If I were to walk into your office right now and put my hands up in the air, asking, “What do I feel? What’s the energy in the room?”—you might think that sounds a bit new agey, especially when it comes to running a real estate company or team. But it’s true.

You can feel the energy in a room.

Let me give you an example. How many of us have been to a concert? You can feel the energy, right? A better example is a sporting event—you can feel the waves of energy when a point is made or lost. The energy is palpable.

Now, who sets the tone for that energy? It’s the players on the field, the musicians—the people performing. They create the energy in the room.

As a leader, whether you're a broker or team leader, you are the one setting the energy in your office. You create the weather. And how do you do that? It’s through your positivity, your enthusiasm, how you carry yourself, and how you walk into the building.

If you walk in with...

Are you running sales contests with your teams and brokerages?

If not, you're missing a big opportunity. Sales contests can generate energy and excitement, which drives performance. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do a sales contest.

Here’s the wrong way: focusing the contest on results.

You might wonder, what else would you focus on?

Well, if you're tracking things like how many escrows were created or how many listings were taken, the same people will win every time. The problem with focusing on results is that you can’t control them.

What you can control is the work. So, instead of focusing on results, shift the focus to what actually creates results—the work itself.

For example, you might say, "We’re doing a contest this month on who adds the most people to their sphere of influence." Or, "Who can do five posts a week for the next four weeks?"

You could track how many unsolicited CMAs agents push out in three weeks, who does the most open...

When we talk about targeting for recruiting in your market, who would be your number one target?

I’m going to share an opportunity you may not have considered yet: Who’s the most likely to move?

NAR did a study on how often agents switch companies, and they found that the average agent stays at a company for about five years. So, agents move about every five years on average. But there’s a group of agents who move more often—agents on teams.

Agents on teams don’t move every five years; they move every three years, making them much more likely to make a move.

Why?

In my experience, the number one reason is their splits. Team members are often on lower splits, maybe 50%, 40%, or even 30% when all is said and done. They're typically earning around 30-50% from a transaction, and they’re often doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

The issue is that they start to look at their team leader and think, "The team leader isn’t working as hard as I am."...

If you're a brokerage owner or team leader, what's the number one reason someone would join your firm?

Often, when I talk to brokerage leaders, they say it’s all about commissions—that’s the driving factor.

But that’s not true. We need to move away from that outdated thinking.

What really drives agents to join a company or team is the potential to close more transactions.

It’s about transaction count, not commissions.

So, how do you build a company or team that focuses on generating leads and helping agents develop leads on their own? Your goal should be to increase each agent’s transaction count, making them one of the highest-performing in your market area.

Here’s an interesting statistic that might surprise you: 50% of all agents in America closed one deal or less last year.

Even if those agents are getting a high commission on that one deal, it’s not enough to support their families. They’re struggling and barely staying in...

Here's an interesting question I was asked recently:

What is your unique genius in the real estate industry?

If you're a brokerage owner or team leader, I really want you to think about this. What's your unique genius? What sets you apart? What are you exceptionally good at? That specific thing is what you should lean into when it comes to recruiting and building your company.

Maybe you're great at investments and have built a large investment portfolio. Maybe marketing or social media is your strong suit. Perhaps you're an expert negotiator or a fantastic listing agent. Whatever it is, figure out your unique genius in this market and industry.

Then ask yourself: How can you leverage that strength to inspire others to join you?

What you're doing is creating a category of one—something you're so good at and so different in that people want to model it. This helps you create what Seth Godin calls the "purple cow." A purple cow is someone doing something completely different from...