If you’d prefer to listen, you can stream the full episode here or watch the video version here. For accessibility, we’ve included the full transcript below for anyone who prefers to read along or who is hearing impaired.
Justin Landis: Welcome to The Justin Landis Show, your real estate podcast about having conversations, building relationships, and creating freedom. Today is episode two with Kristin Klingshirn from The Kristin Show, and we're back in our reverse seats. Justin Landis here, on Kristin's show.
Kristin Klingshirn: You're back on my show again. Honestly, it's less pressure. I just get to sit here and run my mouth.
Justin Landis: I think it's less pressure for me too. I get to sit here and listen to you. Last time you talked about your story and building your brand, and you ended with an Instagram post that went viral, a million and a half views. If you haven't listened to that episode, go back first. Today I want to dig into your social media strategy, the authenticity and vulnerability behind it, and what that means for real estate agents who want to build a brand and connect with people but aren't sure how vulnerable to be. What's your strategy?
Kristin Klingshirn: It's hard out there if you want to build a following, because the market is so saturated. It's the same for real estate. Do you know how many agents are in the Atlanta MLS? Twenty thousand. It's one thing to jump on a viral trend. I see agents doing that, some really creative transitions and funny bits. It's a different thing entirely to create your own trend. If I had that secret sauce, I'd be a multimillionaire and we wouldn't be sitting here.
Kristin Klingshirn: Managing social media well is basically a second job. You're already doing radio or real estate, and now you're adding hours trying to figure out how to capitalize on social. It comes back to input versus output. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so if I'm not careful I'll edit something until it's unrecognizable. My advice, it doesn't have to be perfect. Our sad Easter Bunny reel from last episode actually had an audio glitch in the opening. Ethan and I were devastated. We posted it anyway. It still went viral.
Kristin Klingshirn: What you should get hung up on is authenticity, not perfection. If something looks or feels inauthentic once it's done, don't post it just because you put time into it. That's not wasted time, it's a lesson learned. We did that recently around the Georgia primaries. We wanted to encourage people to vote, spent over an hour on something, and after watching it back I knew it wasn't going to land. So we didn't post it. We posted something else instead, and that one did well.
Justin Landis: On the sharing side, how do you decide what to share? That's a challenge for people who want to be authentic but worry about oversharing.
Kristin Klingshirn: I don't think there's ever a wrong time to be vulnerable, as long as it's authentic and not forced. There's plenty I wish I'd posted and didn't. Social media isn't the be all end all, but it would be ignorant to say it isn't a huge part of business and marketing now. Where else do you have an audience like that at your fingertips? Ten or fifteen years ago agents didn't need social media. Now it's just part of the job.
Kristin Klingshirn: I only focus on Instagram, because I know my demographic. My audience is women around my age, and they're on Instagram, not TikTok. That's the input versus output thing again. If I'm going to do it, I want it to be good, and I'd rather do one platform well than several poorly.
Justin Landis: Do you follow a schedule? How do you stay consistent?
Kristin Klingshirn: Ethan and I have been tweaking our formula constantly, actually just in the past couple of weeks. We were posting too much, and you can't post too much if you want to create demand. So we cut back. Now we're testing something new. If a segment is focused on me personally, I post it from my account. If it's focused on Ethan, he posts it from his. We collaborate either way. Even after years of doing this and building a strong following, I'm still tweaking. It never stops evolving.
Justin Landis: It's fun when something goes viral. But I'm sure over the years you've had posts that got negative comments. That's a real fear for a lot of people. How have you dealt with that?
Kristin Klingshirn: The haters are out there. Back when I started in radio, they were kind enough to just email you directly, so at least it was one person's opinion landing in your inbox, not the whole world. As things evolved, if you have an opinion, someone out there has the opposite one and they'll tell you. That's part of being a public figure, a media personality, or honestly just anyone active on social media. You're an influencer in your own right the moment you're sharing your life and opinions. And if you throw kids into the mix, people really love telling you how to parent.
Kristin Klingshirn: I don't do Facebook anymore, because it got too nasty for me. That was a boundary I created for myself. For a long time I would actually go looking for the negative comments, which I now recognize was detrimental to my mental health. That's part of my personality, I go all in on things, even the wrong things sometimes. You have to have opinions to do this job well, otherwise it's the most boring radio show on earth. I'm not opposed to someone disagreeing and explaining why. I am opposed to someone going for the jugular just to be nasty. My heart genuinely can't take that. You can have a hundred positive comments and one negative one, and that's the one you fixate on. It's human nature, but it's exhausting.
