More Than Real Estate

Episode 91: How to Get Real Estate Leads From Instagram in less than 20 Hours a Week More Than Real Estate with Ashley Walker

Getting real estate leads from Instagram can feel like a second full-time job, especially when you already have kids, clients, and a calendar that never stops. Crystal Ortiz, a Long Beach, California realtor and single mom of two, is on track for about $20 million in production this year, working roughly 20 hours a week. I'm Ashley Walker, and I had Crystal on to break down how Instagram became the reason she almost doubled her business.

When Crystal joined Socially Sold about a year and a half ago, she had 1,600 followers and a feed of just listed flyers, soccer games, and nights out with friends. It took four to six months of being coachable before it clicked, and her first big post hit 250,000 views. Now over 60% of her followers are women 38 to 48 who live in Long Beach or Los Angeles. That's her ideal client, in her market, every time she posts. We talk about her client avatar, how she became the local expert, and why showing up as herself brings in clients who feel like friends.

This one is for the agent who wants a business that fits around her kids instead of swallowing them. You'll hear why Crystal says "the course is gonna be as good as the time that you put into it."

✨ $20 million in about 20 hours a week — Crystal is on track for about $20 million in production this year and has almost doubled her business since the course. "Listen, girl, I'm working, like, 20 hours a week." As a single mom of two, she could crank harder, but the flexibility is the point.

✨ Stop playing the role of a real estate agent — Crystal started at Rodeo Realty, around agents selling $9 million-plus homes in the Hollywood Hills. "I was, like, playing the role of a real estate agent." Now she posts about the Rams and Sunday surf sessions, and a stranger from Instagram scheduled a showing after 3:00 so Crystal wouldn't miss the game.

✨ Live in give energy — My rule for content is to live in give energy instead of get energy. Crystal's list of favorite taco spots turned up three she had never heard of and made her a more valuable agent. The number one thing people tell her when they reach out: "I wanna work with someone who's a local expert."

✨ One client avatar filters every post — Crystal wrote down exactly who her client is. Her name is Alex, and her dad would never come to the inspection. Before she posts, Crystal asks whether Alex would find value in it. When she isn't sure and posts anyway, she gets low views and low engagement.

✨ Why hot seat coaching made it click — More than the workbooks or the modules, Crystal says "the hot seat coaching is the most valuable thing." Watching me break down posts live trained her eye until she could spot the fixes before I called them out.

Crystal Ortiz is a Long Beach, California realtor and Socially Sold student who gets about 80% of her business from Instagram. She started her career at Rodeo Realty in LA and now builds her business around her two kids, the Rams, and Sunday morning surf sessions.

🎓 Want Instagram to bring you clients the way it does for Crystal? Join my Instagram Bootcamp for Realtors, five days of me walking you through the exact strategies I use to get clients from Instagram. bootcamp.socially-sold.com/podcast

Money Mindset for Real Estate Agents: How to Feel Safe Holding More Money | More Than Real Estate with Ashley Walker

Money mindset for real estate agents gets treated as a soft topic, right up until it starts costing money. It shows up as a commission check that disappears before the next one lands, a coaching investment you talk yourself out of, or a flinch when a big month finally arrives. Ashley Walker brought on hypnotherapist Sumaya Ahmed to dig into why that happens, and the two of them never mention a listing once.

Sumaya works with millionaires, stay-at-home moms, doctors, lawyers and agents, and her answer is the same for all of them. The beliefs you carry about money were set in your first seven years, and your brain will keep going out into the world to prove them right. "Your brain, all of our brains, does not know the difference between what's real and what's imagined." She walks through the capacity thermostat, why a 100K month can feel unsafe to a nervous system built on 50K, and the daily reset she runs on herself: gratitude before her eyes open, then EFT tapping, then a conversation with the version of herself she calls Billionaire Sumaya.

Ashley gets honest about her own side of it, including the $300,000 she has spent on coaching in two years and what it takes to stay in a marriage where her husband grew up with the opposite money story. The episode ends with a full guided hypnosis. Find somewhere quiet before that part, and do not listen while driving.

