As a real estate agent, you have something in common with every single business owner in your community. Everybody from carpet cleaners, to candy store operators, to toy store owners, to clothing store owners — every one of you has something in common.

Here’s what you have in common: you all want to do more business.

As a small business operator, what you can do is tap into that. What I would suggest to you is you go through your entire sphere of influence today and you take a yellow highlighter out — maybe print it out — and put a highlight next to all the small business owners that you know. You know more than you think.

When you have that highlighter out and you highlight all those folks, the next step is to call them, reach out to them, text them, or stop by their business if it’s convenient and appropriate, and say this:

“Hey, you know what? I want to support a local business every single week, and I’d love to do a collab with you if you’re interested.”

A collab — what’s a co...

Hey guys, when’s the last time you put an in-search-of ad out on social media? We’ll call it an ISO.

An ISO ad could be as simple as saying, “Hey guys, I have a buyer looking for a home in the Jacksonville area. Three bedroom, two bath, up to $600,000. They’re looking in this school district. If you hear of anybody thinking about selling, please send them my way.”

This has so many benefits you don’t even realize.

You might say, “That’ll never work. I’m not actually going to get somebody who says they’re interested in selling. That’s a waste of time.”

That’s not the point.

The point is that you’re telling everybody in your sphere, everybody in your social media audience, that you are a busy REALTOR and that you will leave no stone unturned in finding homes for your clients.

They’re going to say, not only is Jim busy, he’s actually going the extra mile for his client.

If you do this consistently, you’re helping people see you through a different lens.

Some of you have a problem w...

Almost every week I have a new agent come to me and say, “Hey, I want to tackle a new area of the market.” Maybe it’s for sale by owner, maybe it’s expired listings, maybe it’s farming— all very valid areas to market to.

But my first question is always, “Let’s talk about your sphere of influence first. Tell me about that.”

A lot of times they’ll say, “Well, I don’t really have a good number on that.” That’s how I know they’re not really dialed in on their sphere. I’ll ask, “How many people are in your sphere?” And they’ll say, “It’s like 100… it’s like 200.”

They can’t tell me a specific number because they’re not actually in control of their business.

So the number one thing we have to do—before we chase rabbits, before we look for other business, before we search for something else—is get our sphere of influence dialed in.

Why? Because 70–80% of your business is going to come from this source. We have no business spending time, resources, money, and energy elsewhere when we have...

Hey guys, did you know that in the last 12 months there’s been an average 7% increase in homeowners insurance rates? When people are homeowners and paying insurance, premiums on average have gone up 7%. In a lot of markets, it’s probably much higher than that.

When we hear this, we might say, “That doesn’t impact me. I’m a REALTOR. I’m not selling insurance.”

But this is actually an opportunity.

Everyone in our database has homeowners insurance. Why don’t you reach out to our database today and say, “Hey guys, you’ve probably noticed your homeowners insurance rates have gone up. I just want to be a resource for you. I’ve got a great contact—an insurance professional here in town. If you’re looking to shop your rate or get a different quote, I’d love to refer you to them. Just give me a quick call. I’ll make sure they put you at the top of the list and give you exceptional five-star service.”

Now, why don’t you just give them the name of the person to call?

The reason is you want t...

Hey guys, one of the things I always tell people when they’re starting out in the business is to watch what top professionals are doing and model other people’s success. When you do that, you unlock a bunch of “secrets.”

I’m going to share one secret right now that you may not have noticed, but once I say it, you’re going to dial in and think, “Ah, I have noticed that.” It’s one of those Captain Obvious things when you really look at it.

People who are doing a lot of real estate sales—$20, $30, $40, $50 million in production—often talk about new sales, listings, and closings by saying things like, “I just sold my friend a house. I just sold my buddy a house. I just helped my friends buy a duplex.”

Everyone they talk about is their friend.

Then you reflect on your own business and ask, “Why am I not selling as much real estate as they are?” They put their pants on one leg at a time just like me. They’re not working ten times harder than me.

