One of my students came to me today, visibly frustrated. “I just want to see a property! Why is my agent making this so complicated?” As a professor, this is a teachable moment that goes beyond just real estate – it’s about law, economics, and a massive shift in professional standards. But it also raises a deeper question: 

Are we actually training our agents to communicate the “why,” or are they just hiding behind the “what”?

If you are a buyer or an investor in the 2026 market, here is the real story behind that “difficult” agent.

1. The Legal “Why”: It isn’t a Choice

Your Agent or REALTOR® isn’t being pushy; they’re simply trying to avoid legal trouble. As of January 1, 2025, California state law, specifically Assembly Bill 2992, requires that a written representation agreement be signed “as soon as practicable.” Other states have enacted similar laws, so it’s worth checking your state’s regulations.

In today’s landscape, “practicable” means before the first showing. If an agent takes you into a home without a signed Buyer Broker Agreement (BBA), they are potentially violating state law and risking their license.

2. The Communication Twist: Are Agents Explaining the Power of Negotiation?

Here is where the training gap often lies. Many agents present the BBA as a “take it or leave it” legal hurdle. They are wrong. If your agent is “being difficult,” it might be because they haven’t explained that the BBA is a flexible, strategic tool. As a buyer, you have the power to negotiate the terms of your relationship. Think strategically:

• Specific Properties: You don’t have to sign for every house in the county. You can sign an agreement for one specific address.
• Specific Timeframes: You can sign for one afternoon or one weekend to “test drive” the relationship.
• Specific Compensation: The amount or percentage is a negotiated figure between you and the broker.

The Twist: If an agent can’t explain that you have the power to limit the scope of the contract, they aren’t being “difficult” – they are being under-trained. A great agent uses the BBA to empower you, not to trap you.

3. The Qualification “Probing”: 100% Commission Reality

The second part of the frustration usually comes when an agent asks for a pre-approval letter before the first tour.

Remember the economics: 99% of agents are 100% commission-based. They aren’t salaried employees. They are small business owners who fund their own gas, insurance, and marketing. When an agent asks for your qualifications, they aren’t “gatekeeping”; they are performing a professional necessity. In a world where their only inventory is time, they must ensure they are spending it with someone who actually has the ability to close a deal.

4. REALTOR® vs. Agent: The Ethics Guardrail

Finally, we have to distinguish between a licensee and a REALTOR®.

• Agents: Must follow state law.
• REALTORS®: Go a step further. They are members of the National Association of REALTORS® and have pledged to follow a strict Code of Ethics and a higher standard of practice.

Whether you work with an agent or a REALTOR®, the law remains the same. However, a REALTOR® is held accountable by their peers to be more than just “compliant” they are expected to be ethical and transparent.

The Bottom Line

If your agent is asking for a signed agreement and a pre-approval, they are following the law and respecting the economics of their profession.

But here is my challenge to the industry: If the client feels the agent is being “difficult,” the agent has failed to communicate the strategy of the agreement. A BBA shouldn’t be a barrier to entry; it should be the document that defines the rights and obligations of both sides.

Last week I had the honor to hear Vic Gundotra speak in person and honestly — I’m still processing it.

If you don’t know the name – Gundotra was one of Google’s earliest key hires, a close collaborator with Steve Jobs, and one of the architects behind Google Translate. He also walked away from everything he knew to convert to Catholicism, losing his entire social circle and much of his family in the process. The man thinks in systems – engineering, faith, AI – and when he connects those dots, it’s worth paying attention.

His framing: AI is not just another tool. It is the single biggest transformation since the wheel was invented. And most of us are still treating it like a slightly smarter search engine.

The math that should change how you see this

Here’s the thing about exponential growth that our brains refuse to actually process. Take 30 linear steps and you travel 30 meters. Take 30 exponential steps – doubling each time – and you travel over a billion meters. That’s enough to circle the Earth 26 times. Same number of steps. A ratio of 35 million to one.

That’s not a metaphor. That’s the trajectory we’re on.