✨ Where your money story actually started — Sumaya traces most money beliefs to the first seven years of life. Whether you watched your parents argue about it or absorbed the idea that you climb a ladder to earn it, the pattern sticks. "The more that we believe that it's hard to make money, the more that stays our reality."

✨ The capacity thermostat — Wanting a 100K month and being able to hold one are two different problems. "Safety is determined by whatever our body is familiar with." If stress is familiar and calm is not, the money shows up and leaves just as fast.

✨ When your spouse has the opposite money story — Ashley is abundant by default. Micah grew up with scarcity. She talks through the rooms she has said no to, the yeses that stretched him, and why she stopped trying to drag anyone to her level.

✨ The $300,000 number — "In the last two years, two years I've spent over $300,000 in coaching." Sumaya matches it with $20,000 a month and a mother who asks whether she could find the information somewhere cheaper. Both land in the same place: it looks illogical from the outside and works anyway.

✨ Play, pleasure and money — The stretch Ashley describes as going all the way in. They cover the O method, why childhood play is the fastest route back to a receptive state, and how a mom with three kids fits any of it in without a mess on the kitchen table.

✨ A full guided hypnosis — Sumaya closes with the same hypnosis she ran inside the Agent Collective. Money arriving while you cut a lemon in your own kitchen. Sit or lie down somewhere quiet for this one.

Sumaya Ahmed is a certified professional hypnotherapist and money mindset identity coach who works with millionaires, investors, doctors, lawyers and real estate agents on subconscious and identity-level change. She taught and led a hypnosis inside the Agent Collective, the Socially Sold community, before recording this episode, and you can find her at @mindfullysumaya on Instagram and TikTok.

🎓 Working on your capacity to hold more, but the months are still quiet? The Instagram Bootcamp for Realtors is where you build the lead source that fills them. bootcamp.socially-sold.com/podcast

Episode 89: More Than Real Estate Podcast — Manifesting the Business of Your Dreams

Jackie Bacaris spent 19 of her 21 years in real estate part-time, closing about five transactions a year while working as a dental hygienist. Two years ago she started manifesting the business she actually wanted, and this month she's closing her first three Instagram clients for a little over $3 million.

✨ The bathroom, the headphones, and 30 minutes before the kids — she'd turn the lights off, put on meditation music, and say what she wanted out loud instead of what she didn't. Ten minutes of meditation, some stretching, then a 45-minute walk with no laundry and no breakfast prep first. "Letting go of that guilt was like a huge thing for me."

✨ Inspired action is the part people skip — Ashley is direct about this one. Manifesting the business of your dreams and then not learning the strategy is not a plan. Jackie's inspired action was enrolling in February, at a point she says she probably couldn't afford it.

✨ Month three she was burnt out. Month four it broke. — posting almost every day with nothing coming back, sitting on a bench at the lake with tears in her eyes. "There's a reason why things are quiet. And the reason why things are quiet is because they're building." Then 30 people filled out her intake form in seven weeks.

✨ "I go with myself" — she used to arrive at appointments with a script and every form printed. Her first Instagram client hugged her at the door, the dog sat on her lap, and they were buying around $3 million and selling around $2 million. Her old ceiling was $1.7 million.

✨ She was not on Instagram at all — "I am like a dinosaur." No app, no idea what a story was, five months ago. She also caught herself saying "social media is not my thing" and made herself stop, because she decided the sentence was the roadblock.

Jackie Bacaris is a realtor in Davie, Florida with 21 years in the business, 19 of them part-time alongside a career as a dental hygienist. She's a Socially Sold graduate now coaching inside the Agent Collective, with over $20 million sold, pending, or in her pipeline.

