You may remember the big story in the
news awhile back about ?Cecil,? the
well-known African lion. A dentist from
Minnesota allegedly lured Cecil out of
the protected park by dragging a dead
animal off the back of a car as bait, in the
middle of the night so he wouldn?t be
seen. Once he got Cecil to the legal
hunting area, he killed, skinned and
beheaded the lion to be mounted. This
jerk not only broke the rules for his own
gain, he did some serious damage to the
reputation of hunters around the world.
I grew up in Alaska, and hunting is a part
of life up there. Hunting for food is an
honorable job so long as you go about it
in an ethical manner. In America, every
September-November is hunting season,
when hunters (hopefully) set out with
the core mission of filling their freezers
8
to feed their family.
For t hose of you who are real est at e
agent s, you may have not iced t hat
Sept ember-November is al so recruit ing
season f or real est at e brokerages.
Odds are high that in your inbox right
now there are multiple messages from
brokerages that are trying to recruit you.
You may even have somebody
persistently calling or wooing you to
come over to their brokerage, or to ?have
coffee? with you. Sometimes the
recruiting is done by agents of the
brokerage, who have high incentives to
bring on agents. It could be from a paid
recruiter for a team or firm (although
their title is never ?recruiter? but usually
something fancy like ?business
development manager? or ?agent
happiness director?).
It can be quit e f l at t ering t o get
recruit ed. Where you current l y hang
your l icense, you may be ignored or
under-appreciat ed, and t hen al l of a
sudden someone appears t o not ice how
awesome you real l y are. Feel s good.
Right ?
So what is the problem? Is there one?
YES ? Agent Beware.
As the housing market cools down in the
fall, recruiting season really heats up,
and agents are on the move. Many of
these agents have been wooed by
someone from another real estate
company. When I say wooed, I mean they
have been court ed, romanced, and
seduced into switching brokerages.
I spoke to two agents just this week who
told me how they got the full court press