Top 5 Ways to Prepare for a Real Estate Market Shift

He joined Homeward in 2020, and his main goal as the chief real estate officer is to keep the real estate agent at the center of all residential transactions. It's one of the great things about that company. So let's take a look at what you can do to prep your business for a market shift and even grow during a market shift. Brian, welcome to the Top 5 Show, man. Thank you for being here today. I am excited to jump into this topic because I think it's super timely. So welcome in. I want to start, though, like I've given the bio, the official bio, but a little bit about yourself and how you got into real estate and what that has looked like for you. Yeah, you know, I've had an interesting journey. You know, I'm in Phoenix.

I'm in Phoenix, Chance. So when you don't know what you want to do in life in Phoenix, you get in the real estate. That's just what we do here, right? So I was actually an accountant. That's a whole different story. Terrible accountant. But when I didn't like that anymore, when I was in my 20s, I became a real estate investor, which when I started doing that, Chance, I mean, it was tough to make it, you know, make an error. 2004, 5, 6. I mean, I'm an investor, right? I'm fixing and flipping, but I'm riding the market wave. Well, you probably guess where that went. I got my butt kicked, and while I had made some money in investment, I lost it all, gave it all right back, found myself underwater on a number of properties.

Some of them I was able to sell. Some of them I was able to short sell. Some of them went back to the bank. And in the process of all that occurring, and I had nothing else to do, I found myself in the real estate sales, thinking that a short sale, which many watching today may not even know what a short sale is, because you haven't had it around in quite some time, but basically you're selling the property for less than what's owed on it and negotiating with the bank to accept the difference. I found myself getting in the sales, thinking short sales were an option, like one of my services. It just so happens it became my only service. So from basically February of 07 until about 2013, I operated 100% in the short sale retail sales world.

My entire real estate sales team, I'm a Realtor, was all around the short sale. So much so that when Phoenix started changing and for the better, the market started correcting, I went to Seattle and Portland and these other places that were a couple of years behind purely to extend the life of the model I knew. Because when 2013 rolled around and all the markets were better, I actually had to learn how to sell traditional real estate. Oh, same here, man. And I mean, you know, in Houston, we weren't as pronounced as Phoenix, as Vegas, as some of these places that were, you know, kind of the short sale capitals of the universe. But yeah, I mean, when early 2012, I was selling a lot of REO.

And for those of y'all who don't know what REO is, that's foreclosures. Again, vernacular from a bygone era that we haven't experienced in a decade. But we, at the beginning of 2012, we started seeing the writing on the wall, that things were moving in a different direction. That was actually when I hired my first real estate coach. It was because I was like, I mean, yes, I know how to sell traditional real estate because we didn't get it hit as hard in Houston. But I don't know how to build a business for that because I've relied so heavily on this REO. And if that dries up, man, I'm shit out of luck. I legit, I mean, I'm not even, like I had sold by 2013. We had done thousands of sales and we were third party negotiating for thousands of other transactions around the nation in Michigan and Florida and these other states that were hit pretty hard short sale.

My entire world was constructed around that short sale and bank negotiation. I, no joke, had been on five, maybe six traditional, when I say traditional, I mean homes with equity listing presentations. So I had done thousands of units, but it was so inexperienced in the traditional world. So 2013 was actually my market shift. Everybody else was in a better spot. I had to learn traditional real estate. So I ended up going down that route. And for the next six, seven years, built my real estate sales team and then got into the brokerage space and the title space and the coaching and training space. And then a couple of years ago, a good friend of mine, a fellow agent, Tim Heil, who I've known for a decade, called and we got to chatting around what he was working on, which is this company called Homeward.

And I took my first job ever as kind of like a, you know, I experienced a lot of different things in real estate. One thing I hadn't had experience with was actually working for a company, especially a venture capital backed company that had raised money and was building from the ground up. And so I came on board with Tim about two years ago and became the company's chief real estate officer and spend most of my time. Building the revenue side of our business, forging partnerships with agents and teams and brokerages and all. And so that's kind of what brought us here today. And so I've got a pretty diverse background and I'm excited to share the little that I know with your audience today. The little that you know, come on now. So all the failures and experiences I've had, that's what I hope to share. And hey, if there's no better way to learn, that's the way to do it.

So before we do that, since we're on the topic, let's talk about Homeward. And for the people who are listening who may not be in a marketplace where iBuyers and Power... I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan about a month and a half ago. And when we got to talking about iBuyers and Power Buyers, and they had no idea what the hell we were talking about. Because it's kind of market where they are. And so for anybody who may not know Homeward, let's talk about Homeward for a second. Yeah, you know, the quick and dirty on it, Homeward is what we like to call a modern home finance company. And what we really do is leverage our cash, the power of the cash offer, in creative and innovative ways to help homebuyers go acquire the home they want through alternative financing, not your traditional mortgage per se.

