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Before we jump in today, if you're an agent who doesn't have full control over how many new clients you get every month, I'm hosting a free 30 minute masterclass that you're going to want to attend. I break down the new way that top agents are attracting five, six, even seven deals every single month for free, without relying on Zillow, without buying Google leads, without referrals or anyone else giving them business. This masterclass is completely free. All you have to do right now to register is go over to clientsfromsocial.com and reserve your spot. That's clients from social.com on this episode, I am giving you my predictions for 2026. We're going to go over some biggest winners and biggest losers and some of the biggest surprises that I think are going to happen in our industry over the next year. Let's go the Massive Agent podcast with lead generation tips and strategies to get you more leads and sell more homes. I love to buy houses. I like to sell houses. It takes brass balls to sell real estate. Wait a minute. The leads are weak. You're we. I've had better. Better. Oh, have I got your attention now? Here's your host, Dustin Brome. What is up, everybody? Welcome to episode 419 of the Massive Agent podcast. I am your host, Dustin Brom here in Salt Lake City, Utah. Happy new year. Happy 2026. This episode is coming out on New Year's Day. It's been glorious this year. And by glorious, I mean awful. As a content creator, when your shows come out, we, these, these shows drop every Thursday, every Thursday like clockwork since 2018. Yeah. So this year we had an episode drop on Thanksgiving on Christmas and now New Year's Day. So fantastic. If, if more than 16 people listen to this, I'll be, I'll be pleased. But you 16 people have a treat. I've got a treat for you today. This is the prediction show. My 2026 predictions. And then I'm setting a reminder, actually multiple reminders. It's way too would do somehow miss one to come back to these at the end of 2026 and revisit it and see how I did. And we'll do that in an episode at the end of the year. So I've got some predictions, we have some biggest winners and biggest losers in different categories and this is going to be a fun show today. I've got some bold predictions for sure and maybe even conspiracy theories. Well, we'll have to see. So hang on for, for that as you're starting out this year. I mean, hopefully you've already made some plans, set some goals, analyze what went well, what didn't. And by the way, I'm going to give you a quick tip right off the bat, like this one's free. Okay? If you want to sell more homes and make more money this year than last, what you need to do is find out what worked well last year. To do that, simply go look at where your last 10 closings came from or more or less, whatever. Just. Just like where did your closings actually come from last year? And then write down the source. How did that deal come to you? How did you meet those people? Was it a lead? Was it a Zillow Flex lead? Was it from your team? Was it social media? Was it a referral from your network? What was it? Write all those down. And then once you have them all down, you can then notice trends. And usually you notice referrals like somehow your sphere of influence is a major source. Now once you know that and. Or you see a certain lead source is crushing it, well, then you know, okay, if I want to sell more homes this year, I just need to do more of that. So maybe that one lead source, you increase your ad spend. Or if it's referrals from your sphere, how can you get in front of your sphere? Well, social media is a great way to do that at scale. You know, one quick post, one quick video, you can get in front of everybody all at once, and then you keep doing it every day. Social media is a great way. I think it's way more effective than pop buys, which are highly disruptive and annoying, if I'm being honest. Who the hell wants their door? Who wants somebody at the door in the middle of the day unexpected? I don't. That's why I have a ring doorbell camera with 4K, so that I can see exactly who it is and just not answer if I don't want to be interrupted. So just look back at what worked before, all right? If you want to do. If you want to have a killer year, look at what's already been working for you and do more of that. Not a super hard concept, okay? But I know as you're doing that some of you noticed that you're just not getting as much business as you want, or you're not getting as much business as you need, or it's just very inconsistent. Most of the time it's because you're not in control of where those leads are coming from. You're not in control of how Many leads. You're not in control of the consistency and usually the root cause of that is you are relying on someone else or something else for your business. And does this sound familiar? You're, you're depending on your team leader to give you some great leads from, from Zillow. You're depending on so and so for a certain lead platform to hopefully give you 50 leads a month and you're paying them for it. Also, I see agents spending so much time, rightfully so. Okay, rightfully so. But you're spending so much time doing content and, and working social media, but it's not getting you anywhere and you feel like you're spinning your wheels. You get super