You might be working hard, but are you working smart?
Chris Cook dives deep into the common traps real estate agents fall into when setting their goals and power plans for the new year.
He shares real insights from reviewing agent submissions in the PATH program, showing how vague strategies and “busy work” often replace meaningful, measurable action.
From dissecting the importance of being definitive (no more “2-3 open houses!”) to sharing personal examples of how community involvement drove real results, Chris provides a playbook for how agents can stop hiding behind planning and start connecting with people—where it counts.
Get ready to tighten up strategies, own your schedule, and become the visible, trusted leader your sphere needs in 2026.
Listen For
:44 Why do most agents fall short on their goals each year?
3:45 What’s the danger of vague strategies like “2 to 3 open houses”?
6:58 How can school drop-off lead to more listings?
11:48 What personal passion can you turn into a client goldmine?
16:01 What is the #1 thing agents get wrong in their power plans?
Connect with Chris, Sales Representative | Team Lead at The Haylard Group – RE/MAX Hallmark ®
Website | Email
Read the Summary Below
Working In Your Business vs. On Your Business
In this solo New Year episode, Chris shares insights from reviewing dozens of Power Plans submitted through the PATH program—and highlights a common pattern holding agents back. While most agents have strong goals (like increasing business by 30–40%), many are filling their strategies with “working on the business” tasks—such as improving buyer guides, organizing CRMs, or refining processes—instead of focusing on “working in the business” activities that directly generate relationships and revenue.
Chris emphasizes the importance of specificity and commitment in strategy. Vague ranges like “2–3 open houses per month” lack power compared to a clear, measurable commitment like “3 open houses per month.” The same applies to CRM goals—organizing it isn’t enough; agents should commit to adding one new contact per day and define exactly how they’ll do it.
He shares two powerful personal examples of organic lead generation: hosting parent events through his children’s school community and reconnecting with his sailing network by joining a yacht club. The key isn’t being salesy—it’s becoming a visible leader in communities you genuinely care about. By solving problems, creating events, and consistently engaging, agents build trust and position themselves as the go-to real estate professional.
The core message: strong goals aren’t the issue. Weak or vague strategies are. Agents don’t need more priorities—they need clearer, more intentional execution around the few that matter most. Consistency, community leadership, and daily relationship-building are what ultimately drive sustainable growth.
Full Episode Transcript
Chris Cook (00:06):
Welcome to 2026 and the new year version of Mind Your Real Estate Business. This week, I’m going to be going solo because I’ve been spending so much time reviewing the power plans for agents that have been going through our newest path program. And I want to talk about specifically, I want to talk about all of the different things that I’m seeing that are on the good and the not so good side. And when I say not so good, I want to qualify that. It’s not necessarily that these things are bad, but I typically, I see the same things over and over again. I see a lot of agents who want to perform at a higher level, AKA they want more business. They want to get connected with more people and have more people call them to help them with real estate. The problem that I’m seeing is that a lot of agents are working on their business instead of in their business.
(01:10):
They’re working on things where they’re setting priorities and strategies around having a better buyer guide, having a better buyer or seller process, populating their CRM with people from their database and tagging them. These are things that really, the way I qualify it is there’s daytime activities like during working hours, and then there’s after work activities. So an example of this would be like working on your buyer guide. Why would you spend your nine to five working on a buyer guide? That’s a great and perfect time for you to be engaging and reaching out and meeting new people, talking to the people that you already know. So as I went through all these different power plans, I started seeing the same theme emerging over and over again. I want to increase my business. I want to do 30%, 40% more business in 2026, but the activities that I’m seeing that were falling under priorities and strategies were a lot of the same sort of thing.
(02:29):
And that’s like I said, I want to build my database. I want to meet new people. And so I kept sending back my replies is like, okay, how? Doing what specifically? One of the things that I saw, to give you a specific example here, work more open houses or work two to three open houses. And so these were things where I started to ask people to be more definitive in their strategies. So their priority was, I want to meet more people. And one of their strategies was work more open houses. That’s great. So what I would say is how many? Specifically, how many more open houses are you going to do? Are you going to work one open house being a Saturday and Sunday per week, three per month, four per month? What is the exact number? Then the other thing that I saw a lot of was people, agents were writing that they were going to do two to three open houses per month, which is definitely, that’s a huge improvement from just working open houses.
(03:45):
But again, I would want to put a challenge out to anybody that uses the terms two to three or one to two or two to four. For me, it doesn’t sound definitive enough. It’s more likely for you to fall off if you’re giving a range. So this is what I would say to people is, instead of saying two to three open houses, let’s be definitive and let’s aim for the top. So instead of two to three, just write three. So I’ll ask you as an audience member, which one sounds better? I’m going to work two to three open houses per month, or I am going to work three open houses per month. Which one of those two things sounds like I’m actually going to do that I’m going to follow through with this. And so for me, the three, just saying I’m going to work three open houses per month.
