[T]echnology: The Perfect Closing Gift?
[E]ducation: Buckle Up
[C]oaching: Read the Notes Before You Walk to the Table
[H]ow To: Analyze Your Analytics
[T]echnology: The Perfect Closing Gift?
Apple finally put a screen in the house.
It's called HomeView. A 7-inch display that sits on your counter or mounts to the wall, runs Siri, shows up to nine camera feeds at once, does FaceTime, and recognizes up to six people in the house so everybody gets their own screen. $299. Pre-orders opened Monday, ships November 13.
Marques Brownlee's take is "not convinced," and I think I'm with him on this one. I don't know that I need it. 🤷
But here's the thing. The best gifts are the ones you wouldn't buy for yourself and would absolutely enjoy if someone handed them to you. That's this. At $300 it's a little steep for a gadget you're not sure about, which is exactly what makes it feel like a gift instead of a purchase.
Now think about who just bought a house. 🏠
New address, new doorbell camera, new thermostat, new everything. They're setting up a home, and the thing that ties the cameras and the locks and the lights together is sitting on their kitchen counter with your name on the card. Every time somebody in that house checks the front door or asks what the weather is, it's the agent's gift doing it.
Not every client. The right client. The Apple household, the one who asked about the doorbell at the inspection, the family that just moved in from out of town and doesn't know anybody yet.
If $300 is outside your closing gift budget, the HomePod mini 2 came out of the same event at $149, and the Google Nest Hub does most of the same job for the Google house.
The best closing gift is the one they'd never buy and use every day. 👍
[E]ducation: Buckle Up
Remember when we were all waiting on the first rate cut? Yeah. That's over.
The September inflation report came in hot on Tuesday. Consumer prices up 3.7% from a year ago, above what analysts expected and up from 3.4% in August. Core inflation beat forecasts too. Energy did most of the damage... gas up 34% year over year, fuel oil up 72%. Airfares, hospital bills, and groceries all moved the wrong direction. 📈
Mortgage rates reacted the same morning. The 30-year jumped from 7.46% to 7.56% on the report and settled around 7.5% by the afternoon.
Here's the part that matters. The Fed already raised rates in September, the first hike in three years. Before Tuesday, the market figured the next one was coming in December. After the report, the odds of a hike at the October 27-28 meeting went from 22% to 37% in a single day. Realtor.com's economist said we're in "when," not "if," territory. Real Estate News has the full breakdown.
And wages grew 3%. So paychecks have been losing to prices for six straight months.
I know. Buckle up. 🚗
But I've been doing this for 22 years, and here's what I've learned about markets that shift under your feet. The agents who get hurt aren't the ones in a bad market. They're the ones who keep running last year's playbook in it.
I came across Charlie Rocket this week and I can't stop thinking about this clip. Nothing bad has ever happened to him. The ex left, the job fired him, the brain tumor made him a Nike athlete. Every loss was a lesson. The quality of your life depends on your ability to see how good it is. More on Charlie next week... for now, apply it to the market.
Rates going up doesn't shrink the number of people who need to move. It shrinks the number of agents who know what to say to them. Think about who's left when the easy business leaves. The relocation that has a start date. The estate. The divorce. The growing family in a house that stopped fitting two years ago. None of those people are waiting for 6%. They're waiting for someone who can make the numbers work. 🧮
So here's where the opportunity actually lives this week.
Your buyers under contract need a lock conversation today, not next week. Floating into an October Fed meeting with a hot inflation print behind it is a bet, and it's not a good one.
Your fence-sitters have been promised a refi window that keeps moving. Stop selling them the rate. Sell them the payment, and get your lender on the phone about buydowns before they ask.
Your sellers need to hear that the buyer pool just got thinner and more rate-sensitive. Seller-paid buydowns and closing cost credits are about to be the difference between the house that moves and the house that sits. The listing that solves the payment problem wins.
And the agent who leaves because the market got hard? Their clients don't leave. Every downturn I've been through, the people who stayed picked up the business of the people who didn't.
A hard market isn't the problem. It's the filter.
The rate is the headline. The opportunity is who's still standing next to the client when the headline hits.
[C]oaching: Read the Notes Before You Walk to the Table
A Nashville restaurant guy named Sean Daniel Lyons has a reel with nearly half a million views, and it's a pre-shift meeting. That's it. The whole video is him standing behind the bar asking his staff questions.
