Take Flight Weekly | Jim Miller

Jim Miller
  • 5.0 (67)
  • Business
  • Updated Weekly

You built the business. Somewhere along the way, it started running you. Take Flight Weekly is a weekly coaching session for the advisor who is already at the top of her/his market and knows there is a better way to hold it. Every Sunday at 6 a.m., Jim Miller sits down with a microphone and one idea: build the business so the business builds the life. Jim is a success mentor and life coach to top luxury real estate advisors in over 50 markets across the country, and he leads a brokerage office producing over $2.3 billion in annual sales. Everything he teaches, he built first, starting with rebuilding his own business from the ground up after 2008. Each episode runs 15 to 25 minutes and works on one of the five pillars of Take Flight: vision and standards, habits and routines, CRM and relationship management, standard operating procedures, and personal brand. No panel. No guests. No hype. Just the work. New episodes every Sunday morning.

  1. 5d ago

    #337: Do You Have a Strategy for Client Gifting and Entertainment?

    Summary This week I did something I have not done on this show before. I brought real research with me. I have been archiving my own thinking and my own data for eight or nine months now, building what people call a second brain, and this is the first time I merged that archive with outside data and pulled it up to the microphone. The subject is client gifting and entertainment. The real question underneath it is whether you have a strategy for it at all. Most advisors do not. They have a habit, a holiday, and a credit card. I went back to 2013, my last official year selling. By then I had doubled my business four times in five years and finished around thirty-seven million in volume with an average sale price north of a million. The number that actually built that year was not the volume. It was sixty-eight. Sixty-eight people sat in my platinum and gold, and from 2013 forward I made a deliberate decision to put more effort into fewer people. When I totaled what I deployed across that whole network, my top 100, my referral partners, my warm and hot lists, and my collaborative brokers, the number came out just over fifty-one thousand dollars. Roughly seven hundred and fifty dollars a relationship. Then I ran that number as an investment instead of an expense, which is the whole point of the episode. I walk through what a warm, top-of-mind network returns on that kind of deployment, and I hold it up against what the same money does sitting in a broad index fund over the same stretch of years. I also answer the question every advisor asks the second they hear the number, which is how you possibly fund fifty-one thousand dollars of client care. That answer is new. I have been working on it for about a month and this is the first time I have said it out loud. When a broker in another market refers your business, you pay a fee, you are thrilled to pay it, and it never touches your account. When somebody in your own top 100 refers your business, there is no fee at all. So pay yourself on it. Ten percent off the top, into a separate account, before it ever hits operations and before it ever hits personal. I want to be clear that I am not a financial advisor, and this is not investment advice. What I am giving you is my own data, my own experience, and the mindset shift I want you to make before next Sunday. Money spent on the people who already trust you is not a line item to defend at the end of the year. It is the investment that produces the business. Next week I take the other half of this and show you how to deploy it, which is where the strategy actually lives. It takes time and it takes effort, because you cannot automate thoughtfulness. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to the concept of client gifting as an investment 01:57 Jim's background and the importance of relationship management 03:56 Analyzing business data and the value of a network 05:50 Funding client care through referral-based investment 07:55 The math behind ROI on relationship investments 09:49 The power of trust and influence in client relationships 12:11 Separating investment funds from operational expenses 14:02 Long-term benefits of strategic gifting and relationship building 15:02 Practical strategies for deploying relationship investments 15:59 Encouragement to view client spending as a long-term investment Follow me at @AskJimMiller on Instagram

    #337: Do You Have a Strategy for Client Gifting and Entertainment?

