Dustin Brome (0:00)

This week, I'm breaking down seven huge mistakes that agents made in 2024 and how to fix them going into 2025. Let's go. The Massive Agent podcast. We 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 weak. I've had better. Better. Oh, have I got your attention now? Here' Dustin Brom. What is up, guys? Welcome back to the Massive agent podcast, episode 363. I am your host, Dustin Brome, here in Salt Lake City, Utah, the most beautiful city on the planet. It's not open for debate, so stay out of my fricking inbox about it. It's just not debatable. All right? At least I don't want to have that debate. Welcome to the show. So this week I'm going to be breaking down the seven huge mistakes that agents made in 2024 and how to fix that going into 2025. Let's jump into it right now, shall we? So the first big mistake, failing to adapt to market changes. There were. So this is, this was true over the last couple years, right? When interest rates really started to go higher and then they came down and then they went up again. So interest rates have been crazy. There's also been supply and demand adjustments that have happened, and I see so many agents that are just not responding well to it. You're not adapting well. You, for whatever reason, I see agents just doing what they've been doing prior to the last three or four years and just expecting that they can just keep doing the same. Now, some of the same stuff works, but it depends on what we're talking about. I've seen a ton of agents struggle to adapt to the new interest rates, low inventory shifting, buyer behaviors. Right? So the mistake is really relying on outdated strategies instead of pivoting to what works. Right. For example, agents who, who did not embrace and learn about and really get good at not just like learning about, but learning how to educate and share certain concepts. Like creative financing. Agents that didn't really become experts on creative financing options struggled because you, you just were not nearly as helpful as you could have been if you knew more about creative financing options. Because as interest rates shot up, buyers had to get creative, Right? Agents had to be creative in helping their, their clients to make stuff more affordable because affordability, obviously is a, is a big problem. And then as far as marketing goes, you should be targeting, motivated Buyers, I saw a ton of agents that didn't change their marketing messaging at all. And you're still just broadcasting the same message to the world rather than saying, okay, who's actually transacting right now and then finding those people. And these are slight adjustments. These aren't necessarily major adjustments in what you're doing, but it's certainly a shift in how you approach the marketing that you do and the messaging that you put out there. So, you know, fixing that moving forward, it's a good idea to learn how to speak to targeted or learn how to target motivated buyers, motivated sellers, people that, that need to transact because they're relocating or, you know, they need to upsize because their family's growing or whatever. Right? There's all those life changes, those big life events. When you, when you learn how to identify those and target those and you know, and speak to those and help people who are in the midst of those, it gets easier because then you're finding people that will try transact even in spite of the shifting market changes. So that, that's a big issue and it's going to be an issue moving forward for some agents. So please adapt to market changes, educate yourself, attend trainings, watch, you know, take courses, watch like, go to events to learn how to, how to, how to adapt to the new changes that are happening. Because I'll tell you what changes like, it's not like everything is going to go back to being slow and normal and you can kind of just do the same for five, six, seven, eight years in a row. Changes are happening more frequently and faster than ever, and that's going to accelerate. And so you've got it. It's becoming a superpower where if you can learn how to adapt and how to change and how to pivot and adjust, you're going to thrive. Because most agents do not know how to do that or are unwilling to do that. Number two, cutting back on marketing. I understand 24, 2024 was a lean year for most agents, for sure. And so I understand and agree with and personally participated in cost cutting. As you should. Right. But one of the problems that I saw was agents, when you stop doing certain marketing or all of a sudden you're seen less. You're. If you had ad spend going and you cut back on it or eliminate it, what's happening is you're disappearing from the market in places that you used to appear. And that's a problem for those that figured out how to, how to cut costs and still spend money on intentional marketing. And intentional ads, you, you were able to double down on staying top of mind. And here's what's really cool. So I, some of you may have read 10x by, by Grant Cardone. I'm not a huge Grant Cardone fan. Not an, not a huge Grant Cardone guy. I don't hate the guy, but I'm not like a Grant Cardone fanboy person. Like I, there's good, there's bad, right? But his 10x book, something that I took away from it that I think is a fantastic lesson is he how he talked about in the Great Recession when people were pulling back from spending money on ads and running ads and they were preserving their money, he doubled down like he 10 xed what he was doing. So then he, he became so much more visible because think about it, there's a ton of agents pulling back on marketing when the market slows and when sales slow, right. It's easy to be like, well I'm spending this much on marketing, let's just cut that because