Brokerage owners, team leaders—I know that you're recruiting every day because you're supposed to do that to build your business. I know you're doing it.

And when you're doing this, and you're setting aside one hour a day for recruiting, who are you targeting? Well, who you should be targeting is the people that are going to be the most receptive to your message.

And often, we just target the top producers in the market, or we target a certain group of people that has done this much production over this number of years.

But let me give you another target: “Gap Agents.”

What's a gap agent?

This is an agent who has not closed a deal in the last 90 days.

They have closed deals in the past. Maybe they've been a top performer. Maybe they were a consistent 3 or 4 or 5, 6, 8, 9 top producer.

But for whatever reason, in the last 90 days, they have not closed a transaction.

These folks will be much more receptive to having a conversation with you because they're looking to be rescued. T...

My brokerage owners and team leaders out there, I’ve got a question for you.

Have you ever thought about your business as having a hole, a gap, an area where your weak?

Maybe you’re not strong in riverfront property. Or maybe it’s multifamily, commercial properties, land, or condos—some area of the market where you’re underperforming in this category.

How do you fix that, and how do you fix it rapidly?

I’ll tell you the number one way to do this: Recruit into the gap

You can do this by identifying the top 10-20 agents in that niche in your market area. Then you give them a quick call or a text and say something like the following:

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“Hey, I was doing some numbers this morning. I saw that you’re the number one condo salesperson in this area for the last two years—congratulations.”

Or, “You’re in the top 20 of agents who signed the most land in our county last year. It’s incredible.

“And the reason I’m reaching out is because I want to develop that niche at our company. I feel li...

If you're a brokerage owner or team leader and you're saying to yourself, “hey, who should I target in terms of recruiting in my local market,” I'm going to give you The 20% Rule.

This is something we should all be aware of: There are people that are more likely to move than others in your market area, which falls in The 20% Rule.

Here’s what The 20% Rule means:

People that have had an upswing in their business by 20%, or a downswing in their business by 20% over the past 12 months.

So let's look at the downswing folks. The downswing folks are looking to be rescued. It's a perfect opportunity to be calling them because who do they blame? They never blame themselves.

There's never going to be a time where they say, “well, I didn't do what I was supposed to do.” They're always going to say, “well, my brokerage should have given me better marketing or better support or better training or better leads. It's their fault, not my fault.” It's just a natural tendency of what agents do.

A...

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...

A quick question for you brokerage owners and team leaders out there: do you eat your own dog food?

What do I mean? I mean this: that you're using the same systems that you're providing your own agents. So if you're giving them a certain CRM, if you're giving them a certain platform to use, if you're giving them a follow-up program, you're telling them to use social media, you're telling them to do video, you're telling them to have a YouTube channel, etc.

You have all these systems at your office. But are you using the systems that you're providing, and do you know them like the back of your hand? Can you train them on these tools? Are you an expert in it because you're eating your own dog food every single day?

When you do this at a high level, agents respect you because they want to be led by somebody that's at the front. They want to be led by someone else using the same systems.

And number two, you're going to be able to help them grow their own businesses.

The worst thing I'...

Hey guys, a really interesting study just came out, and it showed that 21% of agents that are 25 years plus in the business are actively looking for an exit strategy.

So two things here.

Number one, if you own a real estate company and you've got a lot of people that fit that category, your business could be at risk: What if they suddenly all retire en masse?

Second thing about this is: We have a massive opportunity in our market to take advantage of these people that are thinking about leaving the industry.

Here's how:

What if you partnered with one of your agents in your office to go out and target these folks in the industry?

You say, “Hey, there's four or five agents at this company and that company and that company that fit that category.”

And then say to one of your agents, “Why don't we go out there in tandem, you and I together, and let's try to recruit them in?”

You can actually maybe buy their book of business and come up with a succession plan. A recruiting strategy ...

It happened, you were able to set a recruiting appointment.

Now what do you do when you’re going to meet someone for the first time at coffee or lunch? Do you immediately launch into your pitch?

That’s the worst thing you could possibly do in your first meeting with a potential recruit.

The first thing you need to do is build rapport and trust. One of the best ways to do that is by understanding who you’re talking to — doing a deep dive and some intelligence research on the agent before the meeting.

What does that look like?

Obviously, you can Google them. You can look at their social media accounts. You can talk to other people in your office about what they might know.

But here’s an easy strategy most recruiters miss: dive into their current inventory.

Look at their listings. See how long they’ve been on the market. Look at their price points. Where are they focusing? Go back and look at the trajectory of their business. Are they up or down compared to last year at this time?

One thing I hear a lot this time of year from brokerage owners and team leaders is, “I’m looking at my budget and cutting costs to increase profit.”

Here’s my message to you: that’s fine. It’s good to be a controller. You don’t want expenses out of control.

But you can’t cut your way to profitability. You just can’t.

What happens is you start cutting services, cutting staff, cutting tools, and cutting resources. If there’s some fat to cut, great. But most of the time, you end up cutting things agents actually like.

You get so focused on creating profit for yourself that you create a whirlpool effect—a downward spiral—for the entire company.

Agents see services being cut, team members gone, staffing reduced, and tools taken away, and they think, “I’m going somewhere else.”

You lose an agent, and your profitability gets worse. Then another agent leaves. Then another. Pretty soon you think you need to cut even more.

You can see where this goes:

You cut yourself right out of busine...

Hey guys, if you’re a brokerage owner or team leader, one thing we tend to do this time of year is say, “Okay, what are our production goals for 2026?”

And you should do this. You should know what you’re shooting for in terms of Gross Commission Income (GCI) and closed volume.

But one thing we often forget is what’s actually going to produce those goals—those transactions closed, that volume closed, that GCI. What is it going to take to create that?

Often, we get lost in this idea that all we need to do is motivate our current crew enough for them to create the production goals we’ve set for the team or the company.

But the reality is, that almost never works.

As someone who coaches brokerage owners, franchises, and team leaders across the country at the highest levels, I can tell you that almost never works.

Why?

Because what’s going to create higher production and higher GCI isn’t motivating your current team to produce more. Now, we want to do that—that’s absolutely a goal.

As a brokerage owner or team leader, one thing we often do—and we see agents do this a lot—is run into what’s called “The Einstein Problem.”

The Einstein Problem is this: we’re introduced to a new idea or concept, and we say, “You know what? I’ve heard that before. I’ve tried that before. It didn’t work for me, so I’m not going to do it again.” We stop listening to that idea, concept, tool, technique, or strategy. We say it doesn’t work in our market.

We’ve all heard agents do this, and we’ve done it ourselves. Let’s be honest.

One of the areas we commonly say this about is recruiting.

We’ll say, “I’ve tried recruiting. It doesn’t work in my market. I’ve tried going after top agents. They never come.”

Or, “I’ve tried experienced agent recruiting. I’ve emailed, texted, called, taken them to lunch, and it just doesn’t go anywhere, so I’m going to stop.”

But here’s The Einstein Problem behind that attitude—and this is true for your agents with lead generation as well.

I want you to...