🎓 Ready to stop picturing the business you want and start building it? The Instagram Bootcamp for Realtors is where the content strategy starts. bootcamp.socially-sold.com/podcast

 Episode 88: More Than Real Estate Podcast — Building a "Buy the Lifestyle" Business

Frannie Benoist took the course back when it was still called Instage, before Susie existed. She was 22 with 449 followers and a professional dashboard showing about a thousand people reached in 30 days. She's 23 now, sitting on 81 deals pending and closed for the year, and her Instagram puts her in front of 180,000 people a month.

✨ 449 followers to 1,435, and 1,000 people reached to 180,000: Frannie screenshotted her numbers the day she enrolled because she figured she'd want them later. Her dashboard now runs between 160,000 and 200,000 people every 30 days and has never dropped below 150,000 in weeks. As Ashley puts it, you can't cold call, network, or door knock 200,000 people a month.

✨ She stopped selling the house and started selling what's around it: her bio used to say first-time buyer specialist. Then she watched which content actually performed and rewrote it. "You're buying for what's around it." Now her reels name the five houses you can walk to the bar from, and the comments come in reading "that's exactly what I'd love to have."

✨ 81 pending and closed at a $250,000 price point: 47 units her first year, 102 her second, and 81 already done or pending this year with about 115 on pace. She's closed $1.6 million with $2 million more in the pipeline before year end. Eighty percent of it now comes from her sphere.

✨ "It's all in the messaging": a b-roll clip of her driving got 13,000 views, 36 comments for her guide, and 9 shares. Her low performers still land around 5,000 views. She posts three or four times a week instead of daily and spends under three minutes in Susie: "I literally do not spend more than three minutes in there at all." 212 guide downloads and counting.

✨ Stories are where the trust gets built: Ashley's take on why founder-led brands explode faster than curated ones, and why the same rule applies to agents. Frannie's feed brings people in. Her stories are what make them say "okay, she's legit."

Frannie Benoist is a 23-year-old real estate agent in St. Louis, three years into the business and on track for roughly 115 deals this year. She took Socially Sold back when it was InstaAgent and came back this spring to keep coaching inside the Agent Collective.

🎓 Want the clients who already know you to be the ones reaching out first? That's what the Instagram Bootcamp for Realtors builds. bootcamp.socially-sold.com/podcast

Episode 87: More Than Real Estate Podcast: How Did Kelly Build a "Pour Into Yourself First" Business

Kelly Purser had been licensed two and a half years, capped around a $450,000 price point, and sitting at 200 Instagram followers. Four months after Socially Sold she's at 1,200, fielding inbound in the $1.1–1.7M range almost daily, and touring a $4.2 million home. She didn't start with a posting strategy. She started by pouring into herself, and the business followed.

✨ "What is meant for us will absolutely not miss us." — Kelly's entire approach to leads runs on this. If someone follows her and hires another agent, it wasn't hers. Ashley admits she needed the same reminder that morning, from her husband, in the middle of a week that had her spiraling.

✨ Get to, not have to — It started as a sarcastic joke to a friend — "you get to go to the gym at 5:00 AM" — and Kelly slowly started believing it. Now it runs her content: "I don't have to post on social media, I get to."

✨ "I just wanna make them proud" — Kelly's dad is a general contractor who brought her along to job sites; her mom went from teacher to realtor. Talking about them nearly brings her to tears on mic, and Ashley catches it: "Not in a whole room."

✨ Making herself proud came next — A year ago Kelly calls herself lazy and undisciplined. She trained for her first bodybuilding show, lost 40 pounds, and rebuilt how she shows up for clients. "It's not just about the weight, it's just about how I see myself too."

✨ Ashley launches the daily Content Auditor — Inside Suzy there's now a Content Auditor tab, fed every framework Ashley uses to hot seat and train her coaches. Drop in your profile or a post that's at least a week old and it audits it — a hot seat, every single day.

Kelly Purser is a Wilmington, North Carolina realtor who came to the coast for school, earned a degree in exercise science, and followed her realtor mom into the business. She joined the Socially Sold March cohort and grew from 200 to 1,200 followers in four months.