  2. Aug 9

    #336: The Art of Communication

    Summary Not every touch carries the same weight. A text and a lunch both get filed under staying in touch in most advisors’ heads, and they are not the same thing. Not to the client, and not to the business. This one lays the ways you communicate out as a ladder, ten rungs, and makes the case that the art is not picking the most convenient rung. It is picking the right one for the person in front of you. This continues the 2026 teaching series inside Pillar 3, CRM and Relationship Management, and it is the practical half of the work. The database tells you who. The ladder tells you how. It starts with an email from someone in the ecosystem, and the question is a fair one. He built his top 100 and came up light. Five names, maybe ten, maybe thirty-five that felt real. That is normal and it is not a problem. A healthy Top 100 runs roughly 20 percent platinum, 30 percent gold, and 50 percent silver, meaning prospects and the people who have not fully gelled with you yet. Most advisors who have been at this a while land between 35 and 75 and build toward 100 from there. I had 11 in 2009. His second question was whether ten reach outs a week would burn through the list too fast. It will not, because the next 10 was never only the top 100. Prospects, referral partners, vendors, transaction partners, and the rest of your sphere all live in that rotation. The ladder itself runs from most human to most automated. Rung one is the one on one in person meeting. Two ears, one mouth, and no business talk unless they bring it up. Rung two is a phone call. Five minutes, no agenda, they simply crossed your mind. Rung three is FaceTime or Zoom, which costs you a scheduling step. Rung four is the handwritten note, and it lands the way it does because almost nobody receives more than a couple in a year. One shows up on a counter and stays there. Rungs five and six are the video note and the voice note. Rung seven is the text, which we all use constantly and which is exactly why it is not special. Rung eight is an email you actually wrote yourself. One human, one recipient, one reason. Rung nine is a segmented and tagged newsletter. Rung ten is the broadcast. Direct mail, the mass email, the social post to everybody. The middle rungs move around depending on the person, and social media DMs sit right in that range. Here is the line to carry into your week. You cannot automate thoughtfulness. A newsletter is not a touch. A social post is not a touch. Neither one counts toward your next 10, no matter how good it looked going out the door. The work is to know how each person wants to hear from you, note it in the CRM so you stop guessing, and then get on the rung that matches. Your Platinum's should see your face in person once or twice a year. Everything else follows from that. Listen for more.  This is your coaching session. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to the hierarchy of communication 01:58 Building your top 100 client list 05:49 The communication ladder explained 07:43 First rung: In-person one-on-one meetings 08:43 Second rung: Phone calls and personal check-ins 09:42 Using FaceTime, Zoom, and scheduled meetings 10:40 The power of handwritten notes and video messages 12:06 Text messages, voice notes, and social media interactions 14:02 Email, newsletters, and segmented communication 15:57 Broadcasting via direct mail, email, and social media 17:50 The art of personalized communication and CRM notes 19:48 Summary: Matching communication methods to individuals Follow me at @askjimmiller on Instagram

    #336: The Art of Communication

  3. Aug 2

    #335: Are You Networking or Observing?

    Summary There are two types of real estate advisors and entrepreneurs. One of them builds a network on purpose. The other waits for the phone to ring. Episode 335 puts those two side by side and makes the case that the distance between them has almost nothing to do with talent, market, or timing. It comes down to intention. This episode continues the 2026 teaching series inside Pillar 3, CRM and Relationship Management, and it goes underneath the technology to the thing the technology is supposed to serve. The tool is not the point. Cloud-based system, spreadsheet, index cards on a desk. Your clients do not care which one you use. They care whether you follow up, and whether the follow up feels authentic to them. The parable in this episode is a map. There is a map of North America on the wall of Jim’s office, and it has been there for ten years covered in pins. Blue where there is a relationship he trusts. Light blue where a relationship still needed to be built. There are not many light blue pins left, because filling that map became a deliberate practice rather than a hope. The same practice shows up in how he walks into a large industry event. Research the room in advance. Identify seven to ten people who operate the way you operate and who serve markets that feed yours. Reach out before you arrive. Set the coffee. Follow up after. Walking out of a room of three thousand people with ten names you will actually nurture beats walking out with a stack of handouts and nobody to call. Then the math. Roughly 85 to 90 percent of an elite advisor’s business comes from the network. Attraction marketing is real, it matters, and plenty of people do very well with it, but on average it accounts for 10 to 15 percent. Effort should follow those numbers, and for most of the industry it does not. The episode also makes a harder point about ownership. When you eventually step back, the only thing in your business that still holds value is the network of names and people who trust you. Everything else is activity. This is also where the referral bench earns its keep. The plumber who takes your call, the contractor who moves your client to the front of the line, the vendor who owes you thirty introductions and is glad to return one. Robert Cialdini named that dynamic decades ago in Influence. You open a door, they open a door, and the client is the one who wins. Two books anchor the episode. Influence by Robert Cialdini, and Rich Relationships by Selena Soo, where the research puts one true connector who believes in you on par with a thousand to ten thousand social followers. Sit with that before you post again. The close is the question worth carrying into the week. Am I networking, or am I observing? A network does not get built in a year. It gets built across a career, and the only day to start is the one you are in. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Networking vs Observing 00:29 The importance of active networking 00:59 Networking as an active, intentional process 01:27 Content layers in the Take Flight ecosystem 02:24 Purpose of relationship management 02:54 Building operational excellence in business 03:23 Technology vs relationship-based client follow-up 04:20 Passive observers vs active networkers 05:21 Long-term value of your network 06:17 Networking at industry events 08:19 Building a strategic referral network 11:51 The influence of relationships and the book Influence 15:10 Rich Relationships book and connection rings 17:36 The law of compensation and network value 18:36 Summary and key takeaways on networking 19:01 Call to action: Be intentional in networking 20:00 Closing remarks and next steps resources "Influence" by Robert Cialdini  "Rich Relationships" by Selena Soo   Jim Miller on Instagram:  @askjimmiller