Why is this piece of paper so important? Because it has the guest's name on it. The occasion. Whether they had a rough experience last time. When do we write the notes? The shift before... not the night of. Why the shift before? Because a host calls in sick, a server doesn't show, and the birthday table still needs to feel like a birthday table. If a reservation says "see notes," the server's next move is the host stand, before they ever say hello. 👋
Then he asks the room how they make a birthday actually feel special, since they get a hundred of them. One server says she tells the table there are a million restaurants in town and they picked hers... and that she's going to make sure they come back.
Now swap the words. Reservation becomes showing. Host stand becomes CRM. Birthday becomes the first house, the relocation, the divorce sale nobody's talking about at the table.
Three years ago I wrote about The Bear, and the restaurant that sends a car for people on the waitlist. I asked what systems you had in place to keep track of the experience. This is the system. It's a note card and a rule about when you read it. 📕
Here's the part that stings. Most agents already have the notes. The kid's name is in the CRM. The dog from the first showing is in a text thread somewhere. The anniversary is in an old email. The intel exists. What doesn't exist is the step where you read it before the appointment.
Restaurants figured out that collecting the information is worthless if reading it is optional. So they made it a required step with a time attached. Not "when you get a chance." The shift before.
Last week we talked about giving your AI a place to keep all of that so nothing gets lost. This is the other half. A note nobody reads before the showing is the same as no note.
So here's the pre-shift for an agent. Sunday night, open the week. For every appointment on the calendar, read the file and write one line: what's the occasion, and what happened last time. Thirty seconds a client. If you've got Victoria or a Marlowe or a ChatGPT with memory, make it do the reading and hand you the line... that's exactly the job.
Then walk to the table like that server. There are a million agents in town. They picked you. Say it. 📣
[H]ow To: Analyze Your Analytics
If you really want to take posting content for your business seriously, you have to analyze your analytics. What are analytics? Analytics are basically the data you receive from posting content on different platforms. Even if you don't post regularly, you still have analytics. Everyone does!
How do you view yours? For Instagram and Facebook, you can easily view your analytics through Meta Business Suite. Once you're in Meta Business Suite, you can access your analytics for both platforms. Simply look at the left-hand menu and click "Insights." From there, you can explore different metrics, including follower growth, reach, views, content interactions, link clicks, and page visits.
When you're in the "Insights" section, you can click on the "Content" tab to see exactly how specific posts performed. This makes it easier to identify what time of day, types of content, or hashtags work best for your audience. Now, what do these analytics actually mean? There are four main analytics you want to pay attention to:
Reach: The total number of unique people who saw your content. This is the first step when posting: getting eyes on your name and business.
Engagement: This is step number two. Getting people to like, comment on, or share your content. This shows that your content isn't just being seen, but it's also interesting enough to encourage a reaction from viewers.
Profile Visits: The next step is getting people to check out your page. Was your content so good that people wanted to stalk your profile and learn more about you?
Link Clicks/Leads: Lastly, what you really want is for people to click on your website or listings and hopefully turn into leads. I always think it's important to ask people how they heard about you or where the lead came from so you can keep track of how well your marketing efforts are working.
Now, let's analyze some analytics! For this example, we're going to look at my own. I currently only post on YouTube Shorts and TikTok, so we'll focus on my TikTok analytics. To access your TikTok analytics, click the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines) in the top-right corner of your profile. Select "TikTok Studio," then click "Analytics."
From here, you can see exactly when your followers are most active so you can plan your posting schedule accordingly. You can also get a better understanding of your audience's demographics. After analyzing my own analytics, I can see that I have clear spikes in views, but my traffic isn't consistent. This tells me that while some of my videos are performing really well, I haven't built an audience that consistently watches my content.
I can also see that I receive approximately one comment for every 92 views, which is great! This tells me that my content is encouraging people to engage. However, I still need to narrow down my niche and focus on building a more consistent audience. I've also learned that my followers are most active around 7 p.m. ⏰ Posting around this time could be beneficial because it allows me to share content when my audience is already online and more likely to engage.
So, what's the takeaway? Posting content is only half the battle. If you're not paying attention to your analytics, you're missing out on valuable information that can help you grow your business. Instead of guessing what works, use your data to make informed decisions about what to post, when to post, and where to focus your efforts. Remember, the goal isn't just to get views or go viral. It's to build an audience that recognizes your name, trusts your expertise, and eventually wants to work with you. Your analytics can help you figure out how to get there!
If your brokerage isn't providing you with the AI tools you need to save time, generate leads, and grow your business, let's change that.
-Ty Morton + Abby G