A $10 million listing in three weeks. That is the client story Christopher Stafford shared with me—and it opens a bigger conversation about how he helps agents grow. Through The Listing Collective, he brings more than three decades of real estate experience to coaching built around mindset, health, marketing and the financial freedom to enjoy success.
By Rocky Valente | The Legendary Edition
Three weeks into working together, an agent with no current business secured a $10 million listing. That is how Christopher “Chris” Stafford described the experience of Tyler, a client in Santa Barbara, during our conversation on We Legendary: The Revolution.
It is the kind of story that makes you stop and listen. For an agent wondering where the next opportunity will come from, the question is immediate: what helped him move forward?
That was what I wanted to explore with Chris. The result caught my attention. His energy—and the way he thinks about the person behind the business—made me want to know more.
Here was someone who clearly enjoyed people. Someone with humour, conviction and the kind of presence that makes a conversation feel alive. I wanted to understand where that came from, and what happened when he brought it into his work with real estate agents.
We talked about winning listings, building confidence and developing a business around an agent’s individual strengths. Understanding his approach also took us into his own story: leaving a respectable career, supporting his partner through illness and learning to stop measuring his worth through other people’s approval.
That is where the story became interesting to me. Chris has built a career around helping people succeed, but his own definition of success has changed dramatically along the way.
Today, his answer begins with time freedom: the ability to choose where he lives, how he works and what he makes room for. His coaching brings that question back to agents who may be growing a business without enjoying the life attached to it.
THE CAREER THAT LOOKED RIGHT AND FELT WRONG
Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Chris describes coming from humble beginnings. He discovered a talent for accounting in college and followed it into a career that included 11 years with PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
He was good at the work. He earned well. From the outside, there were plenty of reasons to stay.
But he told me he went home feeling as though he was “crying on the inside.” The career did not fit the person living it. He wanted to be out in the world, meeting people, creating joy and allowing his personality to breathe.
I respect the decision that followed. Walking away from something that other people consider successful can be harder than leaving something everyone agrees is broken. Friends and family thought he was crazy to abandon the stability. Chris says one of his few regrets is that he did not leave sooner.
He also admitted that making decisions quickly has not always meant making perfect ones. That honesty matters. Reinvention rarely comes with certainty; sometimes it starts with acknowledging that the present arrangement has become intolerable.
Real estate gave him a different way to work. He could meet people, solve problems and put his energy into something he enjoyed.
FINDING HIS PLACE IN REAL ESTATE
Chris remembers his first transaction around 1992: a house worth roughly $200,000 and a commission he estimates at about $5,000. The excitement stayed with him long after the transaction.
He gravitated toward listings, working with sellers, and built a career spanning more than three decades in San Francisco real estate. He remembers the early years as the city’s “cowboy days”: intense, social and sometimes chaotic.
Another early decision surprised me. When someone advised him to get a coach, he committed to paying $1,000 a month. Even today, that is a meaningful investment. He described the accountability as demanding: he had to report back and do the work.
The detail helps explain his respect for coaching as a working relationship. Information alone was never the whole point. There was someone expecting him to act on it.
He enjoyed the business and the lifestyle around it. Then a telephone call changed his priorities.
THE CALL THAT CHANGED THE MEANING OF SUCCESS
Chris remembers receiving the news at around four o’clock one afternoon: his partner had brain cancer.
What followed included hospitalization, brain surgery and an induced coma. Chris described being the in hospital for a year, nights spent beside the hospital bed, sometimes sleeping on the floor while holding his partner’s hand. A business partner helped keep the real estate business afloat while his attention was elsewhere.
During our conversation, Chris said his partner had been in remission for approximately 15 years. They are still together.
The experience prompted him to reconsider the way he was living. His health, his routines and the structure of his business all needed attention. He began putting systems in place and changing how he ate, exercised and looked after himself.
He connected that period of reflection with the book he later wrote, Massive Abundance: How to Create Passion, Purpose, and Prosperity in Your Life.
What moved me was hearing how Chris responded over time: by making changes that brought his work and his priorities closer together. Now in his sixties, he told me he has never felt better.
He also spoke openly about another change. Earlier in life, expensive suits, cars and impressive holidays had become ways to seek validation. He wanted others to see him as successful. Eventually, he began questioning the cost of that pursuit, in money, time and energy.
His definition of abundance now includes being at peace with himself. That perspective gives substance to the freedom he talks about helping others create.