frustrated. You know, you get down about it and how could you not? You know, you're like, I'm spending all this time, all this effort and you don't have anything to show for it yet. It's frustrating. And so your business is super inconsistent and it's up and down. So to solve that, going into this year, I made a Christmas gift for you. The best Christmas gift you could give yourself and to give your business and to give your family, quite honestly, is to attend a free masterclass that I'm hosting. I'm hosting a free masterclass to break down how, exactly how to fix these problems so that you can take control over your lead flow, how often, how many, and the consistency of it. Now you're going to be able to learn in this masterclass. I'm going to teach you the simple formula that top agents are using right now in 2025. 2026. To turn views into followers. Okay. To turn views into. Sorry. To turn views and followers into closings. We don't just want followers, we want actual closings. Turn views and followers into actual closings and I'm going to break down this five new deals a month strategy. It won't last for forever. Just go over to clients from Social.com to see when the next masterclass is being held and register completely free. But if you, if you want to build a consistent lead generating machine that keeps 5, 6, 7 new deals coming into your business every single month. And quite honestly, once you see this formula, you're going to be like, wait, I actually don't have to spend nearly as much time posting as I am now, it's going to blow your mind. So, completely free. I'm doing this for you. Clients from Social.com let's get into the predictions for 2026, shall we? All right, so I'm going to start. We're just talking about social media list in the world of social media. Okay, the biggest winner and biggest loser in the world of social media. I'm going to say something and I don't want you to get upset. Okay? I, I'm going to say something and I don't want you to misunderstand it. So wait, reserve judgment on what this means until I've said the biggest winner and the biggest loser and then explain what it means because it does not mean what you think it means. Okay? The biggest winner in the world of social media, I believe is for 2026, is going to be X. Twitter X is absolutely a monster in the social media world. So December 2024, they had 368 million monthly active users. Okay? Instagram, Facebook, like they have billions. Okay, so they're, they're already huge. But X has seen ridiculous growth over this last year. From December 2024 to December 25th, they're up 200 million. Over 200 million monthly active users. That's, that's some insane growth. Also, X has pivoted to a video first platform. It's not just text tweets. I mean, sure, there's some of that, but X is no longer just text based. It's. It's a short and long form video platform. So daily video views as of late 2025, X is recording 8.3 billion video views a day on the platform. 8.3 billion video views per day. And video posts on x now receive 22% higher engagement than just text or image posts. So videos perform better. And not only that, they are paying creators a ton. Man, I should have put this in my notes here, but X has, has made a. You know, if you're a creator of a certain size on any platform, you can get paid based on your views, right? Because the, the platforms can show ads at the beginning or the end or even sometimes the middle. If it's Facebook or, or YouTube in, they can insert ads into your content so they pay you based on how many views you're getting. Well, X is making theirs the most lucrative for creators, so they're attracting a ton of great creators to X. So X is just a completely different animal. It's a completely different culture and language than, than instagram and, and TikTok and everything else. But I don't think you should be sleeping on X. So if you're not active on there, get on there, just consume some stuff. But be careful. It can very easily go into, you know, this rabbit hole of negativity and, and catastrophe and Conspiracy, very easy to do. So you got to control, you know, take. Be very mindful of what you're. You're paying attention to or what you're watching. And that's true for all the platforms. Here's what's funny. We blame the algorithm. Like, why is the algorithm showing me all this, you know, like kids fighting in school or, you know, like these catastrophes in the world? Well, I'll tell you why. It's because you watch that shit. You may not realize it consciously, but the algorithm just gives you more of what you have shown that you want. Not what you think you want, not what you say you want, but what you have shown through your actions that you will actually watch. It's just giving you more. So if you don't like your feed, if your feed's full of a bunch of bullshit, it's because that's what you've been watching. So take control. Anyways, so the biggest winner for 2026 in the world of social media, I think will be X. And those who figure out how to use X to grow their business because there's a huge opportunity. The biggest loser, I think, is Meta, Facebook, Instagram, because it is the buggiest, most ridiculous platform if you're shit breaks all the time and the search is atrocious. Have you ever used X's search or TikTok search? Theirs is amazing. Like, and YouTube search, they have incredible search tools, but