🎓 Ready learn how to make Instagram your #1 lead source? Join here: bootcamp.socially-sold.com/podcast

🎙️ Episode 86: More Than Real Estate Podcast: Stop Cold Calling and Start Getting Warm Leads From Instagram

Kaleigh Blackwell was cold calling five hours a day, crying between calls, hating every minute of it, and still doing it because it was technically working. Then she had a miscarriage, ghosted everything, came back, found Socially Sold, got pregnant again, spent six weeks too sick to get out of bed, still showed up to the coaching calls from her bed, started posting consistently in January, and now has three to four million closing this year with a newborn on her chest and a toddler at home. She has not cold called since. This episode is for every mom who knows there has to be a different way and just needs someone to show them it actually works.

✨ Five Hours a Day Cold Calling and Crying Between Every Single One — Kaleigh was cold calling five days a week, four to five hours a day, and it was working. She was also miserable. "I hated it so much but it was working." KD, her brokerage colleague and fellow Socially Sold student, sat down with her at an office meeting and said: Kaleigh, when are you going to do social media? She did not have an answer. What she had was a vision that there had to be a way to build a real estate business that did not feel like this every single day.

✨ A Miscarriage, a Sick Pregnancy, and a Newborn — and She Still Came Back — Kaleigh tried to do Instagram on her own for months. She got one client, a college friend who already followed her, but the algorithm was not working for her. She came to the bootcamp, enrolled in Socially Sold, and two weeks into the cohort found out she was pregnant. She spent six weeks in bed too sick to film anything. She still got on the coaching calls. She still absorbed the method. She posted when she could. "I just didn't give up." January came and she went consistent. The leads started coming.

✨ Three to Four Million Closing This Year. Postpartum. Nursing. Toddler at Home. — Kaleigh has closed two Instagram clients since the course and has three to four million projected to close this year. She did this while pregnant, postpartum, and in the full newborn bubble with a toddler running around. Her first real social media closing post-course was a girl who works for Olipop, lives behind her now, and texts her regularly. "I'm so thankful that social media brought me her because now we talk all the time." That is what aligned clients look like.

✨ She Is a Lifestyle Girl and That Is Enough — Kaleigh does not lead with home tours. She leads with Gulf Shores lifestyle content, the local spots, the community feel, the area people are dreaming about relocating to. She keeps B-roll batched in her edits app so when the toddler is crying and the baby needs to be fed in ten minutes she can grab something and post it fast. "I post more about Gulf Shores the area than home tour stuff." And she is still getting leads. You do not have to be the home tour person. Build to your strengths.

✨ The Ideal Client Who Feels Like a Friend — One of Kaleigh's biggest mindset shifts from the course was realizing that Instagram does not just bring in leads. It brings in the right leads. People who reach out to her feel like they have the same personality as her. They feel like friends before they ever meet. "I'm like, wait, what? That's weird." It is not weird. It is exactly what a personal brand built on authenticity does. When you speak to one specific person consistently, that person finds you and feels like they already know you.

✨ Cold Calling Is Done. Instagram Is the Move. — Kaleigh will hold an open house for her own listing when she absolutely has to. She will not cold call ever again. She is going all in on social media and building her Gulf Shores lifestyle brand for the long haul. "Why would I not want to use social media when it's fun, it's getting me out into my community, I'm spending a quarter of the time I was spending on things that weren't even really working, and I have more time to spend with my kids?"

Kaleigh Blackwell is a real estate agent in the Gulf Shores, Alabama area, a Socially Sold graduate and mom of two. She is building her personal brand around Gulf Shores lifestyle content and local expertise while navigating the newborn bubble with her second baby. She is on track to close three to four million this year without a single cold call.

Ashley Walker is the host of the More Than Real Estate Podcast and the founder of Socially Sold, where she helps real estate agents build their personal brand on Instagram and generate qualified leads organically. She is a top-producing agent, mama of three, and wife to her best friend.