    #335: Are You Networking or Observing?

  4. Jul 26

    #334: Use Social Media to Nurture Your Network

    Summary Most advisors treat social media as a broadcast channel, and that is exactly why it is not working for them. In this episode Jim reframes Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn as one enormous cocktail party. Your Top 100 is in that room. Your referral partners are in that room. Your competition is in that room, shaking hands and remembering names. If you have decided the room is too loud, too vain, or too far outside your comfort, you have not opted out of the comparison. You have only opted out of the relationships. This is Pillar 3 work, CRM and relationship Management, with a thread of Pillar 5  - Marketing, Lead Generation and Personal Branding, running through it, and it starts with a decision about which kind of person you are going to be when you walk in. There are two kinds of people at that party. The first walks in and says look at me. Look at my listing, look at my numbers, look at my video. They post and they leave. The second walks in and asks how they can be useful. Jim gives the practical build for becoming the second kind on Instagram. Use the favorites and close friends settings so your top 100 has its own feed instead of the algorithm's. Comment on five posts a day and five stories a day, with twenty or thirty seconds of real thought behind each one, because a comment on a story puts you in the direct messages where an actual conversation can start. Facebook gets the same treatment with a different tool. Friends lists, built from the desktop, let you sort three or four thousand connections into the groups that matter and read only those. LinkedIn earns fifteen or twenty minutes a week if your clients work in industries that live there. Google Alerts do the quiet work in the background, telling you when a client is promoted, honored, or written about. All four of these do the same job. They convert scrolling into intelligence, and intelligence is what lets you act before someone has to tell you anything. The heart of the episode is a story about a loss in Jim's own family and the note and book that arrived from someone in his network who simply noticed a post and did something about it. That book still sits out in the house years later. It is the cleanest illustration of the definition Jim gives here: thoughtfulness is taking the time, putting real thought into something, and then acting on it. Awareness without action is not thoughtfulness. Tools can surface the moment. They cannot supply the care. Next Sunday takes this into a live room, where the same principle has an entirely different set of do's and don'ts. Chapters 00:00 Introduction and overview of social media as a networking tool 01:58 The importance of being present at the social media 'cocktail party' 03:53 Two types of social media users: broadcasters vs. value-adders 05:51 Using Instagram for relationship intelligence and engagement 09:13 Managing your Instagram feed with favorites and close friends 12:08 Commenting on posts and stories to build relationships 14:11 Managing Facebook with friends lists for targeted feed viewing 16:02 Using LinkedIn and Google Alerts for professional networking 17:55 The power of thoughtful actions and recognizing major life events 20:03 The mindset shift: adding value vs. broadcasting 21:03 Engaging actively and responding to comments for better visibility 21:57 Final tips and next steps for social media networking Resources Instagram:  @askjimmiller Website:  askjimmiller.com

