As an office leader, a brokerage owner, is having teams in your building, teams on your roster, a good idea or a bad idea?

So when you look at this from the outside perspective, and I'm somebody that's been in the business for 36 years, I've owned a network of 17 offices, I've run billion-dollar companies, and so I've had a lot of teams working for me over those years.

And I will tell you that teams overall can add a lot to your company because they help you with market share. There's going to be a tremendous amount of market share growth that they're going to bring to the table.

So do you make a lot of money on a team? Usually not. Usually they're on the lowest splits coming to the company. They take up a lot of resources. They can actually take up a lot of real estate in your office.

So on a profitability scale, not great. But on a market share scale, fantastic.

So we have to ask ourselves—we need to have the right mix. We have to run a lawnmower or a piece of equipment that req...

The question for you brokerage owners and team leaders out there:

Do you know your numbers?

And when I ask this question, people say, “Oh yeah, I know my numbers.” And then we test it and see if they really do know the numbers.

I'm going to test you right now. I'm going to ask you a couple of questions about your market, and I want you to be able to tell me if you know your numbers.

When I say your market, I'm talking about your agents that work within your company. That is your local market, by the way.

And here are the questions:

1. What is your average pending price with your agent body? What is your average listing price with your agent body? What is your average close price with the agents that work for you today?

2. How does that compete with the rest of the market versus the MLS? Are you higher or are you lower? Where are you at?

And then I'm going to go deeper than that. I'm going to ask you this really tough question:

3. What's your average agent's productivity based ...

One of the things I'm asked as somebody that specializes in recruiting is how does it impact your recruiting strategy when A) you're going after an office where there's a competing broker, and B) what if you’re the competing broker in your market?

So let's start with a question: what if I'm going after an office where there's a broker that's out there still selling real estate? And that's very, very common. In fact, the vast majority of brokerage owners in the country still sell.

So here's the trick. When you're looking at those companies, when you're looking at the overall agent productivity of that office, you've got to break out the leader, because the leader is inevitably the top producer in the office.

And when I break their production out, it will bring all those other agents' production down. So I'm having a meeting or a conversation with somebody, I can say”

“Hey, I took a minute and I looked at your overall office productivity. Looks like you had a pretty good year. But wh...

As a brokerage owner or team leader, you have a tech stack, right? We all have a tech stack of some kind, the technology we provide to our agents and teams to help them operate effectively in the local market.

But here's the question: Are you eating your own dog food? Do you know how to use your tech stack from top to bottom, inside and out? More importantly, are you using it every single day? Are you fully engaged with all the bells and whistles so that your agents see you actively using it?

When your team sees you texting out of it, video texting, using it for social media, and running drip campaigns—fully immersed in the CRM—they take notice. They follow the leader. If you're not leading from the front, why would they adopt it?

If you find yourself not fully understanding your own tech stack, it's time to dive in. Use it daily, attend all the training, explore the help sections, and go through all the tutorials. Learn it because you likely invested tens of thousands of dollars in...

Okay, guys, if you're a brokerage owner or team leader and you want your team to remember one key market statistic this week, what would it be? Something like:

• "Home sales are up 10%"
• "Pending sales are up 6%"
• "Listings are up 55%"
• Or "Home prices are up X."

How do you get people to actually remember those stats?

I'll tell you what you shouldn't do. When you have your next office meeting, don't do a "data dump," which is what we often do as brokerage owners or team leaders. We throw out 25 different stats, and guess what?

Nobody remembers any of it.

Instead, share just a few key stats—maybe three to five—and then clearly state what you want them to remember.

When you tell them what to remember, they actually retain it because you've set the expectation.

At the beginning of the meeting, I might say, "Hey, I want you to remember this: The list-to-sell price in our market has dropped from 100% to 98%. That means sellers are getting 98% of their asking price, which is still ...

Here’s a question I get almost every day from people who think they need to start recruiting to grow their business.