you go to search for something like a video about this that you just watched 40 seconds prior or a day or a day or so. A day ago. Whatever, good luck finding it. Facebook and Instagram's search is horrendous. So hopefully they fix that. Now, the reason that I said with to reserve judgment, even though I believe in the business world of social media, I think Instagram and Facebook Meta is the biggest loser. I'm not saying you shouldn't use those. I'm not saying that you should focus less on Instagram and, and go all in on X. That's not what I'm saying at all. I. I am all in on Instagram. Tik Tok is number two. Actually, no, I'm moving YouTube to number two for this year. I'll get to this later. But I'm not changing the platforms that I'm using. I'm just making an observation on the business end of things. I think there's a big opportunity to use X if you learn how to do it. But I'm not saying that just because Meta is a company is a shit show that Facebook is not absolutely the best thing for your business. Instagram is not the best thing for business. You need to know where your audience is and then be there. That's it. So if that's Facebook, primarily, go all in on Facebook. If it's TikTok, go all in there. If it's Snapchat or LinkedIn, go all in there. So you need to know where your people are, where your ideal audience actually is, and then be there and post good stuff for them. All right, let's get into home sales. Well, okay, so I'm going from the world of social media to home sales. There's a. We'll be right back. Now, obviously, I think my new free masterclass, breaking down the way to get five closings every month is pretty great. But don't take it from me, okay? Take it from Stephanie, one of the first agents who attended my masterclass. She sent me this message the other day. She says, you probably won't believe this, but I have a new buyer already. Smiley face emoji and five more convos from just one post. Just followed your advice in the webinar. Fire emoji. So I guess you could say it's okay. Hahaha. Look, I want to teach you those same tweaks too, because dammit, if 2026 is going to be your best year, you have to know some things that you don't know yet. In my completely free masterclass, I'm going to break it all down for you. I'm going to show you exactly which tweaks Stephanie made. Just go to clientsfromsocial.com to save your seat. That's clients from social.com and now back to the pod. So I believe that I was going to give you a bunch of nerdy stats like the MBA predicts that there's going to be a 7% growth in home sales. And you know, Logan Motashami over at Housing Wire says blah, blah, blah. Yeah. The experts believe that somewhere in like, you know, the high four millions, the low five millions in total home sales throughout the country in 2026, I believe it's going to be better. I am predicting 5.5 million home sales. That's a pretty rosy prediction because if you've been paying attention to what's happening economically, if you listen to what Treasury Secretary Besant is talking about, with big tax rebates and tax cuts coming and inflation coming down and all these things, gas prices are so ridiculously low now. My wife and I both have Teslas now, so we don't even Fill up with gas. But we see the gas prices and they're super low, like in the low twos. And some places the gas prices start with a one. Just. It's wild. I think that the economy is moving in the right direction. I don't believe that the average American is feeling that yet, but I believe in 2026 it'll start to be felt. I think there's going to be new opportunities for job growth. Wages, I think will go up in certain areas with certain fields. I just think opportunity overall in this economy is going to be much better in 2026. And we're going to start feeling and realizing a lot of the positive economic growth and changes that have happened over this, this year, the first year of the Trump administration. I think we're going to start to realize that in 2026 and feel it. And that's going to have a positive upward impact on home sales, in my opinion. I think that mortgage rates will continue to creep down slightly. I don't know if they're going to get into the mid fives or low fives or some people want them to be. I don't see that happening, at least not this year. But I believe there will be more home sales than we think. And I'm predicting five and a half million home sales. So we'll have to see at the end of the year. If I'm even in the ballpark on that. I hope I'm right. Hope I'm right. All right. The biggest business deal of 2026. This is a prediction. The biggest business deal. I believe an outside company, a company not in real estate, will acquire a real estate brokerage or a real estate company. So I, for example, Google may, may buy Zillow. I, I can see that making a lot of sense. I used to say that Amazon would buy Redfin. I thought that made a ton of sense for Amazon when Amazon was showing aspirations of, you know, getting into home sales, which they were a couple years ago. Well, Redfin has since been bought by Rocket. Rocket now owns Redfin. It doesn't mean that it couldn't be spun off, you know, whatever. But they're still, that acquisition is still like, they're still putting the company together. They're still merging the two, the two companies and, and everything. I haven't seen much from Rocket and Redfin lately