So we've got a few core programs, all of which involve Homeward leveraging its cash, oftentimes to buy the property for you, you move in and then buy it back. So our cash gets used in competitive scenarios, our cash gets used to negotiate better terms or quick close. And then we also use our cash in scenarios where someone owns a home, right, and wants to go buy a new one, but doesn't want to deal with that problem chance that you and I have experienced in real estate since the day we got in. Which is, I own a home, I want to buy a new one. If I sell this one, what do I do? Do I go rent? Do I go move it under my mother-in-law? What do I do? Oh, forget it. I'm not going to go buy it all because I don't want to deal with it. So buy before you sell, which is really our core product and the one we most lean into because that problem is never going away, we solve that by going to buy the home they want, letting them move in, sell their old home with their Realtor.

Once they sell, roll the proceeds into the buyback of the home that Homeward just bought on their behalf. So it's really unique and innovative ways. And then as we all, you know, get into the future, we've got a dozen other ways we'd like to deploy our cash. Our big focus right now, and I think in the coming years, is going to be around home affordability. Like the number of people priced out, we're really looking to solve that problem as well. Yep. So we, I know when we started working with y'all, and that was 20, that was pre-pandemic, it was 2019. You know, it was really the buy before the sell. And it was, if you find a home that you love, go out, buy it, sell your home, move in, easy, right? Instead of having to come in contingent and financed and all that, you can come in cash and win.

And we were in a shorter inventory situation, but not like what we saw post-pandemic. And post-pandemic, it really became for us the opportunity to win multiple offers. Offered also the opportunity to include some people who otherwise would have been excluded. Like, for example, I have one going right now where we ended up not needing homeward, but we got a pre-approved through the process because my client wants to use his VA benefits. And anybody who's been around, you know, for the last couple of years knows that it's hard to get a VA offer accepted right now. But it's really impossible to get a VA offer accepted. It's really easy to get a cash offer accepted. That's right. And then buy it back from homeward using his VA benefit.

That's right. That's arguably, it's one of the greatest benefits of the buy with cash is the ability to help people who are in the incredibly competitive segment of the market, where, call it what it is, VA, FHA, they're going to have a really difficult time winning, even in a softening market. To leverage cash and then buy back, at least on the FHA side, it's a little bit more challenging because of the 90-day requirement, but a like conventional product or the VA, and specifically you could use it in VA, helps them win. And again, to your point, they'd be on the sidelines if it wasn't for that. That's right. Cool. All right. So you and I, I was joking, I actually was having breakfast with an agent this morning that we're trying to recruit.

And we were talking about how, like, we've become dinosaurs in the industry because we've actually been around for as long as we've been. And so many new people are in the industry. And when you and I got to talking about what we were going to discuss today, it was the changing market. And so the number of agents that are out there, and I think you and I, we were discussing statistics earlier, it's somewhere around only about 25% of the agents that are licensed today were around in the last market shift. In the last shift. That's right. And by the way, did you just call me a dinosaur, Chance? Yeah, I called it both of us dinosaurs. Both of us dinosaurs. It's funny how that happened. I went from what was once the young guy to now I'm the dinosaur. But you're right. This hair, this hair, it's not on its own, man.

I mean, the gray is coming in. I didn't know. Yeah. No, it's true, right? Like, we've been at it for a little while. And we've had the opportunity to go through a major market shift and then some other ebbs and flows. And to your point, three-quarters of the Realtors in this nation have never really experienced a market that wasn't on a steady or rather robust incline. And so the slightest bit of softening, an increase in rates, an increase in days on market, that's all foreign. And so I think what we hope to share some today is around, hey, you know, we've been here in a like place before. Here's the lessons we've learned. Yeah. And here's what your action steps could or should be in a softening, in a changing environment.

Right? Let's do it. So let's jump into our Top 5 here. And the first one is cut expenses. Yeah. You know what? This is a pretty – I know to many this might seem rather obvious. But it's not. And I'm saying that not as Brian, the guy over at Homeward. This is Brian, the agent who's coached and trained and been in front of thousands of agents over the course of my career. I've been very blessed and fortunate to do that. I've looked at it a lot, Chance, a lot, and I know you have as well, of P&Ls, of income statements of agents. And there's a lot of fluff. There always is. Why? I mean, hell, go to any real estate convention. There's an expo hall. That expo hall, no matter the convention you're at, is massive.

Why is that? Because we as Realtors love shiny objects. We'll buy anything that we think does another deal. What's the old adage? If you want to get rich in real estate, find something you can sell to Realtors. I mean, I haven't heard that one, but I love it. Because it's true. Right? So if the market is changing, which we all can agree it is, and if there's a degree of uncertainty, which I think it's safe to say there is, you've got to get yourself and your business into a stronger cash position to have greater cash reserves. When I say cash reserves, take your monthly burn rate, the amount of money you're spending, right? That's how much you're spending. Reserves would be a multiple of that. So if I'm spending $10,000 a month in my business in a normal environment, I'd be looking to have maybe three or four months reserves, $30,000 or $40,000 in an account.

I'm going to encourage everybody, and I'm sure, Chance, you're doing the same, to increase that. What that number may be, I mean, my personal belief might be nine months or 12 months. Maybe you think longer. Maybe you think shorter. But you've got to get yourself into a better cash position. Why? I believe that if things change dramatically, you have to create more runway such that you can pivot as well. You have to buy yourself time. I believe that if you give me nine months in any business, especially the real estate sales business, I can solve for whatever problem I have. I don't know if I could do the same with just three months, meaning that if I didn't do business for nine months, do I have the ability to survive? Do I have the ability? And so I want to get in a position where I'm comfortable, which starts with if you're going to increase reserves, obviously, you've got to cut your expenses.

