IN CHARGE ENERGY ONLY

WELCOME

Hey y’all! Happy Wednesday!

I’m home from Nashville, but mentally, I feel like I’m still there. I can’t stop thinking about the event. We hosted In Charge last week and let me say this—this was not a conference in the way people are used to. We gathered sixty women who showed up ready to work and have real conversations. Together, we took a hard look at where they’re playing small in a business they already know how to win.

So today I want to talk about what I saw, what surprised me, and what actually shifts when women stop waiting and start taking charge. Because whether you’re running a team or just getting started, that’s the lever that changes everything.

THE REALITY OF REAL ESTATE

They Don’t Search the Way They Used to

One of our big points of discussion in Nashville is how much everything’s changed in the past few years. What I notice more than anything is that buyers just aren’t shopping the way they did even two years ago. It used to be that buyers would endlessly scroll listings and save dozens and dozens. Then they’d call me and I’d spend half my day answering the same five questions. “Glennda, how big is the bedroom? Will my couch fit? What’s the kitchen actually like?” And then we’d get there in person and realize they weren’t even close to being serious about the place.

Well, the times they are a-changing. What I’m seeing now (and what we talked about in Nashville) is that buyers are coming in more informed, more specific, and honestly, way more impatient. They don’t want to “browse” so much as they want to refine and get this over with already. They want to know exactly what they’re walking into before they ever step foot in the house because they’re tired of wasting time. I feel like this is where this next phase of search is going.

What’s so great is that Homes.com just rolled out Homes Ai. I love how buyers are actually using it. The days of typing in filters are as over as when we’d use a cassette tape to record the song we liked off the radio. Instead, buyers are talking to Homes Ai like they’d talk to us. They can say, “Find me a three-bedroom in Atlanta,” and then follow up with, “Narrow it down to something walkable.” With Homes Ai, they can ask super specific questions like, “Will my nana’s dining room table fit with enough room to include her sideboard, too?” Because they don’t even want to bother to see a place if it means they can’t use their inherited dining set for Thanksgiving.

This is what I call a whole different level of engagement. Your buyers can walk through a home virtually with Matterport 3D Tours, where they can ask questions in real time. Better yet, they can strip out the furniture out to view the space clean, so they’re seeing the space and not someone else’s taste. They can compare one kitchen to another. And how about this? They even get their questions answered in their own language. I’m talking about a round-the-clock open house, with no fresh cookies required.

By the time buyers reach out to us, they’re not making those surface-level queries. They’re asking the real questions that only we can answer. When they engage with us, it's about what will actually move a deal forward. That’s because the lead still comes to the listing agent.

I’ll tell you right now, there are a whole lot of platforms that have zero problem wedging themselves in the middle between you and your clients. Homes.com isn’t trying to do that. They’re trying to make the buyer smarter and send them directly to you, prepped and ready. I feel like that’s a shift worth paying attention to.

If buyers are getting sharper before they ever call us, our job gets a whole lot more interesting… and a whole lot more efficient!

STORYTIME WITH GLENNDA

The Room Where It Happened

Because I have been selling real estate since Jesus was a baby, I’ve been going to real estate conferences just as long. Over the years, I realized that the more events I attended, the more I noticed what was missing on those stages.

Or, rather, who.

The hard and fast truth is that sixty-seven percent of real estate agents are women. Y’all, we are literally the majority of this business, but on every conference stage, it’s a sea of men running the show, with maybe one token woman. That disparity absolutely denies the fact that it’s we women out there every day, listing houses, showing property, negotiating deals, and keeping the clients together when they want to fall apart.

Worse yet, look at who’s perceived as holding the industry’s power. I’m telling y’all, it’s the same story as the representation on stage. Pull up any “Top 50” or “Top 100 Most Powerful People in Real Estate” list, and we’ve got to scroll to even find a woman. Sometimes we don’t see one until we’re twenty names in! Or how about the C-suite across brokerages? It’s the same damn pattern because 95% of the CEOs are men. I cannot square the circle of how an industry that’s overwhelmingly powered by women ends up being led, publicly represented, and directed almost entirely by men. (Mind you—it’s not that I don’t love men, as evidenced by my three marriages.)

What really gets stuck in my craw is that the person making the business run and holding the relationships together is almost always a woman. So why is she not on the stage? Why isn’t she being quoted? How come we’re not seeing her positioned as the authority? I think a lot of women don’t even question this because we’ve been trained to defer. Or we just assume someone else has the answer. We tend to listen to whoever has the microphone. But when you actually sit with the numbers, this disparity should bother you.

