Building a sphere of influence in real estate means cultivating genuine relationships, not collecting contact lists. The speaker uses his 1993 high school class as an example: he influences only those he's spent meaningful time with and built trust with, regardless of whether they agree on everything.
Now, when I got into real estate, some of that early training told me just make lists of names, list everybody you've ever met, everybody you went to high school with. Well, if I look at my high school graduating class, high five Northwest Cabarrus class of '93, I might know a lot of those people, but I don't influence all of them. The ones that I have influence over are the ones that I have had conversations with, spent time with, went through life with. Now, I want to add an asterisk here. These are not necessarily people with whom you agree on everything, because some of my dearest friends in life We don't agree about very much, but we have shared life, and they still come to me with real estate questions because they know that I have knowledge and competence in real estate, and they also know that we have something in common. And so, we have a relationship that gives me a chance to provide information.
