaries has nothing to push against.

Think about a gospel choir. When the soloist takes off on that run and the whole church jumps to its feet, it looks spontaneous. Like the Spirit just fell on her. Maybe it did. But that choir rehearsed Tuesday night and Thursday night. The musicians know the chord changes cold. The director knows exactly when to bring everybody back in.

The structure is what lets her fly.

Your database is the rehearsal. The newsletter goes out on the 1st. The neighborhood update goes out on the 10th and the 24th. The call alert comes every quarter. That’s the chord chart.

What you say on the call, the birthday party invitation, the voice note you send when you see their kid’s graduation post, that’s the run.

The structure is there so you have the freedom to get creative. Not to replace you.

Know Exactly What To Say On The Call

I know what a lot of you are thinking.

“Cheesette, I can set up the automations. I just don’t know what to say when I call.”

That’s the gap. You know you need to touch people. You just don’t know how.

And most of the time, you’re trying to sell people when you should be focused on the relationship. The sale will come. It always comes when the relationship is right.

Here’s the other secret. You probably don’t need to talk as much as you do. Most of the work on a good call is asking the right question and then listening.

I’m going to tell you what I’ll always tell you.

The what is free. I just gave you the what. Thirty-six touches. Forty with calls. The calendar. The math. Take it.

The how is what you pay me for.

Database to Databank Master Course is the how. It breaks down how to call, what questions to ask, how to build relationships that go past “how’s the house?”, and how to track all of it so the relationship turns into revenue you can predict. You won’t come out of it ever again sitting on the phone not knowing what to say to a client.

It’s $297.

And please don’t email me asking which course you should take. Y’all spend more than that on Chris Brown tickets. Enroll in Database to Databank, and let’s get to work on the part of your business that pays you back for years.

What A Well-Documented File Looks Like

Back to her file, because I want you to see what documentation actually looks like.

I don’t do anything in my database without documenting it. Nothing.

Scroll through her record and here’s what you’d find:

→ Every newsletter, logged

→ Every neighborhood update, logged

→ The birthday smart plan, and what I did with it

→ My texts to her

→ Our emails back and forth

→ Notes from our calls

→ The day I unsubscribed her from plans that no longer fit

→ A note from when she reached out on September 8th: seems like we might list in October

That last note matters. A conversation became a date. A date became a plan. A plan became a lockbox code.

Re-Tag Before The Next Season Starts

In Part 1, I told you I was taking her off her past client plan and her neighborhood nurture because she’s selling.

But I’m not just removing things. I’m also looking ahead.

Once she sells this house, she’ll be in a position to buy something else. So in my database, she’s moving toward buyer again.

That’s the cycle. Buyer becomes owner. Owner becomes seller. Seller becomes buyer. Every season, I update her file so my content matches her life.

A database that doesn’t change when people’s lives change isn’t a database. It’s an archive.

If You Don’t Track It, You Can’t Change It

Here’s a line I want you to write down.

If you don’t track it, you can’t measure it. If you can’t measure it, you can’t change it.

The reason I know a single relationship brought in $192,000 is because I tracked it. Every deal, every referral, every family member who came through her door. If I hadn’t, it would’ve just been “a really good client.” Nice feeling. No lesson.

Because I tracked it, I learned something that reshaped how I build my whole business.

What I’d Have You Track Starting This Week

→ Every touch, logged on the contact’s file. Automated and personal.

→ Every call, with a note written before you dial the next number.

→ Every referral, tagged to the person who sent it.

→ GCI by relationship, not just by transaction. Who’s your $192K person? You might already have one and not know it.

→ Life events mentioned, with a rough timeline. “Might move in two years” is a pipeline entry, not small talk.

You can’t build a predictable business on memory. You build it on records.

Execution Is King

Now let me get on y’all for a minute, because somebody needs to.

When people take my course, I get texts.

“Cheesette, I’m loving this!”

I appreciate you. I do.

But that’s not enough.

Loving it doesn’t close deals. Knowing it doesn’t close deals. You can’t expect results from knowing.

Execution is king.

The course gives you a system. Then you have to time block to execute it. Consistently. Not when you feel inspired. Not when the market’s hot. Every week.

It’s like January at the gym. The parking lot is packed. Everybody’s got new sneakers and a plan. By March, you can park right by the front door. Same gym. Same equipment. The only thing that changed is who kept showing up.

Build Your Weekly Execution Block

Here’s a simple way to start.

→ Pick one recurring block each week. Same day, same time. Treat it like a closing appointment you can’t move.

→ Make your calls first. Whatever your quarterly call math gave you, three, five, eight, knock those out before anything else.

→ Document as you go. Notes before the next dial.

→ Review your automations. Make sure your newsletter is scheduled and your neighborhood nurture is running.

→ Update tags. Anybody whose life changed this week gets their file touched.

An hour or two a week. That’s the cost of a locked-in database.

If time management is the thing keeping you from executing, and for a lot of agents it is, that’s foundation work. Before you can run 40 touches a year on autopilot, you need to know where your hours are going, which work is effort and which is efficiency, and what your economic & activity plans actually require of your week. How to Start & Structure Your Real Estate Business lays that groundwork, from your CEO mindset to your time blocks to your sales systems. Build the structure there, so the rest of what I’m teaching has somewhere to live.

I Needed Those Two Listings. Now They’re Sitting.

Let me be honest about the other side of this story.

I needed those two listings. Business is slow, and I’m not above saying it.

But I’m tired of taking listings and watching them sit.

Right now, my listings are sitting three times longer than I’ve ever had listings sit. The market is the market, and it’s been humbling.

So guess what that’s required of me?

A different strategy.

I’m revamping my listing strategy right now. I don’t have it all figured out, and I’m not going to pretend I do. When it’s done, I’ll share what I learned.

But I want you to see something here.

The relationships got me the listings. The relationships didn’t stop because the market got hard. What has to change is my strategy for the part the market controls. The part I control, the relationships, is still solid.

Don’t confuse the two. When the market slows, agents tend to tear up the wrong thing. They stop calling. They stop sending newsletters. They go quiet on the one asset that still works. Then they keep doing the same thing on the part that’s broken.

Protect what’s working. Rebuild what isn’t.

In Due Season

Galatians 6:9 says, let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

Five years of newsletters. Five years of neighborhood updates. Birthday texts. Quarterly calls. A birthday party invitation. Notes typed up after phone calls nobody else will ever see.

Some of those touches probably felt pointless while I was making them. A newsletter about gutter cleaning doesn’t feel like ministry.

But in due season, she reached out. In due season, she waited for me. In due season, she texted me a lockbox code while I was on the other side of the world.

I give God the glory for that. For her. For the relationships. For a business that keeps reaping while I’m resting.

Don’t faint. Keep depositing.

I love y’all with the love of the Lord. And it’s deep, baby. You can’t do nothing about it.

Coach Cheese 💕