You've got to reduce expenses. And there's a methodology to doing that. When you find yourself in a tight cash position, you make panic decisions. When you find yourself in a tight cash position, you think about yourself before you think about the person that you're trying to help, the person that you're trying to serve. And not in a malicious way, not in a selfish way, but more in a I'm putting more pressure on myself to perform in a certain way because I have to. And I look at it, you know, when we talk to brand new people coming in the industry, we're like, look, can you go without a paycheck for six months and not eat ramen? Like, can you live a relatively comfortable life for six months without getting a paycheck?

Because you may very well and probably will, in this case, do exactly that as you make the switch. And so having those cash reserves, I think, gives you a comfort level to continue to operate without pressure. I love it. I loved your analogy, too. The way I think about it, I mean, you're describing, you know, coming from a position of scarcity versus, you know, one of abundance, right? So something I look at similar, like if you're looking to make a higher, right? Or, you know, let's talk about real estate sales. If you've got one deal in the hopper, how do you behave with that one deal versus if you had seven behind it? Right. How would you behave? Right. Obviously, when you have seven, you've got a degree of comfort. You're coming from a position, again, of abundance.

You can make a more educated or patient decision. If that's your one paycheck, though, if you didn't have those seven, you had the one, how might you make decisions in that case? Well, it's the same thing as it pertains to reserves and having the ability to adjust your business if, in fact, necessary. So I won't get into the methodology around cutting your expenses because I know we're limited on time, but a book that does a great job around this is Keith Cunningham's Road Less Stupid. I don't know, Chance, if you've read that one. I haven't, but it's one on the list right now. Road Less Stupid. Great book title. But Keith is actually out of Austin. Fantastic business book, but he's got a variety of conversations within that book around managing expenses and kind of an A, B, C, categorizing your expenses, immediately cutting C and writing rules for B and A.

It's very, very, very sharp. It's worth taking a look at. Awesome. Perfect. All right. Next one is be more present, be more communicative, control the narrative. Yeah. I think this one, I don't know if any of the five we're going to go through are more important than the other, but I love this one. Be more visible, be more present, be more communicative to your clients and your people. Let's kind of break these down, right? When I say people, I mean like if you've got an assistant or you've got other agents alongside you. So we'll get back to that. As it pertains to your clients, you've got to control the story, in my opinion. In other words, if you're not out there working with your sphere of influence, your database, and controlling or influencing the knowledge or data or narrative that they're hearing or getting, you're missing the mark, right?

Like consumer confidence right now is at historical lows in this nation. Why is that? Well, obviously, there's things going on in the economy that would drive consumer confidence down. But there's also this other problem. I don't have it. Here it is. There's also this other problem. It's the collective knowledge of mankind that's sitting in everybody's pocket. And if you get on your phone and you go look at news stories right now on your Apple News, or I don't know what the green bubble people get on their news, but Apple News, you're going to see what? Probably a lot of negative headlines. And to the general public, they don't even read those stories. They see negative headlines and it influences their behavior. My point in sharing that with you is they're forming their own opinions. And if you as their trusted agent, trusted Realtor, are not playing a role in that, you're, I mean, you're going to have some trouble down the road, right?

How many people right now are reading headlines saying, oh, terrible time to buy. Interest rates are up. I mean, that's the general thought for a lot of people is that you as their agent believe. And if you feel differently, you've got to be out in front of that chance. And so that's why I put this one up there. Like if you are the type of agent that likes to go in your office, shut the door and pound away on emails, hey, more power to you. But you're not going to be effectively communicating your message in a very, very different market. People are scared. You know, what do people want? What do you want, chance, when you go to your doctor or you go to your attorney? And hopefully you're not really going to your doctor or your attorney all that often. But when you go to see them, what do you want? You want to be led. You just want an answer.

Like, I just want it. I want a professional, a knowledgeable professional to give me guidance. And what is that? To me, that's just leadership. I think it's the same thing with us. Another great book, The Death of Expertise. Death of Expertise. I better write that. I'm going to write that one down. That's not what I wrote. A little tongue-in-cheek in the sense that it's an expert complaining about the death of expertise. But he makes equal fun of himself in that regard in the book. And it's great. But, yeah, like, to me, the best thing that we could be doing right now as people are seeing data and they're seeing headlines is let's take the time and explain the data. Like, what is the story of the data?

So, you know, I posted something in our internal group and then I ended up posting it publicly and it got a lot of feedback. I don't love year-over-year data. I don't love the way that our industry reports data. Because if you tell just this side of the, this why, and you don't tell the other why, when you're talking about year-over-year, don't tell the story of the previous why, the new why doesn't mean anything. You know, the headlines in Houston were, oh, real estate sales slide. By 0.9 of 1% over the greatest year in history. So, if we're not telling the full story, people are going to be led down this.

