Are you frustrated and struggling as a realtor in these crazy times in America right now? Are you trying to figure out what to do in this recession that’s impacting every industry, including the housing market?
Even though America isn’t technically in a recession right now, it sure feels like it.
The U.S. economy has been hit pretty hard the last couple years. Inflation. Stagnant wages. Sky-high interest rates. Epic layoffs.
It can be easy to look around and say, “What can I really do but wait it out? Nothing’s happening in the real estate market and I just have to wait for things to turn around again.”
Stop!
There are actually a ton of ways you can not only survive but thrive in a recession. I’m going to show you the top real estate tips for a recession.
Economic downturns actually cause lots of opportunities for those who know where to look, and who have the right mindset.
I’m going to teach you how to…
- Make more money (yes, even during a recession)
- Increase your real estate sales and commissions
- Boost your happiness
- Bring more attention to you from your community
So, ready to become recession-proof?
Let’s go!
Stop Making Excuses!
First, I always tell my students that everything starts with the right mindset.
If you’ve ever caught yourself saying, “I don’t have enough time! I’m not getting enough done. People just aren’t buying (or selling). Everything is just so hard!”
Look, I’ve been there. I get it.
I’ve gone through these cycles before—and I’ve learned how to kick myself into gear and start taking real control of my real estate business.
Again, it all starts with mindset. With a winning mindset, clear goals, action steps, and a high level of commitment, there is literally nothing that can stand in your way.
But on the other hand, if you’re struggling, moping, thinking about all the negative things that are going wrong—and spending too much time on Netflix or other things—you’re going to stay in that place. You won’t be attracting buyers or sellers and your real estate business will struggle. Not fun.
It’s time for you to break free! I believe that now is your time, especially as we head into 2024.
Start filling your mind with positive affirmations. It might sound weird or cheesy at first, but trust me. This stuff works!
Stay positive. Hang around positive, inspiring, and motivating people. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you can turn your business around. Having a winning mentality and developing your identity into someone who is successful and achieves versus someone who lets life happen to them.
Now, once you’ve got your head in the right place, what can you do next to be successful during a recession?
Here are some tips. And some of them are super practical so you can start applying them right away.
Focus on Profitable Efforts vs. Unprofitable Efforts
We’re all given the same amount of time. But we spend it differently.
How are you spending your time? Are you focused and on fire? Or do you find yourself kind of flailing regarding your time management?
I get it. It can be super hard to know what to focus on when you’re a real estate agent. It sometimes feels like everything has to be done all at once—and due yesterday.
But I’m going to show you a simple way to see time management that I hope will be a game-changer for you.
It all comes down to profitable efforts vs. unprofitable efforts.
Profitable efforts are activities, habits, tactics—basically all choices—that create time and energy. They generate revenue for you, or they develop events that actually lead to revenue.
Profitable activities free up mental space and give you results. This is because of the action and momentum that is created. It becomes cause and effect. Do X and Y will result.
Unprofitable efforts are activities, habits, tactics, and choices that steal your time and energy. Things you do or people you spend time with that deplete your mental space, that increase your insecurity, confusion, and procrastination, and leave you broke, stagnant, and stalled.
Now, you might be saying, “Krista, this all makes sense. But how do I figure out which things I’m doing fall into which category?”
Well, I’m glad you asked!
How to Know Which Is Which
There are a few easy ways to see if you’re spending too much time in unprofitable activities.
- Look at your income and revenue
- Study your listings, closings, and deals
- Look at current leads and leads you have in the pipeline
Start by looking at your results and asking, “Am I capturing people’s attention? Are people liking, commenting, engaging, and sharing?”
Are you generating leads? How big is your audience? What kind of engagement are you seeing?
These are just a few metrics you can look at to see if your results are producing profit or profit-generating events.
But there’s more you can look at.
Other Metrics to Look At
Here are a few more things to look at when examining how you’re spending your time. Taking a hard look at these areas will help you measure if what you’re doing is profitable or not.
- Your levels of energy, motivation, inspiration, and excitement.
- Your authority, influence, and your brand presence
- Your personal connections, relationships, and leads
Now that you’ve audited your results and some of the things you’re focused on, let’s see what you can do to really move the needle to become recession-proof.
There are some specific things you can do daily, weekly, and monthly that will help you level up.
Ways to Take Your Real Estate Business to the Next Level
Start doing an inventory daily, weekly and monthly of everything you’re doing and see if your efforts are profitable. In other words, is what you’re doing actually making you money, or are you just spinning your wheels?
It’s been said that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. So we’re going to measure what you’re doing and see what results you’re getting.
Here’s how it works.
Track every activity you do on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis and mark down which category they are in—profitable efforts or unprofitable efforts.
This is going to be really eye-opening for you. You might feel a little discouraged at first, but you’ll quickly start seeing opportunities to focus on better, more income-generating things.
Once you have all your activities written down and categorized, you can then start to replace unprofitable efforts with profitable efforts.
For example, if you typically watch an hour of TV every night to wind down before bed, what if you swapped that out for a book? And not just any book, but one that specifically tied into your business and gave you more education to do better.
Replace the activities in your life that are stealing your time and energy, wealth and momentum, and replace them with things that will actually build momentum and help you reach your goals.
I want you to be thinking about what you can do to make more money, boost your happiness, and grab and redirect more attention to you from your community.
