As a brokerage owner or team leader in charge of recruiting, where is the number one source of recruits for your team or office? Where are you going to get the most recruits?

It’s an interesting question, right? You might think it comes from video, cold calling, sending texts, video texts — all the things we talk about in recruiting. I’m going to tell you: all those things play a part, for sure.

But the number one recruiting source for brokers and team leaders across the country comes from one area: referrals from your current team.

Just like agents, whose number one source of business is their SOI — their Sphere of Influence — our number one source of recruits is the same.

It comes from your own version of an SOI: your agent body.

Now, what if your agents right now are not referring more agents? You might ask, “Why aren’t they sending me agents?” That should be your number one source of recruiting. Why aren’t they doing it?

A few reasons:

• You’re not close enough with them. Yo
...

Hey guys, do you have emotional intelligence? That’s an interesting question, right?

There’s a massive difference between IQ and EQ.

Some of you, like me, have probably met really smart people — PhDs, doctorates — yet when you meet them, they’re super awkward. They’re not easy to talk to, sometimes they’re complete jerks, and you wonder why these people are flat broke. They’ve got huge degrees but are living like paupers.

Why? Because IQ doesn’t necessarily translate into a successful career or life. EQ, though, has a massive impact on our success as human beings.

You see plenty of people who didn’t graduate high school or college but went on to build incredible businesses. Maybe that’s you. It’s certainly me. They have high EQ, or emotional intelligence.

So what does EQ mean?

It means having the ability to build relationships with people and elevate those around us so they feel good about the relationship — and about how you’re impacting their lives.

So when you think about how...

Hey guys, as a brokerage owner or team leader, with the holiday season coming up, I want to encourage you to think about what your company is doing to give back to the community.

Giving back has so many benefits. It’s a powerful team-building and retention tool. It also shows potential recruits that your company isn’t just about profits—you genuinely care about people and the community. And for buyers and sellers in the market, it demonstrates that you’re hyper-local focused and committed to giving back regularly.

Here’s what I encourage you to do: pick a charity the whole team can get behind. It doesn’t have to be housing-related.

One year, we did a project giving kids shoes during the winter. Many kids were going to school with holes in their shoes, and their feet were getting wet. Another year, we focused on coats for kids.

Every year, we put together a charitable event during Christmas. We’ll do Thanksgiving-style turkeys and then a big Christmas dinner, along with toys for kid...

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 ...

Hey guys, as a real estate broker, we all know we should be recruiting every day. But sometimes we get caught in a mental trap—thinking that being overly assertive or aggressive with potential recruits is the way to get results.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to recruit.

The right way is by creating relationships, building value in your conversations, and genuinely developing friendships with agents in the marketplace. When you do this effectively, making calls, sending texts, or emails doesn’t feel “salesy”—it feels natural because you’ve built a connection.

The wrong way is sending cold texts, emails, or voicemails repeatedly without making any meaningful connection. Eventually, people shut down, and you hit a brick wall—you’ll never break through.

Start from a position I call “no recruiting.” Don’t start with a recruiting pitch. Build a relationship first. The worst thing you can do is try to sell too early.

We’ve all experienced it—walking into a car lot or furniture stor...

Brokerage owners and team leaders, I want you to start watching for something, and I want you to be opportunistic. That might sound negative, but it’s not.

As an office leader, you have a duty to yourself, your business, your family, and your colleagues. That duty is to recruit consistently. One of the easiest ways to do that is to be opportunistic in a positive way.

What does that mean? Look for trigger events.

Trigger events in your community could be:

• An office leadership change at XYZ Company
• A brand change
• A staffing shakeup
• A technology challenge

I hear about these things all the time, and when they happen, they give me a reason to engage with that company.

For example, I might ask in my office, “Do you know anyone who works at XYZ? They’re having some changes over there. I’d like to reach out.”

Then I’ll make the call:

“Hey, I understand there’s been some changes at your company. I’ve always been impressed with your work. You’re probably very happy where you are—a...

What is your real estate company worth right now? What would you sell it for?

I ask because many people tell me, “I don’t want to do this forever. At some point, I want to escape. I want to sit on a beach with a margarita in my hand. I don’t want to die with a pen in my hand at a desk.”

My answer is always the same: Your company is not worth what it should be today.

Here’s why:

For a company to be truly profitable, it needs experienced agents. The more experienced agents you have, the more sales you generate and the more profit you create.

So, what is a real estate company worth? The answer depends on market conditions, how long your agents have been with you, your brand, and other factors. But in general, companies are valued at two to five times net income.

Now, what if you don’t have net income? Then your company is worthless. In fact, 70-90% of real estate companies in America today fall into that category.

How do I know? Because the brokerage owner still has to sell real es...

As a brokerage owner or leader, are you treating your current agents as your own personal SOI—your sphere of influence?

As an agent, you were trained to do this. You’ve heard it repeatedly from gurus, speakers, and podcasters: work your sphere. You need 20 to 50 contacts per year with your sphere to generate referrals.

But are you applying that same principle to your own agents?

Most brokerage owners and team leaders don’t. Then they wonder why recruiting is so hard. Recruiting feels difficult because they’re not getting referrals from their own agents.

The number one recruiting strategy for every brokerage owner in America should be this: your agents are so impressed, enthusiastic, and in love with what you do that they’re shouting from the rooftops, telling every agent in the market to work for you.

If that’s not happening, it’s because you’re not treating your agents with the same intensity and intentionality as your SOI.

So let’s change that. Treat them with the same respect ...

If you're a real estate broker, I want you to do something the next time you're in a grocery store. Look at the shelves and notice how many products say new and improved.

Now apply that to your own real estate company. Ask yourself: What about my company, what I'm offering to agents in this market, is new and improved?

If you can’t think of anything, neither can your current agents—and certainly no one outside your company can either. But this is the secret sauce.

We often think recruiting is all about commission splits. It’s not. If the lowest split was all that mattered, then the operator with the lowest split in your market would have every agent working for them—and we know that’s not true.

So what is attracting agents to join one company over another? It’s the tools, the technology, the services, the support, and most importantly—which company they believe can help them close more transactions at the end of the day.

Here’s the challenge: What can you roll out every quarter th...

As a recruiting coach, one of the things I hear most often is, “Jim, I’d love to recruit experienced agents every day like you recommend, but I just don’t have the time. My schedule is already stretched too thin.”

I get it. As brokerage owners and team leaders, we’re all busy. But here’s the truth: We can’t control time. If we could add two hours to the day, that’d be great. But since we can’t, the real focus has to be on self-management, not time management.

And self-management comes down to priority management.

The number one priority for every brokerage owner in America should be recruiting experienced agents every single day. Until you gain control of that, your company won’t grow.

Here’s the magic of self-management: if you want to start doing something important—like dedicating one hour a day to recruiting—that means you have to stop doing something else.

So the real question is: what are you willing to stop doing that isn’t leading to results?

Recruiting daily is the singl...