Hey guys, I want to give you a strategy as we head into the busiest season of the year for listings—February, March, April, and May. This is when the most homes hit the market, so it’s the perfect time to ramp up your efforts.

I’ve got two strategies that can help.

1. Create a Real Estate Resume

A real estate resume highlights your background, skills, education, and successes. Keep it simple—just a one-page document. You can use Canva, where you'll find plenty of great resume templates. Pick one, customize it, and build out your real estate resume.

Once it's ready, send it out to your entire database with a cover letter. The letter should say something like:

"As we enter the busiest season of the year, I wanted to share my real estate resume in case you know any buyers or sellers looking for an agent. I’d love to interview for the job of helping them buy or sell their home."

This positions you as a professional and keeps you top of mind with potential...

Okay, guys, here’s some great language to use with buyers who are on the fence. When you’re following up—because we should all be following up—you can say something like this:

“Hey, I just wanted to touch base with you and let you know I’ve been thinking about you. Now that we’re in a new year, I wanted to talk to you about all the new listings starting to hit the market. February, March, April, and May are when we see the most listings, which means the most opportunities. In fact, we have 10% more inventory on the market this year compared to last year. So, I wanted to reconnect and see if we could start looking at some properties together.

“Now, I know you might have some concerns about pricing and finding the right value. Here’s the key message: When you work with me, we’re not buying the market—we’re buying a specific home. My job is to ensure you get the absolute best pricing and value on the home that fits...

Let’s talk about the Primadonna agent.

We’ve all heard the term, but what does it mean? It refers to someone—hopefully not in your office—who believes they hold power over the broker or staff. They might wield this perceived power by being verbally aggressive or abusive, saying and doing things that are completely inappropriate. They think they can get away with it because of their production level or tenure in the office.

So, what do you do with a Primadonna agent? Here’s the unspoken fear many office and team leaders face: If I get rid of them, I’ll lose money. Maybe they’re a top producer, and you’re thinking, “I can’t afford to lose someone like that.”

But when you let this fear control your actions, it gives them even more strength—and their behavior gets worse over time. Worse still, having this kind of toxic person in your office impacts your recruiting. Potential recruits may avoid your office entirely,...

In this episode of the eRealEstateCoach podcast, we sit down with rockstar REALTOR® and Brokerage Owner, Rio Ingram. From patrolling the streets of Los Angeles as a police officer to dominating the Pacific Northwest real estate market, Rio has built an extraordinary business by mastering the art of relationship-building in unique and powerful ways. After rapidly growing a successful real estate team, he set his sights on something bigger—creating a thriving brokerage built on community, collaboration, and a shared commitment to local impact. His passion for rewarding and empowering agents has fueled explosive growth, proving that small-town success can rival even the biggest markets. Tune in as Rio shares his insights on leadership, culture, and the key strategies that have driven his brokerage’s rapid expansion. Whether you’re an agent, team leader, or brokerage owner, this episode is packed with takeaways to help you level up your business!

When you step into the role of recruiter for your team or office, you have to shift gears. You likely came from production, where you were a top agent and a confident salesperson. Talking to buyers and sellers felt natural.

But then you put on the recruiter hat, and suddenly making that first call to a potential recruit feels daunting—like the phone weighs a thousand pounds. It feels awkward and uncomfortable. Why is that?

It’s because you don’t have the skillset yet. Confidence comes from competence, and competence comes from learning and practice. The good news is you can develop those skills by getting coached and learning from others who’ve been where you are. We’ll share some tips and tools to help with that in a moment, but first, let me give you something to think about.

If you’re serious about growing your team or office, you need to commit at least one hour a day to recruiting. Without that, your business is at risk.

Here’s where...

You might’ve had a call where you had a great conversation with a potential recruit—someone you thought would join your company—and then suddenly they went cold. They didn’t join.

What happened?

Well, it’s not about your offer. It’s not about you, what you said, or didn’t say. It’s about their timing. Timing is unique for every agent. Every agent has a runway—that is, the time it takes for them to join your firm. Some have a short runway, some a long one, and others a really long runway.

It’s not about your timeline; it’s about theirs. And here’s the key: the fortune is in the follow-up. But you don’t want to apply pressure.

Here’s what the worst recruiter does: “Jim, we’ve got to get you over here. Let’s make it happen!”

That approach is all about your needs, not theirs.

People often have legitimate reasons they can’t make a change right now. They may have things going...

Do you think your buyers have unrealistic expectations about the homes they’re seeing because of TV shows about housing, fixing up, and flipping?

The answer is absolutely yes.

In fact, 73% of homebuyers have unrealistic expectations based on their TV viewing habits.

So, what can we do about it? We can either do nothing and have them feel disappointed every time they walk into a house, or we can reset their expectations and shift their mindset. Here’s how we do it.

Many of us are already using buyer questionnaires before meeting with clients—sent via text, JotForm, or Google Forms. These questionnaires help us understand their needs. One useful question to add could be:

"Do you watch reality TV about housing? If so, what are your favorite shows?"

When you get this feedback, it gives you insight and lets you address the issue during your first meeting.

For example, in your buyer presentation, you might say:

"Hey, I noticed you like to watch reality TV about housing....

I've heard this so many times over the years: "My market's different, Jim." When it comes to recruiting, people say, "We're in a tiny market, a rural market, a niche market, or a very cliquey market. People here don’t make moves like they do in big cities. Recruiting doesn’t work here."

Let me tell you something: I come from a small town with a population of 25,000. I’ve worked in big cities, small towns, medium-sized cities, and even cliquey ones. Here’s the reality: the numbers behind recruiting aren’t something I’m making up. These are national statistics.

The average agent in America moves every five years.

Look at your entire database of agents in your market and think about this: every single one of them will likely move in the next five years.

Statistically, some will move sooner, some later, but overall, they’re going to move.

The question is: where are they going to go?

Think about your own career. Did you stay at one company...

What's the number one motivator for someone to move from Company A to Company B? It's not the commission plan, so get that out of your head.

The answer is this: the reason I'm going to move from Company A to Company B is because I believe Company B can help me close more transactions.

Transaction count is the number one motivator for all agents. Yet, when I talk to most brokers and ask them to list the top five reasons someone should join their firm, the first things they often mention are: "We've got a great culture here. It's a family organization really connected to the community. People just trust each other. We've got a great staff."

These are all fantastic qualities, but let me tell you what that is: soft value.

Soft values are what keep agents at your company. People love to work at places with great culture, a charitable spirit, an open-door policy, and strong support staff.

But soft value isn't what moves an agent from Company A to Company B.

What moves agents is one thing:...

Hey guys, let’s talk about your power base and why it matters. Your power base number is a great way to measure the health of your database. In real estate, our databases generate the majority of our sales—this has been proven time and time again.

Let’s break it down with some math, because the path is in the math:

If you have a database of 200 people, how many transactions should that generate? The ratio is simple: 10 to 1. For every 10 people in your database, you should generate one sale. So, a 200-person database should produce about 20 transactions.

That’s a general guideline. Let’s make it personal. To find your power base number, take the number of transactions you’ve closed in the past 12 months and divide it by the total number of people in your database.

For example, if you have 200 people in your database but only closed 10 transactions, divide 200 by 10. That gives you 20, meaning for every 20 people, you’re averaging one closed...