How can every business owner that you know model McDonald's for building wealth? Well, you might not know this, or maybe you do, but McDonald's makes a lot of money selling hamburgers, but they make more money owning real estate.

Did you know that of the 36,000 McDonald's locations around the world, they own 70% of those locations and the franchisees are paying them rent?

See, they figured out a long time ago that the money is in real estate.

So when you're talking to your business owners that are in your database, friends of yours, family members, people that are your in sphere of influence that own a business, ask them this key question:

"Hey, have you ever thought about buying a piece of real estate and putting your business in that? Or maybe buying the building that you're in? Because one of the best wealth building strategies for retirement eventually for your exit strategy is to sell your business and then rent the building...

Here's a quick question:

Have you offered your concierge services to all of your clients?

First of all, what's your concierge services? That means that you are the point of contact for anything that has anything remotely to do with real estate, for all of your sphere of influence. And your farmer areas. And your social audiences. So in all those categories, I want those people to think of you when they need a plumber, an electrician, a carpet layer, etc. They're thinking about you before they think about anyone else because you're the main point of contact.

Now, how do you insert value so that they actually make that call instead of just Googling it? Well, here is the way you insert value:

First of all, you gotta talk about it and you should say something like this, "Hey, you may not be aware of this, but I want to act as your real estate concierge for anything that you have related to your house. Whether it's landscaping, a new...

Five things to do in the first quarter of the new year:

1. Refresh your brand

Refreshing your brand means getting new photos taken. Why? Because you are first and foremost your brand. So you need to get a new, fresh photo. You should do this every year, maybe twice a year. But that new photo is not just a straight headshot, it's multiple photos in different settings. Why? Because your photo is the most used branding element in your marketing arsenal.

But what happens when you don't do this? What happens is people then meet you and there's an immediate brand disconnect. There's an immediate feeling, at least at a subconscious level, that they've been deceived. If they can't trust you with your branding, what else can't they trust you with?

It's more important than you think it is. So get that brand updated and refreshed.

Also, look at your bio. So once you get this new photo, you're gonna update your bio for the new year. And...

There's one thing we've all done as human beings, living in the United States of America. I guarantee every adult has thought about this at some point:

They've thought owning a rental would be super cool.

Even if they're not homeowners yet, they've thought it would be nice to be on the other side of the equation — and not be paying rent, but also receiving rent.

So this makes for a great conversation. And there's something interesting that's happening in the world today, which we don't talk enough about in the real estate world, which is this:

A lot of millennials and the next generation of buyers coming in are being taught and embracing this concept that they don't want to own their own home.

They wanna continue renting their own home because they want a mobile lifestyle. And they wanna be able to move from New York to Miami to LA. They wanna surf around and have that mobile lifestyle, but they wanna own a couple rentals.

So...

I'm gonna give you some numbers that are just reality in our business that you should know. And these numbers are going to drive your success throughout your career — whether you like it or not.

Are you ready for these numbers? Here they are:

They may be slightly different for every person, but in general, across the country, here's what the numbers look like in our industry:

* For every 30 conversations you have, you'll average one closed transaction.

And I want you to remember this:

Almost every single transaction you will ever have in your career will be the result of a conversation you've had in the last two weeks. You want more closings? You're gonna have to have more conversations.

Here's another one:

* For every 10 sphere members you have in your database today, you should average one closing — assuming that you've made 20 to 50 contacts with them in the past year.

20 to 50 contacts will get you a 10 to 1 closing...

One thing that we should do this year is cut the dead wood.

What does that mean?

It means we don't wanna be walking up a mountain, our mountain being our figurative goal set that we've set for ourselves and have a backpack full of rocks on our back.

Now, what is that backpack full of rocks?

Those are clients that don't wanna sell, that don't wanna buy, that are wasting your time, that are frustrating, that are angry people that we do not need to be carrying around on our backs anymore.

We need to cut them loose and work with people that really wanna buy and sell.

So going into the new year, how can we approach our business a little bit differently?

One is to work with ready and willing clients which sounds crazy, but it is so simple that it's obvious, right?

We need to work with ready and willing clients.

Having a ready and willing conversation is important. So I'm gonna give you my "ready and willing" conversation script when I'm...

If you have a gap in your income right now and you're out of escrows, what's the cause of that?

The cause isn't anything you're doing right now.

It's not the market conditions.

It's not something you just did yesterday or the day before.

It's actually something you've done 90 days ago.

Whenever I do this with my coaching students when they're having a gap in closings, I tell them to look back to 90 days ago.

What were you doing 90 days ago? Let's really look at the calendar and open it up. When we open up that calendar, we'll inevitably see a gap.

Maybe they went on vacation. Maybe they just took a few weeks off because something was going on in their lives and they stopped prospecting 90 days ago. And that's what comes forward like a snake eating an egg. It just travels down the timeline and then boom, it blows up resulting in them having no escrows in the moment.

So how do we eliminate this situation so we don't have gaps in the future?

It's...

I have a question for you:

Who is your #1 competitor in your marketplace?

When I ask that to a live audience, I'll hear all kinds of the typical brand answers. You'll hear the brands in their marketplace: Remax, Coldwell Banker, eXp, John L. Scott, Sotheby's, etc.

And I always tell them, you're all wrong. Your #1 competitor in your market is Zillow. Zillow is coming to eat your breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And in a large degree, they already are. Now, yes, Zillow has stumbled with their flipping operation. But does that mean they're going away? No. If anything, we should be more terrified now than ever, because they're going to turn and focus their entire attention back to where they actually started out, which is selling leads to REALTORS. They are not going away.

What does this mean? When lose something to Remax or eXp, you need to ask yourself:

Did I really lose that listing to those companies? Or did somebody go on Zillow, fill...

Now we've all heard of supply chain issues hitting the entire country. Lots of things happening because of COVID breaking down the supply chains.

But is this impacting real estate?

It absolutely is impacting real estate. It's impacting builders. It's impacting all kinds of vendors that are tied to real estate.

My wife and I are remodeling a house and we've had to wait six months for the cabinets to come in. It's impacting remodeling and flipping and all kinds of areas that we don't necessarily consider tied to the supply chain.

But real estate is definitely one of those areas.

So how can we use this?

Here's one way we can use it when we're out prospecting is talking about supply chain issues because everybody can identify with it right now.

So you might just say:

"Hey, you know, what, can you do me a huge favor? Even real estate is facing supply chain issues. We're facing very low inventory compared to most years and huge buyer...

If you know people in your sphere of influence that own investment property, I've got some good news. Also, if you own an investment property, I've got good news. And if you're trying to sell investment property, I've got good news:

The investment property side of our business is going through a real resurgence right now. We knew during COVID they got kinda hit. We know the eviction moratoriums made it really tough for them. But now we're starting to see people come back out of that.

So here's a few good numbers in that arena that come from us from the NAR economist blog:

Two of them are dealing with absorption rates. Absorption rates, meaning how many units are being absorbed by the market.

In Q2 and Q3 of this year, 700,000 units were absorbed by this market. It's a lot of units, but completely instantly absorbed by the market.

Vacancy rates have fallen in 2011-ish from 6.9 back then all the way down to 4.6 now. That's a nationwide...