Hey guys, if you're a brokerage owner or team leader, I've got an idea for you. And that is the power of gifting.

Why is gifting so important? Well, gifting is important because it helps you show up in people's lives in a whole different way. And if we're somebody that's trying to recruit or retain agents, gifting is a super powerful strategy.

Let me give you both:

So if you have a staff, a small staff or a big staff, why don't you empower them with a small budget? Not a large budget, a small budget, maybe $200 to $300 a month, where they have the power to gift someone in the office or on your team because of something that's happening in their lives.

They had a sick baby, or they've had somebody graduate high school or college, or their spouse is retiring.

Whatever you see, whatever they see as your staff, they can say, “hey, I'm going to go spend a few dollars on a little gift, personalized gift for this person.”

And of course, who is going to be the one that's listed as saying...

Did you know that only 5% of agents take the time to call their clients on their one-year home anniversary? Can you imagine? But I want you to start doing this. Make it a habit.

When you close a transaction, I would say with a buyer or a seller (because sellers like to hear that, too - they like to know it's been a year since they've sold the home).

But regardless of the side of the transaction you're on, make a note in your CRM to call the client a year from now, and especially if on the buyer side, you can say:

“Hey, it's already been a year since you bought the home and I did something for you. I went ahead and did an updated home valuation to let you know how much equity you built up over the last year.”

What a value-added call. Clients will love this. And of course you can offer to any of their friends and family as well.

Say, “Hey, I've done this for you, but I'm happy to do it for anyone that you know that's curious about what's going on with their home buyers. Of course, n...

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...

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...

Hey guys, a really interesting study just came out, and it showed that 21% of agents that are 25 years plus in the business are actively looking for an exit strategy.

So two things here.

Number one, if you own a real estate company and you've got a lot of people that fit that category, your business could be at risk: What if they suddenly all retire en masse?

Second thing about this is: We have a massive opportunity in our market to take advantage of these people that are thinking about leaving the industry.

Here's how:

What if you partnered with one of your agents in your office to go out and target these folks in the industry?

You say, “Hey, there's four or five agents at this company and that company and that company that fit that category.”

And then say to one of your agents, “Why don't we go out there in tandem, you and I together, and let's try to recruit them in?”

You can actually maybe buy their book of business and come up with a succession plan. A recruiting strategy ...

As a real estate agent, you have something in common with every single business owner in your community. Everybody from carpet cleaners, to candy store operators, to toy store owners, to clothing store owners — every one of you has something in common.

Here’s what you have in common: you all want to do more business.

As a small business operator, what you can do is tap into that. What I would suggest to you is you go through your entire sphere of influence today and you take a yellow highlighter out — maybe print it out — and put a highlight next to all the small business owners that you know. You know more than you think.

When you have that highlighter out and you highlight all those folks, the next step is to call them, reach out to them, text them, or stop by their business if it’s convenient and appropriate, and say this:

“Hey, you know what? I want to support a local business every single week, and I’d love to do a collab with you if you’re interested.”

A collab — what’s a co...

It happened, you were able to set a recruiting appointment.

Now what do you do when you’re going to meet someone for the first time at coffee or lunch? Do you immediately launch into your pitch?

That’s the worst thing you could possibly do in your first meeting with a potential recruit.

The first thing you need to do is build rapport and trust. One of the best ways to do that is by understanding who you’re talking to — doing a deep dive and some intelligence research on the agent before the meeting.

What does that look like?

Obviously, you can Google them. You can look at their social media accounts. You can talk to other people in your office about what they might know.

But here’s an easy strategy most recruiters miss: dive into their current inventory.

Look at their listings. See how long they’ve been on the market. Look at their price points. Where are they focusing? Go back and look at the trajectory of their business. Are they up or down compared to last year at this time?

Hey guys, when’s the last time you put an in-search-of ad out on social media? We’ll call it an ISO.

An ISO ad could be as simple as saying, “Hey guys, I have a buyer looking for a home in the Jacksonville area. Three bedroom, two bath, up to $600,000. They’re looking in this school district. If you hear of anybody thinking about selling, please send them my way.”

This has so many benefits you don’t even realize.

You might say, “That’ll never work. I’m not actually going to get somebody who says they’re interested in selling. That’s a waste of time.”

That’s not the point.

The point is that you’re telling everybody in your sphere, everybody in your social media audience, that you are a busy REALTOR and that you will leave no stone unturned in finding homes for your clients.

They’re going to say, not only is Jim busy, he’s actually going the extra mile for his client.

If you do this consistently, you’re helping people see you through a different lens.

Some of you have a problem w...

Hey guys, I want to talk to you about a unique way of going after for sale by owners and expired listings, and that is cold texting. Today, we’re going to focus on FSBOs.

With for sale by owners, we know that 92% of these folks are eventually going to work with a REALTOR.

The question is:

Will it be you or your competitor?

If you never reach out, never make contact, and never make an effort, you’re never going to have a shot at getting these listings. You never get what we call an “at bat.”

So how do you get an at bat? You make contact. You build a relationship. You’re never going to close them on the first appointment. Usually it takes several appointments and several conversations to get them to come to you.

Remember, FSBOs typically have a four-to-six-week incubation period. From the time they plant the sign in the yard or post on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, within four to six weeks, 92% of them will have worked with or decided to work with a REALTOR.

So what’s our co...

Almost every week I have a new agent come to me and say, “Hey, I want to tackle a new area of the market.” Maybe it’s for sale by owner, maybe it’s expired listings, maybe it’s farming— all very valid areas to market to.

But my first question is always, “Let’s talk about your sphere of influence first. Tell me about that.”

A lot of times they’ll say, “Well, I don’t really have a good number on that.” That’s how I know they’re not really dialed in on their sphere. I’ll ask, “How many people are in your sphere?” And they’ll say, “It’s like 100… it’s like 200.”

They can’t tell me a specific number because they’re not actually in control of their business.

So the number one thing we have to do—before we chase rabbits, before we look for other business, before we search for something else—is get our sphere of influence dialed in.

Why? Because 70–80% of your business is going to come from this source. We have no business spending time, resources, money, and energy elsewhere when we have...