Real Estate Thought Leaders

Note: This is the first installment in Micro‑Shifts That Unlock Real Audience Growth, featuring stories from real coaches, speakers and authors, the deeper principle at work, and one micro-shift you can make today to unlock the audience growth your content deserves. When I saw an ex-YouTube employee admit that YouTube didn’t provide a growth playbook for the Partner Program, that was a lightbulb m...

Fatigue just hit a 5 year high in search interest (per Google Trends).That’s the environment we’re in. And Mark sees it all over real estate, too. ‘I’m seeing a lot of fear in agents….a lot of agents…have been leaning on…Zillow or Facebook leads or YLOPO…A nd they’re seeing those leads decrease a little more, every month, every quarter. And so there’s this fear out there because agents don’t know...

I recorded an audio version of the newsletter with additional comments. If you like having audio (even without guests), let me know! AI has cut Tim Ferriss’ book sales 80% from 2022. He shared the numbers in a blog post this week. But in that post, he has this amazing line: “I’d rather write books for 10,000 people than make short-form video clips for 10,000,000. .” Tim Ferriss But he hit on somet...

Yes, AI breeds inauthenticity. And yes, there are still amazing use cases for AI. This is one of the most impactful I’ve ever seen. Here’s how Matthew put it: “ I wanted to create a system to make things in my voice. Not violating anybody else’s IP, but built on concepts that had landed earlier.” - Matthew Rathbun He built an AI operating system to codify his voice, capture everything he says, cre...

What if AI tools are having a negative compound effect? AI makes one email better, one listing description better, one social post better. But when it all compounds… everything sounds the same. So no one stands out anymore. After reviewing speaker submissions for NAR, and watching agents who are AI power-users, that’s the effect she’s seeing. Paula has a broad view of AI’s effect as a… * Speaker a...

I got the chance to chat with Lacy at the BEATS conference and wanted to have a deeper conversation on what she’s seeing from running her speaker bureau, Elevated Events & Education. Let’s start with a couple bits of insider info. Lacy spends her days working with the Education Directors and committee members putting together events. Here’s what she’s picking up… * Event organizers are being influ...

There are tons of communities for lead gen and prospecting. Geoff has carved out a completely different niche. As both a lawyer and broker , he’s built RPro Academy around content that is… * Hyper-specific * Hyper-local * Timely And through that, the community has found its One Big Promise: We help you get from contract to close. This is a perfect example of a ‘MicroFamous’ strategy, and I’m going...

I caught up with Craig last week and we covered a wide range of takeaways: * The one thing Craig would change about the event * BEATS’ unique approach to taking care of speakers - a big contrast to the limits and restrictions of other events * How the 3 keynote speakers surprised him over the course of the event But for the newsletter, I want to zero in on… 3 Surprising Ways Speakers Disqualified...

If you’ve followed the launch of Natalie’s new show, Leadership That Shines , you might not know that the brand (and company behind it) was created 10 years ago. During that time, here are just a few career highlights… * Speaker, facilitator and coach * Director of Community Growth at KW * President of the Colorado Association of REALTORS® (2023) * RISMedia Real Estate Newsmakers and SP 200 Watchl...

Some of the biggest opportunities come from doing the opposite of everyone else in the industry. In the world of real estate speakers, especially in the association space, Matthew Rathbun is a great example. He stopped doing free gigs for exposure, stopped doing cold outreach to associations and event organizers, and went ‘all in’ on creating content for agents first . Here are the results: * Thri...

When someone wants to refer you… What will they say about you? Not in general…the exact words? We’ve been conditioned to think that content has one path… * We create content * Audience consumes content * People in the audience buy But that ignores the network effects. The massive potential of word-of-mouth. Especially because word-of-mouth can be engineered . Sean Carpenter figured that out a long...

Dave and I connected because ChatGPT recommended my agency. Does that mean I’m throwing time and resources into AI search optimization? Absolutely not. As Dan Kennedy says, the greatest opportunities are in circumventing search. Getting in front of people who aren’t even searching yet. But I had such a great chat with Dave that I invited him to share his experience here. While building a successfu...