That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about, though. I mean, that's such a good example because you see that and you hear price decline and you're like, oh, my gosh, you know, things are terrible. And the reality is, no, double-digit appreciation year-over-year-over-year-over-year-over-year is not sustainable and it's not good. No, it's not. And so, you've got to be the one out there. By the way, and you and I both know this because we experience it in our respective worlds. If you're not the one telling the story or controlling the narrative, somebody is, right? Like, you're being removed from the equation as the trusted Realtor and somebody else, be it technology or an actual person, is stepping in your place. Yep. Because he or she that's most vocal, that's out there, that's gaining mindshare, their job, right?

Like, my job, your job, all of our jobs as agents is to wedge ourself between whatever current relationship they have and the client. I mean, that's how lead generation works. Call it what it is. Sounds harsh, but it's true. And how am I going to do that? Well, I'm going to be, I'm going to increase my frequency, my consistency, and the quality of my communication to middle you out of the way. I mean, that's just, that's how it goes. Right. And I think, you know, right now, you said the last part of that. The quality of the communication has to be there. You know, two years ago, as we entered the pandemic, it was just call and check on people. They'll talk to you about anything because they're tired of being cooped up with their damn kids. So they'll grab the phone. They'll go in the closet with a bottle of wine and talk to you for an hour. We would do call nights in the brokerage to do lead generation, and the number of conversations we had went up in total, but they were 15, 20-minute conversations in a one-hour space as opposed to, you know, typically a five-minute conversation or something like that.

Yeah, the lead gen script was, how are you, right? Yeah, exactly. But today, it's got to be quality. You've got to be talking about what, and that's the way you show your value. That's right. I mean, absent display and value, you're just another guy or girl with a lockbox key. So I'm with you on that. Who wants to be that? Not in today's environment. It's not going to work. No, no, for sure. Let me ask you this, because I would like to hear your thoughts, because I talk about this all the time. And so if it's my agents who are listening to this, they've heard it a billion times. If it's somebody else who hasn't, they probably haven't. But, you know, I am, I'm not of the opinion of being a content Nazi on things that you send out to people to the point where you're spending all your time on that.

Right? But I am more of a, let's not send a dancing leprechaun on St. Patrick's Day and say that that's follow-up. Right? So when you look at that. You mean the quiche recipe or things of that nature? Yeah, yeah. Like, yes, it's nice to have something out in front of people, and it's just a subliminal reminder. And so I think maybe those are parts of a bigger strategy. But really, the value is that one-on-one. Well, here's, I totally agree with that. So I think for the dinosaurs like us, there was a point in time where you would send an email that was even a templated, automated email. And believe it or not, at that time, people didn't know.

They responded because they didn't know that it wasn't you actually sending it. That's right. Like, there was a, for the younger crew out there, yeah, you used to get these obviously templated emails, but you didn't know it because it was such new technology at the time. It wasn't that long ago. My point is, you could get away with sending certain things that didn't have value, that didn't attract that person's attention. Right? But today, the reality is, it could be part of a broader strategy, and I'm not anti, you know, that touch if it's part of a broader strategy. But in summary, I think that everything that you're sending, the objective is to ultimately create real conversation. Right? Real conversation. And there's a hierarchy to that.

Amen, brother. Right? Like, here's the thing. Like, if you think about communication or touch, you know, ways to interact with a prospect, top, top, top is going to be face-to-face appointment. Next down from there is going to be Zoom. Next down from there is going to be phone call. Next down from there is going to be text. Then you're going to get to maybe even written note. Then you're going to get to email. Unfortunately, where do most Realtors start? Not at the top. They start at the bottom, and then they try to work their way up. That's right. And it's fast. And it's low risk. And so, kind of all jives with what we're talking about here. If you've got to be more communicative and control the narrative, sending a two-line funny email isn't going to set you up for that conversation you need to have.

Now, again, if it's part of a broader strategy and is a touch in combination with, you know, a dozen other things that are more valuable, okay, I can get behind that. But if that's the isolated interaction without value add, I mean, nobody's buying into that. So, again, everything's got to drive to communicate, got to drive to conversation, everything. We've been talking about this for the last couple of years. I think that the real estate industry in general, in the way especially that we train new agents, the reason that most agents I think are bad at prospecting is because we make it so that it's 95% losses. At best, 95% losses. The way we, the industry, trains prospecting is if you don't get a referral or you don't get an appointment, you have failed.

Dial until your ear falls off. Call whoever, FSBOs, expires, everybody in your sphere, like whatever it is. But if you don't get a referral and you don't get an appointment, you failed. And my point is if you're having a conversation with somebody, that's a win because it leads to the next conversation, which leads to the next conversation. Somewhere along the lines, either they're going to use you or they're going to give me something who does. Yeah. Well, I mean, I love that, right? Like, and, you know, I had that, I had a very similar epiphany years ago. You know, I ran a pretty phone-based model with my real estate team. And I had, you know, 20-somethings and early 30s individuals coming in. And I was like, okay, go get on the phone. And then it occurred to me, number one, most of them didn't grow up with a phone in their house.

