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,...

Brokerage owners, team leaders—I know that you're recruiting every day because you're supposed to do that to build your business. I know you're doing it.

And when you're doing this, and you're setting aside one hour a day for recruiting, who are you targeting? Well, who you should be targeting is the people that are going to be the most receptive to your message.

And often, we just target the top producers in the market, or we target a certain group of people that has done this much production over this number of years.

But let me give you another target: “Gap Agents.”

What's a gap agent?

This is an agent who has not closed a deal in the last 90 days.

They have closed deals in the past. Maybe they've been a top performer. Maybe they were a consistent 3 or 4 or 5, 6, 8, 9 top producer.

But for whatever reason, in the last 90 days, they have not closed a transaction.

These folks will be much more receptive to having a conversation with you because they're looking to be rescued. T...

As an office leader, a brokerage owner, is having teams in your building, teams on your roster, a good idea or a bad idea?

So when you look at this from the outside perspective, and I'm somebody that's been in the business for 36 years, I've owned a network of 17 offices, I've run billion-dollar companies, and so I've had a lot of teams working for me over those years.

And I will tell you that teams overall can add a lot to your company because they help you with market share. There's going to be a tremendous amount of market share growth that they're going to bring to the table.

So do you make a lot of money on a team? Usually not. Usually they're on the lowest splits coming to the company. They take up a lot of resources. They can actually take up a lot of real estate in your office.

So on a profitability scale, not great. But on a market share scale, fantastic.

So we have to ask ourselves—we need to have the right mix. We have to run a lawnmower or a piece of equipment that req...

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...