(04:44):
It’s definitive, it’s measurable, and that’s something that I can hold myself accountable for. So that’s an example of some of the things that I’ve seen where we have to be a lot more specific in our intentions and what we expect of ourselves on a week-to-week basis.
(05:07):
A lot of people also, they talked about their CRM and organizing their CRM. For me, that’s a now activity like evenings is a great time to work on your CRM after the kids have gone to bed or whatever. That’s not a working hours thing. That would be a great thing to have done over the break. And that was, I sent a lot of people messages saying, “That’s a great thing to do over the break.” I don’t think that that should be a priority for you in the new year. I think that that should be something that’s already done so that you can hit the ground running on the 5th of January.
(05:44):
Then the follow-up to that was instead of just saying, “I’m going to organize my CRM.” Let’s say the CRM is going to be completed, including tagging by the 5th of January, and then starting on week one, I’m going to add one new person to my database every single day. I say one every single day so that it’s very intentional. Then that would be a priority for me. Then my strategy would be on how I’m going to add one new person to my database every single day. And so for this, what I want to do is I want to give some personal examples on ways that I have in the past engaged with new people and added them into my database. Some of these things are new for 2026, and some of them are things that I’ve been doing in the past. So here’s the two examples.
(06:51):
I’m going to start with my kids and my school.
(06:58):
Years ago when I was a new agent, I had, at the time, one new baby who was going to daycare, and the daycare was connected to the school. So the school goes kindergarten, junior, kindergarten up to grade five, and then there was two years of daycare before that. So that’s nine, 10 years for my first kid in that school. And then I have two other kids that are going to be going through there. So I have a lot of longgevity within that particular school. And so what I had decided to do was I wanted to meet more people and I wanted to meet them organically. I didn’t want to meet them by saying, “Hey, I’m Chris. I’m a real estate agent. Are you thinking about moving?” I wanted to meet them in a way that was really organic, but still let them know what it is that I do.
(07:54):
And so my thought process and the advice that I give to other agents is to be strategic with the way that they’re connecting with their community and to solve a problem. If you can solve a problem for somebody and be a leader in that department, it’s going to be hugely beneficial for you because people are going to look at to you as a leader and they’re going to look to you as somebody that is able to solve problems. So for me, what I did was I had joined the local Legion, which I was going to use as a venue for my parents’ night out. Three times a year, I’m going to have an event at the Legion and it’s going to be a fundraiser that’s pay what you want. So I’m going to organize the event at the Legion. I’m going to get a DJ and I’m going to have some fun activities to do.
(08:59):
There’s usually there’s Snooker and there’s darts, and then we would also have Giant Jenga and a few other games, plus the cheap alcohol for the parents at the Legion, which is also a big draw. And then what I would do is I would make a commitment every single day that I did drop off was to meet a new parent and invite them to the parent’s night out that I was going to do end of September. I’m going to do another one in end of January, and I’m going to do another one in the spring, probably in May sometime. Those are the three events. And what I’m going to do is every time I do drop off, every time I meet somebody new, I’m going to tell them about the parents’ night and how much fun it is and how many people come out. This way, I’m meeting people and I’m connecting with them at a community level.
(09:51):
Every parent that has young kids is looking for a way to get out and a way to meet new people that are also in the community. So this really takes off and connects you with a lot of people. And it organically lets them also know that I’m a real estate agent. I’m the sponsor of that particular event, and this is how I’m going to connect with that community. Kid drop off is every single day. And if you make a commitment of meeting new people and strengthening that community bond, then they’re going to start thinking about you from a real estate perspective. As it did for me, this actually worked for me very, very well. And it’s something that I’ve encouraged some other agents to think about. How do you connect with that community through your kids?
(10:40):
So that’s one way. The other thing that when I talk to a lot of people, they feel like their work and their personal life are these completely separate things. And what I’ve come to realize, and what I tell people is that that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case, that some of the best connections that you make with people are going to be through shared experiences and the things that you enjoy doing and they enjoy doing as well. So the personal example for me, I’ve been involved in sailing for my entire life, but for 12 years, I’ve not been a member at a yacht club. And so I was thinking about it and I’m like, how is this possible that with my background that I’m not connected with a yacht club. Yacht club is a perfect place to connect with people that are like- minded, but also live in the community, probably own a house that I can connect with, that I can get involved with at the club level.
