If I asked you—as a brokerage owner or team leader—what are your top five differentiation points, could you answer clearly?

What makes your company different from every other company in the marketplace? In other words, what’s your value proposition?

If you can’t answer that, no one else in your market can either.

Some of you might rush to say, “Well, we have the lowest commission plan in the market.” But that’s a terrible value proposition.

If a commission plan were all it took to recruit agents, then the brokerage with the lowest commission would have the most agents. But that’s rarely true.

Why?

Because commission plans are not the single greatest motivator for agents.

The #1 motivator for an agent to join your office is this: Will you help them grow their transaction count?

If your value proposition doesn’t clearly communicate how you’ll help agents do more deals, you’re going to lose—every single day—to competitors who can.

So here’s my challenge to you:

Take some time to...

How do you get consistent with lead generation as a real estate agent?

This is the greatest challenge most agents face: consistency. That’s the word we’re at war with every single day: consistently showing up, consistently generating leads.

If you want to take control of your business, it starts with committing to one hour of lead generation every day. And the only way you’ll follow through is by scheduling it.

You don’t do what you don’t schedule. You don’t prioritize what you don’t schedule.

So, take out your calendar right now and block one hour every working day to lead generate.

That’s step one.

Step two: know exactly what you’re going to do during that hour.

What’s your goal? What specific actions are you taking?

These are your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). They’ll vary based on your strategy, but here are some examples:

• Call 10 people in your sphere
• Call 10 FSBOs
• Handwrite and mail a few notes
• Post on social media
• Schedule an open house and start farming or n
...

What is push-button recruiting?

If you're an office leader or team leader, you might be tempted to say, “I want to recruit, but I don't want to spend the time doing it. I just want to plug into a system—a CRM, AI platform, or some kind of tech—that will do the work for me. It’ll send emails, send texts, and every day it’ll do the job automatically.”

Then, like magic, people will just start calling, wanting to work for you.

Well, I wish that were true. That would be nice.

Another version of this is hiring virtual assistants overseas to make a thousand calls a day.

I'm going to tell you something you might not want to hear:

These systems, by and large, do not work.

On the rare occasion they do set an appointment, it’s usually with the lowest-hanging fruit—the kind of agent you don’t want anyway. These are people who’ve changed companies five times in a year.

Why doesn’t it work?

Because it’s not personalized recruiting.

Imagine you’re on the other end. If you're getting a gener...

You are at war with a real estate company or agent in your marketplace. I want you to think—who is that person right now? Who is that company?

If I asked you, “Who’s your number one competitor in your market today?”

Now… what if I told you you’re wrong?

Here’s why: The number one competitor in every market in America isn’t who you think. It’s Zillow.

Why Zillow?

Because Zillow is winning the war, not of market share, but of “mindshare.” And many would argue they’ve already won.

They don’t sell homes. But when people hear the word "real estate," they think of Zillow. That’s mindshare. It’s the first thing that comes to mind.

They’ve spent billions of dollars in ads. They’re everywhere online. So when someone wants to sell a house, they check their Zestimate. When they want to buy, they go to Zillow.

Here’s what happens: someone says, “I want to buy or sell a house,” they end up on Zillow, start browsing, and get prompted: “Want to talk to an agent?”

Then they fill out a form. A...

If you own a brokerage or you're a team leader, I’ve got a question for you:

How much of your time each day is spent recruiting? And why is recruiting such a high priority for the top offices and team leaders in America?

The reason is simple: top leaders understand that at the end of the day, we don’t actually sell real estate—the agents who work with us do. What we do is provide the environment, support, administrative resources, marketing, and tools necessary for agents to succeed.

We don’t sell real estate—we help people who sell real estate.

That leads to a big mindset shift. If we’re not serving buyers and sellers directly, who are our customers?

Our customers are the agents.

When you reframe your business like that, it changes how you grow. Just like your agents grow by serving more buyers and sellers, you grow by serving more agents. That means recruiting more agents is how you scale your business.

