09/25/2026
In late 2015, I attended my first real estate conference. I started the conference with excitement for what could be. The breakthrough year we all hope to experience could be a reality if I just implemented the tactics shared and rode the motivation wave from the “rah rah” speeches. Halfway through, I found myself paralyzed by the sheer amount of information being communicated. I was drinking from a fire house and had no idea what fire to put out first.
Ultimately, I decided that I would take good notes, then go home and figure it out. Just to get home and never figure it out. It was just too much information to prioritize and execute on.
I learned the hard way that 20 good ideas in the workbook are far less valuable than one great idea actually put into practice.
This week I had the great honor of emceeing Platform Marketing's Mastermind 2026 in Boise, Idaho. If you were in the room, you heard me (repeatedly) challenge the Platfam to identify their ONE THING—the single takeaway they plan to implement the moment they return to business.
In the spirit of practicing what I preach, here is my ONE THING…
Connor Boyack, one of our esteemed speakers this week, talked about building a moat around your business. The moat isn't your product or your process. It’s the trust you've earned with real people. Influence is the currency.
If I’m being honest, this talk wasn’t a lightbulb moment, but a confirmation. I've been circling this thought for a while, watching our industry get hit by no inventory, then runaway prices, then runaway rates, all on top of an affordability problem that isn't going away. That kind of chaos makes you feel like your business is at the mercy of forces you don't control.
We've always taken marketing seriously. What changed is realizing it isn't support for the business — it is the business. So here's my one thing: We're going to be a marketing company that sells real estate, instead of a real estate company that does good marketing.
To be clear, we're not walking away from real estate. Helping our community buy and sell homes is still the job. But this lens opens up something bigger. In addition to serving our clients well, we want to serve this community well. That means using our platform to put local businesses in front of the people who need them, connecting neighbors to services worth trusting, and helping the small businesses around us actually thrive. The way we do all of that is by being genuinely good at marketing.
So we're hiring a full-time videographer. Not to make listing videos, but to tell stories, build community, and connect with the people who know us, like us, and trust us.
That's the moat. And building it is the part I get to control.
I’m curious, what was your ONE THING? Share it with me down in the comments!
