One thing I hear a lot this time of year from brokerage owners and team leaders is, “I’m looking at my budget and cutting costs to increase profit.”

Here’s my message to you: that’s fine. It’s good to be a controller. You don’t want expenses out of control.

But you can’t cut your way to profitability. You just can’t.

What happens is you start cutting services, cutting staff, cutting tools, and cutting resources. If there’s some fat to cut, great. But most of the time, you end up cutting things agents actually like.

You get so focused on creating profit for yourself that you create a whirlpool effect—a downward spiral—for the entire company.

Agents see services being cut, team members gone, staffing reduced, and tools taken away, and they think, “I’m going somewhere else.”

You lose an agent, and your profitability gets worse. Then another agent leaves. Then another. Pretty soon you think you need to cut even more.

You can see where this goes:

You cut yourself right out of busine...

Hey guys, if you’re a brokerage owner or team leader, one thing we tend to do this time of year is say, “Okay, what are our production goals for 2026?”

And you should do this. You should know what you’re shooting for in terms of Gross Commission Income (GCI) and closed volume.

But one thing we often forget is what’s actually going to produce those goals—those transactions closed, that volume closed, that GCI. What is it going to take to create that?

Often, we get lost in this idea that all we need to do is motivate our current crew enough for them to create the production goals we’ve set for the team or the company.

But the reality is, that almost never works.

As someone who coaches brokerage owners, franchises, and team leaders across the country at the highest levels, I can tell you that almost never works.

Why?

Because what’s going to create higher production and higher GCI isn’t motivating your current team to produce more. Now, we want to do that—that’s absolutely a goal.