(11:48):
I can be involved with the junior sailing programs. There’s all kinds of different things that I can do to connect at a community level doing something that I really enjoy. I’ve talked to some other agents as well that have, they’re rowers, they’re in car clubs, they love dogs, they’re involved in mom groups. There’s all kinds of different ways that you can do this. So one of my suggestions is that as you go through, maybe the priority is to meet new people and add new people to your database, but you don’t want to be salesy, then part of that strategy can be not just to get involved in these groups, but be a leader with these groups. If you can initiate something and be that leader, you’re going to be much more visible to the other people that are getting involved and you’re going to position yourself as a leader.
(12:41):
So those are a couple of examples and that I would really challenge people to build out what the actual activities are going to be. So within that, what I’ve talked about, we’ll use the parents’ night, for example, I’m connecting with people every day that I do drop off. So that’s actually five days of the week I’m doing drop off. That’s when I’m going to connect and strengthen those relationships. So I want to meet a new person every single day at drop off and I’ve made that a priority. So that’s a strategy number one. I want to invite them to this event that I’m going to have three times a year. That’s a strategy. I’m also as a byproduct, which I love, is that I’m now connected with the Legion and the members of the Legion. They love when I show up, we boost their bar numbers, we get an activity at the Legion that is youthful and exuberant.
(13:39):
They love that. We get the DJ there and we include the Legion members as well in the evening. It’s got a really great symbiotic relationship between the school and the Legion that benefits everybody. And I have the added benefit of being the leader of that on both sides. So the more you think about your strategy and you think about how can I build on this, the more you’re going to meet people organically and that business will start to flow to you if you’re consistent with it. So this is the most important thing and why the strategies are so important is that you need to be consistent and engage on a regular basis. So just before the break, before the holiday here, I had Corey Gargani on the podcast and we talked about the power plan and path. What I love about this so much is the goals, priorities, and strategies.
(14:43):
It’s called, he calls it the GPS. And what it does is it takes you from what you want to achieve to action items. And like I said, where I see people have fallen off as they go from goals, priorities, strategies, the strategies is where things really fall off because they’re not intentional and active enough. And that’s where I would really love to see more people in this business start to engage with people, not in a salesy sort of way where you’re phoning, asking, “When do you want to sell your house?” But instead, connecting with people at a community level and really offering value and leadership in a community, that’s where I think things are really going to explode. So as usual, when I’m by myself, I don’t have another guest to banter with. I want to get straight to the point. So what I’m going to do here is I’m going to wrap up with a synnopsis of where I think a lot of agents are not getting the full potential out of their business.
(16:01):
And where I see the breakdown, it’s not in the goals. I think the goals, for most agents, the goals are solid. People understand what it is they want. The priorities start to get a little bit weaker.
(16:16):
With a priority, that’s where you want to talk about, “I want to build my database.” That’s where you talk about connecting with your sphere. Another priority would be, let’s see here, geofarming, that’s another perfect example. And then where 90% of the agents really miss is on the strategies and the execution of these things and breaking it down so that you can layer in all kinds of other opportunities off of those priorities. A great one that I really loved was, and one of my first guests was Pat Gillis, and we talked about one of his biggest strategies is connecting with his sphere of influence. These are the people that already know, like, and trust you. And so what he does is he really stays connected with them through client events. He treats them to sporting events, to dinners. He does Popbuys, he does cards. He really makes his best clients and friends feel loved.
(17:24):
And he does it from a position of real actual love. It’s not something that he does in a selfish sort of way. He pours this love on because he does really like these people, but also because they’re the lifeblood of his business. That’s one of his core strategies is connecting with those people through those very specific activities. And so what I want to leave you with is how are your goals leading to what your priorities are and then what specific activities are fueling your strategies? How can you improve your strategies so that you’re not adding more different things to your business, but strengthening the core activities that you really have decided to build your business off of in the GPS under priorities, there’s only three slots there for you to fill out what your priorities are. So you don’t have to be multidimensional and have five or six or 10 different priorities that you’re working on because most people don’t have the bandwidth to be able to execute all of those things well and have strong strategies.
(18:41):
So I hope that out of this, you’ve gotten a few tidbits on how to actually strengthen the working in your business versus on your business, to work in your business when it’s not that nine to five, those daylight hours, and work on your business in those downtimes so that you can make the most out of your time and really excel.
(19:13):
So here’s the offer that I’m going to make. If you haven’t done the PATH program, if you haven’t engaged with the PowerPlan, and this is something that you really would like to do, I invite you to send me an email, Ch***@***********rk.com. Send me an email and I will personally take the time to explain how this program works, to vet out what your goals, priorities, and strategies are, help you get something that is really strong, that’s going to make a very big difference in your 2026 so that whatever your goal is, if your goal is to add 20, 30% to your bottom line, this is something that we can help you build through very intentional activities. Thanks so much for listening to this week’s episode of Mind your Real Estate Business. Happy New Year to everybody, and we’ll see you on the next episode.