Gundotra explains that the old model of computing was simple: humans wrote explicit instructions and computers followed them. The new model – the one powering everything you’re hearing about right now – is different. AI learns through trial and error at massive scale. It isn’t told what to do. It figures it out. And it is getting better at a rate our linear brains are genuinely not wired to track.

The barrier to entry has already collapsed. He uses the example of a 13-year-old who built a functioning business in a weekend using nothing but voice commands. No coding. No technical background. Just a kid with a clear idea and a tool that could execute it.

That kid is competing with your agents, your loan officers, and your affiliated partners. So are a lot of other people you haven’t met yet.

What this means for our industry specifically

Gundotra’s warning is not about AI replacing people. It’s subtler than that. He calls it the Knowledge Tsunami. Expertise is being commoditized. In a world where AI has access to more information than any human alive, the value shifts – from knowing things to directing things. From having answers to asking better questions.

That’s actually my number one takeaway from everything he said: don’t ask AI for answers. Task it with deep research. There’s a difference, and that difference is where your value lives.

The people in real estate, mortgage, title, and affiliated services who will win the next decade are not the ones who know the most. They’re the ones who can direct the best – who understand their client, their market, their relationship well enough to put AI to work in a way that a 13-year-old with no context simply can’t.

The part that should make us pause

Gundotra draws a parallel to Roman Roads – the infrastructure that allowed Christianity to spread across the ancient world. AI, he argues, is the new road system. Neutral in itself. Enormously powerful depending on who builds on it and with what values.

His concern is real: the large language models shaping this global library of knowledge reflect the culture and biases of the people who built them. We are not guaranteed an objective moral compass in that system. The question of “what is true” – Pilate’s question – is very much alive inside AI.

Which means the people who understand both the tool and their own values are the ones who need to be in this conversation. Not watching from the sideline.

The road is being built either way. The only question is whether you’re on it. Check out some of my thoughts on AI:

• Why Your AI is “Lazy”
• It’s All About That Prompt, Isn’t It?
• The Broken Rung: How AI is Changing Who We Hire
• Anthropic AI Phase 2: Why “Blue” is the New White
• AI Is Taking the Process. Your Job Is to Be Human
• The Last Hiring Cycle You’ll Run the Old Way

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Want to hear more of what Vic had to say? And if you want to talk about how AI is showing up in our business right now — I’m always up for that conversation.

I follow Joe De Sena – the guy who built Spartan Race out of a stubborn refusal to let people quit. He sent something to me this morning that had nothing to do with obstacle courses. It was about loneliness. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how perfectly it described what I’m watching happen in our industry right now.

His take: it’s not that people stopped caring – it’s that connection stopped showing up on any spreadsheet that mattered, and somewhere along the way, investing in people stopped being treated like investing in your business.

Sit with that for a second.

The thing nobody talks about at broker meetings

We talk constantly about agent count, split structures, tech stacks, and lead gen costs. We almost never talk about the fact that a lot of people in this industry: agents, MLOs, title reps, home inspectors – are quietly grinding alone.

Not because they want to be. Because the economics pushed them there.

• The lunch you used to grab with your referral partner? Too busy.
• The mastermind group that used to fire everyone up?
  • Nobody could agree on a time, so it just faded out.
• Meanwhile the algorithm is right there.
  • Always available. Asking nothing of you.

The myth of motivation

Here’s the part Joe said that really landed for me. Ancient monks didn’t wait to feel inspired before they showed up to pray or train. They acted first and let the motivation follow. Motivation is a side effect of movement – not a prerequisite for it. The disciplined don’t wait for the right feeling. They just go.

We do this backwards constantly in this industry. We wait until morale improves to invest in culture. We wait until we have the perfect team to start the mastermind. We wait until things slow down to have the real conversations.

The waiting is the problem.

Your top agent isn’t crushing it because they feel amazing every morning. They prospect on the days they don’t want to. They follow up when the market is frustrating them. The discipline is the thing — the feeling is just a byproduct. Same goes for the relationships that actually build your business long term.

What the hive actually looks like

De Sena talks about earning sister and brotherhood – that belonging to something real requires paying a price most people won’t pay. I think about that when I look at the best brokerages and teams I’ve seen up close.