I need to cut costs. I understand the temptation. You've got to try to figure out any way possible to not cut certain things unless they're wasteful, unless they're just not doing anything. Right. You have to be really intentional about where you're putting your marketing dollars. But you have, you have your comp, your competitors, right? Those that are also spending money, they're also marketing. They're also like you're competing with all these other agents for, for awareness and mind share in your area. So you're going to have agents pull back, which creates less saturation. So if you double down, you're not just getting double the exposure. You might be getting 4x or 10x the exposure because your competitors are going down and now you're doing twice as much. So you're being seen infinitely more. When, when your competitors lay down, that's a great chance for you to, to double down on your activities and, and really take over, right? And really be, be, not disappear from your market, but be seen everywhere by all people at all times. Not literally, but as far as omnipresence in their news feeds, on their phones, with their personal experience with ads, emails, social media, traditional marketing, all that stuff. So moving forward, make marketing a priority and be smart about where you put your marketing dollars. There's some things that agents spend money on that really don't bring in business and others that do. So you have to first know what kind of marketing you're doing that's actually moving the needle. Like where do Your closings come from, where do your clients actually come from and put more money into that stuff? And that's not to say that you shouldn't be running ads in certain places to just to get impressions and awareness for branding. There's. There's absolutely a need for that, of course. So if you can figure out how to supplement your income in other ways to continue doing your marketing and even double down on it and increase while others are pulling back, I mean, that's how you absolutely crush it in slower markets. Number three, the number. The third mistake that agents made in 2024, overreacting to market headlines, paying too much attention to industry headlines. Market headlines, NAR settlement stuff. This, that, and the other. This, this brokerage is acquiring that one. This agent is being sued for this, that, or the other thing. Real estate, media companies, Inman Housing, Wire. Bam. I freaking love bam. Best in the business by far, and you should be following bam. But all of them, like, their job as a media company is to get eyeballs. And so they're. They're going to put out a bunch of stories about everything that's happening in our industry. But that doesn't mean that those stories should be important to you. And I saw a lot of agents get way too caught up in the NAR settlement drama and, and just industry news drama. Like, for the most part, most of that you can tune out. If we're being totally honest, most of the industry news, you can just tune the hell out. Because if there's something big enough, we will come and tell you about it. So it was just a giant distraction. I saw agents get super distracted this year. And I think it's. I think what happened is it's a form of procrastination when it's like, well, I'm gonna. I'm gonna study, I'm gonna. I'm gonna learn about what's happening in the industry. You feel busy, you feel productive, but you're not. You're just distracting yourself from the actual work, from actually doing what's going to move the needle, from actually working on your business and making it an actual business that you can step away from one day, making it scalable and leverageable, all that stuff. So overreacting to market headlines was a huge distraction and a big mistake. Number four, staying with the wrong team or the wrong brokerage. It's incredible because I speak to a lot of agents on a daily basis. I'm amazed at how much money some people pay their brokerage on each year without any real return, without any, Anything of value in return. And so maybe that's a team that you're on that you really shouldn't be and you don't need to be a part of anymore, that it's benefiting them more than it's benefiting you. But for most agents, it's not necessarily the team, it's the brokerage that you're with. And I understand comfort, right? I completely understand comfort. Before I ever changed brokerages, the first time I was with a company called Equity Real Estate here in Salt Lake. They're at the time, I think they're still close to this, but at the time they were, they were the largest brokerage in Utah as far as market share, as far as transactional market share and a ton of agents. I think they had a thousand or so agents, maybe more. But I stayed there because it was cheap and because I didn't understand what else was out there that was possible. And so I just stayed. And even though I thought I'm saving money, see, see for me it was different. Rather than I was paying too much for my brokerage, I was paying so little that it made me not see the value that I was missing out on by being with a different model. And I did that for seven and a half years before I finally made a change. And in hindsight I wish I would have made the change sooner for sure, but I didn't understand. Like I was only looking at the cost of a transaction and how cheap it could be versus the value that a brokerage can provide and the people that being with a certain business model can provide to helping you build a business. Which I certainly get that now, but I didn't then. But I talk to agents all the time that they like their broker. So they stick around. They don't want to, they don't want to break up with their broker. They don't want to have that confrontational one time