If you were to go back in time for the last 24 months and look at every closing you had, would all those people you closed a transaction with have given you a recommendation or endorsement online?

In other words...

If you closed 20 transactions, do you have 20 endorsements on realtor.com, Zillow, Facebook, or Google Business? Or are you missing a lot?

If you're missing a lot, you're missing opportunities. Here's why:

If you look at a couple of agents in your market, you might find this, I see this all the time. You might have an experienced agent that's crushing it — doing 30-40 transactions a year. Then you have this brand new agent who just started their business a couple of years ago and only closed 10-12 transactions each year.

But... online, they're getting a recommendation or endorsement from every single client. And sometimes clients they didn't even close a transaction with, but just had a good experience with them. So...

Here's an interesting question for you coming into the new year:

How many clients did you fire in 2021?

If the answer is zero, then that tells me as a coach that you don't take your time as seriously as you should.

You see, we all have a value of our time. And we can all figure it out quickly. We can take the 2000 hours an average agent works for a year and divide it by our gross income for last year. And you'll know exactly how much you're making per hour.

So if you made $100k, for instance, divide it by 2000, and you made about $50 per hour. If you made $200k, then you made about $100 an hour and so on.

Let's say that you're at the top, you know, you're doing $200k-$300k a year. Meaning, your time is worth $100-$150 an hour, which is very true for many of my coaching students (and even far more than that), but they're not saying "no" enough.

Here's what I mean:

If you have somebody that's wasting an hour of your time and your...

There's one thing we've all done as human beings, living in the United States of America. I guarantee every adult has thought about this at some point:

They've thought owning a rental would be super cool.

Even if they're not homeowners yet, they've thought it would be nice to be on the other side of the equation — and not be paying rent, but also receiving rent.

So this makes for a great conversation. And there's something interesting that's happening in the world today, which we don't talk enough about in the real estate world, which is this:

A lot of millennials and the next generation of buyers coming in are being taught and embracing this concept that they don't want to own their own home.

They wanna continue renting their own home because they want a mobile lifestyle. And they wanna be able to move from New York to Miami to LA. They wanna surf around and have that mobile lifestyle, but they wanna own a couple rentals.

So...

Here's a super easy technique this time of year, which is super effective:

Go back to 2021. Look at every transaction you closed. Pull the HUD statement from your closing and then send that onto your client.

Why would you do that?

Because now it's tax season. People are gonna start filing taxes. They're gonna realized they lost those documents. And you can provide a real service to them by sending them those documents,. Just email them over and put a little note on that that says,

"Hey, I know tax season's coming. Thought I'd make it easy for you to file your taxes. There's some things here that may be a deduction for you or may save you some dollars in your taxes. Here you go.

By the way, hope you're enjoying the home. If I can help you or your friends with anything in the future with real estate, your referral is my highest compliment."

Something like that. Simple, easy, and guess what? Your clients will love it. They'll thank you....

There's a "four alarm fire" happening in the real estate industry today:

What is it?

Interest rates.

Interest rates are rising extremely rapidly. Now we knew coming into 2022 rates were gonna rise. The anticipation was from Mortgage Bankers Association, NAR, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, etc. The consensus was 3.7% by the end of 2022.

But what has happened?

First week in January, rates went to 3.12%. Second week in January, rates went to 3.45%.

Wow — that's almost a vertical rise!

So what's the messaging here?

The messaging for our buyers and sellers is get off the fence and get into the market.

Now, why are rates rising so quickly?

Well, we know that the Fed had told us already that they were gonna raise rates three times in 2022 to fight inflation because inflation's at a 50-year high and 7% was the latest number.

So their #1 goal was to fight inflation.

They also announced they were gonna stop buying mortgage-backed securities...

Hey guys, I wanna give you a quick strategy when you are listing a house for the first time and you're having a conversation with a seller.

I call it my "Many Buyer Eyes" Strategy. And here's how it works:

I say...

"Hey, you know what? One thing I do with all my sellers when I list their properties for sale is I treat you as a buyer. And what that means is that I'm gonna act like you're a buyer for your own property and your own price range. So I'm gonna set you up in the MLS as if you're a buyer looking in the 400-500k price range in your market area, in our MLS zone that we're in with similar attributes of your house. Here's why I'm doing this: I want you to see in real time the listings that are being presented to buyers that are searching for home like yours.

So you're gonna see all your competition, all the price reductions, all the pending transactions, they're gonna be coming to you. And I want you to look at them because we...

Lawrence Yun was recently quoted as saying, "If you are under the age of 40, you have never seen inflation this high in this country."

The inflation rate in November hit a record 6.8%. That's the highest we've seen in decades.

So when we look at these numbers and everybody's talking about inflation, how does this relate to estate?

It's an interesting conversation. It's something that we should talk about with our clients.

Here's the good news when it comes to real estate:

Real estate is a tremendous asset and a hedge against inflation. That's why last year, we saw a record number of people investing in real estate. In fact, it was the the highest recorded ever. The percentage of homes purchased was 18.2% were sold to investors.

One reason is they're using it as a hedge against inflation.

So here's what's happened according to Lawrence Yun. He says that real estate has proven to be a good hedge against inflation. Some examples:

In the 1970s,...

I'm gonna give you some numbers that are just reality in our business that you should know. And these numbers are going to drive your success throughout your career — whether you like it or not.

Are you ready for these numbers? Here they are:

They may be slightly different for every person, but in general, across the country, here's what the numbers look like in our industry:

* For every 30 conversations you have, you'll average one closed transaction.

And I want you to remember this:

Almost every single transaction you will ever have in your career will be the result of a conversation you've had in the last two weeks. You want more closings? You're gonna have to have more conversations.

Here's another one:

* For every 10 sphere members you have in your database today, you should average one closing — assuming that you've made 20 to 50 contacts with them in the past year.

20 to 50 contacts will get you a 10 to 1 closing...

One thing that we should do this year is cut the dead wood.

What does that mean?

It means we don't wanna be walking up a mountain, our mountain being our figurative goal set that we've set for ourselves and have a backpack full of rocks on our back.

Now, what is that backpack full of rocks?

Those are clients that don't wanna sell, that don't wanna buy, that are wasting your time, that are frustrating, that are angry people that we do not need to be carrying around on our backs anymore.

We need to cut them loose and work with people that really wanna buy and sell.

So going into the new year, how can we approach our business a little bit differently?

One is to work with ready and willing clients which sounds crazy, but it is so simple that it's obvious, right?

We need to work with ready and willing clients.

Having a ready and willing conversation is important. So I'm gonna give you my "ready and willing" conversation script when I'm...

At this time of year, a lot of sellers will say something like this:

"Hey Jim, I think I'm just going to wait because I will probably get more from my house later anyway. So I'm just going to wait until spring or summer and see what happens then."

How do we address that comment or that concern?

I'm going to give you one script that's worked for me over the years. And it works by talking about the fact that when we're staying and rebuying in the same market, waiting doesn't make a lot of sense.

So let's put this in practice. You might say,

"Hey, I hear what you're saying, but here's something to consider, right? If you're buying or selling in the same market -- because the entire market's going up in value at the same time -- waiting to sell your home to buy another home just means the other home you're buying is also going up in value at the same time.

In fact, there's a little bit of a Delta that if you're buying a higher...