This week a reporter reached out to me with several questions about a new report showing that nearly one-third of U.S. counties are now seriously unaffordable for homebuyers. One question stood out: why aren’t falling home prices making homes more affordable? It’s the right question, and the answer should shape every coaching conversation we have […]
Stack Your Way to a Stronger Real Estate Brokerage
Habit Stacking for Talent Attraction and Retention I’ve worked with leaders at 500 of the nation’s largest real estate firms, and I’ve found one universal truth: every broker-owner and their staff knows what they should be doing. Call five agents a day. Check in with top producers. Follow up with the recruit who said “maybe next […]
We Weren’t Meant to Run Alone
The Big Four and the Power of Community It was 105 degrees. Too hot to run outside, so I headed to the gym, set the iFit treadmill to a 5% incline, and let trainer Hannah Eden do the talking. Somewhere in the middle of that climb, she said something that stuck with me. She talked […]
One Step Beats a Dozen Programs
It’s October. Which means the plans are coming. By Thanksgiving, most offices will have more programs than agents using them. Benjamin Franklin cut through all of it in seven words, in the 1737 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanack: “Well done is better than well said.” Almost three hundred years later, it’s still the best business advice […]
The Partner Who Stayed
Ask any broker-owner who ran an office through 2008 about their affiliate partners. They’ll name the lenders, escrow officers, and title reps who disappeared when volume dried up. Then they’ll name the ones who stayed. They’ll say those names with a completely different tone. Nearly two decades later, the ones who stayed are still getting […]
The Appraisal Just Changed. Who Told Your Agents?
Picture a seller in early November. The appraiser has been in her home for ninety minutes. He’s measuring rooms with a laser scanner and photographing the kids’ bedrooms, the home office, the medication on the kitchen counter. She calls her agent. “Is this normal? Where do these photos go?” Her agent has no idea. That […]
Fire Bullets, Then Cannonballs
In Great by Choice, Jim Collins describes a ship at sea with a hostile vessel bearing down on it and only a limited supply of gunpowder. If you load everything into one cannonball and fire, you’ll probably miss. Then you have no gunpowder left. The better move is to fire a bullet first. See where it […]
The Stay Interview
Most brokerages have an exit interview. That’s the conversation where you finally ask a good agent what went wrong, right after they’ve already signed with someone else. That isn’t a retention strategy. It’s an autopsy. Ask before they leave Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans, authors of Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em, have long championed a simple […]
What I’d Tell Every Student Before Year One
Every semester, I watch students light up when they pass the final. They’re ready to go. Here’s what I wish I could tell every one of them before they walk out the door. Your license is permission, not preparation The exam proves you know the rules. It doesn’t prove you can get a stranger to […]
What We Can Learn from 13.1 and 26.2
As some of you know, I’m training for the Long Beach Half Marathon. Part of that training includes cross-training on the bike and the rower, and on the bike I’ve spent a few work out sessions with Ashley Paulson, an iFit trainer, indoor cycling instructor, and marathon runner. Somewhere between the intervals and the climbs, […]