on how that's going. So that'll be interesting to see this year. But I believe a big outside company will buy a real estate company. So maybe Amazon buys open door, Zillow buys or Sorry, Google buys Zillow or something like that. Or I don't see one of these older legacy brokerages like a ReMax get, get acquired because there's just so much debt. There's, there's. If you look into the financials of ReMax, it's not good. It, the, it's, it's not good at all. So I don't see any brokerages getting traditional brokerages getting acquired by an outside player. I see mergers and acquisitions happening just like Compass this year in 2025. Acquired anywhere. Century 21, Caldwell era, excuse me, Electronic Realty and Associates. Electronic Realty Associates. Fantastic. Better Homes and Gardens and a couple other brands. So I believe we'll see another big merger between brokerages like that. But I think we're going to see a big acquisition from an outside player. So that, that's my biggest business deal prediction. Let's go into Biggest Loser Biggest winner here. We'll start with the losers and end with the winners. Biggest loser brick and mortar franchise brokerages. Brick and mortar, the traditional brokerages, both local and independent and these big franchise companies ReMaxes, Keller Williams, you name it. The reason being when you have so much overhead with physical locations we're seeing with all these companies, their expenses are. It's just this huge rope around the neck that's not letting them do much. Like they have this huge weight on their shoulders, this big gorilla on their shoulders that they can't get rid of. They have too much damn overhead. And so that's why there's so many KW offices that you may not realize this but a lot of the owners are trying to sell them and just can't. There's not that many buyers for a ReMax office or a Keller Williams office because there's just not much profit in it. There's just too much overhead. That is a big problem. And so we're seeing with a lot of these companies is their fees actually increase and, or they take away value. That's the, that's exactly the opposite direction that your brokerage should be going in. If your brokerage is increasing the cost to do business there and reducing the value you get for doing business there, what are you doing? That's not a sustainable model. So the brick and mortar traditional franchise brokerage is the big is going to be the biggest loser of 2026. Biggest winner. On the flip side, not just cloud based brokerages that don't have a ton of office space overhead but AI focused AI powered cloud based brokerages. The cloud based brokerages in general have A huge leg up because they don't have all of this brick and mortar offices and all these leases and all this, all the staff everywhere that just, it takes so much of their money. So the cloud based brokerages have much less in expenses because it's all cloud based. Well, those are great. The AI focused AI powered cloud based brokerages are going to crush. AI is not something that you can ignore anymore. It's, it's not something that. Well, I wonder if it's going to be big. It's already freaking huge. AI is already, it's huge for me. I mean even in, in writing my notes, in my outline for the show today. Absolutely. I, I use Chat GPT and I use Gemini to come up with some ideas and, and put some stuff in order. Hopefully it's a huge part of your business now I think. Well, I'll get to this in a minute because I'm going to talk more about this. But the AI focused cloud based brokerage will win. They're already winning. They will continue winning because think of it this way, the brick and mortar offices, the, the franchise brokerages, they don't. I'm trying to figure out how to frame this the right way. Okay, let me back up. EXP gives 50% of its revenue back to agents through the revenue share program. 50% of company dollar gets paid back to the agents through revenue share. Now only I think at exp it's about 11, 11% of the agents actually participate in that. Which, which is fine. Like it is, it is what it is. That's good. Real gives 60%. Real gives 60% of its revenue back to agents through revenue share And Real has 12% of, of the agents earning revenue share. So if you want to compete with that, if you're trying to compete with EXP or, or Real or a couple of these others that have something somewhat similar. There's only a couple others that have something even remotely like it because it's not possible elsewhere. If you, if you're a brick and mortar traditional brokerage, what, where are you going to find an extra 50 of revenue to give back? You don't even have 5%. So that's why these old brokerages that are built a certain way, they don't have an extra 50 to 60% or even 40 or even 20% of revenue that they can give back to their agents to make it a stickier, more attractive, more lucrative platform. They can't. So agents who see that and they're like, yeah, I absolutely want that as part of my business, they are only looking at a couple brokerages because there's only a couple that can do that because that's the way the business was built from the beginning. The model was built around it from the beginning. Any brokerage that wants to compete has to be built that way from the beginning. I don't know any other way around it. So there's your biggest loser. Biggest winner as far as brokerage