So they looked at this phone in my office and were like, what is that? And number two, many of them, I mean, no disrespect, but they kind of grew up in an environment where you didn't hear no all that often. Yeah. And then number three, and lastly, there's been no stronger generation that's been discouraged from talking to strangers. So I've got this new crew coming in. I'm like, use a phone that you've never seen, call and get rejected 98% of the time. And, oh, by the way, you're going to call a bunch of strangers. And then I was wondering why they weren't successful. Like, in hindsight, it's like, you've got to, the yes or no isn't the objective necessarily. The conversation and adding what I would call a nurture to your database, someone you're going to follow up with and determine, that's the win. And, again, in a shifting market, not to get ahead of myself because I know this is one of our, but in a shifting market, it's just a numbers game at that point.

In a shifting market where your ratios may have been, call it, I'm going to make up numbers four to one, it might go to eight to one or ten to one in terms of conversation to appointment or something like that. In a shifting market, it's just that you've just got to increase the quantity of these conversations that you're having. Why don't we just go ahead? I know it was number four on our list, but let's just skip to that. All right, we'll skip to that. Focus on lead conversion to appointment. Yeah, I mean, here's the deal. All of your lead conversion, like your lead generation and then your lead conversion efforts, in a changing market, must, must, must be to face-to-face appointment. Again, here's why I say this, in the crazy market that we've had, where demand is astronomically high, you can really kind of vet over the phone the quality because you had such an abundance of opportunities coming your way.

You can say, you know what? I don't know if they're really ready to buy. They say they are, but I don't think they really are. I'm going to push that one aside. I'm going to get on to the next. And you have the ability, I guess, to just have these conversations. In a shifting market, though, in my opinion, it is very much a quantity of at-bats that you can get. In other words, get in front of the people, much like you were just saying, Chance, get in front of the people and have more conversations and more conversations and add to your database. So all of your lead generation efforts have to be built around, how do I get in front of this person? Even the sign calls that many of us still get today, right? Like, go, go show the property. Now, this is my, I don't know if you teach this and I don't know, you know, I certainly don't mean to undermine anything you're doing, but my strategy in a market that's changing, especially for agents that don't have any deals in the hopper, there's no better use of your time than getting out in front of a prospect, whether they're qualified or not yet qualified, is irrelevant to me.

Get out there and go make some stuff happen. Yeah. It is hand-to-hand combat. It is wartime, not peacetime. And in my opinion, getting out there in front of people, you have a chance of making something happen. Staying behind the phone or the text or the email, you got no shot. Yeah. I think that we're in a place now where as the market shifts, you know, we were talking about this this morning, actually, in a meeting. For anybody who's come into the marketplace the last two years, like, I look at, what if I came into the marketplace in the last two years? Like, it's been a hell of a time to come in as a brand new agent into the real estate market. That is, let me go write 20 offers to get one accepted. Let me go do this. Let me go do that. Whatever it was. Now, we're going to start to see some normality return.

And you're going to be able to work open houses because things are going to be on the market longer than five minutes. And so, these lead gen opportunities that may not have already been baked in when you started, there's more opportunity today. People who disengaged because they didn't feel like there was any opportunity for them to be able to buy a home. Now, there is. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And when we're talking, and I think this is an important point to make, when I say focus your lead conversion on appointments, it's not as simple as just continually drive and you're going to get appointments left and right. You've got to have something in that conversation when you're converting to an appointment that differentiates yourself from everybody else you're talking to.

Now, shameless plug, this is one thing I love about what we do at Homework is our value prop, what we're asking agents to put out in front of their prospects is unique, different, piques the interest of that prospect and gets you to the table, gets you to the appointment. This might sound crazy, Chance. I don't need every agent to go do a Homework deal. Just because we got you to the table or our value proposition got you to the table doesn't mean you have to use it. My mindset is get you as an agent more at-bats, and my hope is that through those more at-bats, you do a couple Homework deals now and again. Use buy before you sell, use buy with cash, use these programs as a value prop to get you that appointment I'm talking about.

Once you get to that table, and we'll talk about that here in a minute, you know, your menu of services and things like that, that matters. But I would, you know, when you're focusing on lead conversion to appointments, I'd really look at how am I going to differentiate myself. And when you say to a person on the phone, hey, I hear you, you own the home you're in right now, but you want to go shop and you don't want to deal with that headache. Well, what if I told you I've got a program that allows you to go buy the next home you want for cash before selling the one you're presently in right now? Would that be of interest to you? That's what I'm saying, like, get to the table. Now, get to the table, and if buy before you sell makes sense, great. But if it doesn't, that's great, too, because now you're in the game. Well, let me tell you something. From practical experience, you know, since we're making the shameless plug for homework, even if they have zero interest in using the homework product, right?

Even if they don't care, the fact that you are talking about it, you're going to win more business because you differentiated yourselves from everybody else out there who isn't talking about it. I mean, we have had people in appointments tell us, well, no, I don't really need that, but that's super cool that you offer it. I'm going to keep that in mind for my, I think my cousin might need it or, you know, whatever it is. They just, they've never heard of it before. They don't know how to do how that works. Tell me more, whatever. And they may never use it. In fact, you know, we have kind of that menu that you were talking about for sellers and buyers. And in almost every case, 99% of the time they go the traditional route. That's right. Right. But the fact that we're having the conversation differentiates us from everybody else.

