How to Build a Full-Time Real Estate Business While Keeping Your 9-to-5 with Keniece Perscell
- Colby Casoria
- Aug 6
- 6 min read
At this EMC Agent Power Hour we were joined by Keniece Perscell, a real estate agent who has closed north of $55 million in volume while working a full-time leadership role she has held for 17 years. Her message cut against everything most brokers preach. You do not have to go all in, quit your job, or knock on a single door to build a serious real estate business. You have to be intentional, consistent, and willing to do one thing well.
Here is your cliff-notes recap of the session.
First Up: The APEX Agent AI Segment
Every Power Hour opens with a quick marketing and AI segment from our partners at APEX Agent. This week Jake Randolph walked through a ChatGPT prompt for uncovering the psychology behind your ideal buyer.
His core point: features do not create desire. "3 bedrooms, updated kitchen, large backyard" tells buyers nothing about whether the home fits their life. So instead of asking AI to write your listing description, ask it to understand your buyer first.
The prompt has AI act as a real estate marketing strategist and identify:
The 3 most likely buyer profiles for the property
What each buyer cares about emotionally
The strongest selling angle for each
The biggest objection each may have
How to position the home against competing listings
3 social media hooks
From there, Jake feeds the buyer psychology it generates back in to write reels, YouTube scripts, and listing copy that actually connects. One agent on the call said it was an instant unlock for a listing that had not sold yet.
Meet Keniece: $55M+ While Working Full-Time
Keniece has been licensed for 8 years and has spent the last 17 on the leadership team for California's Department of Developmental Services, where 24 staff members report to her. She got into real estate to make a little extra on the side, hoping for 3 to 5 deals a year.
It exploded. Brokers told her it was time to drop the 9-to-5. She thought about it, then asked the obvious question: why change what is working? Today she closes 16 to 20 deals a year on her own, $10 to $16 million in annual volume, and she has not had a slow year. Almost all of it comes from referrals. No Zillow leads.
Stop Apologizing for Being Dual Career
Keniece's first piece of advice was mindset. Stop apologizing for having a second stream of income. Brokers often push agents to quit because they do not know what else to tell you. But the real question is not full-time versus part-time. It is whether you can show up consistently and authentically. If you cannot do a given activity all the time, it will not produce results.
For the record, she calls herself a full-time agent. What she does outside her client hours is nobody's business as long as she shows up.
Pick One Thing You Can Do Consistently
Keniece is not a cold caller. She does not knock doors. She is not a salesperson at heart, and she does not like being sold to, so she refuses to sell. Instead of forcing tactics that do not fit her, she built her entire business around one thing she can do consistently: geographic farming.
The lesson for the room: find the one activity that is authentic to you and go all in on it, rather than half-doing five things you dread.
Get in Front of People Before They Think About Selling
Her whole strategy is built on visibility before intent. She gets in front of homeowners long before selling is on their mind, so when the time comes she is the obvious choice. They see her market updates, her newsletters, her signs, and her at the grocery store.
She is the number one agent in her community with about a dozen listings, and most sellers hire her without a formal listing appointment because the marketing already did the work.
The Mailer System That Runs Her Business
This is the engine. A few specifics she shared:
A monthly market report mailer through Real Marketing, a San Diego company that is zip-code exclusive, so no other agent can use it in her area
The front shows local sales trends and a map of active listings. The back features one of her listings or a community value-add
She mails about 1,500 homes. Start smaller: at least 200, or results take too long
Each mailer has a QR code. A scan texts her the person's name, sends them to her home bot for an instant value, then she hand-delivers a custom CMA to their doorstep
That means they see her twice, once digitally and once on the porch
She does not ring the doorbell. She just leaves it. Same result, less awkward.
How She Started With No Budget: Handwritten Cards
Before she could afford printed mailers, she did it with sweat equity. In 2023, when the market slowed, she bought blank cards from Amazon, paid her nieces $20 to help, and wrote handwritten notes with her business card tucked inside.
Her system:
Decide on the 1st what you will write that month
Commit to 10 cards a week, written on your lunch break, in the Starbucks line, wherever
Mail the whole batch at the end of the month
Repeat
People open them because they look like invitations. From that alone, in a community where she had never sold, she has closed 16 homes since late 2023.
Where to Farm for Faster Results
If you want quicker traction, do not farm the established neighborhood where grandma raised her kids and nobody moves. Target newer communities, which have the highest turnover. Anywhere with 5% turnover or more is a good bet, especially move-up buyers and downsizers.
Community Events That Build Visibility
Because she is time-strapped, Keniece does one big event a year: the New Haven Community Business Mixer. She gathers local business owners, from photo booths to inflatables to DJs, into one room, invites the community, and runs a four-hour event every fall. She also shows up as a vendor at the HOA's trunk-or-treat. Between the events and the mailers, she is everywhere.
Her CRM: Grade Everyone A Through D
Keniece runs on Buffini because it tells her exactly what to do each day. Everyone in her database gets a grade:
A: likely to use you, or has closed with you before
B: someone you recently met, like at an open house
C: vendors, home inspectors, and the like
D: disregard and delete
She works warm relationships only, so outreach never feels awkward. The system tells her who to call, who to send a handwritten card, and who to pop by.
A Week in Keniece's Life
Her days are tightly blocked:
Logs on for her 9-to-5 around 6 to 6:30am, works in-office 3 days a week
Prospects and calls warm leads from 12 to 1:30 daily, and if that window slips she finds another
Takes real estate calls throughout the day
Books listing appointments for 5 to 6pm and offers set times rather than asking
When a buyer wants to see a home far away, she calls a local brokerage and pays a newer agent to show it, which has never failed her
She leans on a virtual assistant in the Philippines and an in-person assistant who doubles as her onboarding concierge. Her rule: if she cannot do it herself, she pays someone. Hire your weaknesses.
What Clients Need to Know About the 9-to-5
Not much, really. Keniece keeps her two careers completely separate. By policy she cannot market to her staff or the community her department serves, so there is no overlap. With clients, she introduces her team up front so nobody expects her to answer every second of the day, then delivers. As long as she is showing up and servicing them, the rest is her business.
Her AI "Red Team" Trick
Keniece built her onboarding and offboarding process with AI, but not the way most people do. She runs a "red team." She asks ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity the same question, then feeds each answer into the others and asks them to find the gaps and holes. Pitting them against each other produces something sharper and, in her words, less AI-ish. Then her VA brands it.
The Trust Filter
One last principle on who she works with. Price point does not decide it. Trust does. If a client is realistic and trusts her, she will work with any price point. If they are unrealistic and do not trust her, she passes, because she knows they will run her into the ground. The $75,000 mobile homes she started with drained her more than her million-dollar deals ever have. Highest and best use of time.
The Bottom Line
You do not need to quit your job to build a real estate business worth having. You need one activity you can do consistently, systems that let you delegate, and the discipline to stay visible before people are ready to move. Keniece proved you can do all of it in the margins of a full-time career, and still outproduce agents who went all in.
Join the Next EMC Agent Power Hour
Want more sessions like this one? Our next EMC Agent Power Hour features author Steven Ross, back for part two. Steven has knocked on more than 100,000 doors in his career, and his session is all about converting proven scripts to however you want to build your business, at the right place and the right time. If scripting is your thing, do not miss it.
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