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...

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...

People often ask me, “Jim, what’s the secret to recruiting?”

Here it is: spend one hour a day recruiting—just like your agents are expected to spend one hour a day lead generating. We tell agents to prospect daily; as a brokerage owner or team leader, you need to do the same thing with recruiting.

I call this the “Five by Five” system. It’s a proven strategy we use in our company and with our brokerage coaching students across the country to drive performance and success.

Here’s how it works. Within that one hour of recruiting, you commit to:

• Making 5 calls
• Sending 5 texts
• Sending 5 video texts
• Writing 5 personal notes
• Doing 5 social media touches

If you hold yourself to that standard, you’ll start unlocking new opportunities.

The next question is: what do you say? What should you be texting, saying on calls, writing in notes, or posting on social media?

The key is natural, authentic conversations that resonate. Great recruiting isn’t about pushing for an appointment eve...

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...

As a brokerage owner and team leader, I have a question for you: when’s the last time you fired someone?

That’s a big one, isn’t it? Have you ever actually fired someone, or do they just leave on their own? A lot of brokerage owners and team leaders don’t have the strength to say, “This person isn’t working here anymore.” But avoiding that creates roadblocks for recruiting.

Sometimes one agent creates what I call the “bad apple syndrome.” They’re so difficult—dramatic, gossipy, toxic—that potential recruits won’t join your company because they don’t want to work with them.

Think about your roster right now. Maybe everyone is fantastic. But maybe not. Maybe you’ve got someone with barnacles—someone others don’t want to work with.

And here’s another question: how many people on your roster haven’t closed a deal in the last year? You might have five, six, eight, even ten agents producing nothing. Why are they still on your roster? They’re dragging down your company’s production number...

If I asked you—as a brokerage owner or team leader—what are your top five differentiation points, could you answer clearly?

What makes your company different from every other company in the marketplace? In other words, what’s your value proposition?

If you can’t answer that, no one else in your market can either.

Some of you might rush to say, “Well, we have the lowest commission plan in the market.” But that’s a terrible value proposition.

If a commission plan were all it took to recruit agents, then the brokerage with the lowest commission would have the most agents. But that’s rarely true.

Why?

Because commission plans are not the single greatest motivator for agents.

The #1 motivator for an agent to join your office is this: Will you help them grow their transaction count?

If your value proposition doesn’t clearly communicate how you’ll help agents do more deals, you’re going to lose—every single day—to competitors who can.

So here’s my challenge to you:

Take some time to...