THE LISTING COLLECTIVE: BUILDING AROUND THE PERSON
Chris’s platform, The Listing Collective, reflects the focus of his coaching: helping listing agents develop their businesses through an approach adapted to their strengths and personalities.
During the interview, he described The Listing Collective as a six-month program with a seven-tier framework. The areas he discussed included health, mindset, marketing, business growth and wealth building. The work combines individual coaching with group mastermind calls, where participants exchange ideas, encourage each other and work through challenges together.
His audience is primarily in North America, with a broader focus on English-speaking markets. He generally works with experienced agents, although he said people earlier in their careers can reach out if they are seriously committed.
What I connected with most was his description of walking “arm-in-arm” with clients. There is a structure, but the person matters within it. The strategy has to account for how an agent communicates, what they do well and where they need support.
That is practical. An approach someone cannot sustain is unlikely to become a useful habit, however impressive it sounds in a presentation.
Chris described the six-month program’s ambition as helping agents double, triple or even grow their listing business fivefold. These are the growth objectives he discussed, with the work customized to the individual. Tyler’s story, which opened our conversation here, illustrates the kind of breakthrough Chris wants to help clients pursue.
The $10 million figure refers to the value of the property Tyler was engaged to list. Chris shared it as an individual client outcome, rather than a result promised to every agent.
Chris acknowledged that some clients have struggled to make progress. Participation, habits and readiness to implement the work remain part of the equation. Coaching can provide guidance and accountability; the client still has decisions and actions to take.
SMALL STEPS, STRONGER AGENTS
One of the clearest parts of Chris’s explanation was his emphasis on manageable steps. He talked about minimum standards and building progress through actions people can repeat.
He calls the benefits the three C’s: confidence, consistency and competence.
I like that because an ambitious goal can be exciting while the distance to it feels overwhelming. A smaller commitment gives someone a place to begin, evidence of progress and something to build on.
The group element of The Listing Collective supports that process. Alongside individual work, agents can bring ideas and challenges into a room with other people doing the work. For Chris, The Collective is part of how people learn and stay engaged.
His perspective on sales also stood out. With so many tools competing for attention, he believes clients still want to know, like and trust the person advising them. He emphasized listening and building rapport rather than rushing to sell.
That is an important part of what makes his personality relevant to the business. The humour opens a conversation; attention to the other person gives it somewhere meaningful to go.
“IF IT AIN’T FUN, IT AIN’T GETTING DONE.”
Chris said this during our conversation, and it captures something about him that a list of credentials cannot.
He takes the work seriously and wants people to enjoy the business they are building. After decades in real estate, he has little interest in creating a version of success that consumes everything else.
He remains a San Francisco broker while living in Panama. He told me he wants to double his coaching business and spend more of the year working from different cities around the world. Travel is part of the life he wants his business to support.
There are practical complications, including time zones. We laughed about them because freedom still involves planning, responsibilities and work. The appeal is having more choice over how those pieces fit together.
When I asked what he would tell his younger self, his answer returned to kindness: stop being so hard on yourself, and stop feeling you have to impress everyone else.
For someone whose work involves performance and growth, that is a valuable message. Ambition does not remove the need to treat yourself well.
WHY I SEE A SUPERHERO
The superhero idea comes from my impression of Chris: he sees capability in people and wants to help them use it. The strength he brings is a combination of experience, energy and a willingness to work alongside an individual.
He has also made substantial changes in his own life. He left a career that did not suit him, built another, supported his partner through a frightening illness and reconsidered what he wanted his work to make possible.
Those experiences give his message weight. When he talks about health, freedom and finding joy in the business, there is a personal history behind the words.
What I hope agents take from his story is this: you are the asset inside your business. Your skills matter. So do your attention, your energy, your relationships and the decisions you make about your time.
Chris’ work brings those things into the same conversation as listings and growth. For the agent who has forgotten why they started, or who knows they are capable of more but needs structure and support, that could be a meaningful place to begin.
That is the power I see him helping people “Unleash”.
CONNECT WITH CHRIS STAFFORD
The Agent Unleashed
https://www.theagentunleashed.com
Contact Chris through his company, The Agent Unleashed, to learn more about “The Listing Collective” and discuss whether his coaching fits your goals.
Massive Abundance: How to Create Passion, Purpose, and Prosperity in Your Life
During our conversation, Chris invited Legendary listeners to contact him and request a free copy of his book at: https://agentunleashednow.com/book
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