Hey guys, when you look at every real estate market in America as a broker-owner leader, you can probably agree with me that there's only one #1 brokerage in every market.

Now, today, it may be you, or it might not. Odds are it's not. So if we're not number one, sometimes we can say to ourselves, "Geez, how am I going to attract agents if I'm not the top dog in the market?"

We need to change the narrative.

What do we do to change the narrative? We got to reframe what people are looking at.

So I'm going to give you an example of that:

When we are talking about our firm, instead of just focusing on who sold the most, who listed the most, who painted the most, which is what agents get caught up in, brokerages get caught up in reframing the narrative.

For example, by saying, "Hey, let's look at a couple of other metrics of how we can evaluate companies in the marketplace."

Maybe it's the number of years the broker has been a broker. I'm 36 years in the business. Not a lot of people ...

As a real estate broker, one of the things that we often focus on is recruiting, as we should. Recruiting is the number one way that we can drive profitability to our business over the long haul.

Yet what happens with a lot of brokers is their measurement of their success is misguided.

Let me tell you what I mean by that:

Often we would obviously say that we're successful if we're recruiting X number of people into our company in a given period of time.

But I'm going to suggest to you that is a poor measurement system. And here's why:

Because you're measuring the bottom of the funnel, not the top of the funnel. And the top of the funnel is what creates results. Just like with our agents, when we teach them to lead generate, we have to teach them that they have to fill the top of the funnel.

In other words, they have to go out and lead generate every day to ever hope to generate a listing, a buyer, or a closed escrow.

The same thing is true for us as recruiters.

We have to be fi...

Hey brokerage owners, I have a story for you:

Two branding experts walk into a store where you can buy collectibles, like a thrift store. We'll say that generously they buy $128 worth of just little trinkets, little doodads, this, that, and the other. About 100 items is what they buy.

So they walk out of the store with all this stuff, and they go, and they employ writers, professional writers, to write stories around each of these little items.

Now, they are fictional stories, not real stories, but then they take these stories that have been created around each of these little crazy items, and they post these stories with pictures of the items on eBay. They clearly state, "This is a fictional story."

What do you think happens with this?

A quick example is that they had a little figurine of a cat with a little tamale mustache. They paid $0.50 for it. They were able to sell that thing for $22.

But their whole haul of stuff that they spent $128 on, they sold for over $3,600 by creat...

Hey guys, let’s say you've been talking to an agent in your community and you have a good feeling about the potential to bring them into the office, onto the team.

You've been doing some what I call “No Recruiting” recruiting, building some relationships, really starting to have that great conversation with them.

But they're not quite there, right? They're just not quite going over the fence for you.

I got an idea for you, and it's something maybe you've done, maybe you haven't done. But for those of you that haven't done it, here's some encouragement for you. And that is to do what I call a culture test. And the culture test just means this:

You call that agent, you text that agent, and say:

"Hey John, this morning or this afternoon or next week we're going to have our office meeting. And I just want to invite you to it, just so you can get a vibe and a feel for what it's like to see one of our meetings, to experience a meeting that we do.

We invite people from other companies a...

Hey, brokerage owners and team leaders. I'm sure you've experienced this because I've experienced it a million times:

As a brokerage owner, later as you get a stream of agents coming into your office and they're always asking the same exact question. Like, "Oh, I got to ask you about this." And you're like, I've answered this like ten times this week. Drives you a little crazy, a little bananas.

But you go through and you do it again, and you think about that time suck of answering the same question over and over and over again.

Let me give you a solution for that.

And that is to create your own little mini university, right?

Your mini university just means you're going to create a recorded answer where you answer this frequently asked question, this FAQ question.

And now you push this out to your office and say, "Guys, I'm getting this question a lot. I just want to answer it en masse."

You put it on your Facebook closed group. Maybe if you had a YouTube channel, a private one,...

