This One Time in Real Estate...

Our team has been taking field trips on Wednesdays to areas some of our agents may not know. Our first trip was to a particular area that still has affordable homes available for under $200,000. It is the perfect target area for a first-time homebuyer. The same can probably be said for agents all across the US. If you're an agent, there are probably sections of your city you don't know as...

Ultimately, you control your own life, your own business, and your own time. There are a lot of tools out there and guidelines you can follow to achieve your goals or solve problems. But at the end of the day, you have to decide what will be best for you and your family and then do it. You have to ultimately make that decision and commit. Here's a real-world example. Every year during the firs...

How do you process and retain information? How do you keep things top of mind? Sarah learned along the way that if she transcribes what she’s hearing she has a better opportunity to remember it. She’s used it now for years and has volumes of notebooks to refer back to with so many ideas etc . She has notebooks that she can reference back on what the thoughts were when creating team training progra...

When Mark was a teenager, his first job was actually his own start-up business doing car care and detailing. He would leave flyers on the windshield of any fancy car he saw and over time, he developed a loyal customer base. He'd wash their car every week and even go so far as to clean between all the spokes on the wheels with a toothbrush. He was so successful that he even employed a friend to...

"Why?" is a conversation stopper. Instead, use "Tell me more." That's a conversation starter. Both are prompts to try to get more information from the other person, but "tell me more" relays more interest in what they're saying. It can also come across as less judgmental. Acknowledge, ask. Acknowledge, ask. Here's an example. Someone says they're going...

When a new lead comes in, look for clues first. What's their email address? You can learn where they work, if they're an educator, a hobby of theirs, a dog or cat lover. It is surprising sometimes what you can learn just from their email address. Follow the breadcrumbs. If you can see their search history, are they only looking in a specific zip code? What other common factors? There is so...

Let's dive deeper into the Mel Robbins 5-second rule. If you have an impulse to do something, you have 5 seconds to act on that impulse or your brain will kill that drive. It all starts with getting out of bed in the morning. We've all been there...your alarm goes off and you just don't want to get out of bed. You hit the snooze button and before you know it you've hit the snooze b...

If you have a goal, start small and just do it. You have to start somewhere. If someone had said 2 years ago that we'd someday have recorded over 70 podcasts, we would have thought you were crazy. And yet here we are. You just have to start and be consistent. Even if you're taking small steps, they build up over time. If we relate it to social media: imagine you're posting reels all th...

If you're an agent and you're feeling insecure or uncertain about the future given the NAR settlement, what are you doing to prepare? Start by asking yourself: what is your favorite part of this career? What do you love doing? Then prioritize that activity. For Sarah, she loved previewing. Consistent previewing brought consistent results. She was finding houses that worked for her buyers t...

Sarah's two oldest children are very active in sports and she's noticed some common traits of good coaches: they instill confidence, they hold you accountable, and repetition. Coaches see our potential and push us to reach the highest level. Just like in real estate, there is no magic button that will get you to your goals. You have to practice and go through all the steps to gain the skil...

"The biggest communication problem is that we don't listen to understand. We listen to reply." - Steven Covey Remember: conversations are a gift. They're a chance to learn about the other person. When you interrupt someone you're not only derailing their train of thought, but you're also proving that you're just listening to reply not understand. One of our agents rec...

Communication is about balance. Look at your own relationships. If you're an overcommunicator or external person, maybe you haven't had the best relationships with people who are the same way. (Unless you feed off of conflict, which is a whole other conversation.) In general though, external communicators are balanced by internal people. It's a give-and-take. You have control over what...

Sometimes we lead with our ego and jump to conclusions. Pause and think from the other person's perspective first before reacting. Are they stressed? Are they afraid? Where is their opinion coming from? At the end of the day, you want to help your buyers find a home and you want your sellers to help them sell their home. Keep the ultimate goal in mind when you're working with your clients...

Respect your time and worth. If you say yes to something, then you're saying no to something else. Don't forget that a buyer or prelist consultation is not just about convincing them you're the right agent for them. You're also interviewing them to make sure they're the right client for you. Do you want to work with a seller who has unrealistic expectations on the price of thei...

The NAR settlement has been a hot topic in real estate. There is still a lot of uncertainty and unknowns. 90+ brokerages still haven't settled. Growth happens outside of your comfort zone. When there is uncertainty, there are 3 options: fight, flight, or freeze. This directly translates to how people in the real estate community are reacting to the recent news. Mark predicts that current high...

Picture this: your buyers are in their car on a winding road with their dream home at the end. You as their prospective agent, aren't in the car with them. You're actually in the grass off the road completely. They haven't yet chosen their agent and they don't know how long their journey on the road will be. How do you get from the grass to in the car with them as their copilot? Do...

You've heard that growth happens outside of your comfort zone. There is nothing wrong with being in your comfort zone...unless you have goals and aspirations. Part of our growth strategy is if you're standing still, then you're moving backward. If you do the same activities you did last year, then you haven't adjusted to how the market has changed. The market is not a static thing....

We each have a finite amount of energy and that may look different from person to person. Throughout your day or week, your energy depletes. What things in your life deplete your energy the most and the fastest? How are you replenishing that lost energy? As agents, we talk to a lot of people all day. That can be exhausting and run through your body's battery quickly. Are you balancing your sch...

There is no easy button, magic pill, or lucky horseshoe that will give you automatic success in real estate. If you magically sold 5 houses in a day without having to put in the work, then you'd never gain the skills to continue building on that success. You would have no foundation. The journey is just as important if not more important than the success sometimes. It takes work to create the...

You've heard the grass is always greener on the other side. Think about it in a different way though: the grass is greener where you fertilize. Water your own grass. Don't always be looking over the fence at your neighbor's yard. Your business is different from other agents you're competing with. It's even different from other agents on the same team. From the outside, sure may...

The difference between a good, a mediocre, and a terrible lead follow-upper will show in one place: your number of closings. Think of leads in 2 different ways: a warm lead vs. a cold lead. A warm lead is someone you met face to face or belly to belly / ear to ear. If you meet a lead at an open house, then you're more likely to dazzle them since it was in person. It's a stronger start to b...

If you're not tracking your metrics, then you're missing the boat. There is an emotional and analytical component to why metrics are important. For example, every Friday Sarah posts an agent advice video on her social media. It's a short 2-minute video on a specific topic with a full-text description. This text then goes directly into an email that goes out to about 2,000 local real es...

First off, if you are an agent and don't have a social media presence then you're missing out. What is your voice? What unique perspective can you provide? Be yourself and loosen up. We get in our own way sometimes and think we need to present ourselves in a specific way. You might think you're coming across as professional, but people are actually perceiving you as stiff and unrelatab...

Follow-up is not one size fits all. Agents that are the most successful at follow-up don't get frustrated. They mix it up, make it a game, and keep it exciting and fresh. There are 5 easy ways to communicate: call, text, email, video, and social media. There are about 16 working hours in the day by which you can reach someone. If you're not mixing up the method and timing then you're m...

Sometimes we can get in our own way and our client's way. We have a new agent on our team that was inadvertently sabotaging his showings. He was saying his opinion right off the bat when opening the front door. The other day he tried a different tactic. When they walked in, he immediately thought the home was outdated...but he waited to see his clients' first impression. And they loved the...