They don’t wait for an occasion. They make the occasion. The broker who hosts a monthly dinner for their top referral partners – not to pitch anything, just to stay in each other’s lives. The team leader who runs a Saturday workout with whoever shows up. The title rep who actually knows your agents’ kids’ names.

That stuff feels small. It’s not small. It’s the whole game.

Call the agent who went quiet. Host the lunch. Pull your affiliated partners – your title rep, your home warranty contact, your top inspector – into a room for no reason other than to stay connected. Do one hard thing together.

In a world where scrolling is free and showing up costs something, the people who choose to show up are the ones who build something that lasts. A brokerage isn’t a collection of independent contractors sharing a logo. At its best it’s a group of people who would go to bat for each other.

That doesn’t happen by accident. The platform doesn’t matter much: Zoom, phone, coffee shop, doesn’t matter. What kills connection isn’t the medium. It’s when we stop showing up with intention and start just going through the motions.

So what do we actually do with this?

Nothing revolutionary. Just deliberate.

• Text the agent you haven’t talked to in three weeks.
• Schedule the no-agenda lunch.
• Start the group chat that people actually look forward to.
• Do one hard thing together.
• The Spartans didn’t need reminders to stay connected. We apparently do.

Fine. Consider this yours.

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If this resonated, pass it along. Someone on your team probably needs to read it. And if you want to talk about how your office is handling culture, connection, and retention right now — my door’s open.

Our industry is addicted to the elevator-pitch version of leadership. We love punchy slogans. We tell our loan officers to “increase pull-through rates,” our agents to “own the neighborhood,” our recruiters to “find the unicorns.”

On the surface, these directives are beautiful. Simple. Sticky-note-ready. But as Xinjin Zhao recently observed, there’s a dangerous gap between simple and clear.

Zhao uses the analogy of asking for directions in an unfamiliar city. Someone tells you, “Go straight, then turn right on Maple Street.” You set off with total confidence. Ten minutes later, when Maple Street still hasn’t appeared, that confidence becomes anxiety.

The instruction wasn’t complex — it was incomplete. It was missing distance.

The Clarity of the Current Fever

The Q1 2026 Agent Migration Report tells us exactly what happens when the market stops waiting. We aren’t just in a shifting market — we’re in a high-velocity environment where external agent moves are up 25% and volume is up 15% over the prior quarter.

“Go recruit” is simple. Knowing that 15% of agents in production (50,000) professional agents are projected to change brands this year — and that agents move every single month, with January and April as peak windows and no true dead season — is clarity. It gives you the distance: the scope of the opportunity, the rhythm of the calendar, and the pace at which you need to move to catch the mid-tier producers who are finally off the sidelines.

Adding the Markers to the Path

Clarity isn’t about dropping a 50-page SOP on someone’s desk.

True clarity means adding the specific markers that let a professional navigate. In today’s market, those markers are:

The 20% Rule. Only 1 in 5 agents produce consistently quarter-over-quarter. The other 80% ride a production rollercoaster. Clarity means telling your team: focus your energy on the productive core, not the crowd.

The Efficiency Ratio. Forget the model debate — traditional vs. virtual doesn’t predict who wins. The marker of a winning firm is an ER of 2.0 or higher: $2.00 in production for every $1.00 in losses. That’s the number that matters.

The Internal Premium. We often overlook the gold in our own backyard. Internal office-to-office moves are up 38% year-over-year, and those agents outproduce external recruits by 28%, averaging $5.47M in volume. The best recruit might already be in your ecosystem.

The Two-Way Street

Zhao emphasizes that clarity is a shared responsibility. If your leader gives you a “simple” direction that feels vague, it’s on you to ask for the distance. If you’re the broker-owner, don’t wait for your team to get lost.

When 30% or more of departing agents are leaking into independent segment, you don’t have a recruiting problem — you have a clarity problem. You haven’t made your value proposition clear enough for them to see the path forward within your organization.

The Bottom Line

In a market this volatile, uncertainty is the ultimate productivity killer. Simplicity feels good in a meeting.