    #334: Use Social Media to Nurture Your Network

  5. Jul 19

    #333: When the Ideal Client Finds You First

    Summary Most real estate advisors were taught the wrong job. The industry says we sell homes. That framing screwed me up for years, because the product is a home but the work is people. What we actually do is put buyers with sellers and sellers with buyers, and that only happens through relationships. Episode 333 continues our Pillar 3 journey on CRM and relationship management, and this week the focus is the best call you can get in this business, the one where your ideal client finds you first. There is a term for this. Return on Network (RON). Just like a return on time or a return on investment, your network pays a dividend when you have put yourself in the right rooms and maintained the relationships you built there. For elite level producers, 85 to 90 percent of business comes from network. Once you do that math, the conclusion is not complicated. The area of your business that deserves the most intention is the one most advisors treat as an afterthought. This ties straight to the law of compensation from chapter five of The Go-Giver by Bob Berg. Your income equals the number of people you serve and the way in which you serve them. Notice what is not in that sentence. It says nothing about houses. I walk through four situations from my own network to make it real. An advisor gets a call from a parent at her school who needs a private, confidential move, and she already has the buyer, so the seller shows the home to one person and everyone wins. An advisor fields a request from another broker, works his own database, and finds a client sitting on a property who names a move-me number. A couple relocating to Chicago in 2011 call me because a past client told them I was the only option, and I close a $1.6 million sale in thirty days when I need it most. An advisor drags himself across a restaurant to greet a past client, meets two more empty-nester couples at the table, and that one walk turns into $25 million in production. None of these are lucky. Every one of them traces back to a relationship that was built and then maintained. Here is the hard part. This is not Instagrammable. It does not go viral. Nobody talks about it but it is the foundational principle of a successful brokerage business, and it is the only real equity you have. The industry keeps telling us to go find new people. In reality the new people are already connected to the clients in your top 100. The work is two to three hours a week, maintaining your network one brick at a time, and once you lay a brick in that foundation you never remove it. It does not matter whether your CRM is analog, a spreadsheet, or something sophisticated. What your top 100 cares about is that you are invested in them and that you are their person. Build the systems and the rhythms to hold those relationships, and the business gets easier, more predictable, and more enjoyable. That is the business we all want. This is your coaching session. Chapters 00:00 Introduction and overview of relationship management 00:30 The value of the network and return on relationships 01:28 The professional purpose: helping you win in real estate 02:10 What is a broker? Beyond selling homes, creating relationships 05:02 The true role of a real estate advisor: putting people together 07:10 The law of compensation and serving more people 08:19 Examples of relationship-driven transactions 16:23 Creating momentum through relationship systems 18:18 The importance of maintaining your network 20:40 Building a foundation brick by brick 22:37 The joy of your ideal client finding you 23:11 Closing remarks and next steps Find me on Instagram at @askjimmiller and online at askjimmiller.com.

    #333: When the Ideal Client Finds You First

  6. Jul 12

    #332: The Price of a Client Relationship You Let Go Cold

    Summary In 2013, I made a decision that on paper looked like career suicide. I moved into leadership at Jameson Sotheby's and agreed to wind down my personal real estate business. My strategy was to cut my Top 150 in half, push the bottom 50% down to fringe, and go all in on the 68 people who mattered most. I was concerned my production would suffer. The opposite happened. 2014, 2015, and 2016 were some of the best brokerage years I ever had. This episode is about why, and it is the real start of Pillar 3, CRM and Relationship Management. The heart of this episode is the referral tree. Your platinum clients are the seed and the trunk. They introduce you to the person, who introduces you to the next person, who becomes three more branches. Picture ten or fifteen of those trees, nurtured over years, and you start to see why I still know I had exactly 68 clients. I know that number the way you know your own kids' birthdays, because I looked at it every single day. That daily attention is the entire reason my business doubled four times in five years. A CRM organizes the relationship. It does not make the call. You cannot automate thoughtfulness. Listen for more details. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to the importance of CRM and relationship management 01:00 The value of CRM in generating millions in revenue 01:59 Categories of clients: platinum, gold, silver, fringe 02:57 Jim's personal story and business growth through CRM 03:59 The law of compensation and serving more clients 04:56 Creating a top 100 client list for business success 05:59 The importance of staying top of mind with clients 06:58 The referral tree concept and its significance 08:06 The impact of relationship nurturing on business growth 09:04 Starting with platinum clients and personalized communication 10:03 Practical steps to build and maintain your CRM 11:14 The cost of neglecting CRM and relationship strategies 12:14 Creating momentum through consistent client engagement 12:54 Expanding your client base through relationship management 14:09 The importance of regular CRM audits and pruning 15:08 Jim's final advice and encouragement for listeners 16:11 Closing remarks and next steps for building your CRM Resources The Go-Giver by Bob Burg   Jim Miller - Instagram - @askjimmiller