goes. Biggest loser, shiny object chasers. Biggest loser of 2026 will be the shiny object chasers. If you are bouncing around from one thing to another because you watched a, you watched a webinar, you watched a video and that agent over there is doing this one thing. So now I'm going to do it. Oh, well, I'm going to stop this and do that. Oh, and then so, and so is doing this. These awesome magical mailers, this direct mail campaign. It's absolutely crushing. So I'm going to do that and then I'm going to go do this and then, well, that didn't work. After a month and a half, I'm going to go do this. If you are bouncing around from one strategy to the next without any consistency, without giving it time to work, that's loser mentality. And you feel that in the results or lack thereof that you have, unfortunately. So the biggest winner on the flip side in 2026 will be agents who commit agents who commit to a certain strategy and you just stick with it and you keep doing it and you keep doing it and you get better and you give it time to work. I know what it's like to jump from one strategy to another to another. And it's, it's usually because you need it, because you're, you're like, I'm starving here. I need some business. I've got to get something going. And you stop three feet from gold. If you've ever seen that, that meme, you stop right before you hit the gold. And you were so close. You just needed to swing, swing the, the pickaxe a couple more times and you would have hit it. But you gave up too soon. The shiny object chasers give up way too soon. And you're not giving whatever strategy it is enough time to work. YouTube, social media, writing, blogs, whatever door knocking, even, like everything works and nothing doesn't. But you have to give it time to work. And you also, during the course of that have to give yourself enough time to get better and improve and gain confidence. That doesn't happen within a month. Sometimes it doesn't happen within six months. It Depends on what we're talking about. So the biggest loser is the shiny object chasers. The biggest winner are the agents who commit. All right, Another biggest loser. The reinvent the wheel. Agents. Agents who for some reason are reinventing the wheel. Guys, the wheel was invented a long time ago. Just use the damn wheel. You want your own, then just get the blueprints to the wheel. But no, you're beating your head against the wall trying to figure something out that's already been figured out thousands and thousands and thousands of times. We are real estate agents trying to build businesses inside real estate. We're trying to sell more homes. We're trying to increase profitability and an increase revenue and build a brand. Okay, that's been done tens of thousands of times successfully. Just model the people who have done it and the playbook they followed. That's it. So the biggest winner are the playbook stealers, the agents who steal the playbooks of others. That's working. And I'm not talking about Michigan football. I'm not talking about Connor Stallions with that whole thing. If you're a college football fan, I'm not talking about U of M. No. If you see a certain blueprint being followed by maybe it's a team. If you're trying to build a team or trying to build a brand on social, trying to figure out how to do content that converts into clients, follow the proven blueprint. Just take the blueprint from someone that has it now. You may have to join a coaching program. You may have to take a course. You may have to watch a free masterclass@clientsfromsocial.com Wink, wink. You may need to become business partners with somebody. You may need to go to a mastermind so you can spend time with someone or, or a certain group of people, or you just watch a video, or you just do a Google search, or you just have Gemini or chat break down for you. These blueprints are out there. So find someone who's already doing the thing you want to do at a high level and steal their blueprint. That's how you win. That's it. And by the way, all those people that you're looking up to and you're stealing their blueprint, they stole someone else's. They. They borrowed somebody else's. The biggest losers of 2026 will be the agents who are reinventing the wheel for no reason whatsoever other than stubbornness or being cheap or being scarce. If you're trying to save $200 a month, well, I could join that group which is going to give me everything and hold my hand and help me do it. But it's 200 bucks a month. I'm just going to figure it out myself. What do you think is costing you more money? The $200 a month to, or whatever it is, maybe it's $5,000 to invest in, in a program or a coaching group or whatever. My stuff's less than that. But you get into it, that's an investment because you're paying, you're, you're investing your money to just have somebody give you their whole expertise. They've already made the mistakes, they've already fixed the holes, they've already patched the holes. They've already figured out, oh, this doesn't work. So let's do this instead of. They can, you can just buy that. You can just buy somebody else's proven blueprint so you can skip all the bullshit. But there's some of you that to save a few hundred bucks a month or a thousand dollars a month or whatever it is, you're just gonna figure it out yourself. And to you, I say good luck because I've been