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Tom Ferry Summit 2026 · Day 1 · Anaheim, August 3

Find the sun, then build the machine.

Everything said on Day 1, compressed — and a 12-week plan to put it to work in Oakville. Day 1 was the WHY. Day 2 is the model, Day 3 is the momentum.

6 sessions · 201 slides Source: Tom Ferry 2026 Slides Day 1.pdf Prepared 17 Aug 2026
Part I — What was said

The six sessions

Each session below is the actual content from the deck, followed by the one thing it changes for a solo agent in Halton.

01
Tom Ferry with Dr. Gio Valiante

The Authority Era — the 40% trap

"People underperform to their abilities." — across every domain

Valiante's work with Tiger, Scottie, Lexi, Steve Cohen points at one finding: most people operate at roughly 60% of what they're capable of. The talk asked two questions — what psychologically causes success, and what behaviour change produces higher performance.

Five ways to win

  1. Talent — innate ability in a specific domain.
  2. Work ethic — outworking more talented people, with structure and a consistent feedback loop.
  3. Differentiated perspective — seeing the world through a proprietary lens. This is where opportunity lives.
  4. Better process — anything that can be engineered for quality, reliability, experience and margin, will be.
  5. The right team — hiring and associating to cover your deficiencies.

"What are the smallest adjustments you could make to tap into YOUR 60%?"

The giveaway: the Real Estate Professional SOP & Checklist Library — 15 systems, 48 SOPs, 1 AI engine (built by Coach Merrill Jencks). Revenue side: lead generation, database management, content & brand expansion, lead conversion, listing system, buyer system, AI search & brand visibility, skill improvement. Operations side: client experience, business dashboard, attribution & ROI by lead source, escrows that create 5-star reviews, finances & budget, market knowledge, implementation. Prescribed pace: do the business profile interview once, then customise one SOP per week.

For you Of the five ways to win, three are already yours — work ethic, a differentiated perspective (restoration and renovation fluency no other Oakville agent has), and process. The gap is that none of it is written down as a system anyone else could run. One SOP a week for 12 weeks is the whole fix.
02
David Childers · HousingDaily.com

What buyers and sellers actually want

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality." — Max DePree

First half of 2026

  • Days on market climbing: 21 (2022) → 42 → 48 → 53 → 53, and higher again in 2026.
  • 83% of sellers expect to get asking price or more. 12% expect less. 5% don't know.
  • Inventory has rebuilt steadily across six years.

Second half of 2026

  • 70% of markets favour buyers or are trending that way — up from 52% last year, and nearly double 2019's 37% (Realtor.com Market Clock).
  • The longer a home sits, the more the price falls: −7.3% at 31–60 days, −9% at 61–90, −10.6% at 91–120, −14% past 120.
  • 30-year rate forecasts sit in a 6.1%–6.6% band through Q2 2027. Rates travel in a range.
  • Appreciation returning to a healthy rate: 1.72% (2026), 1.98%, 2.78%, 3.10%, 3.34% by 2030.
  • Sales volume flat: 4.74M / 4.75M / 4.74M / 4.78M forecast.
  • Foreclosures Jan–Jun rising: 65,082 (2021) → 227,548 (2026).
  • Total housing wealth at an all-time high — $48.7T, against $13.8T in 2000.
For you The transferable idea is the DOM-to-discount curve, not the numbers. Rebuild that exact chart from TRREB data for Oakville and Halton with your CMA pipeline — it is the single most persuasive listing-appointment slide there is, and it makes the overpricing conversation arithmetic instead of opinion.
03
Jason Pantana · Ai Marketing Academy

The AI visibility gap — become the agent the algorithm names

"No matter the market, the market belongs to those who market."

The premise: consumers now ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Grok who the best agent is, and the answer is given without a click. Zero-click search means the winner is whoever gets cited, not whoever ranks.

Why blogging is back

  1. AI cites blogs most when asked to compare or recommend.
  2. AI citation clicks convert 23× better than organic search.
  3. AI favours recent content — the results are in the repetition.

The six things that get a blog cited

  1. Summary answer up top — answer the question in the first paragraph.
  2. Semantic questions as subheads — the way a person actually asks it.
  3. Tables, lists, steps — extractable structure.
  4. Internal linking across your own pages.
  5. Local context — named neighbourhoods, streets, schools, landmarks.
  6. Entity authority — consistent name, brokerage, licence, service area, contact.

BOFU or bust. Skip top-of-funnel. Write the bottom-of-funnel questions people ask right before they call someone.

