For you agents out there, I’ve got a question: have you mapped home anniversaries for your entire database?

What does that mean? When we help someone buy a home, we automatically record the closing date in our CRM. If you haven’t been doing that, start now. If you haven’t done it for your whole career, go back and do it for every house you’ve ever sold.

When that anniversary date comes up—January, February, March, April, May, whenever—you now have a reason to call those clients and say, “Hey, happy six-year home anniversary. Can you believe it’s already been six years?”

Then you say, “Guess what? It’s your turn for a home equity analysis. I like to update all my friends on how much money they’ve made on their house over the last 12 months.”

You tell them, “Here’s what you’ve made. Percentage-wise, it looks like about $22,000.”

That’s a great present to get every year. Your clients will love this.

Second, you follow it up by saying, “By the way, if you know anybody buying or selli...

Brokerage owners and team leaders, I have a quick quiz for you. How many social media posts have you put out in the last seven days?

I ask this because we’re constantly preaching to our agents about the necessity of being visible with their database. When we’re visible—highly visible—we’re more likely to create transactions. Visibility matters.

In fact, I would argue that visibility is more important than ability.

You can have an agent who’s fantastic at negotiating, marketing, working with clients, and solving problems—and they’re still not closing transactions. At the same time, there’s another agent in your community who’s terrible to work with, a poor negotiator, and yet they’re closing a ton of deals.

What’s the difference? Visibility.

This second agent is everywhere. They show up on every feed—Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube. They’re highly visible.

Meanwhile, the agent with great ability isn’t closing transactions because no one sees them. Visibility trumps ability. U...

Hey guys, here’s a great message to put out to your SOI, and specifically to buyers who may be on the fence about entering the market.

A new study just came out from HousingWire showing that 40% of listings on the market today have had a price reduction of some kind. That’s higher than the last two years—higher than ’23 and higher than ’24.

That makes this a great time to be a buyer, especially if you’re a bargain shopper.

So what’s the text? You could simply say:

“Hey guys, if you’re out there wanting to find a bargain in today’s market, the time is right. Forty percent of listings on the market today have had a price reduction of some kind. Some sellers are more motivated than others. If you’re ready to start shopping, this may be the best time to shop for your next home.”

And that’s true.

Now is a great time to be a bargain hunter. Put that message out. Shake up some interest. Get people looking at homes.

It’s a great time to be a buyer.

Hope this helps. If you want more ide...

I’ve got a question for brokerage owners and team leaders:

If you could wave a magic wand over your business right now and hire somebody—a staff member—and money was no object, what would that position be? What would that full-time person look like coming in and helping your company?

What would that position be for you?

A lot of people would say, “I’d hire a social media director.”
Some people would say, “I need a marketing person.”
Others would say, “I need a TC,” or “I need an inside sales agent,” or “I need a tech person. I need a technology expert in my company.”

Or you might say, “I need somebody running my Google Ads or my Facebook Ads. I need somebody in that room.”

All of us have different needs, but I want to go deeper with you on this.

I don’t want this to be a dream. I want this to be a reality. And the way we do that is by identifying your hiring trigger.

For all of us, that trigger is going to be dollars flowing through the front door. We need more revenue coming in t...

Hey guys, if you want to have a fantastic phone call with everyone in your database coming into December and January—right at the end of the year and the beginning of the new year—this is what I call the “Real Estate Tune-Up.”

We take our cars in for a tune-up every few thousand miles. We need to do the same thing with our database. The way you do that is by being direct and asking one key question.

Here’s the question.

“Hey, this is Jim. How are you guys doing? I’ve been thinking about you. I’m talking to everyone I know as we head into the new year, just on the business side, and I wanted to ask: is there anything you have on the horizon, real estate-related, for 2026 that I can help you with?”

That’s it. You just put it out there.

“Do you have anything going on in 2026, real estate–related, that I can help you with?”

You’ll be shocked by how many people say, “Actually, yes, we do. We’ve been thinking about something.”

Remember, about 5%—one in 20 people you talk to out in the...

