My guess is that you're somebody that gives back to the community. Now, you might do it in small, subtle ways that people may not notice. But what if you could give back to charity in a way that helped you, the charity, and also helped your business at the same time?

It's a true win-win situation.

How could you do that?

Well, one of the ways is to pick a charity that you really care about, that you're passionate about, and then secondly, tie that charity to closings in the new year.

So here's an example:

What if you sent out an email, a text, social media post, and you said something like this:

"Hey, in 2023, I've set a goal of selling 30 homes. And I want to help that number of families achieve their real estate goals. But I want to go bigger and also help my favorite charity achieve their goals. So for every closing I have between January and March of this year, I'm gonna donate [fill in the blank: $100, $200, $500] for every...

Five things to do in the first quarter of the new year:

1. Refresh your brand

Refreshing your brand means getting new photos taken. Why? Because you are first and foremost your brand. So you need to get a new, fresh photo. You should do this every year, maybe twice a year. But that new photo is not just a straight headshot, it's multiple photos in different settings. Why? Because your photo is the most used branding element in your marketing arsenal.

But what happens when you don't do this? What happens is people then meet you and there's an immediate brand disconnect. There's an immediate feeling, at least at a subconscious level, that they've been deceived. If they can't trust you with your branding, what else can't they trust you with?

It's more important than you think it is. So get that brand updated and refreshed.

Also, look at your bio. So once you get this new photo, you're gonna update your bio for the new year. And...

Hey guys, here's a fun idea you're probably not doing now in terms of marketing your listings, which is doing a behind the scenes viewpoint of what you're doing to market listings.

And I what you're thinking: What does that mean? Well, a lot of us that watch television today, we'll see a lot of behind the scenes. Everybody loves to see behind the scenes. Like if you're watching your favorite show, whether it's House of Dragons or The Handmaid's Tale or whatever, at the end of the show, they'll circle back and they'll do behind the scenes interviews and so forth.

And people love it. They eat that up. That's when you bought the dvd—yes, we used to do that—we would get the DVD extras and that's what it would have on there.

You can do the same thing with your listings.

What if you started doing some behind the scenes work? And what do I mean by that?

What if you had you taking some photos or some, some...

Here's a target market right now that could be a massive opportunity for us:

We should be looking for opportunities. In every market shift, there's an opportunity. And one opportunity we're starting to see is retirement.

People are accelerating their retirement plans. In fact, the number of retirees in the marketplace is up 13.7% in the third quarter of this year.

Why?

A lot of people just don't wanna face the challenges of recessionary markets and things happening, and that's out of their control. They just want to exit and enjoy the rest of their time, right?

So when you have a retiree, by definition, a lot of times what they do is they want to downsize. They wanna scale back their lifestyle, so they can afford the retirement. And we're seeing this a lot with empty nesters and just people that are ready for the next phase of their lives.

So these retirees are perfect target audience for us in that they're probably...

What is the picky inspection?

Now, for years we've been in a seller's market. And the last thing we wanted an inspector to do is to come in and kill the deal, right? But today the market is shifting towards buyers. And buyers are starting to gain more and more leverage in the marketplace.

So when I'm counseling my buyers, I might say, "You know, we wanna get an inspection. That's a fair inspection. But I'm kind of leaning towards advising my inspector to be a little bit more picky than they might have been in the past. Let me tell you why:

Because what we're doing when we do an inspection is really looking at health and safety issues and really big structural issues. You know, the roof is going bad, or there's a bad foundation, or something like that. The minor stuff, the things like just noting the age of a water heater and you know that there's a crack in the sidewalk and you know, the basic stuff, the cosmetic stuff is...

You're probably hearing a buyer say this to you. They're saying, "Hey, I wanna wait. Let's put a pin in this because I wanna wait and see what happens with the market."

Now if they say that to you, what's your response?

The language of sales matters. We're not trying to manipulate people or push people, but we wanna understand where they're coming from. And help them understand the market a little bit better.

So my response to that would be something like this:

I'd say, "Hey, I totally get it. I wanna move at your pace. I don't want you to feel rushed at all. But I do have a question for you because I wanna understand where you're coming from: What's the value in waiting?"

I'm gonna let them answer and they're gonna probably say that they think prices or maybe interest rates will come down. And my response to that would be:

"I totally understand. And if that's where you're at, I'm totally cool with that, as I said. But...

We know interest rates are rising, right? I'm in contract on a couple of different investment properties right now. I'm still out buying despite the market conditions. Actually, it's an opportunity for investors. And when I got to the point of finding out what my interest rate would be on one of these properties at duplex, I was told that it would be 8.5%.

And I about fell over! 8.5%, that's nuts, right?

And she explained to me that, well, you could pay points, get that down to, you know, 7.5%, or even 7.1%. And there was a lot of strategies around that, but it was gonna be expensive on the point side. So when we're having this conversation, buyers like myself are gonna immediately think my, if I'm gonna pay that kind of points, I want somebody to share that cost with me.

Who do you think it's gonna be? It's gonna be the seller. If the sellers are gonna want top dollar, like these Impressment property owners do of course, they might...

What is the rule of five? Well, the rule of five was something that author and speaker John Maxwell came up with.

And what John came up with was this idea that if you have a big task at hand, something you really gotta get done and it can seem overwhelming or just completely out of your reach, how do you make that happen? Despite what might seem like overwhelming odds?

Well, he used the rule of five.

And the rule of five is simply this:

Imagine that that goal is a tree in your backyard. And you have one tool that you can use to cut down that tree: an ax. And so you go outside and every morning you take that ax and you swing it as hard as you can, three times into that tree. And then you put the ax down, you go back inside, and you wait for the next day to come. And the next morning you do it again. And again, and again.

Now, we would all agree that eventually that tree's gonna fall down. No matter how big the tree, it's gonna topple...

Here's some good news about the real estate market, and we need some good news right now:

As of the second quarter of 2022, home ownership rates were rising. So that's good.

And we say, well, why would anyone not want to be a homeowner? Right? When we're in the real estate business, we think everybody should be a homeowner.

But sometimes, renters have a hard time getting over the hump of deciding if it is a good idea to become a homeowner. Especially when we're seeing interest rates rise. We've seen prices still rising in some markets by double digits.

One thing you can point to, which is really powerful, is the concept of inflation.

Everybody knows what inflation is and inflation is touching everybody. And so you can point out that, "Hey, you know, I'm sure you're aware that inflation right now is at a record high, a 40-year high. The last reading was 8.5% inflation. But what people don't realize is that rents are...

A number that we should be concerned with right now in the market is 16.1%.

So what does 16.1% represent?

It represents the number of transactions that were canceled last month. The last time we saw a number that high was at the beginning of COVID when buyers really didn't know what was gonna happen. March, April, when COVID really went into full effect in our country in 2020. That's when you saw this same level of cancellations. And that's what we're seeing again right now.

So how do we tighten down offers so that sellers have some clarity that they know they're gonna get to closing?

I'm gonna give you several things to think about. You might have a few more. But one of the things is getting the disclosure statement signed as quickly as you can.

Most states require a disclosure statement. This is where we're the seller's gonna disclose everything they know about the house to a buyer. But not waiting around, not delaying getting that...