Hey guys, have you heard of an ISA? An ISA is in the real estate world: an Inside Sales Agent.

Now, why should you care? Well, a lot of top teams hire an ISA to sit in their office or virtually and make calls into the marketplace. They could be calling their spheres of influence. They could be calling FSBOs, expireds, online leads, neighborhoods. Lots and lots of uses for ISAs.

Is it a good investment? It can be. But I want to talk to you about something else, which is related to ISAs in a different way, and that is treating your current sphere of influence as a low-key ISA.

And what I mean by that is you've got this little army around you, these 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 people in your sphere of influence that could be out in the marketplace acting as, kind of, your ISA. But you got to train them to do so.

You got to turn them into your little mini sales army. And what do I mean by that? I mean, you're going to let them know that the best way they can help you is just by watching an...

Hey guys, what does it mean to go “upstream” with a real estate business?

Well, one way you can look at this is targeting specific people in your community that could send you business, who are also business owners themselves.

But how would you identify them?

Well, one quick strategy is just to ask people already in your social sphere of influence with a question like this:

“Hey, do you have any financial advisors that you would rate a 9 or a 10 in terms of their skill set?”

And when they say, “Yeah, I’ve got somebody,” they raise their hand and say, “This is my person, this is who you should talk to.”

You say, “Great. You know, one of the people that I like to refer to are people that are highly regarded, and obviously I’m dealing with a big financial investment when it comes to housing. So I like to refer great people to great people as well.”

And now you’ve got their name.

Now you call that financial advisor and you say:

“Hey, I was referred by a couple people in my group, ...

I had a friend of mine tell me a strategy recently, and I thought it was a brilliant strategy.

He calls it the “3-1 Strategy” and it's a strategy that all of us can implement starting right now, today.

Here's what it looks like:

Every morning when you get up, quickly review three articles about real estate.

Now, you might use your AI to help you with this, whatever AI tool you're using. But you're looking for three quick articles you can scan through.

What you're looking for is one idea, one concept, one stat that jumps out at you about the real estate market.

It could be nationally. It could be locally.

When you've got that stat, now you've read three articles and you've found one stat.

I'm going to push this out to ten people in my SOI, either through a text, through an email, maybe through a video text, social media, or a strategy like a DM.

Or you could actually be posting and going big on social media with this idea and concept too.

The idea is I'm going to push this out...

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...

Let me give you a quick, super simple thing that all REALTORS should do.

Once a week—maybe once a month at the very least—you should do the 24-hour report as a live report on your social feeds. It could be a Reel, could be a story.

But what is a 24-hour report?

It simply means you're on your hot sheet in the MLS, and you just read off the stats of the hot sheet. You're going to say something like this:

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“Hey, I just want to give you a quick update on what's happening with the market.”

It's been 24 new listings in the last 24 hours, 18 listings went pending, 32 have closed, and we've got 25 price reductions.

The market is really humming along. We've got a lot of great things.

I saw this really incredible buy come up that I'd love to share with you—if you're looking for a rental property, it looks incredible. We've got another one on a rural property that looks fun too, right on the river.

If any of you have a real estate need, I'd love to be somebody that you talk to. Give me a...

Hey guys, one of the things I always tell people when they’re starting out in the business is to watch what top professionals are doing and model other people’s success. When you do that, you unlock a bunch of “secrets.”

I’m going to share one secret right now that you may not have noticed, but once I say it, you’re going to dial in and think, “Ah, I have noticed that.” It’s one of those Captain Obvious things when you really look at it.

People who are doing a lot of real estate sales—$20, $30, $40, $50 million in production—often talk about new sales, listings, and closings by saying things like, “I just sold my friend a house. I just sold my buddy a house. I just helped my friends buy a duplex.”

Everyone they talk about is their friend.

Then you reflect on your own business and ask, “Why am I not selling as much real estate as they are?” They put their pants on one leg at a time just like me. They’re not working ten times harder than me.

The reason is simple: they have more frie...

Hey guys, if you want to have a fantastic phone call with everyone in your database coming into December and January—right at the end of the year and the beginning of the new year—this is what I call the “Real Estate Tune-Up.”

We take our cars in for a tune-up every few thousand miles. We need to do the same thing with our database. The way you do that is by being direct and asking one key question.

Here’s the question.

“Hey, this is Jim. How are you guys doing? I’ve been thinking about you. I’m talking to everyone I know as we head into the new year, just on the business side, and I wanted to ask: is there anything you have on the horizon, real estate-related, for 2026 that I can help you with?”

That’s it. You just put it out there.

“Do you have anything going on in 2026, real estate–related, that I can help you with?”

You’ll be shocked by how many people say, “Actually, yes, we do. We’ve been thinking about something.”

Remember, about 5%—one in 20 people you talk to out in the...

As a real estate professional, I know you’re probably already on Facebook and Instagram. Everybody is.

But are you on LinkedIn? And if you are, are you using it to its fullest potential?

Here’s why I ask: Did you know that one in three business owners is on LinkedIn? One-third of all the businesses in your town are on LinkedIn.

The beauty of LinkedIn is that it helps you flesh out your own database—your CRM, your SOI—because it connects you to people from professions you’ve been in before. If you list past employers and say, “Hey, I’ve worked at these three companies,” LinkedIn will suggest people you might know.

You might look at that and say, “You know what? I do know that person. They’re not in my database, but I do know them.”

Now you can connect with them on LinkedIn, send them a message, get reconnected, and start a conversation. Then move them as quickly as you can into your SOI.

Think about alumni groups or colleges you’ve attended. All of these business-related connectio...

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
...

Quick question: Have you put your sphere of influence to work? If not, you’re missing a huge opportunity.

Think of your sphere as a massive sales army. Maybe you have 100 people, maybe 200, maybe 500. But are you actually putting them to work?

That means programming their reticular activator—the brain’s pattern recognition system—to look for real estate opportunities. We all have it, and you can tap into it. I’ll give you two simple techniques.

First technique:

When you’re talking to someone this week, try this script:

“Here’s a crazy stat that might blow your mind—within the next two weeks, you’re going to hear of someone who wants to buy or sell real estate. You might not think so because you’re not tuned in to it, but just watch. And when you do, think of me. If you can, I’d love for you to send me that referral.”

What happens? Almost inevitably, they’ll hear about someone buying or selling a house within the next couple of weeks.

For the second strategy, say this:

“As we he...