IN OUR SPRING CLEANING ERA

WELCOME

Hello and happy (?) Income Tax Day! I’m home from Los Angeles, where I had the time of my life! The weather was perfect and for a few days, I got to step out of the day-to-day and just be.

Now, here’s the wonderful thing about stepping away: when you come back, you view everything from a different perspective. You see what’s working, what’s not, and where you’ve been letting things slide. That’s why we’re talking about a spring audit today. Spring buying season is the time to metaphorically clean house. What are you doing in your business that’s actually producing? What are you keeping out of habit that isn’t paying you anymore? And what do you need to tighten up so you can move faster, cleaner, and more profitably over the next 90 days? This is about doing what works, on purpose, and letting the rest go.

Also, now that I’m back home and back in it, I’m rehearsing for Dancing Stars of Atlanta 2026. I’m currently sitting at about 80% of my fundraising goal, which means I’ve got just enough pressure to make it interesting. Anyway, let’s all put on our dancing shoes and get right to it!

@glenndabaker

Support me as I take to the dance floor to support Alzheimer’s! You can support me from the link in my bio to donate today! #GlenndaBaker ... See more

STORYTIME WITH GLENNDA

Time for Spring Cleaning

Happy April 15th, y’all. What better a day to talk about an audit? (Don’t panic, I mean a good kind of audit, and not the go-to-jail-because-you-have-a-shady-accountant kind.) With spring buying season upon us, this is the perfect time to take stock of where your year’s heading. The spring season is when everything kicks into gear as we begin spring cleaning, shaking off the dust from a long winter. As those flowers emerge from the earth and the trees begin to bud, it feels like everything is fresh, new, and exciting, so let’s capitalize on all that blossoming hope and momentum.

If you want to make real money this spring, it’s time to run a true audit on your business. Take a hard look at what’s working, what’s wasting your time, and what has no business accompanying you into Q2.

Start with the Bottom Line

First, look at your credit card statements because those don’t lie. Go line by line and ask yourself if each charge produced a return in the first quarter. If you subscribed to something, paid for something, downloaded something, and that something didn’t make you money, time’s up. It either produced or it didn’t.

If it didn’t, dump it. It’s just that simple.

Now, a quick caveat is that there’s a difference between a tool not working and you not working it. Some of these platforms are incredibly powerful, but they require effort, consistency, and intention. If you didn’t use it, you don’t get to blame it. But if it’s just sitting there quietly billing you every month while you ignore it, that’s just bleeding profits.

Mind the Clock

Here’s the real audit: examining your time expenditure. I want you to track one full week of your life like you’re billing hours as an attorney. Every showing, every listing appointment, every conversation that moves a deal forward, I want you to mark as green. If it’s something you don’t have to do, mark that time as yellow. If it’s something you hate, make it red. The point is, I want you to log it all because this will give you a visual representation of where you spend your precious time creating that green.

What you’ll find is that most agents who think they’re working full-time are nowhere close. They’re busy, they’re distracted. Maybe they’re reacting but they’re not producing. Where your time goes will explain exactly why your income looks the way it does. Spring is not the season to be casually productive. It’s the season to be precise, so think green.

The Things You Keep

Now, here’s what you don’t throw out in a pique of spring cleaning: no matter how shiny the new technology gets, you must keep the fundamentals that actually build credibility. For me and my business, I will never stop previewing houses. Ever. Because there’s no substitute for being in the property, understanding how it lives, and seeing what the photos and the specs can’t tell you.

Let me tell y’all how this actually plays out in real life: I was sitting at a listing appointment with a seller who’d already looked online and convinced himself where his house should land among the comps. One of the properties he kept coming back to was a house listed higher than his, sitting on seven and a half acres. In his mind, more land equals more value. End of story.

Guess what? I did not agree.

He looks at me and says, “But Glennda, that house is on seven acres. I have two. Mine should be worth less.” Now, I’d been in that other house. I didn’t just click through it online. I’d walked it, studied it, and understood how it lived in real life. So I said, “Let’s slow down and actually compare apples to apples. Yes, that property has seven and a half acres. But only about three of those acres are usable in any meaningful way. The rest isn’t buildable, and it’s not functional. That space is just land on paper. That extra acreage doesn’t even make the house feel more private. The way the lot’s positioned, the outdoor space sits right next to the neighbor’s backyard.”

What looked impressive on a listing sheet didn’t translate into real value for a buyer. Then I took him through his own house. He has two acres. While it’s a smaller number, the layout works. The space creates privacy where it matters, so if he wants to sit nekkid by his pool, no one will see him. His outdoor spaces feel intentional.