If you’re a real estate broker or team leader, I’m sure you’re experiencing what I’m about to describe. I call it the 80/20 rule, and it’s not the 80/20 rule you’re thinking about.

The 80/20 rule we usually think of is that 20% of the agents do 80% of the business. It’s probably closer to a 90/10 rule now, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

What I’m talking about is the 80/20 rule when it comes to the deployment of the technologies, tools, and services you provide to your agents.

As a brokerage owner or team leader, you invest in all this tech and all these tools, and then 80% of your agents don’t use them. You’re spending thousands—maybe tens of thousands—of dollars, and you’re thinking, “This is crazy. Maybe I should just stop providing this stuff.”

That’s a mistake.

First, you have 20% of your people who are actually using these tools, and those are usually the people producing. If you stop providing the tools, you’re hurting that group.

But there’s another reason you shou...

As a real estate professional, I know you’re probably already on Facebook and Instagram. Everybody is.

But are you on LinkedIn? And if you are, are you using it to its fullest potential?

Here’s why I ask: Did you know that one in three business owners is on LinkedIn? One-third of all the businesses in your town are on LinkedIn.

The beauty of LinkedIn is that it helps you flesh out your own database—your CRM, your SOI—because it connects you to people from professions you’ve been in before. If you list past employers and say, “Hey, I’ve worked at these three companies,” LinkedIn will suggest people you might know.

You might look at that and say, “You know what? I do know that person. They’re not in my database, but I do know them.”

Now you can connect with them on LinkedIn, send them a message, get reconnected, and start a conversation. Then move them as quickly as you can into your SOI.

Think about alumni groups or colleges you’ve attended. All of these business-related connectio...

Hey guys, if you're a brokerage owner or team leader, I've got a strategy for you when it comes to recruiting, and that's what I call “Weakest Point Recruiting.”

You might say, what does that mean? Weakest point recruiting simply means this: I want you to look at your overall business today—your brokerage, your team. Most of us are pretty strong in residential resale. That’s the general core.

But what about other areas of the market? Maybe you're weak in land sales. Maybe you're weak in rural property. Maybe you're weak in waterfront, golf courses, condos, or commercial property.

I want you to identify two or three areas where your company or team is just weak—where you're not very strong in that market area. And I want you to look at this not as a weakness. I want you to flip it on its head and ask, “how can I turn this into an opportunity?”

Your opportunity is to recruit to your weakness.

Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to identify the top 10 agents in that niche who coul...

Let me tell you a story:

I had a friend of mine that had cancer a while back, and I was at a garage sale and saw this book all about the Mayo Clinic. It had a story in there about the Mayo Clinic, a study of 400 patients the Mayo Clinic had served, and these 400 patients had had miraculous recoveries from cancer.

I thought, “Oh, this is a great book to give my friend.” So I got it and gave it to them. I was telling him about the story—it was absolutely incredible.

But what was interesting about this story of the cancer survivors was that the one thing they all had in common wasn’t their treatment plans or some crazy protocol.

They all believed that they would get better.

Every single one of them had a 1000% belief that they would survive—and they did. They had miraculous recoveries that no one could explain.

So why do I bring this up? How does this relate to real estate? It relates in that your belief about the market matters, and your approach every day matters. If you come into...

Hey guys, there’s an interesting new study from 1000Watt. They studied 600 agents and asked them several questions about where they thought they were in their career.

A shocking number: 31% of these agents said they were actively considering making a real estate brokerage change—switching offices.

That number jumped to 53% for agents under the age of 35.

So when you hear that as a brokerage owner or a team leader, what should that represent to you? What I think it should represent is opportunity.

If you look at your entire market—maybe you have a thousand agents, maybe ten thousand—think about one-third of them are actively considering making a change, and 53% of that younger generation are actively considering it. Then the question becomes: What can you do about this opportunity? How can you get ahead of it?

The way you get ahead of it is by being intentional with your recruiting strategy—getting out there, having conversations, building relationships, and really showing your val...