Kristin Klingshirn: So I drew a line. I stick to Instagram, and I treat it like my house. Polite disagreement is welcome. If you're disrespectful or trolling for the sake of it, you're blocked. I have no problem muting or blocking people. It still stings when it happens, because I'm a people pleaser and I want to be liked. But I've learned you can't take it personally. People only see a snippet of you online, often a polished one. If I'm not going to take advice from someone, I'm not going to take their criticism either. My inner circle gives me real criticism, and I know it comes from a good place. Most of the time, a harsh comment has more to do with whatever that person is going through than it does with me.
Justin Landis: Talk about the scrutiny you've faced as a woman specifically. That's a different level.
Kristin Klingshirn: Bert was always ahead of the curve, he had a great mentor and was a real visionary about making the show accessible, streaming, the podcast, cameras in studio, YouTube. Radio isn't purely auditory anymore, it's visual too. But on Facebook, the level of hate the women on the show got compared to the men was astronomical, and it mostly came from other women. Bert could say something and people would laugh it off as classic Bert. I'd say the exact same thing and it was like the sky was falling. This wasn't early on either, this was years in, after I'd already built real rapport with the audience. We got attacked constantly for our looks. The guys almost never did.
Kristin Klingshirn: As a woman in radio and media, the unwritten rules are real. You can be funny, but not too funny. Pretty, but not too pretty. Smart, but not too smart. Opinionated, but not too opinionated. Emotional, but not too emotional. I'm proud to say I've finally gotten to a place, and I think this comes with age, where I am who I am. People can take it or leave it.
Justin Landis: How would you translate that into advice for a female agent nervous about the same thing?
Kristin Klingshirn: It's corny, but be yourself. Take inspiration from others, then filter it through your own lens. What would this look like from your vantage point? It's easy to get beaten down, and I understand that fear. Give yourself grace. But you're never going to please everyone. That's a pipe dream, I gave up on it a long time ago. Find your voice, share it, and don't let other people's opinions hold you back.
Justin Landis: You've talked about being a perfectionist, wanting everything polished before it goes out. I'm the opposite, I usually post the first take. Could it be better with more takes? Probably. But I'd rather get things out than get stuck. How does someone strike that balance if their instinct is closer to yours than mine?
Kristin Klingshirn: Early in my radio career there was zero analysis paralysis, I just said things on air. That paralysis is newer for me, honestly just the last couple of years, because of cancel culture and how fast something can go viral for the wrong reasons. I've walked on eggshells around my own opinions because I'm afraid something will get twisted or taken out of context. I closed myself off to sharing certain things because of that fear, and I'm only now starting to come back out of it and trust my own voice again. I believe I'm a decent person, flawed but decent, but a stranger scrolling past on their feed doesn't know that. They just see a clip and react.
Kristin Klingshirn: If someone's just starting out, my advice is to pick the topics you're most confident about and stay in that lane until you build trust in your voice. A good example for me is talking about my dad. When he passed, I was very open about the grief on air. We were incredibly close. You're never the same after losing someone like that, and it still hits me out of nowhere, driving in the car, hearing a song he liked. The love has to go somewhere. I wasn't talking about it constantly, just when it was relevant. Someone commented online that I talked about my dead dad too much. For a second I thought about going quiet on it entirely. Then I realized that would just be a disservice to me, because I do want to talk about him, he was the best, he had the best jokes. Why would I censor something that matters to me because one person is uncomfortable with grief? His birthday is coming up, Father's Day is coming up, and I'm going to post about both, because that's real life. Some people will be uncomfortable with that, and that's theirs to sit with, not mine.
Justin Landis: So much wisdom in that. I think a lot of people are going to see their own story in trying to find their voice and figure out where the line is. Thank you for sharing both episodes with us.
Kristin Klingshirn: Thank you for having me. It's been an honor, both episodes.
Justin Landis: Thanks for listening today. Make sure to like and subscribe so you don't miss an episode. We'll see you again next week on The Justin Landis Show.