that person. And guess what? I struggled for so many more years than I needed to because I was unwilling to invest to just get the fricking blueprint. Now I highly suggest, I highly suggest you go to clients from Social.com and attend my next free masterclass. Did I mention it's free? Yeah. Okay, another biggest loser here. Me for not sticking to my YouTube commitment in 2025. The biggest loser of 2020. Wait, well that's not for, that's not a 2026 one. Okay, the biggest loser of 2025 was me for not sticking with my YouTube plan. For me, YouTube is my biggest untapped opportunity. So I think this is the third year that I've said this now, but I'm serious because I now have a videographer full time. YouTube. I am committing to YouTube in 2026. And so the biggest winner of 2026 will be you. The, the subscribers to the massive agent channel on YouTube. I highly recommend you go do that because I'm going to be dropping a video a week made for YouTube, specifically for YouTube. Breaking down a hack or a strategy or giving you something tactical that'll help you build your business, get more leads, start more conversations and get more closings every month. That's what you can expect from me. So 2025, I didn't do that. 2024, I didn't do it. Not really. I think I did a couple more Videos that The podcast on YouTube doesn't count. I put that up there every week. That doesn't count. I think I did a couple more videos, two or three more in 2025 than I did in 24, but 26 a video a week. Biggest loser of 2026 will be, once again the market blamers. Interest rates are high, the market's tough, there's no inventory, blah, blah, blah. The biggest winners of 2026 will be the agents who freaking do it anyways. We all know agents that have grown like crazy this year, while at the same time you are sitting there blaming interest rates, blaming market conditions, blaming this, that, or the other, blaming AI, blaming Trump, blaming Biden, blaming this for your inability to grow. Isn't that weird how, like, we all have the same playing field here. We all have the same tools available. We all have the same opportunities. Some of us choose to just freaking do it, some of us don't. So the biggest winner of 2026 will be the agents who say, you know what? I'm not going to participate in that weak bullshit where I give all the power to someone else, where I give all the power of whether or not I succeed or fail to the Federal Reserve and what, what interest rates are doing or what Trump is tweeting or whatever the hell, or my team leader is not giving me enough leads. Well, maybe you should learn how to generate your own so that you're not reliant on anyone else. That's a choice. I know I'm. I'm. I'm being a little blunt here, but my. Hell, you're an adult. You're. You're a freaking adult. And you. You're in business. You're. You're running a business here. It's time to take some shit seriously. Stop messing around. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Just find. Decide what you want to do. Find someone who's done it or has the blueprint and just get the blueprint. Simple as that. And then do the work. Here's a. Here's a fun one. The least anticipated trend of 2026. And then I'll get into the most anticipated trend. Least anticipated trend. There's going to be more lawsuits. There's going to be more lawsuits just like that nar and coming after commissions and all that, there's going to be more because there's blood in the water. And these, these law firms who, by the way, get 40%, they're bitching about agents. 6% commission while they're getting 40. Isn't that wild? Yeah. But they're winning the PR battle. It. See, marketing and marketing is everything. Marketing and PR is everything you learn to master, that you will crush in business and in life. So these law firms, these, these fricking attorneys see that there's blood in the water and they're coming after it. They're going after Zillow right now. They're going after the Zillow flex program. And it, it's all just a money grab. There's nothing to do with trying to do the right thing for consumers or any of that. It's not. It's about money. So there's gonna be more lawsuits. That. That's great. That's. That's fantastic. Most anticipated trend carousel posts are working great on Instagram. Carousel posts in some cases are working better than reels. Again, I'm not saying you should not post reels anymore and you should only post carousels. You should do both. You should do both. A good mix of reels and carousel posts on Instagram specifically is working really, really well right now. So I'm very interested to see if that continues and if one like it may go back the other way, it may completely go to one side where carousels crush and reels suck. I don't know. The only way to find out is to just keep doing it. Just keep participating and doing it and doing it and learning and paying attention and, and be around others that are doing it at a high level. I mean, hell, you may even look at the massive agent society, hint, hint, and being in that group. So you can just learn from others that are a step or two or five ahead of you and not have to guess and not be behind the trend. Be ahead of the trend, participate in the trend. Here's another most anticipated trend AI will replace. Okay, how do I word this? AI up to this point has been great for like writing, listing descriptions, doing