Every week someone sends me their content to look at. A lot of it is the same thing. A definition.
"What's a bully offer." "What's a status certificate." "5 things to know about closing costs."
It's correct. It's clean. And it does nothing.
Here's why. Your client can Google "what is a bully offer" and get the same answer from a thousand sites. You wrote a worse version of Wikipedia and put your headshot on it. That doesn't make you the expert. It makes you the person who can also use Google.
The information isn't the value. You having lived it is the value.
Watch.
Here's the version I usually get sent:
A bully offer is when a buyer puts in an offer before the seller's offer date, usually over asking with a short irrevocable, to push the seller to accept before anyone else can compete.
Fine. Accurate. Forgettable.
Here's the same thing, from someone who was actually there:
I had a buyer lose four homes on offer night. Four. We did everything right. Waited for the offer date. Bid our number. Watched someone else get the house every single time.
After the fourth one she said, "I keep following the rules and the rules keep losing." She was right.
So on the fifth one we didn't wait. We went in two days early. Firm offer, well over asking, four-hour clock. The listing agent had to take it to the seller. That's the law. Every offer gets presented. The seller signed.
That's a bully offer. And the lesson isn't "offer more." It's that the offer date isn't a rule. It's a suggestion. If the house is right, you don't wait your turn.
Same information. One is a definition. The other one you can't fake. You had to be in the room to write it.
That's the formula: real problem, moment of truth, usable insight.
The problem: four losses on offer night. The moment of truth: "the rules keep losing." The insight: the offer date moves. Every story you've got already has those three beats in it. You're just skipping them and writing the textbook version instead.
"But my clients' deals are private"
Some of you are already telling me you can't do this. Your deals are private. Your clients don't want their business on your website.
Fair. So change the details.
Round the number of homes. Move the city. Drop her name. None of that is the point. The point is the lesson, and the lesson is true. As long as the core of what actually happened stays intact, changing a few details to protect someone's privacy isn't dishonest. It's just decent.
What's dishonest is inventing a win that never happened. Don't do that. But "a buyer I worked with" instead of a real name? That's fine. Tell the story. Protect the person.
This isn't just an agent thing
If you run a brokerage, this is how you should think about everything you put in front of your agents too. Your content problem isn't your sphere. It's your roster.
Here's an example I use on stage.
The problem: every one of your agents gets the "how's the market?" question from their sphere. Most of them answer with something vague and wishy-washy that sounds like every other agent in town.
The moment of truth: when an agent can't give a clear, confident, specific answer about their local market, they sound like they don't actually know. Their clients notice. Their confidence in that agent drops. And they never say a word about it, which is exactly what makes it dangerous.
The usable insight: so give them the answer. Every Monday we send our agents a two-minute market brief. Three numbers and a one-sentence take they can use word for word when someone asks. Here's what a week looks like:
New listings this week: 47, up 16% from last week.
Average days on market: 21, down from 28 a month ago.
Sale-to-list ratio: 99%.
The take: "Inventory is finally opening up, but anything priced right is still gone in under three weeks. If you've been waiting for more to choose from, this is your window. Just don't expect to take your time once you find it."
Same formula, just aimed at a different audience. For the agent, it means they never get caught flat-footed on the market question again. For you, it's the difference between a brokerage that recruits agents and one that actually makes them better.
It works for video too
This isn't just a writing thing. It's your reels too.
A talking-head reel that opens with "here's what a bully offer is" gets a swipe. A reel that opens with "my buyer lost four homes before we figured this out" gets watched to the end. Same lesson. One is a lecture. The other is a story, and stories are the only thing that survives the scroll.
A definition is a thumbnail nobody taps. A story is a hook. Typing it or filming it, lead with the moment you lived, not the textbook.
Google wants this too
One more reason, because it matters more than people think. This is also what Google rewards now. In 2022 they added "Experience" to their quality framework. Now it's E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust. Real estate is a "your money or your life" topic, which is exactly where Google leans on that hardest. A definition shows none of it. A story shows experience in the first line. Same length, completely different signal. To the reader and to the algorithm.
So next time you sit down to make something, written or video, for your clients or for your agents, don't start with "here's what X is." Start with "here's the time X happened to me."