Clarity wins in the field.

Stop giving your team directions that leave them stranded ten blocks past their turn. Give them the distance, the markers, and the context they need to move with certainty.

The distance to the goal won’t change. Their confidence to reach it will.

Inspired by a LinkedIn post from Xinjin Zhao — Author, Speaker, Photographer, Marathon Runner, and Startup Advisor. Data: Recruiting Insight Q1 2026 Agent Migration and Brokerage Model Performance Report

I was thinking today, we can overcomplicate this business.

We debate splits, technology stacks, lead generation, office footprint. And somewhere in all of that noise we forget the thing that actually holds a brokerage together. How people feel when they walk through your door.

Horst Schulze said it best.

“Guests do not primarily want luxury. They want to feel like they are wanted and cared for.”

That is it.

That is the whole game. And he proved it by studying 400,000 guests at the Ritz-Carlton until the data was undeniable. When the first contact with a guest was excellent, a complaint never followed. When it was negative, a complaint always followed. Almost every time without exception.

He called his philosophy simple. Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. Every person in that building, regardless of their role or their title, was expected to treat every other person with dignity. Full stop.

The brokerage firm I led, was built around that same belief. And I want to be direct about something. I never tolerated disrespect from an agent toward my staff. Not ever. Not from a top producer. Not from anyone.

Production does not buy you the right to treat people poorly.

Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen means it goes both ways. The moment you let one person erode that standard you have told your entire team what they are actually worth to you.

Onboarding Is Your Ten-Foot Rule

Schulze also created the ten-foot rule. Every employee, regardless of role, stops within ten feet of a guest, makes eye contact, and says welcome. Not hi. Welcome. Because hi puts two people on equal footing. Welcome tells someone you are there for them. Steve Jobs flew to Atlanta to learn this before he opened a single Apple Store and built it into every retail location. Apple Retail became one of the highest revenue per square foot operations in history.

It started with a man obsessed with the first moment of human contact.

That first moment is your onboarding. The day an agent signs with your brokerage is your ten-foot moment. What do they feel walking in? Is there someone who makes them feel like they made the right call or do they get a packet, a login, and a good luck?

I have seen brokerages spend thousands recruiting an agent and lose them inside 90 days because the onboarding experience told them they were just a number. Win that first moment and you build a foundation. Fumble it and you spend the next year trying to earn back trust you never fully established.

Retention Is a Daily Decision

Onboarding gets an agent in the door. Retention is what keeps them. And retention is not a program. It is a daily decision made by every manager and leader in your office.

At my firm we made one promise – and delivered it – to every agent. Broker and compliance support within one hour or less on weekdays and two hours on weekends. No exceptions. I monitored it personally every single week.

That promise told our agents something no recruiting brochure ever could: When it matters we are here.

Schulze gave every Ritz-Carlton employee authority to spend up to $2,000 on the spot to resolve a guest complaint. In his final three years the full amount was used exactly once. The point was never the money. It was knowing someone had their back.

But get this, I have watched too many acquisitions go sideways because new ownership looked at the P&L and started trimming what they could not explain. When Schulze left, the new Ritz-Carlton leadership cut the escort standard, walking guests to their destination instead of pointing. The brand fell from number one in the world to number twenty-six. One cultural decision. I have seen the exact same collapse happen in brokerages after a sale closes. The thing that looked like overhead was the entire reason agents stayed. Culture is not a cost center. It is the moat.

Before you cut anything ask what it is actually paying for. Not just functionally but emotionally. Your agents have options every single day. They stay because of how your office makes them feel.

Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. Protect that standard.

Lead like it matters.

Because it is the whole business.

Win the day.

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In the real estate world, things get heated. We deal with high commissions, emotional sellers, and the constant pressure of recruiting and retention. It is easy to feel like a difficult agent, a frustrated client, or a pushy affiliate is out to get you.

When a deal hits a snag or a team member pushes back on a new policy, our reflex is often to get defensive. But there is a better way to handle the friction.

