The Real Shift: The Real Broker Podcast

Hosted by Kristen Cantrell & Templeton Walker | Guest: Candace Neff

What does it actually look like to build real community inside a cloud-based brokerage?

Templeton's out this week, so Kristen's flying solo, but she's got someone even better in the room: her real-life friend Candace Neff. What started as a random Instagram DM almost two years ago turned into a friendship built on shared travel, shared wins, and now a shared brokerage. This episode is proof that Real doesn't just build businesses. It builds people who show up for each other.

Candace Neff is a Columbus, Ohio based agent with 8 years in real estate and a background as a mortgage loan officer before making the leap. She spent four months at Keller Williams, six years at eXp, and made her move to Real in September 2024. She's not here to sell you a dream. She's here to tell you what actually changed.

Kristen and Candace get into:

  1. Why Candace trusted the cloud-based model from day one — and why her small-town Ohio family thought she was nuts for going full commission
  2. The real reason agents leave traditional brokerages — leverage, lane, and not having to carry the overhead of running one yourself
  3. What she didn't expect to love: Real's tech stack and how much simpler it made managing her transactions after years in a clunkier system
  4. Real Wallet, explained simply — how commission checks land straight into her wallet, how the debit card works, and how she's stacking points toward her cap
  5. Real Capital — not live in Ohio yet, but on her radar the second it is
  6. Building The Real Room — the local, in-person culture she started in Columbus almost from scratch, now running monthly and already spreading to Cleveland, Dayton, and Cincinnati
  7. Why she leads from behind the scenes — how she's intentionally handed the mic to other agents instead of making it a one-woman show
  8. Rise, the annual conference — why Candace calls it her yearly fire-under-the-ass, and a public callout for a golf partner this year
  9. Her advice to anyone being recruited right now: take it as a compliment, not pressure, and be willing to unzip that old brokerage jacket

Favorite Moment:

Candace on what "cloud-based" actually means in practice: it's not isolation, it's leverage. She gets to build her brand and support her local agents without carrying the weight of running a brokerage herself. Real handles the system. She handles the people.

Connect with Candace:

Instagram: @yourrealtorcan

Loved this episode? Share it with an agent who's still on the fence about making the move, and don't forget to subscribe to The Real Shift Podcast for more real, unfiltered stories from agents building freedom their own way.

Follow along on Instagram!

Host: @heykristencantrell

Co-Host: @templeton_walker

Guest: @yourrealtorcan

Interested in joining Real? Let's chat!

What is The Real Shift: The Real Broker Podcast?

Real, Raw & Relatable With Kristen Cantrell & Templeton Walker — two agents who ditched the old-school rules, built freedom through Real Broker, and are bringing you the real, unfiltered stories no one else is telling.