🎓 Ready learn how to make Instagram your #1 lead source? Join here: bootcamp.socially-sold.com/podcast

Episode 85: More Than Real Estate Podcast: How Brittany Doubled Her Production and Increased Her Price Point with Socially Sold 

Brittany Simpson closed eight transactions last year, the slowest year of her career. This year she'll close sixteen, and her average price point moved from six to seven hundred thousand up closer to a million. Same calendar, no paid advertising, about two hours a week on content.

✨ The price point moved before the workload did: Brittany's average sale used to sit between six and seven hundred thousand. It's closer to a million now. Ashley's read on it: "your six or seven hundred thousand dollar house now you can sell the same amount of a million dollar houses and make more money." The line they both landed on was "in less time."

✨ Eight deals to sixteen with nothing else running: Last year was her slowest ever. This year doubles it, and she credits all of it to Socially Sold because there is no other lead source in the mix. "I'm not paying for anything, I'm not doing any other advertising or anything like that." Content takes her a couple of hours a week, less when she recycles a post and swaps the hook on screen.

✨ Her own sphere noticed before the strangers did: Brittany assumed the people already following her would just keep scrolling past. Instead friends' families started recognizing her at football games, and clients started saying the same thing out loud. "I've literally had people tell me you're everywhere."

✨ Why the referral stopped reaching you: Ashley walks the scenario she keeps seeing: your best referral source sends someone your way, that person loses the card, opens Instagram, and follows whoever is visible in the market instead. Brittany's version of the same shift is shorter. "It's the new Google."

✨ A listing she never went looking for: Brittany doesn't target listings with her content. She has one right now that came from Instagram anyway, from a seller who saw how she was showing up there. That's the byproduct Ashley says sellers are starting to ask agents about directly.

Brittany Simpson is a residential real estate agent in New Braunfels, Texas, where she's been selling for sixteen years and raising four kids. She took Ashley's class in October, joined The Agent Collective right after, and now closes buyers who found her on Instagram.

🎓 Want to sell in a higher price point without adding hours to your week? That's what the Instagram Bootcamp for Realtors is built for. bootcamp.socially-sold.com/podcast

Episode 84: More Than Real Estate Podcast:  Stop Chasing Clients, Start Attracting Them

Murphy Aycock enrolled back when Socially Sold was still called Insta Agent. She was doing open houses, cold calling, and driving across the entire Dallas Metroplex for clients who didn't respect her time. Two years later she's closed $9.5 million and her clients fly in, sign, and send referrals for years.

✨ The last-straw enrollment: Murphy joined on an ultimatum to herself. Her words: "I'm gonna take this course and if this doesn't work out, like I'm getting out of real estate." She'd just closed one commission check and used it to buy in.

✨ From $600K to $3 million buyers: Before the course she was working deals in the $500–600K range. She niched into relocation, climbed to $1M, then $3M. "This course like tripled whatever my price point was whenever I first started in real estate."

✨ The three million dollar closing: The buyers flew down twice, wrote the contract, and had a King Charles Cavalier named Murphy. They've sent four or five referrals since, and she still visits them at the lake house she sold them.

✨ Late bloomer, fast results: Murphy resisted niching down for months. Once she committed, it took one or two reels before people started landing in her DMs.

✨ One to two hours a week: Fifteen to twenty minutes per post, two to three posts a week, a story every other day. No videographer, no happy hours, no open houses.

Murphy Aycock is a realtor serving the Heath and Rockwall area of the Dallas Metroplex, specializing in relocation clients. She's a Socially Sold graduate who has closed $9.5 million since building her personal brand on Instagram.

🎓 Ready to stop guessing what to post and start attracting clients who actually want you? The Instagram Bootcamp for Realtors is where agents build the personal brand that does the lead generation for them. bootcamp.socially-sold.com/podcast

Episode 83: More Than Real Estate Podcast: It's Okay to Want More for Your Real Estate Business

Jaime closed seven transactions last year and spent all of it worried about where the next one was coming from. This year she is at eight, with 3.5 million closed and 5.5 million sitting in her pipeline. Three of her four July closings found her on Instagram.

