Brokers, owners, team leaders, office leaders, I’m going to give you a little tip for your next office meeting.

So sometimes we start office meetings… I’m going to give you one really good way to make these meetings come alive, and I’m going to give you a second good way to really make them come alive.

One is to have the “Genesis Conversation.” What is that?

Well, when you’re doing your “haves and wants,” people are talking about new listings, sales, closings, and so forth. I want you to follow that up and say, “Hey, tell me, where did that listing come from? What was the genesis point where the lead came from, in other words?”

And people say, “Well, it came from my sphere of influence,” or “It was an open house,” or “It was a sign call,” or “It was an internet lead.”

Great. And then you move on to the next person: where was the genesis point for you?

And everybody in the office is going to now really get tuned into where all the leads are flowing from.

80% of the time it’s gene...

Hey guys, you may not have heard of Kevin Kelly, but he was the editor at Wired magazine, and he wrote a really interesting article several years ago about having a thousand true fans.

So if you imagine yourself as an artist, maybe a songwriter, singer, someone who paints, a writer, his point of the article is that if you had a thousand true fans — a thousand people who really believed in you and bought everything you produced — you can make a really good living as an artist.

So does this apply to us as REALTORS? The answer is absolutely, positively it does.

Because if you have a thousand people in your sphere of influence, you can absolutely have an incredible income if you’re applying the strategies around managing that sphere of influence that are really critical.

And here’s the strategies you need to embrace: you need to be touching this database 20 to 50 times a year. You also need to have it organized in a CRM system, a client relationship management system of some kind.

Whe...

Real estate agents—I’ve got a question for you.

Have you updated your listing presentation in the last 12 months? Hopefully you have. If you haven’t, now’s the time to do it.

Because we’re in spring—we’re in the Super Bowl of the listing season. Spring and summer are the busiest seasons for listings, so we should have an updated listing presentation, refreshed and ready for 2026, and have that dialed in.

And by the way, you should have the same thing for your marketing plan—two separate things, right?

Let’s say we’ve done that. We’ve updated and refreshed our marketing plan and our listing presentation.

Now what do you do with it?

Well, you can wait until somebody calls me for a listing appointment, which is great—but you don’t want to wait. You want to be proactive.

So what you’re going to do with these two documents is you’re going to put them out to your sphere.

You’re going to say, through a text, an email, a phone call—it could be an email or even a letter, an old-school l...

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, have you ever thought about how you're interacting with your Sphere of Influence on social media?

Now, obviously we need to be really smart about this, and every single person that's in our Sphere of Influence, we need to make sure that we're connected with them on Facebook and Instagram and all the other possible places, maybe LinkedIn. And that should be maybe a spreadsheet or a checklist that we're checking that box off.

But let me give you one more idea. It's from a top producer I recently saw and thought it was brilliant:

What this agent did is he built a closed Facebook group for his, what he called VIPs—people that have sent him business or done direct business with him. So referral partners, people that have sent him referrals, or people that have done business go into his closed VIP Facebook group just for them.

And by doing so, he does all kinds of fun things. He runs contests in there where he rewards people for sending him referrals or doing direct business wi...

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...

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...

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...

Hey guys, did you know that in the last 12 months there’s been an average 7% increase in homeowners insurance rates? When people are homeowners and paying insurance, premiums on average have gone up 7%. In a lot of markets, it’s probably much higher than that.

When we hear this, we might say, “That doesn’t impact me. I’m a REALTOR. I’m not selling insurance.”

But this is actually an opportunity.

Everyone in our database has homeowners insurance. Why don’t you reach out to our database today and say, “Hey guys, you’ve probably noticed your homeowners insurance rates have gone up. I just want to be a resource for you. I’ve got a great contact—an insurance professional here in town. If you’re looking to shop your rate or get a different quote, I’d love to refer you to them. Just give me a quick call. I’ll make sure they put you at the top of the list and give you exceptional five-star service.”

Now, why don’t you just give them the name of the person to call?

The reason is you want t...