The four ready-to-run outputs

  • Answer blogs → BOFU leads
  • Heat sheets → more showings
  • Market emails → done for you
  • Avatar videos → every listing

"I see you everywhere." — four words that mean your multichannel marketing is working. Search, blog, YouTube, Instagram, SMS, email.

Also named: "people don't buy the best product, they buy the product they're most certain is the best," and "anything that can be automated, will be automated." AI video tools cited — Veo, Sora, Runway, Higgsfield, Kling, Luma, Seedance, Pika, VEED, Wan, Firefly, LTX.

For you This is your highest-leverage session by a distance, because you already own and deploy your own site. Most agents are stuck inside a brokerage template and cannot add schema, structure or internal links. You can ship an answer blog in an afternoon. That is the differentiated position.
04
Aaron Cuha · @aaroncuha

How to win on YouTube

The receipts: 107k subscribers over 780 videos on his own channel, 138k over 577 on a second. A recent example — filmed between coaching calls while living in Cabo — did over 10k views in six weeks and 20 buyer-guide downloads.

The crazy simple system

  1. Press record before you're ready.
  2. Quantity beats quality.
  3. Never miss a week.
  4. Say the words they're searching for.

The room exercise was ten seconds long: your name, what you help people with, press record. That's the entire first video.

For you "Never miss a week" is the only rule that matters here, and it is the one your existing content calendar already has the structure to enforce. Weekly beats good.
05
Patrick O'Connor

Be seen everywhere

#2 in his MLS by volume. $70M+ sales volume, $2M+ GCI, $2M+ in GCI since 2018. 1,000 to 100,000+ YouTube subscribers in 190 days — producing 100+ conversations and 26+ clients secured. In 2026: 22 sellers and 4 buyers.

Top three lead sources, 2026

  1. YouTube
  2. AI recommendations
  3. Facebook marketing

Content formula

  • Content that attracts your ideal client — 10 to 18 minute videos.
  • Consistency rather than perfection. One hour or less per video.
  • Optimise everything with AI.
  • Say the title/keyword in the intro. Invite engagement, tease the payoff. Relax and have fun.

Five steps to becoming the authority with AI — 32 clients in 2026 from AI recommendations

  1. Create a bio that speaks to AI (AEO, SEO & GEO).
  2. Ensure bio consistency across every profile.
  3. Create blog content.
  4. Post Google Business Profile updates highlighting blogs, new listings, sold case studies, YouTube home tours.
  5. Social media that speaks to AI.

Sold case studies were his highest-performing format, titled as results: "How 200,000+ Online Views Delivered Chapin, SC's Highest Off-Lake Sale This Year." "How We Sold This Irmo, SC Home After Another Agent Had It Listed For Months." Boosting spend: $25+ per post.

For you Step 2 is free and takes one evening. Your name, brokerage, city and specialty must read identically on your site, Google Business Profile, realtor.ca, Royal LePage, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Inconsistent entities are why models won't name you.
06
Tom Ferry · closing keynote

The most important decision you will make at Summit

The study. Scientists dropped volunteers into three places — a dense forest, the Sahara, and an open field blindfolded — and told them to walk in a straight line. Some loops were as tight as 66 feet across. Not one person realised they were crossing their own path. 100% were certain they were going straight. (Souman et al., Max Planck Institute, 2009 — as told by Seth Godin in Poke the Box.)

Give a person one fixed point to aim at — the sun, a peak, a distant tree — and they walk a near-perfect straight line. Take it away and their best effort loops them back to where they started.

"We're not out of ideas. You're out of focus. And that's the harder problem to admit."

95% walk in circles: no fixed point, sell just enough to survive, confuse motion for progress, end the year where they started. 5% lock onto something meaningful and bend every behaviour toward it.

The five that stack

  1. Pick your line.
  2. Confidence to act.
  3. Motivation — a goal that compels action.
  4. Systems — we rarely rise to our goals, we fall back to our systems.
  5. Environment — who you associate with and where you spend your time.

The reference point can come from either direction. Solve a problem (pain as fuel — "I'm done drowning in debt," "I refuse to miss another season of my kid's life") or chase the big sexy goal (pull as fuel — the lake house, work-optional by 50, the team you always said you'd build). Away-from or toward, both give you a sun.

For you The exercise below is the deliverable of Day 1. Nothing in Part II works without it, because the leading number in the scoreboard is derived from the goal you name here.
Part II — The decision

Exercise 1, run properly

Tom's eight steps, verbatim from the deck. Answer fast — first instinct is truth. This is the twenty minutes the rest of the plan hangs on.

