I keep coming back to something about the tributes pouring in following the passing of Dolly Parton. They’re coming from people of every walk of life and so many generations.
What’s amazing is to see so many who don’t agree on much of anything else, from politicians to pop stars, have come together to sing her praises and remember her fondly. She had a way of making almost everyone feel like they mattered to her personally, and that is a glimpse of one of the many reasons she was remarkable.
She never ran an email drip campaign or automated a single touchpoint. In an industry built on texting, tagging and instant everything, Dolly famously communicated in a very “old-fashioned” way with those closest to her: fax machine.
Most of what’s been written this week is about Dolly the performer. Less has been said about Dolly the businesswoman, and that’s the part I wanted to put a spotlight on for agents because she was completely sassy in life, but she was also totally savvy in business.
Consistency beat charisma
It’s tempting to credit Dolly’s staying power to personality, and she had plenty of it. Part of her magic was, by most accounts, that she was the same person backstage as she was on camera.
Top agents who build 20-plus-year books of business tend to have the same trait: The version of them a client meets at the listing appointment is the same version who shows up at the closing table, and the same version who picks up the phone three years later when that client’s neighbor needs a referral.
Inconsistent agents get repeat clients. Consistent agents get client referrals, and make trusted friends, which is a different business entirely.
She put real money behind people who hadn’t proven anything yet
In 2022, Dollywood’s parent company, Herschend Enterprises, launched GROW U, a program covering 100 percent of tuition, fees and books for any Dollywood employee, seasonal, part-time or full-time, starting on their first day of work. It wasn’t a stunt aimed at the public. It was a bet on people nobody outside the park would ever see.
Years earlier, her Buddy Program paid every seventh and eighth grader in her home county $500 for finishing high school, another bet on people who hadn’t proven anything yet.
Most agents invest in the parts of the business a client will actually see: the listing photos, the staging, the closing gift. Fewer put real time or money into the people who make their own business work: the assistant, the transaction coordinator, the newer agent they’re mentoring who isn’t generating referrals back yet.
Dolly’s instinct ran the other way. She backed people before they’d earned it, and it’s a large part of why the loyalty around her ran so deep for so long.
She never let anyone else define the terms of her name
Dolly co-owned Dollywood with Herschend Enterprises, but she kept tight control over her name, her brand and her creative decisions throughout a seven-decade career full of people who wanted a piece of both. She famously turned down deals when the terms didn’t protect her long-term interests, even when the short-term money was tempting.
That instinct matters more for agents right now than it has in a long time. Between shifting commission structures and a growing number of platforms competing for a piece of the transaction, it’s easy to let someone else’s terms quietly define your business.
The agents who’ll still have a book of business in 10 years are the ones treating their own name and their own client relationships as the asset worth protecting, the way Dolly protected hers, rather than renting their reputation out to whatever lead source is paying for it this quarter.
The actual takeaway for this industry
Referral business isn’t a byproduct of good service. It’s a byproduct of being the same trustworthy person on every single interaction, whether anyone’s tracking it or not, and of investing in the people around you before you need anything back from them.
Dolly Parton never had a listing appointment or a closing gift, but she ran one of the most durable trust-based businesses most of us will ever study. The agents worth modeling themselves after aren’t the ones with the biggest marketing budget this year. They’re the ones still getting called in 20 years by people whose parents they helped buy a first home.
If there’s a practical place to start, it’s showing up for your own community the way Dolly showed up for hers, consistently and without an angle. The Realtors Relief Foundation is a good place to begin, and my Community Champions program lays out concrete ways to build that habit into your business.
Legacy isn’t built in a single closing. It’s built in what you keep doing after it.
Darryl Davis is the CEO of Darryl Davis Seminars. Get connected on Facebook or YouTube.