    #332: The Price of a Client Relationship You Let Go Cold

  7. Jun 28

    #331: Q3 Effort. Q1 Results

    Summary June was a month of reflection on Take Flight, a mid-year audit of what the first two quarters delivered and where the cracks are hiding. Episode 331 closes that arc and turns toward the second half of the year. Jim opens on the farmer's logic that runs underneath everything he teaches. You plant in the spring and harvest in the fall, which means the work you do right now lands six to nine months out, not on next month's paycheck. Real estate is not a business of selling properties. It is a business of building relationships and compounding them over a long career. Borrowing the structure of Brian Moran's The 12 Week Year, Jim frames this moment as Week 13, the point where you celebrate the wins, count the near misses as learning, and plan the quarter ahead. He is candid that Q3 is a trap. You are tired, the year has been long, and the pull to pump the brakes is real. His answer is not to grind harder. It is to be intentional and surgical, taking one project per week and knocking it out, whether that is a couple of hours, thirty minutes, or a single phone call you have been avoiding. The quarter's teaching focus is Pillar 3 of Take Flight, CRM and Relationship Management. Jim makes the case that this is where all real success comes from. Your income is the number of people you serve times the level at which you serve them, and you cannot afford to lose people from your network because they are so hard to replace. 85%-90% of most advisors' business comes from their network, which is why offline marketing, reputation and relationships, outperforms any digital tactic over time. Across Q3 he will get detailed on building a Top 100, setting cadences for platinum, gold, silver, and fringe contacts, and retaining the network while expanding it. Jim closes with the question he puts to every client. Are you interested in being great, or are you committed to it. He points listeners back to the June episodes, 327 through 330, and to episode 254, Think Like a Farmer, as the groundwork for the season ahead. The challenge is simple and singular. This week, name the projects that need to get done in Q3 and commit to running them one at a time. Do the heavy lifting now so your network is in real shape heading into Q4 and Q1. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Take Flight Weekly 02:54 Reflecting on Q1 and Q2 Results 05:48 Preparing for Q3: The Trap Quarter 09:06 The Importance of CRM and Relationship Management 11:49 Commitment to Success and Building Your Network Ask Jim Miller - Email List - mailto:Jim@askjimmiller.com Instagram:  @askjimmiller

    #331: Q3 Effort. Q1 Results

  8. Jun 21

    #330: What the Top 1% Still Do on Purpose

    Summary June is the month to stop and look. A six-month audit is the most valuable two hours an ELP can spend right now. Step out of the business, look at it from the outside, and answer three questions.  What does winning look like?  What plays work every time you run them? What is broken that I can fix in Q3 and Q4? This episode is the answer to the second question, the 7 plays I would run over and over to stabilize a business and most often add real production over the next twelve months. The weekly planning session. The next 10. 1=3.. The pipeline at 150% to 200% of goal. The post-closing process. The three rocks of marketing. And boundaries. Each one maps to a pillar of Take Flight, because this is not a list of tips. It is the framework boiled down in one podcast episode to what actually moves a business. Different advisors sit in different places. The purpose is the same. Build the business so it fits into your life. Filter out the noise. What I give you in this episode are the signals. You just have to run the plays. Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Purpose of the Audit 04:54 Seven Plays for Business Success 15:56 Conclusion and Call to Action Resources Jim Miller's Website - https://askjimmiller.com Instagram - @askjimmiller

    #330: What the Top 1% Still Do on Purpose
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5
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About

You built the business. Somewhere along the way, it started running you. Take Flight Weekly is a weekly coaching session for the advisor who is already at the top of her/his market and knows there is a better way to hold it. Every Sunday at 6 a.m., Jim Miller sits down with a microphone and one idea: build the business so the business builds the life. Jim is a success mentor and life coach to top luxury real estate advisors in over 50 markets across the country, and he leads a brokerage office producing over $2.3 billion in annual sales. Everything he teaches, he built first, starting with rebuilding his own business from the ground up after 2008. Each episode runs 15 to 25 minutes and works on one of the five pillars of Take Flight: vision and standards, habits and routines, CRM and relationship management, standard operating procedures, and personal brand. No panel. No guests. No hype. Just the work. New episodes every Sunday morning.

Information

  • Creator
    Jim Miller
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    339
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Take Flight Weekly | Jim Miller
  • Show Website
    Take Flight Weekly | Jim Miller

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