The Milk Aisle Meeting: How A Grocery Store Run-In Turned Into A $1.2M Listing

This is the story of a listing I won in the frozen dairy section of a grocery store in Duvall, Washington, at roughly 11:13 on a Tuesday morning, while I was holding a gallon of 2% milk and trying to remember if we were out of coffee filters.

The Recognition

I was doing what I do most weekdays: squeezing in a grocery run between showings, when a guy I didn't recognize walked up to me holding a carton of oat milk.

He pointed at me and said the six words every small-town broker lives for:

"Are you the guy on Duvall TV?"

His name was Spencer Kabelac. And Spencer isn't a random Duvall resident. Spencer is a Netflix video producer who works on, among other projects, Bill Burr's specials and shows.

Later That Same Day: The Halloween Party

Here's where it gets ridiculous.

Later that exact same day, Eve and I went to a Halloween party at a friend's house. I walked in, said my hellos, and I turned around, and there was Spencer. Same guy. Same day. Different location.

We both started laughing. This is what happens in a town of 8,000 people.

We talked for another hour at the party. His wife was there. We ended up connecting on a human level in a way you cannot manufacture through any amount of cold-outreach marketing.

The Call, That Night

Spencer called me that night. I was at their house within an hour or two, pen in hand, at the kitchen table, walking through what would eventually become a listing presentation.

One grocery store encounter. One Halloween party. One night. One kitchen table. One listing.

The Lesson

I did not "close" Spencer in the milk aisle. I didn't pitch him. I didn't hand him a business card.

What I did was:

• •1. **Be a real person** in my town, consistently, for many years
• •2. **Make content** (Duvall TV) about people I love because I love them
• •3. **Be recognizable** as the person who actually lives where he works
• •4. **Show up, in person, within hours** when someone said "we're thinking about selling"

That's not a marketing funnel. That's a life.

You should hire the broker who has been in your town long enough that people recognize them at the grocery store.