Three lessons from Groucho Marx: Here’s where he proved it. In 1942, Warner Bros. released Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, the biggest picture in the country. A few years later the Marx Brothers, well past their peak, announced a comedy called A Night in Casablanca. Warner Bros. sent a legal notice claiming rights to the word “Casablanca” and suggested […]
Tag: Real Estate Managers
4 Steps to Defeat “I Don’t Have Enough Time.”
I’ve lost count of how many broker-owners, recruiters, and agents have sat across from me and said some version of the same thing: “Mark, I just don’t have enough time.” Here’s the uncomfortable truth I usually offer back: the leaders crushing their goals and the ones drowning have the exact same 168 hours a week. The […]
Stop Waiting for Motivation: Act Your Way Into Believing
The real estate industry is obsessed with “mindset.” We spend millions on keynote speakers trying to change how our agents think, hoping that if we just inspire them enough, their actions will follow. Change your heart, and your actions will change. But what if that model is completely backward? Psychologist George Simon inverts this approach. […]
Character Under Duress: Good Intentions Don’t Run a Brokerage
I was thinking about my father recently, God rest his soul. Whenever I faced a setback, a difficult task, or a situation I wanted to quit, he’d look at me and deliver his famous line: “It builds character.” I wonder if we’ve lost that in today’s society. Today, when things get hard, the default instinct […]
Acting Differently First Can Change What You Believe and Feel
Over 40+ hours on planes, trains, and automobiles over the last few weeks gave me time to reflect on something I’ve learned across 20,000+ hours helping teams improve their business processes, and from my top three influencers in the counseling field. We usually assume change works like this: change your heart, and your actions will […]
Stop Extracting. Start Partnering. Watch What Happens.
I’m in the Philippines thinking about something I see in some real estate offices, and not in others. There’s a framework for global economics: wealthy nations built wealth partly by extracting resources from developing nations. Take resources, send back minimum, keep profits. One-directional. Built into the system. Some real estate offices operate the same way. […]
Your Best Agents Are Watching How You Show Up
I’m in the Philippines right now with my wife visiting family. Watching Filipino culture up close (the way families stay connected across continents, how strangers become family in five minutes, the way people solve problems with what they have), I noticed something. It’s just intention made visible in daily life. That’s culture. Not the poster […]
Resets Are Built on Rules, Not Feelings
What I learned from Joe DeSena (Mr. Spartan) and others: The market shifts. Rates move. A deal you were counting on dies at the closing table. A top producer you spent six months recruiting ghosts you on signing day. And then comes the feeling. The slump. The “I’ll get back on the phones Monday.” The […]
Your culture is your competitive advantage
Four sentences that separate the brokerages people fight to join from the ones they quietly leave Mike Deegan won his 400th game coaching baseball at Denison University. Someone asked him what drives that kind of sustained success. His answer had nothing to do with talent or technology or market conditions: “Show up every day. Work […]
The Day I Almost Quit on Kilimanjaro, and What It Taught Me About Building a Brokerage Worth Joining
There’s a spot on Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest free-standing mountain, where a vehicle can reach you for the first time on the descent. Before that point, if something goes wrong, your options are a helicopter or a stretcher carried by porters. There is no other way out. So you move, and you deal with whatever you’re […]