Brokerage owners and team leaders, I have a quick quiz for you. How many social media posts have you put out in the last seven days?

I ask this because we’re constantly preaching to our agents about the necessity of being visible with their database. When we’re visible—highly visible—we’re more likely to create transactions. Visibility matters.

In fact, I would argue that visibility is more important than ability.

You can have an agent who’s fantastic at negotiating, marketing, working with clients, and solving problems—and they’re still not closing transactions. At the same time, there’s another agent in your community who’s terrible to work with, a poor negotiator, and yet they’re closing a ton of deals.

What’s the difference? Visibility.

This second agent is everywhere. They show up on every feed—Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube. They’re highly visible.

Meanwhile, the agent with great ability isn’t closing transactions because no one sees them. Visibility trumps ability. U...

I’ve got a question for brokerage owners and team leaders:

If you could wave a magic wand over your business right now and hire somebody—a staff member—and money was no object, what would that position be? What would that full-time person look like coming in and helping your company?

What would that position be for you?

A lot of people would say, “I’d hire a social media director.”
Some people would say, “I need a marketing person.”
Others would say, “I need a TC,” or “I need an inside sales agent,” or “I need a tech person. I need a technology expert in my company.”

Or you might say, “I need somebody running my Google Ads or my Facebook Ads. I need somebody in that room.”

All of us have different needs, but I want to go deeper with you on this.

I don’t want this to be a dream. I want this to be a reality. And the way we do that is by identifying your hiring trigger.

For all of us, that trigger is going to be dollars flowing through the front door. We need more revenue coming in t...

If you’re a real estate broker or team leader, I’m sure you’re experiencing what I’m about to describe. I call it the 80/20 rule, and it’s not the 80/20 rule you’re thinking about.

The 80/20 rule we usually think of is that 20% of the agents do 80% of the business. It’s probably closer to a 90/10 rule now, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

What I’m talking about is the 80/20 rule when it comes to the deployment of the technologies, tools, and services you provide to your agents.

As a brokerage owner or team leader, you invest in all this tech and all these tools, and then 80% of your agents don’t use them. You’re spending thousands—maybe tens of thousands—of dollars, and you’re thinking, “This is crazy. Maybe I should just stop providing this stuff.”

That’s a mistake.

First, you have 20% of your people who are actually using these tools, and those are usually the people producing. If you stop providing the tools, you’re hurting that group.

But there’s another reason you shou...

Hey guys, if you're a brokerage owner or team leader, I've got a strategy for you when it comes to recruiting, and that's what I call “Weakest Point Recruiting.”

You might say, what does that mean? Weakest point recruiting simply means this: I want you to look at your overall business today—your brokerage, your team. Most of us are pretty strong in residential resale. That’s the general core.

But what about other areas of the market? Maybe you're weak in land sales. Maybe you're weak in rural property. Maybe you're weak in waterfront, golf courses, condos, or commercial property.

I want you to identify two or three areas where your company or team is just weak—where you're not very strong in that market area. And I want you to look at this not as a weakness. I want you to flip it on its head and ask, “how can I turn this into an opportunity?”

Your opportunity is to recruit to your weakness.

Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to identify the top 10 agents in that niche who coul...

Hey guys, there’s an interesting new study from 1000Watt. They studied 600 agents and asked them several questions about where they thought they were in their career.

A shocking number: 31% of these agents said they were actively considering making a real estate brokerage change—switching offices.

That number jumped to 53% for agents under the age of 35.

So when you hear that as a brokerage owner or a team leader, what should that represent to you? What I think it should represent is opportunity.

If you look at your entire market—maybe you have a thousand agents, maybe ten thousand—think about one-third of them are actively considering making a change, and 53% of that younger generation are actively considering it. Then the question becomes: What can you do about this opportunity? How can you get ahead of it?

The way you get ahead of it is by being intentional with your recruiting strategy—getting out there, having conversations, building relationships, and really showing your val...

What do you think agents say is the number one consideration when choosing a real estate brokerage? I bet the default for many of you would be the commission plan. Most assume they’re always going to go right to the commission plan.

What if I told you that’s not true? According to a brand new study of 600 agents, they found that the number one thing driving the conversation about making a switch was technology—who is leading in technology.

So here’s a question for you: what is your tech stack as a real estate brokerage owner or team leader? Does your tech stack put you on a parity basis with the major players in your market, or are you inferior? That’s number one.

And then, do you have some advantages? Do you have things you’re doing a little bit differently?

Maybe you’re starting to use some AI in your business. Maybe you’ve created some lead-flow opportunities. Maybe you’ve created playbooks and plugged technology into them to make that technology really work for your agents.

So...

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
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Brokerage owners, I want you to think about the last agent you lost. I know it’s tough — I’ve been there. Losing an agent feels like a gut punch, like getting kicked by a donkey. It hurts.

When you think about that last agent who left, I want you to answer a tougher question: why did they leave? What caused them to go to another firm?

Sometimes they get led down a garden path and think the grass is greener. But often, and this is hard to admit because our emotions get in the way, the real reason they leave is because we didn’t have a close enough relationship with them.

And I’ll tell you something: Friends don’t leave friends.

That’s the reality.

You need a closer bond with your agents individually. And then you need to help them grow transactionally. Start with the relationship, then move to helping them grow their transaction count.

The only reason people leave is because they’ve been promised a path to more transactions. It’s rarely about the commission plan. Sure, that can sp...

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...

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...