When I got into the real estate business, and I bet you're like me, when you walked into your real estate office in the beginning, there was a leaderboard. Some people call it a brag board in the office, right?

It had the listings and the sales. You'd write your name down when you took a listing and write your name down when you took a sale.

And we liked it, man. We're ego-driven people. As real estate agents, we all want to see our name on the board.

So when you open your company, some of you brokerage owners and team leaders might have done the same thing. You thought, "Well, I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to have a big brag board, and I'm going to fire people up about getting on that brag board every month."

Is that a good idea, though?

Here's why it may backfire on you:

The reason it may backfire on you is, who are the same people that are going to be on that board every single month, month after month after month? They'll be your top producers.

And you might say,...

Brokers, owners, team leaders, office leaders, I’m going to give you a little tip for your next office meeting.

So sometimes we start office meetings… I’m going to give you one really good way to make these meetings come alive, and I’m going to give you a second good way to really make them come alive.

One is to have the “Genesis Conversation.” What is that?

Well, when you’re doing your “haves and wants,” people are talking about new listings, sales, closings, and so forth. I want you to follow that up and say, “Hey, tell me, where did that listing come from? What was the genesis point where the lead came from, in other words?”

And people say, “Well, it came from my sphere of influence,” or “It was an open house,” or “It was a sign call,” or “It was an internet lead.”

Great. And then you move on to the next person: where was the genesis point for you?

And everybody in the office is going to now really get tuned into where all the leads are flowing from.

80% of the time it’s gene...

Hey guys, if you are a brokerage owner, I’m going to challenge you to do something which I think would be very valuable for you, and that would be to create a value map of your company focused on the three T’s:

Training, Technology, and Tools.

If you’re going to take out a white sheet of paper, write down every piece of training you offer as a company, every piece of technology you offer as a company, every tool that you offer as a company. Write it down on one sheet.

Maybe it’ll take a couple of sheets.

Then take that list, put it in Canva, and have it create a nice checklist for you.

Bring it to your next office meeting and say this:

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“Hey guys, I created what I call a value map of the company, just showing off all the tools, technology, and training we’ve got.

“I just wanted to have everybody check it out and see if there’s something maybe you haven’t taken advantage of, that maybe you want to plug into in the next 12 months to help you create more transactions.

In fact, I’...

Hey brokers, team leaders, I’ve got a question for you: when was your last wow moment when it comes to marketing for your firm?

When did you roll out a piece of digital marketing — maybe a new sign design, new branding, new flyers, something fresh and exciting technologically? Maybe it’s a new website or a new social media skin. Something that wowed your agents.

If the answer is you can’t remember, or it was sometime last year, I’m going to suggest that you commit to doing this once a quarter.

Once a quarter, you should be rolling out a wow moment for your agents where they’re like, “Whoa, that is cool. That is really exciting.”

This keeps your company fresh. It keeps it exciting. It gives you a retention tool, and it gives you a recruiting tool at the same time.

Then the question becomes: what is it?

We’ve got to go in search of it. We’ve got to look for people outside of our company, ideas, strategies, marketing pieces, branding pieces outside the company, and be in tune and sa...

Hey, brokerage owners, team leaders, I’ve got a few questions for you:

First: What’s been your biggest sale ever at your company? Interesting question.

Second question: What’s been your biggest month ever for closing transactions, by volume and sides?

And then third question: What’s been your biggest listing month ever, by the total number of listings coming into your office?

Those three key performance indicators—you might call those your best records, right? Your highest achievements as a company are really a fun thing to measure your team against and say:

“Guys, I just did a little study.”

You’re talking to your team members in an office meeting.

“I just did a study. Here’s our biggest sale ever in the history of our company—and this is the agent who did it.

And then, “our biggest month ever at this company has been 32 transactions, 15 million closed.

“Our biggest listing month ever was this number.

“I want to set a goal for 2026, 2027 for us to hit a higher number—a highe...