conversation that they think is going to be the end of the world. I remember that, that conversation too. I didn't want to leave my first broker. He was a mentor of mine. He lent me money multiple times during times of struggle. And I don't know what I would have done without him. But I still had to make a business decision for me and my family. When I finally had that conversation with him, he understood. I was so worried about it, I postponed that conversation for probably a month or two for real. When I finally had the conversation, he was super gracious. He understood, he wished me luck. We ended up actually like he, he referred some agents my way I referred some agents his way that were a better fit for him and his brokerage. And like it's our relationship continued. And then I realized he's a broker with about 100 agents and he deals with this all the time. Agents come and go. Anyhow. The more I learn about different business models and what being with the right brokerage can do for you, what it can, what it can empower you to do, what it can, what it can support you in building and doing, and who within it can help you build. Now that I really grasp that it, I see agents make the biggest mistake that most agents are making, I believe, is staying with the wrong brokerage for too long. A brokerage that's not serving them, where the brokerage is getting a lot more out of the deal than the agent is. I. There's agents that I talk to that are paying 1000 1200, 1500 dollars a month just in freaking desk fees just for the privilege of being an agent at their brokerage. What do they get in return? Exactly? I ask them and they're like, well, like a CRM. And you know, I like my broker. Audit yourself. Get, like, get, get rid of the comfort shit. Now look, some of you are in the right place and you should not move. But some of you know deep down that you're just settling. You're just settling for, okay, you're just settling for comfort, and that's fine. But you are absolutely underperforming. You are absolutely leaving potentially millions of dollars on the table, literally millions of dollars on the table with what's possible at certain business models. So challenge yourself. If you're at a brokerage that's just, they're getting more out of it than you're getting out of them or it's just super expensive and you're tired of wasting money. And rather than cutting back on your marketing, what if you cut back on what you pay your damn brokerage? So look into that number five, ignoring or underutilizing AI tools. I use Chat, GPT and Perplexity all day. Every single day. I use it for something. My kids now, they have a question. They're like, hey, let's, let's ask ChatGPT. And so they do. I use it all the time. And I, I feel like I'm dramatically underutilizing the AI tools are out there because there's so many of them. There's like, what? I'm using Chat, GPT and Perplexity and I'm just looking into Claude. And then Google has Gemini and there's a bunch of others. They can do some really advanced stuff. But I'm not an engineer. I'm not a coder. Now I should be hiring one who can build me certain things, that you can use these tools to write code for websites and for, like, for all this different stuff. But I haven't. And here's what's really interesting, right? You cannot ignore AI tools anymore. Because if you do, if you're resisting that new technology, you're being outpaced by those who are embracing it. AI is not going to replace you. AI is not going to replace agents. I do not see any scenario in the near future where that's even plausible. Maybe 20 years from now, I don't know. But, like, in the foreseeable future, agents aren't going anywhere. However, agents that refuse to adapt and really lean into the AI tools that are freely available, you're just going to be beat by agents who are embracing that stuff. Simple as that. It's like when the iPhone came out. If you, if you still have a flip phone, what are you doing? You know, you have this dramatic competitive disadvantage. If you're still faxing shit, you have a dramatic disadvantage. So use the tools. It's like if the iPhone came out and you said, nope, not going to do that. I'm just going to stick with my little flip flow, my flip phone for a while. Good luck with that. Good luck with that. We've seen how that plays out. So don't be one of those agents. Embrace and lean into and learn about and try it and test it and sample it. Because, look, I'm confused by it. I'm overwhelmed by it. So is everybody. Even those who are literally in the tech field in AI, they're overwhelmed by it because it's, it's moving so fast. It's growing so fast. It's, it's, it's advancing so damn fast. So if that's the case, shouldn't we be trying to keep up? I don't, I don't think that there's any way to keep up if we're, if we're being honest. But you should try to, you should make an effort to keep up, because then at least you're making progress. And plus, it's going to make you faster, you're going to save time and make you more productive. Why wouldn't you want that? So use the AI and tech tools that are available for the love. I mean, my brokerage has them built into our, into our app, into our whole system. It's creating, just listed Graphics for people. It's. It's grabbing inspection reports from a deal you closed three years ago and putting it in your hand in a second. Like, it's amazing. It's amazing to see those who are embracing it and leaning into it and those that are resisting or ignoring. And we know how this ends. If you're ignoring, it's not going to end well. You're just going to be beat. Number six, relying solely on referrals. The number six mistake I see a ton of agents make, especially in 2024, was relying way too much on referrals or relying only on