Well, buy before you sell gets people off. You know, people that thought buying was not a possibility because they didn't want to deal with the headache. It opens up an entire, entirely new lane as well. And I've learned that firsthand, you know, going out to some open houses in Phoenix where we have eight, where again, I'm in Phoenix. And I see, like I observed these open houses, you know, recently where people are coming in and, you know, the old, you know, how we work open houses. We let them look around. And then we say, we make the joke that every Realtor makes, which is, you're ready to buy this one? And they say, no, it's not what we're looking for. And then you say, what are you looking for? And then they describe it. And then you use the old line. Okay, if there was a home on the market that had all of those things that you just described, are you ready to go write an offer on it today? And then they say, no, because.

And what do we as Realtors historically do? We immediately pivot to a listing presentation. All right, I got to go sell their old home. Imagine saying to them, what if I told you that home you just described, we could go buy it for cash right now before we sell your old home. My point in sharing that is, number one, make sure everybody knows what homeware does. But number two, that opened up an entirely new lane that didn't exist previously. If it's buy before you sell, great. But what is your answer to that if you're not going to leverage that or if you're in a state that doesn't have it? What is your unique value proposition that's going to get people off the fence or open up the opportunity for you to head over to their house, sit at the kitchen table and discuss real estate? That's where my head goes on that sort of thing.

Awesome. All right. So we've cut our expenses. We're more present. We're more communicative. We're controlling the narrative. We're communicating with value. We're focusing on taking lead conversion to appointments. Driving to the appointments. So we're going to come back. We're going to take it one step back because we kind of jumped over one and say double down on listing lead gym. Yeah. I mean, this one's pretty straightforward, right? He or she, and Chance, you know this. Like, again, the dinosaurs know this. He or she that controls the inventory wins the game. That's right. And so. As glorious as HGTV would love you to believe that showing homes all day is fantastic. It's not where you make money in real estate. He or she that controls the listing inventory wins the game.

So whether you're a big team or a solo agent, it's irrelevant to me. You've got to go out there in a shifting market, in a changing market, and go grab more listings, your unfair share of listings. Because listings, whether it's 10 days on market or 210 days on market, it's a paycheck no matter what. And they're leverageable, like you can leverage out of it. And again, it's a predictable business. If you're dependent 100% on buy side business, it is a very unpredictable business that has a lot of variables that you don't control, like mortgage rates, etc. Yep. If you're listing, if you're focused on listings, right, not only putting a sign in the ground that will generate buyer opportunities, but you have a much more stable and predictable business.

So, again, in short, when in a market that you're not quite sure what direction it's going to go, if you want to bring stability or certainty to your business, you've got to go grab more listings. Which means double your lead generation effort for listings, right? Now, when I say double, I do literally mean time on task. If you're spending an hour a day lead generating, yeah, go to two hours. The truth of the matter is, your conversion rate is likely to decline when the market's shifting, but you can beat that if you have more at-bats, right? Like if Chance and I are baseball players, and I have a higher batting average than Chance, he can get more hits overall than me. How? He's just got to get to the plate more often.

And that's it. My average might be higher, but he could outperform me hit-wise because he's getting to the plate more often. That's a function of effort more than anything else. Yep. So, I'm saying doubling your lead generation effort around listings. It's an effort opportunity. Go hard. Because, by the way, in a changing market, and I'm telling you firsthand, most agents, not most, but a lot of agents will bury their head in the sand, cross their fingers, and hope the day changes. Man, what a massive, massive opportunity that represents for those agents that take it seriously and are professionals. So, when you're doubling down on lead generation for listings, what makes it a lot easier, sorry to plug it again, but I'm going to say, like, what is your message? How are you going to differentiate yourself, which is why I go back to buy before you sell or something like that?

You've got to have something compelling to talk about to get you to the table and to take more of those listings, right? And it doesn't have to be phone, by the way. I always use phone as, like, you see me act it out because that's the way I've always operated. But, you know, everything ultimately does drive to the phone, but I'm not saying that has to be your weapon of choice. The postcard you're sending, the social media you're posting, the message you're using when you're door knocking, what you're saying in your open houses. That's got to be listing influenced, listing heavy. Okay, I'll take a breath now. No, the only thing I was going to even add to that, because, I mean, I think you nailed it, is, you know, what we've been working with our agents on for the last couple of years is, you know, in your business plan, you know, every business plan, regardless of brokerage, regardless of program coaching or whatever, you know, they typically have some sort of, this is my income goal, right?

And if this is my income goal, then I need to have this many transactions based on dollars and average commission rate. And that means I need to set this many appointments and I need to make this many phone calls and whatever, right, down to an activity level to drive it down to achievable bite-sized pieces. What we've been saying is, set that income goal, great, but forget the buy side completely and drive 100% of that income goal through listings. And if you can do that, you're not, I mean, you're probably going to come close to doubling that income goal. Yeah, because your buy sides aren't going away. You're using the listing side as a driver for the buy sides. Yep, yep. I mean, same conversation we have with anybody who's thinking about starting a team.