Professional speaking is a grind. Either you love it or you don’t. If you’ve done more than a couple events in a month, you’ll know what I mean. So it makes sense that most of my friends and clients want to speak 5-10 times a year, at the right events. Maybe a bit more. Enough to boost your business and enjoy yourself. Not so much that you’re on first name basis with the Delta luggage-check attend...

Rod Santomassimo has built the #1 coaching firm in commercial real estate. 400 active clients. 40 staff coaches. High dollar live, in-person events that get 30% of the room signing up for coaching. Generating millions in coaching contracts. So Rod thinks, Why not go big and global with a virtual event? This is the story of the virtual event that made 6 figures…but triggered that “never again” resp...

Community-driven events are very different from big name brokerage or coaching events. They value different things. Choose topics differently. Find speakers differently. Karen is on both sides, as a speaker and running her annual conference, Empowering Women in Real Estate. Here are a few of the… Non-Obvious Insights from our Conversation: Look for Communities Where You Fit the Vibe and Conversati...

Ever finished your talk and looked out at a confused audience? Horrible feeling. And you’re not alone. “I used to give talks…on panels, interviews…where I’d talk about strategy…. And I noticed a lot of the audience would be sitting there dumbfounded, not in a good way, but basically confused.” That’s Eric Simon, founder of BAM Media. Starting with his Broke Agent following on social media, Eric co...

Most of us are casual speakers. You get a handful of opportunities a year. If you could increase that to 1-2 times a month…you’d 2X…even 5X your business. Selling more services, books and courses to the audience, of course. But also the added exposure and marketing content that comes from consistent speaking gigs. But there’s a LOT you don’t know. Things event organizers notice….and mention to eac...

It was the AI platform that originally caught my eye… But my conversation with founder Sean Soderstrom brought up something even more interesting: They don’t use AI cold email tactics to promote their AI-powered platform. That led to some killer insights that go way beyond AI and into the psychology of earning attention. If you don’t know Sean, you should, he was… * Dir of Expansion & Regional Man...

I want to pull back this week and give a 30,000 ft view. I reached out to Jeff Levine because he’s served in nearly every role in the industry. High producing agent, team leader, broker, even association leader at multiple levels. In our conversation he called out several key, long-term disruptive trends that are shifting the landscape right underneath brokers, agents, brands and associations. “ T...

Speakers rarely get to see through the eyes of an event organizer. But Jeff Cohn did. Each year running The Team Building Summit, Jeff and his team carefully tracked which speakers… * delivered great content * created the most buzz * received rave reviews from attendees Because he was putting his own money on the line to throw those events , he also spent a lot of time thinking about which speaker...

A few years ago, Alisia Krastel posted a video that helped explode her agent coaching business. “I would have people message me being [saying], ‘Can I schedule a coaching call? When can I start coaching?’ No conversation, no nothing... Even now I have people who [say],’ I watched your video two years ago. Can you start coaching me next week?’ We never have a conversation. They already know me. It’...

I’m sure this episode will annoy some people, but it can’t be helped. Whatever your opinion of Inman…(and I genuinely don’t care) The question of how to become a contributor has come up a LOT over the years.  I contributed articles for several  years and always had good experiences, especially with Dani Vanderboegh , editor and Head of Contributor Program.  So I asked her to step into the spotligh...

Dale Archdekin is one of the sharpest sales coaches I’ve come across in real estate. One of the reasons I have great respect for him is that he doesn’t just have tactics, he has a system . He doesn’t just teach scripts, he teaches agents how to think. This presents a marketing challenge. Most agents want shiny objects and “magic pill” offers. He compared Smart Sales Coaching to running a culinary...

This edition I'm diving into strategic partnerships and business exits. In addition to co-founding ProInsight, Justin hosts Think Bigger Real Estate and wrote The Upstream Model. Justin built his entire business around a non-obvious insight: the biggest opportunities in real estate aren't about getting more leads. They're about strategic partnerships with retiring agents. That led to ProInsight ,...

If you want to dominate a market, there are a couple different paths. Create something with wide, mass-audience appeal. Later, add a higher-end version to capture the luxury market. Create something exclusive, rare and valuable first …then later create a mass-market version. KW is a good example of path #1.  Luxury Presence is on path #2. Both paths can work, but I tend to recommend #2 - start hig...