✨ The pipeline problem, solved — She used to "finish one transaction and then immediately worry about where the next one was going to come from." Now she has two buyer contracts signed for this year, two more looking early next, and her price point has doubled.

✨ She bounced between archetypes first — Move-up buyer, then local, before landing on relocation. "I think I would have had even more success early on if I would have just picked one and done the thing."

✨ One guide, one download, then sixty — Her old guides got one or two downloads across all of last year. Year to date she is at 60, and every one lands in her CRM with a follow-up plan already attached.

✨ Two hundred calls a day was never it — The other program she almost bought was built on calling expireds. "There's gotta be a better way to grow my business."

✨ She turns 50 next year and she is not too old for Instagram — She started at roughly 300 followers and is now at 1,400, selling to a client about ten years younger than her. "I don't feel like you have to be like a 20-something influencer."

✨ Permission to want more — The part Ashley pushes hardest on. "I had permission to want more for my business and myself. And that was a total mind shift for me." She is now saying out loud that she wants to double next year, and her husband is talking about getting his license.

Jaime Surrett is a real estate agent in Arizona's East Valley, licensed seven years, working Gilbert, Queen Creek, and Mesa. She enrolled in Socially Sold last fall and built her business around relocation clients.

🎓 Want the system Jaime used to turn 300 followers into a full pipeline? The Instagram Bootcamp for Realtors walks you through it in five days. bootcamp.socially-sold.com/podcast

Episode 82: More Than Real Estate Podcast: Stop Outsourcing Your Personal Brand and Learn How to Fish

Cassie Dieudonne spent a year paying a company $1,200 a month to make her content and run her ads. Zero deals came from it. Six months after she brought her personal brand back in house, she has seven deals directly from Instagram and 11 million closed by July, in a year she almost didn't invest in herself at all.

✨ A year of done for you content and nothing to show for it. A company approached Cassie with an exclusive in her zip code. They sent her shot lists, edited her videos, wrote her captions, and ran her ads for $1,200 a month. Her words: "I gave it a year and I didn't get anyone from it." The captions were the part that stung most, because she knew she could write them herself.

✨ 11 million by July in a year she called humbling. Cassie has been licensed nine years and had never broken 10 million in a full year. "Total I've closed 11 million from January to July." She joined right before Ashley had Winnie, on a payment plan, in a year when rates were up and inventory was sitting and she told herself she couldn't afford it.

✨ Seven deals, ten to fifteen minutes a day. Three closed sales from Instagram, two of those clients now listing their own homes, plus two buyer rep agreements. Ashley runs the math on air at a 650 average and lands around $136,000 in commission. Cassie's actual time investment: "I probably spend 10 to 15 minutes a day on a reel," posted between six and seven at night because that's when hers performs.

✨ It works in a suburb, not just a skyline. Cassie is in Katy, Texas, and she names the objection before Ashley can. "I'm not like I'm in Nashville or like that. I'm not in a beach town. I'm not in Charleston." One voiceover reel about a patio bar in old Katy pulled over 100,000 views and a wave of local followers, because nobody outside Katy is following a bar in Katy.

✨ Rejection is protection. Nine years in, Cassie has learned to let the wrong client go. She has watched a listing leave and sell with someone else and made peace with it. She sets the expectation up front that a Sunday night text waits until morning, and her teenagers hold her to it at the dinner table. "I'm not answering somebody at 8:00 on a Sunday night."

About Cassie Dieudonne
Cassie is a real estate agent in Katy, Texas, a Houston suburb known for its schools and its oil and gas relocation traffic. She has been licensed nine years and works without a team by choice, with junior high and high school kids she wants to be present for. She went through Socially Sold in the fall cohort and is projecting 15 million this year.

 🎓 Ready to make Instagram your number one lead source?
Join the Instagram for Real Estate Agents Bootcamp. Five days with Ashley, $97, the exact strategies she uses to close one to two houses a month from Instagram with no paid ads, no media team, and nobody posting on your behalf.
bootcamp.socially-sold.com/podcast