The Right Move Starts with the Right Team.

I can’t be the only one thrilled the kale era is finally over. We spent years pretending kale chips were good. Then science apparently said, “Screw it. Put protein in the Doritos.” THIS is the innovation I’ve been waiting for. 😂 We survived kale. We deserve this.

Where was this sticker before I became Chief!

I’ve owned dogs. I’ve fostered dogs. I’ve had the easy ones and the ones who apparently considered the emergency vet a second home. So…pet insurance. Worth it? I’ve gone back and forth on this one. The upside is pretty simple. A $40-$100ish monthly payment can potentially protect you from getting whacked with a $5,000, $10,000 or even bigger vet bill. The downside? You can pay premiums for years and barely use it. Pre-existing conditions generally aren’t covered. There are deductibles and reimbursement limits. And a lot of the time YOU pay the vet first and get reimbursed later. The other option is basically becoming your own insurance company. Take whatever you would have paid in premiums and stick it into a separate account every month. Here’s where fostering changed my thinking a little… Dogs have an incredible ability to go from perfectly fine at breakfast to “that’ll be $6,800” by dinner. 😂 Pet insurance isn’t really about whether you’ll make your money back. Hopefully you DON’T. It’s about making sure you never have to make a horrible decision about an animal you love simply because you can’t afford the other choice. Curious what everyone else does. Pet insurance? Emergency fund? Or just roll the dice and hope your dog doesn’t eat a sock?

When I got into real estate, I talked about DIGITAL. AI wasn’t a thing yet. People scoffed. Then we grew. And grew. And became more profitable every year. Meanwhile, much of the industry kept buying more leads, adding more people, allowing license hangers to fill their rosters, doing more manual work…and watching margins disappear. Now I have a new goal. Use AI to drive agent productivity to levels this industry has never seen. Not AI for cute posts. Not AI for better emails. AI as LEVERAGE. More conversations. Faster follow-up. Better decisions. Better client service. More transactions per agent. Less wasted effort. The end game? We take over markets with smaller, more productive teams and service our clients at 10X the level of our competition. Digital was the first wave. AI is going to make that look small.

Pocket change for the upside

A little over year ago, we unexpectedly lost one of our agents, John Cosgrove. In his memory, we created the John Cosgrove Scholarship to give one new agent a serious opportunity. Here’s our promise: $100K in your first 6 months. But you have to be:Full-time. Coachable. Not afraid of the phone. Willing to learn new things. And willing to follow the playbook. The scholarship pays for your licensing course and first year of licensing. You bring the work ethic. We’ll bring the systems, leads, training, technology and accountability. No experience required. No bad habits preferred. Think you’re the one? DM me SCHOLARSHIP.

I get asked ALL the time: “Why can’t we have tiny homes in New Jersey?” Y’all know I LOVE tiny homes. I think they could be an incredible option for affordable housing, downsizing, seniors, young people trying to get started… all of it. So why don’t we see tiny-home communities popping up all over NJ? It’s not because people don’t want them. It’s because we’ve built a system that makes them incredibly difficult to build. Zoning. Minimum lot sizes. Minimum house sizes. Setbacks. Parking requirements. Utility requirements. Septic rules. Local approvals. Density restrictions. And here’s the part nobody likes talking about: A $150,000 tiny home sitting on a tiny lot generates a whole lot less property-tax revenue than an $800,000 house on that same piece of land. We say we want affordable housing. Then we regulate the affordable part right out of housing. That’s why.

“Glen’s a party.” Yeah. I was. I could drink with the best of them. I was usually the guy keeping the night going, not ending it. Then I ran for Fire Chief. And somewhere along the way I made a pretty simple decision: Being Chief was more important than drinking. Not because drinking is evil. Not because everyone else needed to stop. Not because I suddenly became morally superior. Because I decided the responsibility I asked for deserved a better version of me. I wanted to be ready when the pager went off. Clear when somebody needed a decision. Present when people were counting on me. What surprised me was how much my personal decision became everybody else’s conversation. Some people thought I was making a statement about their drinking. I wasn’t. That’s one of the stranger things I’ve learned about changing your life: Sometimes your discipline makes other people feel judged even when you haven’t said a word. Stop drinking and somebody thinks you’re judging their drink. Start working out and somebody thinks you’re judging their body. Work harder and somebody thinks you’re criticizing their effort. Change your priorities and somebody thinks you’re criticizing theirs. You’re not responsible for that. I didn’t stop being fun. I just stopped believing fun required a bottle in my hand. And for the record… I’m not a quitter. 😂 I still drink. Just not when I’m local.