content emails, you know, helping you flesh out ideas, even like business structure, team structure, all that stuff. Right? I believe this year is when we're really going to see AI start to replace the workload that an agent does. So agents are going to be able to be far more productive as far as like prospecting and follow up and nurturing. Those AI tools exist already. My brokerage just released hey Leo, which by the end of Q1 will be available to agents in all MLS's. That whole AI platform. You talk to it just the way you would talk to chat, GPT and your clients, your prospects, your leads, Hell, your Zillow leads can just. Hey, Leo can actually answer Your Zillow, your Zillow phone calls and just guide them through the home search and everything like that. It can set them up with your preferred lender, it can do all the, it basically replaces you. So you just need to focus. Once you have tools like this, you just need to focus on getting more people into it and then working with the people that come out the other side nurtured and ready to go. That's, that's going to be the game in 2026. So the marketers, the lead generators are going to absolutely crush with a tool like Helio, because LEO just does all the prospecting, does all the nurturing over time for you. And later this year reels going to be paying agents to be putting leads into the system, which is absolutely wild. AI is going to be replacing a lot of the stuff that takes a ton of your time. AI has been great with helping us be more productive with marketing and certain things like that. But the day to day, the nurture, the prospecting, the follow up, all of that AIs right now, AI can actually do that and it's going to be at scale by the end of Q1. So look for tools like that. Because if you could just focus on lead generation and then servicing the clients that come out the other end, how many more clients could you service on a monthly basis? Think about it. And then if you got a showing agent to actually show the homes, how many more clients could you work with? Like you could work with 10 times as many clients in a month with that kind of productivity. So if right now, if, if you max out at six deals a month and you don't have much more bandwidth, or maybe 10 deals a month and you don't have any more bandwidth. Well, what if you could service 80 or 100 because the big time suckers are handled by AI in a way that's done better than you. That is my most anticipated trend of 2026 and the technology exists today. I've seen it and it's exciting. Most anticipated events of 2026. I haven't looked into this much because, so I don't know what new events are happening. I might even do an event or two of my own, I don't know. But the two events that I for damn sure are going to forward in Vegas in July. I'm pretty sure it's in July. It usually is. So that's, that's Neil Dingra's big event forward. I've been what, four or five, I can't remember four or five years straight. I've been to all the forwards. The best event of the year, I believe, for. For entrepreneurs. The next one is Rise, which is specific to Real. Anyone can go. You don't have to be a real agent, but it's, it's Real's big conference. It's in October this year. Don't even know where yet. So that's coming Forward and Rise are my most anticipated events of the year. Are those the only events? No, I just don't know of the others yet. I threw this one in there. Last biggest personality of 2026. I think he was the biggest personality of 2025. Oh, okay. There's two. I just thought of two. Two biggest personalities of 2025 and I think one of them is going to be the biggest personality even moving forward. Ryan Sirhant. Not only is he a great content creator, a great agent, super entertaining. Now he has these, this TV show that's crushing on Netflix. He is running an incredible business. He's building an incredible brokerage. They are building incredible technology internally. I respect so much what Ryan Sirhant and his team have done and are doing. I believe Sirhant will be the biggest personality of 2026. But I' to give a shout out to Tampa Bri. She is on Instagram. Hilarious, wildly unprofessional, which I love. Anyone, if you follow me on Instagram, you, you know this. Hell, if you listen to the show, you know this, this is not. This is not news. But Tampa Brie is hilarious. She is vulgar and unprofessional and all this. And she has blown up this year on, on social media because of it, what she's done. And it's not that you have to be vulgar, you have to be unprofessional. You have to swear, you have to be crude or anything like that. You don't have to do that. She just found something that she could do that was authentic to her and then she just stuck with it. She just found a format and she's like, I'm gonna commit to this because I enjoy it. I think it's fun and she made it work. You just need to find out what, what that is for you. And that might require a ton of testing. I'm still, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what that is for me. I have a couple ideas of stuff that I do on social, but I'm always testing new stuff, just trying to find out, like, hey, I enjoy this. This is fun. And I think that this creates a unique, you know, a unique presence on on social media. So if you don't follow Tampa, Bri, I think you should. 