referrals. And I get it. If your phone rings, you're getting business. You don't have to do any marketing. It's just, oh, the phone's ringing. I have, I have people to work with. Cool. I get it. At some point, that will dry up. At some point, those people will be distracted by another agent they find online. They'll be referred to another agent that is more omnipresent online. They'll, they'll. Maybe they'll be distracted by some discount broker or some, like, new automated tool or FSBO assistance thing. There's all sorts of that stuff out there, right? So those referrals will diminish. I've talked to dozens and dozens of agents. Usually they're older, usually they're over 50 or 55 years old. And they're like, you know, I've been relying on referrals for 20 years and, you know, they're slowly starting to, to go away. Like they're, they're getting fewer and fewer every year. Exactly. So if you're waiting for what you're doing, if you're just relying on referrals, if we're being honest, you're waiting for business to come to you. You're waiting for business to come to you. You have to be proactive in, in a 2025 world, you can, you can still work all those referrals as the majority of your business, but you need to still be proactively generating leads, you know, putting marketing messaging out there and trying to reach new people and reminding the people in your sphere that you. That you exist. But you have to do that or else your referrals will dry up. They'll become few and far between. And if you haven't done anything to generate leads or awareness or build a network or build a brand, you'll literally just be pushed out of business. I'm not trying to scare you. I'm just being freaking honest. And, you know, this you know this to be true. If you're listening and you're somewhat triggered by this, it's because you know it's freaking true. You just don't want to do anything about it. So hopefully you'll do something about it. Agents who, you know, if you don't have multiple lead sources, you just struggle to sustain your pipeline for all the reasons I just mentioned. So let's proactively generate leads, build a brand, put some content out there, run some ads. I mean, hell, hire someone to do that stuff for you. But you've got to. You've got to do it. You cannot just sit there waiting for the phone to ring, because eventually it will not. Number seven, I see agents just skipping the personal branding. It's a huge mistake focusing solely on property ads or, you know, you're an agent with your brokerage and that's it. And you have no personal brand whatsoever. If you're not building a recognizable personal brand, then you will not be recognized at some point. You will not be remembered, you will not be seen. You're certainly not going to be referred. Because those who have personal brands who are seen, found, recognized, and remembered, they will be getting all the business. That's just the world we live in. And that will accelerate and only get stronger and worse next year and the year after. So if you're neglecting your branding, then you're finding it harder to stick out in a competitive market. Those who are building a personal brand through content and ads and content and ads and content. By doing the personal branding stuff, it's getting easier. It's getting easier because your brand now starts doing work for you. And you have credibility when you show up at a listing presentation rather than just being the random agent with ABC Realty, they've seen your videos before. They've been to your website. They maybe they saw an ad that you did or a billboard that you were on or you know, something, or an art. Maybe they read an article on your website that you wrote or that you were featured in or on some other website. And you have credibility, which gives you a huge competitive advantage. So you can build. But you can build your own credibility. I did. I did. By starting this freaking podcast and doing content on social media. Without this podcast, none of you would know who the hell I am. None of you would know who I am if it wasn't for this podcast. Doing it religiously, consistently, every freaking week, every Thursday morning for seven years now. Like, almost. It'll be seven years next month. Holy shit. That's crazy. No One would know who I am if I didn't put content out there, if I didn't, if I didn't stay consistent with it, if I wasn't authentic in the stuff I was putting out there, if I didn't make an attempt to have something interesting to say, then no one would know who the hell I am. And I have no idea where I would be in business, if I would even be in this industry at all had I not built a personal brand. And I still feel like I'm way behind on it. There's so much more that I can and should and will do. But if you're, if you're just skipping the personal branding, you're making a huge mistake. You can have your own version of a personal brand. You do not need to be this big influencer with 150,000 followers. That's not necessarily what personal brand is. But you need to create a brand. You need to create an online reputation. You need people to see you, they need to find you, they need to remember you, they need to like you. They, you know, all of that happens when you build a personal brand and you build your own credibility. So in summary, the seven huge mistakes agents made in 2024 and how to fix them fail. Number one, failing to adapt to market changes. Number two, cutting back on marketing. Number three, overreacting to market headlines. I think paying attention to them at all is a mistake for the most part. Number four, staying with the wrong brokerage or team for way too long. Number five, ignoring or underutilizing AI tools. Number six, relying solely on referrals, sitting there waiting