One of the biggest mistakes office leaders make is this: They think that i...

As a real estate agent, you're probably looking for ways to generate leads in a unique or different way.

I'm going to give you one of those strategies right now. It’s completely outside the box, and I hope it gets your wheels turning and inspires a fresh perspective on your business.

Let me start with a fascinating statistic I first came across in The Millionaire Mind by Thomas Stanley. I’ve researched it myself over the years, and it consistently holds true:

90% of all millionaires—and people who will become millionaires—have volunteered or are actively volunteering in a charitable organization within their local community.

So, ask yourself:

Are you modeling that behavior by getting involved in local charities?

If not, what would happen if you started?

Here’s what happens when you do:

You begin networking with great people—people who are already successful or on their way to success. You’re also giving back to your community in a way that aligns with your passions.

If you’re ...

I've got a question for you as an office leader or team leader:

Do you have a recruiting website?

Most of the people I coach—office leaders and team leaders across the country—don’t. It's just not something they've thought about.

But having a recruiting website is important.

When someone starts to consider joining your company, they’ll do a little Google search. They’ll check out your website. They’ll look to see if it looks professional, if it feels like a good fit, and if it reflects who they are.

Now, if you also have a recruiting website—or at least a dedicated recruiting page—they can dive into the value your company offers without needing to talk to you just yet.

That’s powerful. A lot of agents are nervous about making that first contact. They don’t want to jump on a call right away. You can make it easier by creating a recruiting page on your website—or even a separate website entirely—dedicated to recruiting.

The most important part of that page?

Outlining your entire ...

As a REALTOR, you've heard the word farming, right?

Well, I want to give you a different thought process on farming that I think will be really unique:

Instead of doing a shotgun approach where you're sending out a generalized postcard or letter (which can be effective if done right), I want to introduce you to what I call “Vertical Farming.”

So instead of reaching out to 200 people, reach out to 20. And with those 20 people, go deep.

Here’s how: I might send them a CMA or a neighborhood report (both of which you can generate for free at NAR.com if you're a REALTOR). That system allows you to create a beautiful 81-page report on someone’s home anywhere in the country.

You can choose between a seller report or a neighborhood report (which might be shorter, maybe half the size).

Then, add a cover letter that says something like:

“Hi, my name is Jim. I'm with ABC Real Estate. I'm reaching out to a select handful of people in your neighborhood today to give you a quick update on you...

If you're a brokerage owner or team leader, I want to talk to you about something that's kind of outside the box—and that is what we call “adoption rates.”

What's adoption? Adoption means you bring in technology, a system, a tool, or maybe a training program into the company, and you watch as only 20% of the people utilize it—and 80% do not.

That's the rule of thumb: The 80/20 rule.

So you start to wonder why the heck you would bring anything into this company? You feel tempted to cut everything: the technology they’re not using, the training, the mentorship program—this, that, and the other.

Well, remember there's also an 80/20 rule in production too:

20% of the people are doing 80% of the production.

So when you cut these things, you might actually be hurting the people who are supporting the company the most.

But I want you to rethink the 80/20 rule for a second.

When we measure whether we should cut, keep, or add something to the company, don’t just look at whether people a...

Hey guys, lots of news around home prices happening right now. New reports are showing a massive imbalance between home buyers and home sellers:

There are roughly 500,000 more home sellers than buyers in the marketplace today.

What that means is there's a lot of pressure for sellers to get their prices right, attract buyers, and offer incentives.

Zillow is predicting prices will decline this year by 1.9%. Redfin is also forecasting a 1% decline. So, we’re starting to see price adjustments already—especially in the major metro markets. 11 of the 50 metros across the country are already seeing price declines.

This is not going to be an easy year for sellers, but you can still sell your home—as long as you're doing the right things and guiding your clients properly.

One thing I like to discuss with my sellers is “search engine pricing.”

What is search engine pricing? It means understanding how buyers search for homes online.

Here's what they don’t do: They don’t sit down and say, “...