I mean, you, at one point, started a team. The most profitable way to start a team, especially if you don't know your cost, you know, to lean back on your accounting background, if you don't know your cost of goods sold, the most profitable way to start a team is organic lead generation. And the way you do that is have more listings. That's right. That's exactly, I mean, it's exactly right. And it's the most, again, it's the most stable, predictable business, which in a changing market, you've got to crave or desire stability. I mean, that only makes sense. Yep. Right? And so, and by the way, when you go grab more listings right now in a declining market or a shifting market, when that market returns and you've done it right, your market share, like your unit can't, like you've established yourself, you've created market share, and now your unit count rises with the market.

That's right. So I love that. And I think the very last thing, and it kind of, that we have on our list, it kind of combines all of these in some sense, except the expense component. I think number five here is to just simply provide a larger array of services and solutions. In other words, you know, Chance, you and I were talking about this earlier before we started recording, you've got to have a menu of services today. You've got to function as a consultant, right? Right? Like you're not, the days of sitting across the table and talking at a buyer or a seller and saying, hey, I list homes and here's how I market. Here's what I get paid. Those days are probably behind us. But sitting on the same side of the table as them and opening up your menu of services and then consulting and saying, hey, here's what I think based on this point of pain that you have.

Here's what I think based on this challenge you have. And functioning in that consultant, the only way you can do that is if you have an array of services. And by the way, you know, when I say array of services, I'm talking about varying, various ways you can list their property. Again, buy before you sell or traditional listing. Here's my flexible listing commission, whatever it may be. Yeah. And on the buy side, like here's my strategic ways to help you get a home. You know, we can do a better job conveying even just the basic things that we do and just recognize that not everything is going to lead to this traditional path. You're going to solve for it untraditionally. And the idea here is you establish a relationship and this is a client for life. So you may not knock it out of the park financially on deal one. But when you're functioning in that way, much like your financial planner might do.

Right. Like a lot of a lot of a lot of us work with, you know, different financial guides and these guides are going to help us get a toe in the water, earn our respect, earn our trust. And then eventually, you know, we get into a deeper relationship. I think there's more of that that needs to occur in real estate. And that will occur by literally offering, you know, multiple services and trying to help them solve for whatever pain point they have. Right. So provide more services, I think, is is simply, again, another thing that's going to differentiate yourself from everybody else. Yeah, no, I agree 100%. I mean, I think, you know, we've created an economy where I can pick up my cell phone and I can push a button and whatever I want to happen will just happen. And there's so much choice and there's so many options that if we're not at least taking a somewhat similar viewpoint of the initial part of the transaction, the initial part of the relationship, whatever that looks like, we have to have some sort of instant gratification of you get to be the one who picks.

You get you're in control here, not me. You know, we had this veil of secrecy that was the MLS for years and years and years. And, you know, the analogy that I make there oftentimes is, you know, travel agents where once upon a time they had all the information behind lock and key. We've got the same, but we and we've had that same mentality for many years. We've got to shift the mentality to my, here's my value. Let me give it to you. Let me show you all of this. You be the one who, because that's what they want. No, I mean, you nailed it. And it's interesting you mentioned, we could totally go off on a tangent now, but when you start talking about travel agent and then you mentioned Expedia, I assume you might be going to Spencer Raskoff. I mean, hello path. Yeah, I have done that before. Yes, which is which is awesome to talk around, which is genius to recognize, you know, travel agent, you know, where that business went.

Zillow, where's our business going and giving free access or not free access, but giving access to these things, you know, what opportunities were created. But there's there's one thing you were just saying. It made me think, you know, when you talk about all the disruption that's in our business today, you know, I just mentioned Zillow, love them or hate them. They're a massive disruptor. You look at like a Zillow, like there's one thing that I believe and I think you believe, Chance, I think you'll agree with me, that they can't take away from us. And that is our relationships. Yep. They can't take our relationships unless we screw up. Yeah. Unless our frequency and our consistency and our quality are not there. And that kind of summarizes a lot of what we're chatting about today.

In a shifting market, you've got to double down on listing gen and conversion to appointment and be more visible, communicative. These are all things around deepening relationships. Absent that, they're going on. Remember, everybody you're talking to on the phone right now, they may have their phone on their ear while they're looking up their house on Zillow. I mean, you're literally talking to people who are trying to work with somebody else at the same time. I mean, it happens. And so we've got to do a better job overall of building a moat around our people. Around our people. Yeah. And keeping the information in front of them if they're not going somewhere else looking for it. So, Chance, I have a bonus number six if you're game for one more. I am always down for a bonus number six. I have a bonus number six.

I couldn't figure out how to work this one in. But I want to stress it because it's, frankly, of all things that I was able to do that helped me build a business in a shifting market and build a fairly big one. The thing I probably did well, more than those other things, I became very, very focused on increasing my knowledge base, my training, my education. I didn't know what I didn't know. And I became a student. And I'm going to encourage those that have either already been through something like this or those going through it for the first time, become a greater student. Meaning that this podcast hopefully gave you, you know, a few ideas. But you need to be attending more training, more education for yourself. Go to more CB&A events.