for the phone to ring. And number seven, skipping personal branding. So I, I will, I will tell you this so in, in a month or so. So right now we're, we're over halfway through the massive agent business accelerator. It's a 12 week program where we take agents who do not have a functional real estate business, where really it's solo agents that are just wearing all the hats. And we walk over 12 weeks, we walk through every single step required to build leverage, to build a support team around you, who to hire, how to hire them, which systems to put into place, when to do things, how to do things, we walk through all of it. So after 12 weeks you have the blueprint and the roadmap to be the CEO of a business and not just the, you know, an employee of your own and not just an agent who owns your own job. And so we're, right now, it's closed, we're not accepting new members because we're over halfway through and it's a 12 week thing. We don't want new members coming in and being completely overwhelmed and behind. So we are opening up soon. And so right now on massiveagentsociety.com you can get on our waiting list where we will let you know, we will notify you when we open up for registration again for the next 12 week accelerator. And what I'm, what I think we're going to be doing before the end of this year because I know a lot of you have, have some surplus money that you want to put to work. You want to make some, some business investments to minimize your tax burden, right. So rather than like hey, I have an extra 50 grand at the end of the year that you're going to pay taxes on. You want to turn those into expenses? Of course. So we're before the end of the year we're going to, we're going to open it up for pre registration for the next round so you can put some of those dollars to work as a legit business expense before, before the tax year ends. So get on the waiting list and we'll let you know exactly when that opens up. Probably sometime in the next week or two. And then looks like we'll be starting the next 12 weeks probably end of January, possibly early February. But you'll get a discount and you'll be able to use those tax those, those dollars today in tax year 2024 rather than an expense next year. So go over to massiveagentsociety.com to get on the waiting list for that. Now some tool I'm going to add some bonus mistakes that I see agents making, right. Kind of along the lines of not utilizing the AI and tech tools. When I see agents who you're not nearly as educated on the market and on market conditions and on economic news as you should be. I'm not saying that you should be reading all these articles and doing all this stuff. No huge distraction. But the hack here, the cheat code is to just use keeping current matters go to trykcm.com bam and when you use KCM when you are a KCM member, it's like having a team of economists and housing experts in your back pocket like they are your staff telling you exactly what's happening, what's about to happen, what's in, what's happening in the future, what it means to your buyers, what it means to your sellers who want to sell, what it means to real estate investors that want to flip a property or get into rentals. They tell you everything. They give you marketing materials, they give you graphics to post on social, they give you video scripts and everything for how to communicate this stuff and create content for your audience. It's just an incredible tool. Go to try kcm.com bam use this tool. It's. It's very inexpensive compared to what you get. I highly recommend it. And then go to now bam.com first off, bookmark that page book now bam.com follow them on Instagram as well. App now Bam. But while you're there, go to the BamX community and join Use code massive at checkout. Save yourself some money. That's going to give you a discount on bamx membership, which is an online community of agents all around the country that are doing big shit, that are thinking big, they're entrepreneurial, they're collaborative. And these are agents you need to be connected with going into next year. Plus, they have events, they have masterminds, they have a bunch of free courses and trainings that members get for BAMEX. Go to nowbam.com join BAMX and use code massive at checkout and save yourself some money and make a ton more next year by the proximity of people that you're going to be connected to. I appreciate you guys listening so much. Please share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. Maybe it's your broker, maybe it's your team leader, maybe it's some fellow agents or, you know, some agents, agent friends across the country. Share it in a Facebook group. Share a link to it, you know, on. In your stories or on LinkedIn or whatever. But help us. Help me to reach new people. Help me to reach new agents because I keep coming back every freaking week, week after week after week, for now seven years. Because I know there's agents that don't have access to any of this perspective or information and they're doing the wrong shit and nobody's teaching them otherwise. So let's help those agents out. If you found value in this, please share it so that other agents can discover it as well. And just by sharing this episode or any of our episodes, or even just mentioning our podcast, you could potentially be impacting somebody's career. You could be impacting a family positively just by turning them onto this podcast, which is pretty crazy. And all you have to do is share it. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate it. There's just a. There's just a few weeks left of the year, so a few more episodes of 2024 before we get into 2025. I appreciate you listening. We'll be back next week with another episode of the Massive Agent podcast. Take care.