Then inside his house, I explained what nobody can get from a spreadsheet. The floor plan of the other place was choppy. Oh, my stars, the other kitchen was pretty but it was barely functional, like no one had ever heard of the work triangle. The way the home lived day-to-day wasn’t nearly as strong. On paper, one house looks like the winner (more acreage, higher price) but in reality, his two-acre property delivers a better living experience.

When I explained it that way, I could see the shift happen in real time. The seller stopped anchoring to the number of acres. He started understanding how buyers actually think. As agents, that’s the moment when we win the listings. When we make something click that the sellers couldn’t see before, that’s how we earn their trust and establish our credibility.

This is why previewing matters. This is why knowing your market matters. Because if I hadn’t been in that house, my only play would be to argue numbers. Instead, I had the benefit of explaining reality. Buyers pay for how a house feels, functions, and lives.

The same holds true with farming. I don’t care how many people try to convince you that you don’t need a farm anymore. Trust me, you do. If you don’t know a neighborhood inside and out, you’re always going to be a step behind the agent who does. The difference now is that the old-school discipline of farming can be paired with tools that make it exponentially more powerful. What used to require binders, photos, and glue-sticks-with-Glennda now can live in your database, populated with real-time data, mortgage insights, and market activity. It’s the same practice, but now it moves faster and hits harder if you actually use it, no arts or crafts required.

The Case for Old School

Of course, there are the “old fashioned” tactics people love to dismiss, like open houses. The temptation may be to Marie Kondo those right out of your business. But if you think open houses don’t work, you’re doing them wrong. The agents who win are the ones who take something that used to be passive and turn it into a fully leveraged event. Instead of sitting and waiting, they’re broadcasting, targeting, inviting, and following up. Those agents are stretching that one open house across multiple time frames and platforms. That’s the pattern you should be looking for in your audit; not what’s old versus new, but what’s being underutilized versus fully leveraged.

As you do your spring clean/audit, the takeaway is simple. Cut what isn’t producing. Fix what you’ve been using halfway. Get honest about how you spend your time. Double down on the habits that actually make you credible in the eyes of your clients. The agents who win in the spring market are the ones who align with what works and execute it at a higher level.

Now, if you’re interested in turning your spring effort into even more green, I’m breaking it down step by step at my next PowerSuite session. I’ll walk you through exactly how to get focused, get efficient, and get paid in this market, not the one you wish you had!

ESTATE AGENT GROWTH PROGRAM

I want to talk to y’all about Estate Media’s agent growth program. In it, you have access to agents operating at an elite level, in multiple markets, with different styles and different approaches. Now, I realize we may not be selling the same product you are. Maybe we’re not in your city, or we have a different business model. The point is to listen, learn, take what works, and make it yours.

The agents who win in this business aren’t the ones waiting for an experienced person to hand them a perfect, customized plan over a white table cloth lunch meeting. The ones who pay attention, put in the work, and build something that actually fits them are the ones who win!

GLENNDA’S GURU

Welcome, Rory Golod!

I’m so delighted to share my conversation with Rory Golod today! Rory’s the President of Growth at Compass International, which means he’s in the trenches, helping support and scale a network of over 340,000 real estate professionals across their brands.

Rory’s been recognized as one of Crain’s New York 40 Under 40, but what matters more to me is how he thinks. Rory’s firmly in the camp that technology should support the agent, not replace them. He’s a strong voice when it comes to protecting agent choice, especially around how we market listings and serve our clients. I welcome you to enjoy our conversation about growth, about leverage, and about how to use the tools we have without losing the human edge that actually closes deals!

Thank you, Rory!

GLENNDAISM

Today’s Words of Wisdom

GLENNDA BAKER & ASSOCIATES

Speaking of Green…

I’ve been featuring a ton of lock-and-leave homes lately. Well, this one’s not your turn-key, move-in-ready, everything’s-already-been-done-for-you kind of house. The home at 6140 Michelle Lane in Douglasville, GA is what I call an opportunity property. It’s been a long-term rental and it’s been lived in hard. Will you need a vision and a contractor? Oh, my stars, yes. But if you know what you’re looking at, you can see it immediately: the bones are there, the square footage is there, and that half-acre lot gives you room to actually create value.

This home is all about where it can go tomorrow. You’re in an established Douglasville neighborhood with easy access to I-20, shopping, schools, all the things that keep demand steady. The pretty houses? Those are already priced. This is where you create the margin. So if you’re a weekend warrior, a seasoned investor, or somebody who knows how to buy right and build equity, this is the kind of property you don’t overthink. You run your numbers, you trust your eye, and you go to work to make it turn green.