The reason is simple: they have more frie...

For you agents out there, I’ve got a question: have you mapped home anniversaries for your entire database?

What does that mean? When we help someone buy a home, we automatically record the closing date in our CRM. If you haven’t been doing that, start now. If you haven’t done it for your whole career, go back and do it for every house you’ve ever sold.

When that anniversary date comes up—January, February, March, April, May, whenever—you now have a reason to call those clients and say, “Hey, happy six-year home anniversary. Can you believe it’s already been six years?”

Then you say, “Guess what? It’s your turn for a home equity analysis. I like to update all my friends on how much money they’ve made on their house over the last 12 months.”

You tell them, “Here’s what you’ve made. Percentage-wise, it looks like about $22,000.”

That’s a great present to get every year. Your clients will love this.

Second, you follow it up by saying, “By the way, if you know anybody buying or selli...

As a real estate professional, I know you’re probably already on Facebook and Instagram. Everybody is.

But are you on LinkedIn? And if you are, are you using it to its fullest potential?

Here’s why I ask: Did you know that one in three business owners is on LinkedIn? One-third of all the businesses in your town are on LinkedIn.

The beauty of LinkedIn is that it helps you flesh out your own database—your CRM, your SOI—because it connects you to people from professions you’ve been in before. If you list past employers and say, “Hey, I’ve worked at these three companies,” LinkedIn will suggest people you might know.

You might look at that and say, “You know what? I do know that person. They’re not in my database, but I do know them.”

Now you can connect with them on LinkedIn, send them a message, get reconnected, and start a conversation. Then move them as quickly as you can into your SOI.

Think about alumni groups or colleges you’ve attended. All of these business-related connectio...

Hey guys, new study from Harris Interactive—interesting study—found that every American knows four people who are going to move next year. I want you to put that in perspective.

Let's say you're a real estate professional and you have just a hundred people in your database. You might say that's not enough to make a living. The reality is those hundred people know 400 people who are going to move.

What percentage of those would you need to have a complete transformation in your career? To actually 10x your performance from last year?

So then the question is: if that's true, how do I get my arms around that business? What am I missing? What am I doing wrong?

I'm going to give you two things you're doing wrong...

First one is going to be hard to hear: people don't look at you as referral worthy.

What does that mean? It means when they look at you, they're thinking, “I don't know if I could trust him or her with a referral,” because they don’t know you're a hardworking agent.

Why do...

What’s your response when the buyer says to you, “I think we're going to put a pin in this right now. We're just going to wait and see what happens with the market.”

Your first response should be, “Hey, totally understand. Let me ask you, what do you see as the advantages to waiting?”

Dig deeper. Figure out what's going on in their heads.

Most of the time they're going to say that they’re waiting for interest rates to drop or prices to fall.

When you hear that, what are you going to do?

You could say, “Well, we'll wait and see with you,” and then follow up in six months. But if you do that, they'll end up signing up on some lead form, getting captured by another agent, going to an open house, or being connected with someone else through a referral, and you're probably going to lose them.

That's the reality.

So instead of doing that, here's what I'd recommend.

Say, “Hey, totally get it. Waiting for interest rates to stop seems like a safe bet, seems like the wise decision to mak...

How many referrals would you like to receive next week?

If you could just say, “Hey, I want to receive referrals,” how many would that be? Now, everybody would say, “As many as possible,” but let’s be realistic. How many have you received this year? What’s been your average? You’ve probably been getting one a week. For most of you, that’s not the case.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you just got one referral next week? What if you got two? Wouldn’t that be absolutely incredible?

You might say, “How can I start to juice this? How can I get referrals to start flowing to me regularly?”

We often think of it in terms of our spheres of influence, which is good. But we can also get referrals from another category, another source — and that is B2B referrals.

What’s B2B? Business-to-business. We’re always looking at business-to-consumer, B2C, but B2B is a powerful, powerful strategy for you.

Let me give you a good example. If I want to start receiving one referral a week, maybe two, what shoul...