When you're talking to your sphere of influence and you're communicating a message through social media, email, newsletters, email marketing, and physical mail…

What is that message? And do people really like the message?

That's a really interesting question. We can measure that. We can measure it with email newsletters like Constant Contact or MailChimp, based on what they call the click-through rate—how many people are clicking on the topic so they like it and want to read it or dig into it.

And then deeper than that, we can see how long people are on your social media. If they engage, how long they're sticking on that, if they're watching your video for 10 seconds or 20 seconds, getting all the way through it. So that's what we call stickiness with the content.

To make your content more sticky and have a higher click-through, let me give you an idea. And that is to give people social currency.

What is social currency?

That means you're going to give somebody something that the...

Hey guys, we're coming into Spring, and this is a great time of year to offer your concierge services to all of your clients.

What is your concierge service?

You want people to think about you when they think about anything related to their house — whether that's putting a new roof on, new carpet, refinishing the floors, needing an electrician, needing a plumber.

You want to be the first point of contact when they have a need related to their house. But you've got to say it out loud.

You've got to reach out to them. This is a great text, a great call, a great email where you say:

“Hey guys, a lot of times this time of year, coming into Spring, is when people like to do home improvement projects. If that's you and you need a contractor of any kind, reach out to me.

I've got relationships with the best contractors in the market. They give my clients great service and great pricing, so please reach out to me.”

Now, here's how I'm inserting value: I'm saying they're going to get whi...

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?

Hey guys, when’s the last time you put an in-search-of ad out on social media? We’ll call it an ISO.

An ISO ad could be as simple as saying, “Hey guys, I have a buyer looking for a home in the Jacksonville area. Three bedroom, two bath, up to $600,000. They’re looking in this school district. If you hear of anybody thinking about selling, please send them my way.”

This has so many benefits you don’t even realize.

You might say, “That’ll never work. I’m not actually going to get somebody who says they’re interested in selling. That’s a waste of time.”

That’s not the point.

The point is that you’re telling everybody in your sphere, everybody in your social media audience, that you are a busy REALTOR and that you will leave no stone unturned in finding homes for your clients.

They’re going to say, not only is Jim busy, he’s actually going the extra mile for his client.

If you do this consistently, you’re helping people see you through a different lens.

Some of you have a problem w...

Hey guys, one of the things I always tell people when they’re starting out in the business is to watch what top professionals are doing and model other people’s success. When you do that, you unlock a bunch of “secrets.”

I’m going to share one secret right now that you may not have noticed, but once I say it, you’re going to dial in and think, “Ah, I have noticed that.” It’s one of those Captain Obvious things when you really look at it.

People who are doing a lot of real estate sales—$20, $30, $40, $50 million in production—often talk about new sales, listings, and closings by saying things like, “I just sold my friend a house. I just sold my buddy a house. I just helped my friends buy a duplex.”

Everyone they talk about is their friend.

Then you reflect on your own business and ask, “Why am I not selling as much real estate as they are?” They put their pants on one leg at a time just like me. They’re not working ten times harder than me.

The reason is simple: they have more frie...

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...

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...

I have a question for you. As a real estate agent, how topical are you?

What do I mean by topical? In other words, when you watch the news at night, open up your web browser, or scroll through social media, a lot of real estate news hits us. Because we’re in the real estate business, we see a lot of news that affects us.

If it’s really top of mind for you, guess who else sees that? All of your clients see that too.

So when there’s a topic that’s hot, and you see a lot of trending discussion around that topic, what should you do with it? Well, you should speak to it. You should put out your own content where you talk about your opinion on that specific topic.

I’m going to give you two examples that fall into that realm right now—topics there’s been a lot of chatter about, two proposals by the current administration. You can agree or disagree with them, but there’s still a lot of chatter.

The two proposals: 50-year mortgages and portable mortgages.

Have you heard the chatter?

This...

Hey guys, new study from Harris Interactive—interesting study—found that every American knows four people who are going to move next year. I want you to put that in perspective.

Let's say you're a real estate professional and you have just a hundred people in your database. You might say that's not enough to make a living. The reality is those hundred people know 400 people who are going to move.

What percentage of those would you need to have a complete transformation in your career? To actually 10x your performance from last year?

So then the question is: if that's true, how do I get my arms around that business? What am I missing? What am I doing wrong?

I'm going to give you two things you're doing wrong...

First one is going to be hard to hear: people don't look at you as referral worthy.

What does that mean? It means when they look at you, they're thinking, “I don't know if I could trust him or her with a referral,” because they don’t know you're a hardworking agent.

Why do...

Brokerages owners, you’ve probably heard me talk about this before, but I want to give you a different spin on it.

When I’m talking to agents, I give them what I call my “4-1-1-1 Strategy.”

For them, that means:

1. Lead generate for one hour a day
2. Set one appointment a day
3. Go on one appointment a day
4. Add one new person to their sphere of influence each day

If agents do that consistently, they’ll see transformation in their business within 30 days.

But what if I told you, as a brokerage owner, that you could apply your own version of the 4-1-1-1 Strategy to create transformation for yourself?

Here’s what I’ve found: the most successful recruiters in the country—the ones consistently bringing on experienced agents month after month—operate just like top-producing agents.

Most of their recruits—70%, 80%, sometimes even 90%—come as referrals from people already in their office. They’ve built such strong relationships that their agents become evangelists, out there singing their ...