I don’t know about you, but I tend to collect email accounts like I used to collect Topps baseball cards in the 1980s, and then comic books in the 1990s.
The difference, of course, is that I actually wanted the baseball cards and comics. At the height of my teaching, I was at the University of New Hampshire, Great Bay Community College, New England College, York Community College, and Southern Maine Community College. Then I had my two old university emails from my alma maters. And my personal.
That’s eight email accounts.
When I quit teaching, I thought Oh this is going to get better, except yesterday I accidentally logged into sbargdill@ccsnh.edu.
You can also find me at sbargdill@kw.com, which is my real estate sheriff’s badge. And stevebargdill@gmail.com, my longtime personal email, receives enough spam to qualify as a federal Superfund site. The KW account is probably a close second. too, because the number of open house alerts I get, the broker opens, or my favorite-favorite is when a Realtor who lives in Woka Woka, California, sends me a market report for Dover, New Hampshire. My maybe third favorite is when a Realtor from anywhere sends me a Happy Thanksgiving email with a single pixelated piece of turkey clipart in the upper left-hand corner, and literally just the words “Happy Thanksgiving.”
When I’m in the middle of a transaction, 90 percent of my job literally becomes email triage.
I’ve long and hard thought about going nuclear and just starting over from scratch. There’s nothing like that new email smell.
But here’s the thing that really pushed me over the edge. I’m trying to build out this “Steve Bargdill” entity across every platform—the new SEO strategy that isn’t so much SEO searchable as much as building a favorably indexable, specific, singular identity that AI can recognize, understand, rank, and recommend.
And email is not only a platform, but the platform you should pay attention to first. Because email is the primary identity layer. Not social media. Not your website. Email.
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And email is weird because, as a platform, it doesn’t exist in the wild wild west of the Internet. Email is not public data. Email, however, absolutely functions as a primary identity layer for AI models in three ways.
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Every platform—Substack, WordPress, LinkedIn, Facebook, Keller Williams, MLS, your hosting service, your domain registrar, your analytics, newsletter feed, your client CRM—I mean, just pick something. All of it attaches to your email as the canonical account holder, the verification method, and the trust signal.
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Email signatures are publicly indexable through replies, forwards, and archives. Every time someone forwards your email, takes a quick screenshot, or quotes your email, your footer hits a server that stores that information, archives it, and indexes it. Which effectively turns your footer, your email signature, into a public mini-bio.
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Email choice determines which “you” the Internet thinks you are. So if you’re anything like me, you split your entity into fragments: sbargdill@ccsnh.edu, sbargdill@kw.com, and stevebargdill@gmail.com. The ccnsh address marks me as the academic. The KW address marks me as a realtor. Gmail suggests personal/private/unindexed.
To fix this, my first move was to set up a brand new canonical email:
steve@stevebargdill.com
And, yes, it feels ridiculous typing that.
Because my good writer friend John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt at the immortal, perposterous, legendary email address of
JohnJacobJingleheimerSchmidt@JohnJacobJingleheimerSchmidt.com
has been doing this for years. Name, by the way, changed to protect the innocent. Cause I mean, who does that?
Why not just John@JacobJingleheimerSchmidt.com?
But turns out John wasn’t ridiculous, he was just early.
Your email signature, your from-address, your sub-brand line, and your footer are all semantic signals that plug into the larger entity graph of who you are across platforms. So, if you receive an email from me, this is the new look:
The steve@stevebargdill.com is the root identity, the canonical email. The header strip repeats my exact tagline from this very Substack, which means every email I send reinforces the same entity description across platforms.
The little tiny link that says “New on Substack,” I thought personally, was a moment of pure genius, except I got that kinda wrong. Am I on Substack? Are you reading a Substack post right now?
Yes. Yes, you are. But. More specifically, you are reading a Coffee with Steve Substack. So I did change that to read “New on Coffee with Steve.”
The cool bit about the Coffee with Steve link is that it is dynamic. Gmail, Outlook, whatever you use, will ruthlessly and unapologetically strip out dynamic scripts with a mighty vengeance. Except, every time I post on Substack, that little email link automagically updates with the title, date, and subtitle snippet. If you want the tech stack on how I built that updating link, drop me a line, and I’ll give you the step-by-step.
The contact phone numbers, the same numbers on my website, on my substack, on my Facebook, along with the website not only clean and repeatable but professionally anchored. Since I’m a Realtor, I included the geographical areas I mainly service.
You’ll notice, too, that I yanked out every ounce of legalese crap from the footer. This move really hit my soul too because every real estate agent has a footer that looks like a cease-and-desist letter married a liability waiver and then reproduced. The information is still there, still accessible, but I don’t want to be known as someone about to file a lawsuit if you breathe in my direction. And, as a Realtor, receiving all those Thanksgiving emails and seeing each one of them tack on wire fraud warnings, and seriously, I’m just wishing you a happy Thanksgiving, we don’t have a contract language—kinda takes away from the heart and intent of that spammy Thanksgiving greeting.
How long did this take to update my email and signature? I consider myself pretty tech savvy, but I won’t lie here: what I thought would take a couple hours at the most, an entire flipping day. But this is not about simply updating an email signature. It’s about tightening the spine of the whole Steve Bargdill universe.
The whole layout is machine-digestible, human-legible, and brand-aligned. And that Santa hat avatar?
Adorable.
“Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.” – John Edgar Wideman
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Why Your Realtor Might Be In Over Their Head
The first in a full 10-part series that pulls back the curtain on an industry most people never get to see clearly. Beginning with the low barrier to entry that brings so many agents into real estate, the pieces walk readers through how those agents are actually educated, supervised, and licensed to represent the largest financial decisions of someone’s life. From there, the arc traces the full anatomy of a transaction—what a Realtor truly does, how agency law works in the real world, and why so much of the job has less to do with houses and more to do with marketing and navigating human behavior. The series also explains how agents are paid, how production numbers get misused, and how to read a Realtor’s online presence with a critical eye. The final installment gives consumers a practical set of interview questions so they can choose representation based on skill, clarity, and trust rather than chance or convenience.
About this publication.
Coffee with Steve is an independent publication by Steve Bargdill. Views are my own and do not represent Keller Williams Coastal & Lakes & Mountains Realty (“KWCLM”) or any other organization. Each Keller Williams Office is Independently Owned and Operated.
Not advice. Content is informational and educational; it is not legal, tax, or financial advice and does not guarantee results. Talk to a licensed professional who knows your situation before you act.
No agency created. Reading this does not create an agency relationship or agreement for services. Brokerage representation requires a separate written agreement with KWCLM.
Licensure. I am licensed in New Hampshire. Equal Housing Opportunity.
Wire-fraud warning. During representation by Keller Williams, you will never be asked via email to wire funds to anyone, including a title company. Do not follow email wiring instructions. Always verify by phone using a trusted number.
You can reach Keller Williams Coastal and Lakes & Mountains Realty at 603-610-8500 or Steve Bargdill directly at 603-617-6018.
Steve Bargdill | Realtor & Author | Dover • Portsmouth • Somersworth • Rochester • Seacoast NH | Licensed in NH as Stephen Bargdill Jr., with Keller Williams Coastal & Lakes & Mountains Realty.
Pronouns: he, they
