Hunter or Gatherer? Wrong Question.

…and it cost me more deals than I'd like to admit. I'll get to that.

First, this week.

This was advisory week. Back-to-back sessions with agents at every stage of the business. Somewhere around the fourth or fifth conversation, a pattern showed up that I couldn't unsee.

A handful of them are already at or past their 2026 goal. It's the last week of September.

None of them got there on one lucky deal. They got there on volume.

They did it in this market, with these rates, while the headlines do what the headlines do. Real estate has about as much noise right now as politics does.

When I asked what changed, nobody said the market got easier. Every one of them said a version of the same thing: I had to go find new opportunity. A new stream or a new source, something that wasn't in their database in January.

They weren't luckier. They were more honest about the math.

Real estate is a numbers game. Sales is a numbers game. It always has been. If you have enough balls in the air, some of them go through the hoop. Not all of them, and not most of them. Enough.

Here's what the noise is covering up: people still need to move. Nobody's life stops because rates ticked up a notch. People still die. Babies still get born. People still get married, get divorced, get the job in Charlotte, retire, and inherit the house. The list goes on and on.

The opportunity didn't disappear. Most agents just don't have enough of it in play.

Why that happens depends on how you're wired.

Two kinds of agents.

There are hunters and there are gatherers. Both have strengths, and right now both are struggling, for opposite reasons.

Hunters live for the chase. Discomfort is their fuel. But in this market, clients are moving slower than hunters want to move. A buyer who needs to sell first, get the raise, and wait out a lease is a 6–12 month opportunity, and hunters drop that ball. They don't drop it because they don't care. They drop it because today's opportunity is louder.

Gatherers are the nurturers: the follow-up, the long game, the conversion. Knowledge isn't their problem. They know exactly what to do with a lead. Their problem is that creating new opportunities got harder, and the database they've been farming isn't producing enough new ones.

I know which one I am.

I've always been a hunter. (Yes, it's actually my middle name.) I love the thrill of the close, and I love the calling to serve. I've always believed leadership is best delivered as stewardship.

But long-term follow-up? That was my kryptonite. Once we'd built a relationship, I was great. If there were two or three things that had to happen over six to twelve months before someone was ready to buy or sell, though, I'd drop the ball more often than not.

I was so focused on the opportunity of today that I forgot about the opportunity of tomorrow.

It wasn't until I started building a team that I found the sauce: find the people who are extremely good at what you're horrible at.

For me, that meant putting support around follow-up. We went from 50–60 deals a year to 150, and then to over 300.

My skills didn't change. What changed was that I finally admitted I couldn't do it all alone.

Here's what I believe that most of this industry won't say.

You've been told to fix your weaknesses. Take the assessment, work on your gaps, become well-rounded.

I think that's backwards. Well-rounded is how you end up average at everything.

The agents I see thriving right now did one of two things. They adapted, deliberately adding the activities they're not naturally good at or don't enjoy, on a schedule, without negotiating with themselves. Or they leveraged, finding someone extremely good at their weak spot and building around that person.

Either path works. What doesn't work is pretending your wiring doesn't cost you anything.

Hunters don't have a lead problem. They have a follow-up problem.

Gatherers don't have a conversion problem. They have an input problem.

The two problems look different, but the symptom is the same: not enough balls in the air.

Wherever you are right now.

If you're newer, you may not know yet which one you are. Find out in the next 90 days and it'll save you three years. If you're mid-career, you already know, and you've been covering the gap with hustle. That works until it doesn't. If you're a top producer, your weakness costs more than you think, because it scales right alongside you. If you lead a team or an office, look at your roster. Pairing opposite wiring is the job.

We have three months left. Thirteen weeks. That's plenty of runway to win.

Here are five plays.

1. Run your Q4 math before October 1.
Take what's left on your 2026 goal and work it backward: closings needed, then appointments per closing, then conversations per appointment. Divide by 13. Write the weekly conversation number somewhere you'll see it every morning.
Why: "I need to pick it up" doesn't put a single ball in the air. A number does.

2. Name your wiring by Friday.
Pull every opportunity from the last 12 months that didn't close. For each one, ask where it died. If it died at the start because there was never enough coming in, that's a gatherer problem. If it died in month three because it went cold, that's a hunter problem.
Why: Your gut will tell you who you want to be. Your lost deals will tell you who you are.

3. Hunters: build the follow-up floor by October 9.
Every lead that's 6–12 months out gets a next date and a next action in your CRM, with no exceptions. Then choose. You can adapt, with a 30-minute follow-up block at the same time every day that's protected like a listing appointment. Or you can leverage, handing the long game to someone who's great at it: an assistant, an ISA, a teammate, a partner agent.
Why: The deal you lose isn't the one you missed. It's the one you already had and forgot.

4. Gatherers: add one new stream by October 15 and run it for six weeks.
Pick one: open houses, a holiday event for your sphere and past clients, a geographic farm, expireds, or a referral relationship with an estate attorney, CPA, or financial planner. Just one. Don't pick three.
Why: Your follow-up is already a weapon. It just needs more to aim at.

5. Build your life-events list by September 30.
People still need to move. Some of them already told you why. It's buried in your CRM notes.
Export your contacts with notes and paste them into Claude or ChatGPT:
"Here is my client database with notes. Identify every contact who has told me about something that could lead to a move in the next 12 months: a lease ending, a job change or relocation, retirement, settling an estate, wanting more or less space, or a property they've mentioned selling. Only use what the contact told me directly. Do not infer anything about family status, religion, national origin, disability, or any other personal characteristic. Rank the list by the timeline they gave me, soonest first. Then draft a short, personal check-in text for the top 25 that references what they shared with me, in a warm, casual tone and not salesy."
Why: The best new opportunity in your business might already be in your business.

One more thing.

Start thinking now about who sits on your personal board of directors for 2027.

I don't mean the friends who co-sign your wildest idea at dinner. I mean your real advisors: the smartest people you know who genuinely care about you and your goals.

A good board has seats. One person is five years ahead of where you want to be. One is extremely good at the thing you're horrible at. One will tell you no and mean it. One is outside real estate entirely, because that person will see what the rest of us can't.

Write down three names by December 1. Then ask one of them before the year ends.

The hunters who figured it out found a gatherer. The gatherers who figured it out found new ground. Nobody I'm watching do this at a high level is doing it alone.

You don't need a better market.
You need more balls in the air.
You don't need to be good at everything.
You need to stop pretending you are.
Thirteen weeks.
Go.

Building with you,
Austin

P.S. To the agents who sat across from me this week and let me in on what's actually working: thank you. You wrote half of this one.

Austin Sizemore is the CEO & Founder of Austin Sizemore Companiesand CEO & Team Leader of Keller Williams Realty Metro Atlanta — a market center, a producing sales team, and the operating systems behind them.