I had a conversation with a coaching client yesterday about getting 'back to basics'. This might be something that we tell ourselves when we are in a slump. Or maybe you've heard it from an internet guru recently. But what does that really mean? What ARE the basics? What ARE the fundamentals? If I were to say that to you, what would you automatically assume you needed to do? Pick up the phone? Send text messages? Send out emails? Maybe all of the above. To be honest, that sounds more like a shotgun blast approach and less measured and strategized than it should be. Here is what the basics means to me. Visibility. Visibility means your name showing up on your clients phone when you call or in a text message or an email or in their social threads. It means your name showing up on the front of an envelope, or you physically showing up on their doorstep. It means you need to get back in front of the people you've maybe been ignoring the last couple of years with a strategy that is going to get the ball rolling again. So let's chunk it down…if I tell you to pick up the phone and make some calls, what does the strategy look like? - Who are we calling and why? - When are we calling them? - How often are we calling them? - What do we say to them WHEN we call? - What do we want the outcome to be? If I said to email your clients, chunk it down… - What platform are we using to send the emails? - Who are we emailing and why? - When are we emailing them, days and times? - WHAT are we saying in the emails to get responses and engagement? - WHEN are we going to put this into action? - Getting 'Back to Basics' or the 'Fundamentals' will mean different things to different business owners. If you are stuck and need to turn things around, take a look at your business and understand what worked in the past. Examine what you did. Write it down. Then work out a plan to deploy it consistently in your business and watch things turn around.

Over the last 4 years or so I have been getting between 40-55% open rates pretty consistently out of my email lists. Like clockwork...send an email and it was always bang on in that range. Then 6 months ago, something changed. It could be how Apple presents emails from lists now. It could have been increased 'spam' security from Google. It could have been a combo of those things or something else altogether. I couldn't place it. All I knew was that something was broken and I needed to fix it. So...I took my last 5 emails and posted them up into Grok. I also added in Open Rates and Click Through Rates (CTR) and asked the Ai to help me figure out what the problem was. Grok came back with a list of things to fix, the first of which was to get rid of all the bounced and unsubscribed from the list. Unknowingly, this was hurting me. Second, I needed to start segmenting my lists based on their behaviour. Third, I needed to fix the content that was going out. I did everything that I was told to do and came out with some pretty amazing results so far. Open rates jumped almost 10% on one send. Of course, this will only improve over time so long as I continue with the style of content that creates engagement. I didn't have any clickable links in this email so no CTR, but I can say this email with a strong CTA increased my engagement with my list. I heard from people I have never heard from before and was honoured to provide some massive value for their real estate business in 2026. YOU HAVE TO KNOW... 2026 is the SEPARATION year for those leveraging Ai versus those that aren't. If you want to make moves in 2026 and begin to leverage Ai in ways that will blow your competition out of the water, then consider the Ai Agent Advantage Course. We get going on January 14th!

After battling for a few hours with Chat GPT, I think I finally figured out how to create a custom GPT that incorporates scatter charters, graphs and other pricing info. The real trick here is our MLS doesn’t allow us to export info into a CSV so I had to create a prompt to pull info from PDF listing files I load in . It’s a pain in the ass but I think I have it figured out