As a real estate brokerage owner or team leader, the only way to grow profitability is by increasing the number of agents working for you.

You have to switch hats. Many of you are coming from being top-producing agents, where your focus is on personal production. But when you move to the brokerage side, it’s no longer just about your production—it’s about where production comes from.

Production doesn’t come from one, two, or even ten agents. It comes from a team of agents working under you. Your customers are no longer buyers and sellers. As a brokerage owner or team leader, your customers are agents.

If you want to grow, you need more customers—more agents. If you stay stagnant with the same number of agents, you won’t just fail to grow; you’ll become less profitable over time. Inflation is constantly eating away at your profit margins. It’s grow or die. Expanding y...

I get this question all the time from brokerage owners and team leaders: “How do I start recruiting today when I don’t have everything built yet?”

They often feel stuck in a catch-22: They think they need to build their vision first in order to start recruiting, but they don’t have the money or resources to build it because they don’t have agents yet.

Here’s the answer: People will buy into your vision as long as you can articulate it clearly and tie it to a timeline.

When you’re talking to agents, say something like:

"I’ve got this vision of the kind of company I want to build. I’m looking for a few people who want to get in on the ground floor and help me build it. We call them ‘founder agents.’ They’ll be right there, side by side with me, helping shape this vision. Can I explain to you what I’m trying to create?"

If you can sit with people and lay out a clear vision of what you’re working towards, they’ll buy into it. It doesn’t have to be 100% built yet—that’s what you’re wor...

Have you ever lost an agent? I have.

If you're a broker owner or a team leader, you probably have too. At some point, an agent decides to leave, and it feels terrible—like getting punched in the face. It's emotional, and you might wonder: Why did that happen? Was it my failure, or is it just part of the industry?

Here's the hard truth: it often is a failure on our part.

Specifically, it's a failure to understand where that agent was in their career. And that failure stems from a lack of communication with the agent.

Retention—that's what we're talking about here. Keeping agents starts with building relationships. And relationships come from spending time with your agents.

Time leads to relationships, and relationships lead to retention. So, the first step is spending more time with your agent team.

Now, you might say, “Jim, I’ve got a 200-agent office. There’s no way I can spend more time with all of them.” But it’s not about hours of one-on-one time. Even five or ten minutes can...

If I were to walk into your office right now and put my hands up in the air, asking, “What do I feel? What’s the energy in the room?”—you might think that sounds a bit new agey, especially when it comes to running a real estate company or team. But it’s true.

You can feel the energy in a room.

Let me give you an example. How many of us have been to a concert? You can feel the energy, right? A better example is a sporting event—you can feel the waves of energy when a point is made or lost. The energy is palpable.

Now, who sets the tone for that energy? It’s the players on the field, the musicians—the people performing. They create the energy in the room.

As a leader, whether you're a broker or team leader, you are the one setting the energy in your office. You create the weather. And how do you do that? It’s through your positivity, your enthusiasm, how you carry yourself, and how you walk into the building.

If you walk in with your shoulders slouched, talking about your bad mornin...

If you're coaching agents as part of your real estate brokerage or team, which we all do, one of the best methods I’ve learned is the 1-3-1 Method.

When someone brings you a problem, start by asking:

First, let's clarify the problem: What’s the one main issue we’re dealing with here?

Not 55 different things—just the one big issue we need to solve.

Then, ask: What do you think are three viable solutions for solving this?

If they can’t come up with three, help them brainstorm.

Finally, have them choose: Which do you think is the most viable option for actually getting this resolved?

Encourage them to go out, try it, and see how it works.

As a leader, whether you're a team leader or a brokerage owner, make a note in your CRM to follow up with that agent in a day or two. Check if the resolution actually solved the problem. Sometimes they'll come back and tell you, but if they don’t, reach out and ask, "Did that solve the issue?"

By using the 1-3-1 Method, you’re teaching them to f...