It bothered me enough to finally build something where that dynamic doesn’t exist. I was inspired to create a space where the people doing the work are also the people leading the conversation. Because if sixty-seven percent of the industry is women, then the future of the industry should look like women, too. I reached a point where I was done sitting in rooms that didn’t reflect the reality of the business, so Kelly Anne Harris and I did something about it.

What we put together in Nashville for In Charge was intentionally small. We wanted a group that felt intimate. People kept telling us how great it was that they could actually talk to each other, that they weren’t just sitting in the dark taking notes. They had the time and space to have conversations that didn’t feel surface-level. I love that the women who showed up made a real commitment to be there. Oh, my stars and stripes, they came from all over, from Canada to New Mexico! These women booked flights and hotels and rearranged their schedules to be a part of our Power Suite. That told me that they weren’t just dabbling; they came because they were invested.

We structured the day around working sessions, whether it was video, wealth building, listings, or relationships. We talked through real scenarios and not just theory for theory’s sake. We gave people information they could take home and immediately use. The video conversation stuck with me more than I expected. So many women want to do it, and they know it matters, but they hesitate right at the starting line. They’re too worried about how they sound, how they look, whether they have the right setup. I was there myself six years ago, so this was a tangible reminder of how long people can stagnate in a space, even when they’re otherwise moving forward in their business.

One of the most valuable things that came out of the entire event for me was the listing workshop. Let me tell y’all, I did not expect to be sitting there mesmerized the way I was. This agent got up and walked us through her process, and before she even got into the “how,” her numbers told the story. She went on eighty-two listing appointments and took eighty of them, and seventy-eight of those actually sold.

I think we all know that’s not normal. Even at a high level, that’s not normal.

So I’m sitting there thinking, What are you doing differently? The answer is her certainty. She walks into every appointment 100% convinced that she’s the best option. There’s no internal debate, no “pick me” energy radiating off her. Of course they’re going to choose her because she knows deep in her bones that she’s the best option.

When she sits down at her appointment, she tells them, “I’m excited to be here. Sell me your house.” I had never heard that before, and it stopped me cold, because it shifts the entire conversation. The seller’s got to articulate what they have, what they think it’s worth, and what matters about it. It immediately puts her in a position of control without ever having to say it out loud. She also doesn’t send anything in advance. Instead, she brings everything with her and handles it right there at the table, which means there’s no chance for the energy to fall off after she leaves. Once she has the listing, she stays on it. It’s just that simple.

What I took from her session wasn’t just a new line, although I absolutely used it on my first appointment once I got back. Instead, this was a reminder that confidence is tangible. It shows up in how you walk in, how you ask questions, how you move the conversation forward. There’s no magic trick there. She just decided she was the standard, and then she built a process that reflects that.

Over the course of the day, we also had conversations that had nothing to do with scripts or strategy. The group talked about losing a parent, going through a divorce, trying to rebuild while still showing up professionally every day. Hearing someone say they watched my story during a hard time in her life and it helped her keep going mattered so much to me.

The name “In Charge” came from a pretty simple idea. You are in charge of your life and your business. That sounds obvious, but I don’t think we always operate that way. There’s a lot of deferring, a lot of waiting. We often default to allowing someone else to set the direction. But this was about recognizing and owning your own power and as we progressed, I could feel people starting to step out of old habits into better default settings.

By the end of the day, what I took away wasn’t just that the event programming worked. Instead, the whole room worked. The size, the structure, the mix of experience, the willingness to be direct with each other was lightning in a bottle. People were there to build something, not just talk about it. It’s my experience that when you get that many women who are serious about their business in one place, the total becomes greater than just the sum of all its parts.

When women own their power and decide it’s high time that they’re in charge, everything changes.

GLENNDAISM

Today’s Words of Wisdom

GLENNDA BAKER & ASSOCIATES

She’s a Peach

Listen, if you’ve been waiting for something juicy to hit Midtown, this is it, because this condo at 1080 Peachtree Street NE #1904 in Atlanta, GA, is a peach in every sense of the word.

Sitting right on the curve of Peachtree at 1010 Midtown, you’re steps from everything, whether it’s coffee, dinner, Piedmont Park, or the Beltline. With a walk score of 91, you can live your life without ever reaching for your keys!

Inside, you’ve got walls of glass, a full-length balcony, and those skyline views that remind you exactly why you chose the city in the first place. It’s fresh, it’s bright, it’s updated, and the building itself gives you that full-service, lock-and-leave lifestyle people are chasing right now. This is Midtown living the way it’s supposed to be: easy, connected, and sweet as can be!