Listen to people like Chance that have had opportunities to live and experience this sort of thing before. Start reading a bit more. Like, you really got to up your game and be thinking. I'm not saying think about business nonstop. But I am saying be more purposeful in studying the game. I think he or she that controls the listings does win the game. But I also think a function of controlling listings and lead generation and all these things we talk about, even being visible, communicative, that's a leadership thing. I think you've got to become a student, a sponge, and learn and learn and learn. By the way, not only should you be attending things for yourself to improve your game, to raise your lid. I also think that you should be teaching.

I think you should be teaching. 100%. Here's probably the selfish reason why I believe you should be teaching. I don't think there's a better way to learn than to actually be the person that has to stand in front of a room and share it. Yep. The degree of accountability is massive. Like, you can't stand up in front of a room, talk around something, and not go do it. Otherwise, you're a fraud. Right. The amount of preparation that goes into teaching means you've got to study it, know it, and be comfortable speaking around it. What a great degree of accountability there in and of itself. Right. So, I think you've got to attend more. You've got to study more. You've got to consult more. You've got to have a mentor. You've got to have a coach. You've got to have these things. But I also think you've got to be that to others because the accountability and the learning opportunity is massive.

That's what I put as my bonus number six. I love that. So, let's take a trip a decade ago, and we're in this shifting market. I've hired my first coach, and my coach says to me, so, what do you do with other Realtors? I was like, what do you mean? He's like, do you serve in any capacity? Do you go to mixers? Do you, what do you do? And I was like, well, no, I don't do any of those things. I don't talk to other Realtors. They're not going to buy or sell a home for me. Why would I waste my time? And he goes, he didn't say this, but the tone of his voice was like, look, dummy, what you need to do is stop being a secret agent and go out and get in the mix.

And so, you know, a couple of just tack on notes to what you just said. Go get involved in your association. If you're a young professional, go get involved in the YPN group of your local Realtor association or your state Realtor association. Go get involved in a committee. Go join WCR. You know, whatever those things are in your area that are good to join are going to bring quality people to the table that you can learn from. Iron sharpens iron. Like, I learned more about real estate and running my business by getting involved in association leadership because I was around great agents. And I just soaked up. And I am, you know, if you're a regular listener to this podcast, you know that I am not above stealing other people's shit and taking credit for it when it works.

R&D, right? That's right. So, yeah, I think that's a big one. I love the idea of teaching it. Just if your brokerage doesn't do it, if whatever, get yourself in a place where you can have a weekly coffee with five or six other agents. You know, I think that we are, especially post-pandemic, it's really hard to get people in a room. But I think it's so important because I think from a mental health standpoint, if nothing else, it's just good to be in a room with other people and realize that you're not the only person whose clients are crazy. Or you're not the only person who's suffering from appraisal issues or whatever it is. And go hear other people know that they're doing the same thing and just get some reassurance that you're not losing your mind.

So, yeah, I think that's whatever you can pour into making yourself a better business person, a better Realtor, whatever. Do it. It's got to be, I mean, we as Realtors, I mean, we are self-employed business owners. And this is our profession, like, you know, this is our profession. I look at this as, you know, I clearly like to use sports analogies. This is your pro sport, right? Like, this is your game, right? Like, how would a baseball or football or basketball player operate preseason, during the season, after games? What does rest need to look like? What does game film have to look like? I know that might sound a little weird to some of you, but the truth is, I think we need to be doing our equivalent of that in our game, right?

Like, how are you preparing? You know, what is, what are you feeding yourself mentally and physically, right? Like, how does your schedule look? What are you saying no to? You know, what is your pregame and postgame ritual look like? Like, I really believe that if we want to take, if we want to have massive success, which you wouldn't be, you wouldn't, if you're listening to this, that's what you want. You got to play this like you're, this is your pro sport. Yep. How do you, and I think training and education, as well as showing others how to do what it is you're doing, is a really big component of that. Amen. Love it. So that's awesome. So we got five plus a bonus. Cut your expenses. Be more present. Communicate, communicative.

Communicate value. Focus on lead conversion to appointments. Double down on your lead gen for listings. Figure out what your value prop, your menu of services and solutions, whatever that looks like, that's going to change the narrative when you're talking to somebody. And then last but not least, our bonus, which is pick up your training and education. That's right. You said it well. And number seven, go use Homeward if it's in your backyard. That's right. So on that note, before we go, if somebody wanted to learn more, figure out how to work with Homeward, what would they do? I'll tell you what. For your crew, for those that are listening, I'm going to give you my email. It's brian, B-R-I-A-N, at homeward.com, H-O-M-E-W-A-R-D.com.

I probably can't help you on specific deals, but I certainly can connect the dots for you. So now you have my personal email. Again, hit me up with anything you need, any problems, any challenges, any opportunities. I'm on it. If you want to learn more about Homeward, obviously, just go to the site, homeward.com. Really proud of the site because we think it does a great job educating. I'd start there, and that's the simplest place. But again, don't hesitate to reach out to me. Happy to help in any way I can. Awesome. Brian, thank you so much, man. This is a lot to unpack, but it's really good stuff. Chance, I appreciate it. I appreciate the partnership we have with your operation. You guys are doing great things alongside us, and so it's really an honor. Thank you for having me today. Thank you. Thank you for watching another episode of Top 5.

We will be back next Wednesday with one more. See you soon. Take care. Thanks.