Start every day by asking this simple question: “Is what I’m doing daily helping me make more money?”
Examples of Profitable Activities
Here are a few examples of things you can do on a daily basis that I would put in the “profitable efforts” column.
- Create content
- Make videos
- Do community-related content
- Create niche-related content
- Send emails
- Meet with accountability partners
- Video text messages
- Client communication
- Research and stay on top of what’s happening in the local MLS. Look at how many listings there are, and what’s changing in the market, and then communicate that in more effective ways to your clients.
- Become more engaged in Facebook Groups. And while you’re there, focus on serving people, not selling. Answer people’s questions, add value, give recommendations, give support, and give referrals for local professions and local businesses.
- Share resources, links, and tools with other agents to create meaningful relationships and conversations on a daily basis.
All of this has everything to do with being successful during a recession. It’s all about taking control of your business, and not letting outside forces dictate how well you do.
Most people don’t realize how much control they have over their lives, their health, their jobs, and their money.
If you do even just half of these tips, I guarantee you will start to see a major turnaround in your business and you’ll be leaving those recession thoughts in the rearview mirror.
Next, let’s look at some things you can do weekly.
What You Can Do on a Weekly Basis
Here are some profitable activities you can focus on weekly that will help you grow your business.
Content repurposing—This is when you do one video and use that content in other places. For instance, you can use part of the video script for a YouTube video for emails or social media posts. Take a video and turn it into five smaller videos for TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram, and Facebook.
Networking—Network with other people in your community who have larger groups of people following them. Get in front of other people’s audiences by having affiliations and supporting people in your community.
Marketing funnels—You can also send people to your marketing funnels. (A funnel is simply a marketing term for the way you’re bringing in new clients through content and ads.)
Here are a few examples of funnels I’ve had that have worked well:
- “What’s my home worth?” funnel
- “Seller seminar” funnel
- “Listing presentation” funnel
- And so many more… (Get creative!)
You can create ads that send people into our funnels and let them binge-watch what you’re doing. Educate them on the market conditions and set them up for success. The more you help people, the more that will come back around in your revenue.
You can also schedule and coordinate community interviews. Or attend coaching calls, trainings, webinars, courses, and educate yourself about the market.
There are literally so many things you can do! The sky is the limit.
What Should I Be Doing Monthly?
Now, what about monthly?
You can audit your marketing campaigns and check on the reporting to see how well they are performing.
Again, look at the results. How is everything working? How can you change what you’re doing to make improvements? How can you carry out better tests to see what works the best to connect with people? How are you solving people’s pain points when it comes to buying or selling a house?
Use these insights to create your next monthly marketing campaign.
You should also:
- Update your CRM monthly
- Launch new Facebook ads and other ad campaigns.
- Release new videos
- Launch new email sequences
- Update your social proof. Get more testimonials every single month.
“Just sold” marketing is also an awesome way to reach people and bring awareness to your brand as a realtor. Send out mailers with a digital twist on it that sends them to one of your funnels. An example would be including a QR code that people can use with their phone that directs them to one of your websites or landing pages. People actually like getting mail now because they’re not used to getting it.
You can also do monthly seminars. Here are a few ideas for topics to cover to get you started:
- Buyers
- Seller
- Refinance
- Credit repair
- Home owner-related education
All these things are profitable activities you can start doing today that will pay off. Guaranteed. These will absolutely give you more time and make you recession-proof.
Always Be Innovating
Finally, think about when the pandemic hit. What did restaurants and bars do? When people couldn't go to the bars, the businesses made cocktail kits and sold those. Or restaurants upped their take-out game and made it easier for people to order online and pick up from their car.
Whatever you do, don’t freak out about the market changing. Or a recession. Slow down, take a deep breath.
Also realize that most of your competitors will be paralyzed, not knowing what to do. They’re nervous, anxious, scared. Many of them will actually get out of the business. So this is a time for you to really go for it!
Instead of panicking, just change and innovate what you’re doing. Try new things. Think outside the box.
During the last recession back in 2008, I completely transformed my business and it turned out to actually be one of my best years. I sold 169 homes!
And you can do it, too. Just be innovative.
Now that we saw the top real estate tips for a recession, what else can you do to level up your game?
You’ve Got This!
I’ve spent the last 20 years working in real estate. And I’ve learned a lot of right (and wrong) ways of doing things.
If you’re ready to really level things up in your real estate game, check out my website to learn how to become an unstoppable real estate agent in today’s market—no matter what’s going on in the news.
My free digital marketing mastery class will teach you the best strategies to help you generate more real estate leads and empower you to dominate any real estate market.
Here are just a few things you’ll learn:
- How to increase your income through the levels of communication.
- The right way to scale your business by becoming an innovator and thought leader in your community.
- Tools to developing the right mindset and identity shift.
- How to generate more leads while you sleep with marketing strategies used by the world’s most successful brands.
- How to develop a content engine strategy so you never again have to worry about inconsistent income.
I don’t want you to simply survive real estate market trends—I want you to thrive!
Stand out from the competition. Secure your future as a top 1% real estate agent by taking my 3-day digital marketing mastery class.
If you would like to work on your mindset, be more productive, get more done, hold yourself accountable, ditch those limiting beliefs, and you want someone to help you through, sign up today to invest in yourself and your future!