2026 is here. Obviously you're listening to this on January 1st, maybe later. I've never met an agent that is like, you know, this isn't going to be a very good year for me. I don't know. Everyone's like, this is going to be the best year. I'm going to crush it this year. I hope that that's true. I want that for you. But just being the voice of reason here, the only way that that's going to be possible is if you do something different than you have been doing. If you're going to have, if you're going to double your sales, what is it that's going to double your sales? What are you going to do differently? Because if you just keep doing the exact same thing, you're going to get more of the exact same results. So what are you going to do different? Ask yourself that question. What are you going to do different? I created the this free masterclass to teach you how to get five or more new deals every single month. It's completely free. Just go to clientsfromsocial.com, i created that for you to teach you how to take control back over your leads, over your lead flow. Because if you're relying on someone else or some program to give them to you, you don't have any control. Like they can cut it off or they can raise their prices and all of a sudden you don't have any because you, you're just like on rented land. Like you, you've got to build your own brand. And the good news is doing that is not rocket science. There's a proven formula. It takes a little bit of effort for sure, it takes some time, but there is a blueprint you can follow. There's certain, there's certain tweaks you can make to your content. There's certain tweaks you can make to your marketing that when you get those dialed in, it all just starts working and deals just start flowing like crazy every single month. And that's what I'm breaking down in the free Masterclass. Go to clientsfromsocial.com and attend that. Attend the next one that's available while that lasts because it's not going to be available forever. Clients from social.com thank you so much for listening. Happy New Year. I'll see you guys next week for episode 420, which the, you know, the 20 year old version of me would have been very excited about. But now I don't give a episode 420 coming next week. See ya, Sam.
Host: Dustin Brohm
Date: January 1, 2026
In this special New Year's episode, host Dustin Brohm dives deep into his bold predictions for the real estate industry in 2026. He categorizes the coming year’s biggest winners, losers, and uncovers some surprises that agents and brokers should watch out for. The focus is on platforms, brokerage models, agent mindsets, and transformative AI tools—arming agents with actionable insight to navigate the new year. Brohm’s signature candor and humor set a motivating tone for agents looking to take control and thrive in a changing industry.
Review your previous successes.
“If you want to sell more homes this year, I just need to do more of that.” (07:08)
Consistency in lead generation is everything.
Biggest Winner: X (formerly Twitter)
“If you’re not active on [X], get on there, just consume some stuff... But be careful, it’s easy to go down the negativity rabbit hole.” (16:12)
Biggest Loser: Meta (Facebook & Instagram)
Brohm’s Strategy Advice:
“I believe in 2026... we’re going to start to realize a lot of the positive economic growth... It’s going to have a positive, upward impact on home sales. That’s my prediction.” (23:10)
Biggest Loser: Brick & mortar franchise brokerages
“Their expenses are just this huge rope around the neck... there’s not that many buyers for a RE/MAX office or a Keller Williams office because there’s just not much profit in it.” (29:37)
Biggest Winner: AI-powered, cloud-based brokerages
Loser: The ‘shiny object chaser’
“You stop three feet from gold... you needed to swing the pickaxe a couple more times and you would have hit it, but you gave up too soon.” (36:05)
Winner: The committed agent
Loser: “Reinvent the wheel” agents
Winner: “Playbook stealers”
“Just model the people who have done it and the playbook they followed. That’s it.” (39:58)
Loser: Market blamers
Winner: Agents who “do it anyway”
“We all have the same tools available. Some of us choose to just freaking do it, some of us don’t.” (45:09)
Least anticipated trend:
Most anticipated social content trend:
AI’s increasing role:
“You could work with 10 times as many clients in a month with that kind of productivity.” (56:09)
Most anticipated events:
Personality of the year:
“She just found something that she could do that was authentic to her and then she just stuck with it.” (01:03:25)
On platform choices:
“You need to know where your audience is and then be there and post good stuff for them.” (20:50)
On stubbornly refusing to invest:
"What do you think is costing you more money? The $200 a month... or missing out for years because you wouldn’t invest?" (42:16)
On market blame:
“If you’re relying on someone else or some program to give [leads] to you, you don’t have any control. Like, they can cut it off or they can raise their prices… you’re just like on rented land.” (01:07:40)
Advice heading into 2026:
“If you just keep doing the exact same thing, you’re going to get more of the exact same results. So what are you going to do different?” (01:08:14)
Missed the episode or want the cheat sheet for the year? Start here, and you’ll know exactly where Brohm thinks agents should focus to make 2026 their best year yet.