Indra Nooyi, the former CEO of Pepsi, shared some advice in a 2008 interview with Fortune Magazine that completely changes the dynamic of a difficult conversation. She suggests that whatever someone says or does, you should assume positive intent.

Flipping the Script

Nooyi points out that when you assume negative intent, you get angry. You react. You might even scream or get defensive. But if you take away that anger and assume they actually mean well, your approach shifts.

Think about the last time a top producer came into your office complaining about a change in the commission split or a tech glitch. It is easy to think they are just being difficult or ungrateful. But what if you stopped and thought, “Maybe they are reacting this way because they are stressed about their own overhead or they just don’t understand the ‘why’ behind the change?”

As Nooyi explains, when you assume positive intent, you start to truly listen. You start trying to understand if they are hurt, upset, or just confused. You stop being “random” in your response and start being a leader.

Breaking the Cycle of Negativity

In our business, the heat of the moment is a daily occurrence. If you react from a negative perspective just because you didn’t like how someone else reacted, you end up with two negatives fighting each other. That doesn’t close deals, and it definitely doesn’t build a great office culture.

When you make the effort to assume the best in people, they usually notice. They might even realize their own reaction was over the top because they see you are actually trying to help.

Why It Works for You

This isn’t just about being “nice.” It is about your own emotional intelligence. When you aren’t busy being angry or defensive, you have the headspace to solve the actual problem.

Next time a conversation starts to go sideways, try to get behind what the other person is saying. Assume they have a good reason for their frustration. You might be amazed at how much faster you can find a solution when you aren’t busy fighting an invisible enemy.

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I’ve noticed a pattern in our industry. We are surrounded by high achievers who want everything to be “top tier.” Whether it is a new recruiting deck, a luxury listing presentation, or the perfect office layout, we tend to chase that final 5 percent of polish.

But here is the truth we rarely talk about: Perfection is expensive.

That last tiny bit of quality almost always costs a disproportionate amount of time and money. If you are a broker owner or a top producing agent, you know that your time is your most valuable asset. Spending ten hours to make a flyer “perfect” instead of “great” usually means you missed out on three listing appointments or a chance to coach a rising star.

The 95 Percent Sweet Spot

My favorite type of purchase—or project—is the one where you spend 80 percent of the cost but get 95 percent of the value.

Think about the tech stack in your office or the marketing materials you provide your team. There is often a massive jump in price or effort to get from “really good” to “flawless.” In reality, that extra 5 percent of perfection is rarely what closes the deal or recruits the agent.

The best combination of cost and quality is almost always one step down from perfect.

The Cost of Over-Engineering

When we over-engineer our systems, we create two problems:

1. The Time Sink: You spend weeks tweaking a CRM or a script that should have been launched in days. While you were polishing, your competition was already in the field using a version that was “good enough” to win.
2. The Decision Fatigue: Chasing perfection for every minor detail exhausts your mental battery. By the time a truly high-stakes decision lands on your desk, you are already drained from worrying about the font size on a business card.

Finding the Value

This isn’t an excuse for sloppy work. Quality matters, and in real estate, your brand is your reputation. But there is a huge difference between excellence and perfectionism.

Excellence is about delivering high value and moving the needle. Perfectionism is often just a sophisticated way of procrastinating or overspending.

Next time you are looking at a new vendor, a new hire, or a new marketing campaign, look for that one step down from perfect. That is where the profit lives. That is where the scale happens.

Give yourself permission to be 95 percent great so you can use that saved time and money to actually grow your business.

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In our industry, we are taught to be “yes” people. We say yes to the late night showing, the last minute recruiting lunch, or that extra project that landed on our desk Friday afternoon. We usually view these as signs of hard work. But there is a reality we often ignore: trades are always happening, whether you see them or not.

Every time you say yes to one thing, you are inherently saying no to something else. It is a simple equation that we frequently miscalculate.

The Invisible Exchange

Think about the daily trades you make without even realizing it:

• The Early Meeting: When you say yes to that 7:00 AM strategy session, you are saying no to a quiet morning or time with your family.
• The Extra Project: Saying yes to a new internal audit or a side committee is a direct no to a free weekend.
• The Energy Drain: Saying yes to a high-maintenance client who exhausts you is a no to the time and headspace that actually fulfills you.

