There’s a concept in the Farmer’s Almanac called succession planting. You plant in intervals, so something is always coming up behind what’s already growing. If everything goes in at once, everything comes up at once, and when that wave is over, it’s over.

Most agents run their business on a single planting cycle.

Spring arrives, the calendar fills, the pace becomes relentless, and staying on top of the work already in motion takes over almost completely. That makes sense. The deal in front of you deserves your full attention. But by the time summer slows down, or fall feels quieter than expected, there’s a recognition that nothing new was started while everything else was finishing. The harvest got all the attention. The ground behind it stayed empty.

What’s worth saying directly is that the busy season is one of the best environments for planting you’ll have all year. The energy is up. You’re already in conversation. Buyers, attorneys, other brokers, lenders. All of them are in orbit. There’s more natural permission in those weeks to expand a conversation than at almost any other time.

A question asked at the right moment during a showing. A genuine exchange with a broker you’ve crossed paths with three times and never really connected with. A check-in with someone you closed six months ago, not because there’s anything to pitch, but because good relationships don’t maintain themselves.

None of this needs its own block on your calendar. It needs a slightly wider lens on the time you’re already in.

This is where most agents get tripped up, not from lack of effort, but from narrowing focus as urgency increases. The deal gets closer to closing and the periphery disappears. The conversations happening alongside the transaction, with the attorney, the co-broker, the people in the building. All of it gets filtered out in favor of moving faster toward the finish line, which is understandable. But that narrowing also closes off the natural overlap.

And then there’s the quieter piece: the small, consistent touches that don’t belong to any particular deal. The message you send because something reminded you of someone. The note that isn’t tied to a transaction, a follow-up, or an ask. These are easy to skip when the calendar is full because nothing visibly breaks when you do. But they’re what keeps something growing in the background while everything else is finishing up front.

Coaching Corner: Building the Overlap

At the end of each week, ask yourself two questions.

What did I move forward?
And what did I start?

Both need to be happening, not perfectly, not at scale, but consistently. One deal advancing. One conversation opened. One seed in the ground. That kind of overlap, practiced week over week, is what changes the rhythm of a business over time.

The harvest is visible. It’s measurable. It feels like the whole point. But the stability underneath it is built in the space between the things finishing and the things just beginning, in the decision to keep planting, even when it would be easier not to.