This One Time in Real Estate...

100 episodes! Thank you for being a part of this journey! And welcome to 2025. This week is all about best practices for a successful year. It's not too late to get your plan together to have a strong year. Honestly, you have to start with having a plan to begin with. If we had decided to take a break from the podcast and not set a date for our first episode back, would we have ever started up aga...

How are you preparing for 2025? Have you set your goals and made a plan? Don't forget, if you're not moving forwards then you're moving backwards. There are always ups and downs in business and in life. If you stay static, then the "downs" or uncontrollables will set you back and you won't be able to get back ahead. You want to keep that forward momentum. The number one uncontrollable in real esta...

What are some good habits or things to consider when interviewing to join a team? Depending on what your goals are, look for a team that has a lengthy interview process. Ultimately you want to find a team that's a good fit for you on a professional and personal level, and that takes time to sort out. You also don't necessarily want to join a team that will take just anyone. If you're looking to ac...

We've recently started adjusting our process for hiring new agents. In the past, we brought in the candidate's significant other. This might seem strange, but when you first start out as an agent, you may not see an actual paycheck for months and meeting with the significant other can help us to better understand how invested they are in this career path and what kind of support system they have....

Sarah's been reading a life-changing book: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. The idea of it is essentially that people in general care too much about everything and then aren't able to care enough about the things that actually matter. We overwhelm ourselves. The author Mark Manson talks about the feedback loop from hell. Social media has exponentially ramped up the feedback loop of how we valu...

Family-life-work harmony is a topic that's relevant year-round, but especially right now during the holiday season. In real estate, in particular, this time of year is critical. The work you do now is going to affect the business you do in early 2025. But this isn't a time of year when any of us want to work more, so how do you balance the two? The secret is that word "harmony." Family-life-work h...

What is the value of leveraging off of reviews? Reviews give you credibility. It's an objective view of you and your performance, and they're presumably from people who know you, like you, and trust you. A lot of our team's business comes from referrals as well, which in a way is a form of a review one-to-one. On this theme of reviews and customer service, Sarah just returned from her 4th family t...

With less than two months left in 2024, there’s still a powerful window of opportunity to make a strong impact! In this episode, we dive into how you can capitalize on the remaining 4-5 weeks of selling time to close deals that count for a 2024 paycheck and, just as importantly, lay the foundation for a thriving 2025. Many agents slow down around the holidays, which means less competition and more...

The election is next week. Who knows what's going to happen. It is an uncontrollable. You have to focus on the process and disassociate from the uncontrollables. Focus on what you can control and the process, not the uncontrollables and the outcome. On our team, we use levers to take control of our business. Levers are specific action items we focus on - things like open houses, making calls, or r...

It sounds obvious but everyone is different. Everyone is motivated by different things and has different habits. For example, Sarah loves finding shows on Netflix that have a lot of seasons. It gets her excited that she'll have something to watch for awhile. Versus Mark, who finds shows like that daunting. He won't watch anything with a lot of seasons. If you're in a position of leadership, these...

Last week, Mark and Sarah did one-on-one check-ins with all 26 agents on our team. One of the biggest takeaways? Sometimes people just want to be heard. They aren't always looking for solutions, just for someone to listen. It can be challenging sometimes to meet people where they're at. Everyone has a different background, different wants, and different needs. This also goes back to getting out of...

➡️ At the time of recording it was September, which you may or not know is Realtor Safety Month. It’s easy to see something in the news or hear about it and just think: that would never happen to me. But in an industry like real estate, you can never be too careful.  ➡️ Back when Sarah worked in car sales, she wanted to sell a mustang to a gentleman quickly. She was distracted and hungry. The clie...

Imperfect consistency will outperform perfect inconsistency every time. If you follow Mark on social media, you know he puts out regular reels on social media. They aren’t perfect, but they add consistent value. He posts 2 every week. He recently got 2 leads from those imperfect videos: a $1.7 million seller and $300,000 buyer. Sarah posts a reel every Friday afternoon. She was recently told by so...

How do you gain confidence in the luxury market? You have to preview, preview, preview. Locally, it can also be beneficial to read St. Louis Business Journal, Town & Style, and Ladue News. You may not like the periodicals, but you'll know about charity events, recent business acquisitions, and the like. The more reference points you have in the business environment and local happenings, th...

➡️ Special guest today! Neil, Mark's brother and real estate partner, joins Mark and Sarah this week to discuss luxury listings, specifically working with luxury sellers and preparing for sale. ➡️ About 2 decades ago, Neil started like all real estate agents do: buying and selling at every price point. Early on you have to go wide so you can learn areas and grow as an agent. But over time, the...

It's absolutely critical for agents to get in front of objections and avoid having to be reactive. Many issues that come up in the home buying or selling process often have foreshadowing clues in earlier conversations or situations with clients. Deal with those potential issues or doubts early on and maybe you'll be able to prevent a mutual release or your client feeling uncomfortable abou...

Follow the breadcrumbs. If you're an agent, you're probably utilizing a CRM. Your leads will leave you clues in their activity, searches, and even just in their email address. Don't miss that opportunity to dig deeper. Maybe their email is an edu, so you know they work in education. Or maybe their email indicates they work in the medical field. Look for those clues. They can give you i...

National headline: "Record Number of Home Deals Collapse in July." We've seen this as well in our business. You never want to use the down market as an excuse to be down in business, but in some ways, it is reassuring to know that we're not the only ones seeing a record number of mutual releases. When we started seeing this trend earlier this spring it was because of how quickly...

People don't care about what you say until they know that you care. People also remember how you made them feel long after they've forgotten what you said. You have to keep this in mind when interacting with clients, other agents, friends, family, or anyone in your life. Maybe you thought you made a great buyer presentation. But even if you said all the right things, it doesn't matter...

There is a disconnect between what buyers think their agent does for them and what the agent actually does. Sarah recently saw an interesting statistic: buyers think it takes an average of 15 hours for their agent to find them their home. However, in actuality, it takes more like 80-100 hours for an agent to find their home. Mark argues that a great agent actually takes even more time than that. P...

You may have heard...but things have changed in real estate recently. A Buyer Agency must now be signed before an agent can show a prospective buyer a home. Some agents have always done this, but others have wanted to establish a relationship before formal agreements. Now, the Buyer Agency is required whether you show them one home, or three, or twenty. A positive of this change: there is now a de...

Picture this: you're at a restaurant on a Saturday night. It's busy...there's a band and every table is full. You put in your food order and the food just doesn't come. However, your waiter addresses the issue head-on and provides an explanation, an apology, and a coupon for your next visit. He didn't skirt the issue, avoid you, and allow you to become progressively more frustr...

In the standard contract in Missouri, the seller is responsible for getting occupancy inspections done. But, the seller is not necessarily required to make all the necessary changes and updates to the home that were flagged on inspection. If the seller doesn't want to handle repairs, they have to tell the buyer within the allotted time frame, which becomes a point of negotiation with the buyer...

About a month ago, our team started using FUB (Follow Up Boss). It's a CRM (Client Relationship Manager). If you remember, we did an episode cautioning against getting distracted by shiny objects a few months back. We already utilize Sierra as a CRM, so how does FUB not fall into the trap of shiny objects? You shouldn't make changes just for the sake of making changes. There's somethin...

Mark has been investing in real estate for many years and he hosts an investment meeting every Friday for our team. Investing in real estate is a no-brainer as a long-term investment. It's also something tangible that you can be involved with regularly. Sure, some people own stocks that they manage themselves. But with real estate, you can physically drive by your investment to check on things...