For broker owners and top agents, the cost of a “bad yes” isn’t just the hour you spent in a meeting. The real cost is whatever could have grown in that space instead. Maybe it was the visionary recruiting plan you never got to write, or maybe it was just the rest you needed to stay sharp for a big negotiation.

Improving the Ratio

The point isn’t to start saying no to everything. You can’t grow a brokerage or a career by hiding from opportunities. The goal is simply to recognize the difference between a good yes and a bad yes.

A bad yes usually feels like an obligation. It is the task that keeps you busy but doesn’t actually move the needle. In recruiting, a bad yes might be bringing on an agent who produces well but destroys your office culture. You said yes to the volume, but you just said no to the peace and retention of your existing staff.

How to Audit Your Yes

Start looking at your calendar as a series of investments rather than just a list of things to do. Before you agree to the next “opportunity,” ask yourself what you are giving up to make it happen. If the trade doesn’t feel fair, it probably isn’t.

Protect your space. Improve your ratio. When you stop filling every gap with a “bad yes,” you finally leave room for the things that actually matter to grow.

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The “Unreasonable” Talent Play: What Real Estate Leaders Can Learn from Google’s DeepMind Deal

Every brokerage owner knows the feeling of a competitor eyeing their market. They have a bigger budget, deeper pockets, and an aggressive recruiting team. How do you actually beat them?

A recent Wall Street Journal article titled “The Inside Story of the Greatest Deal Google Ever Made” tells the story of the 2014 acquisition of DeepMind. Google paid over 500 million dollars for a tiny startup with 50 employees and zero revenue. At the time, critics called it insane. Today, it is considered the bargain that saved Google’s future.

For real estate CEOs, recruiters, and top producers, this story offers three blunt lessons on winning the talent war.

1. It is Never Just About the Money

In 2014, the real battle was between Google and Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg was incredibly close to buying DeepMind himself.

Google’s Larry Page didn’t win by offering more cash. He won because he understood what the founders actually valued: autonomy. They wanted a guarantee that their work would stay independent and ethical. Page promised them a private ethics board. Zuckerberg didn’t.

The Real Estate Lesson: When a top producing team is deciding between you and a rival, it is rarely just about the commission split. It is about the “intangible equity.” Are you offering a platform where they can scale their own brand, or are you forcing them into a rigid corporate box? Google won because Page was a better listener.

2. Pay for the “Bargain” That Feels Too Expensive

Paying 500 million dollars for 50 people was called “unreasonable” back then. Today, DeepMind is the engine behind Google’s most valuable AI systems. That original investment is now worth billions.

The Real Estate Lesson: As the market shifts, the best deals often look overpriced on paper. Acquiring a ten person super team from a rival might require a payout that makes your accountant nervous. But the DeepMind story teaches us that true “force multipliers” are rarely priced at fair market value. A 10x player pays for itself exponentially. The greatest risk isn’t overpaying for elite talent. It is missing out on the talent that defines the next decade.

3. Don’t Fear the Culture Clash

The article highlights a constant tension between DeepMind’s academic culture and Google’s profit-driven world. DeepMind wanted to change the world. Google wanted to protect its ad business. For years, this friction was actually healthy. It allowed DeepMind to innovate while Google provided the infrastructure to make that innovation work in the real world.

The Real Estate Lesson: We see this clash all the time. You have the legacy listing agent who does things “the old way” and the new tech-enabled team that demands automation. A successful broker doesn’t force everyone into one mold. Your job is to manage the tension. Let the different groups thrive separately while building a bridge so they can learn from each other.

The Bottom Line

Google’s DeepMind deal was about one thing: securing the most critical asset for the future before anyone else understood its true value.

In our market, the principle is the same. The brokerages that will dominate the 2030s aren’t necessarily the ones with the most desks today. They are the ones with the vision to attract the talent and technology that others still think is “unreasonable.”

Follow my AI series – AI Lazy | Blue is the new White | Your Job Is To Be Human | Who We Hire IS Changing |

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