The eight steps
#StepThe prompt
1Pick your directionThe big sexy goal I actually want — or the problem I'm done tolerating — is…
2Make it vividWhen I've got it, what do I see, feel and do differently? Who's with me?
3The 5 whysAsk "why does that matter?" five times. Don't stop at the money — chase it to the real reason.
4The cost of driftIf I don't change and stay in the 95% — what does this cost me in 3 years?
5Name the goalSpecific + a date. "By ___, I will ___." A scoreboard you can't fake.
6Set the leading numberThe ONE weekly behaviour that drives it — conversations, appointments, hours prospecting.
7Declare your new standard"Once I hit this, I never go back below ___." Set the floor.
8Say it out loudSpeak your goal and your why to someone. Trade a number and check in Friday.
The two supporting questions Tom asked before the exercise
  • What do you want so badly that you would push through the natural barriers, the old stories and the limiting beliefs to achieve your abilities? What are you willing to fight for?
  • What are my top 10 all-time great experiences I want to have — bucket list, death bed, no regrets? And what's the through line of all of them? (Travel, family, love, connection, adventure, achievement, abundance.)

Recommended leading number

For a solo agent with a built database and no team, the leading number is conversations per week — not calls dialled, not posts published. Conversations is the only input that survives a slow market. Suggested target: 25 conversations and 3 coffee meetings per week, tracked in the master contacts sheet, with the floor declared at 15. Every campaign in Part III exists to make those conversations easier to get, not to replace them.

Part III — The build

Twelve weeks, four phases

Sequenced by leverage, not by the order the sessions ran. Weeks 1–2 are the ones nobody else in Halton can execute as fast as you can.

Week 0 — this week The reference point Session 06
  • Run Exercise 1 end to end. Write it by hand, one sitting, phone away.
  • Name the goal with a date and put it where you'll see it daily.
  • Declare the floor — the number you never go below again.
  • Say it out loud to two people who will actually hold you to it, and set a standing Friday check-in.
  • Set up the weekly scoreboard (below) before any content work starts.

Done when: a written goal, a leading number, a floor, and one person expecting your Friday number.

Weeks 1–2 Close the AI visibility gap Sessions 03 & 05

Entity consistency — one evening

  • Write one canonical 60-word bio: full name, REALTOR®, Royal LePage Real Estate Services Ltd., Oakville, service areas (Oakville, Burlington, Milton, Halton), and the specialty nobody else can claim — renovation and restoration insight on resale value.
  • Paste it identically into your site's About page, Google Business Profile, realtor.ca, the Royal LePage profile, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Same name string, same brokerage string, same phone, same URL.
  • Add RealEstateAgent + Person + LocalBusiness schema to the site, with areaServed and sameAs pointing at every profile above.

First four answer blogs — BOFU only

Each one built to Pantana's six-element structure: summary answer in the first 60 words, semantic question subheads, one real data table, internal links to your project and CMA pages, named Oakville context, and the entity block at the foot.

  • "What is my Oakville home worth in 2026?"
  • "Should I sell my Oakville home now, or wait for rate cuts?"
  • "How long are homes taking to sell in Oakville right now?" — this is where the DOM-to-discount table lives.
  • "Which Oakville neighbourhood gives the most house under $1.5M?"

Done when: four pages live, schema validating, and every profile carrying the same bio.

Weeks 3–4 Press record Sessions 04 & 05
  • Film the ten-second video today. Name, what you help people with. Don't rewatch it.
  • Pick the weekly slot and defend it — same day, same time, every week, no exceptions. This is the rule that produces the result.
  • 10–18 minutes, one hour of production maximum. Say the title keyword in the first ten seconds.
  • First six titles, in order: an Oakville neighbourhood tour, "Moving to Oakville in 2026 — what it actually costs," a full listing tour, a sold case study, "Oakville vs Burlington vs Milton — where the value is," a renovation-ROI walkthrough.
  • Write sold case studies as results, the way O'Connor titles them — outcome first, address second.

Done when: four consecutive weeks published without a miss. Views are not the metric yet; the streak is.

Weeks 5–8 The multichannel machine Session 03

One asset, four channels — the "I see you everywhere" effect. Every video becomes an embedded blog, a Google Business Profile update, a reel and an email segment in the same week.

  • Heat sheets — a weekly best-value list for the database. Under-priced, long-DOM and just-reduced listings in Halton, with a line on why each is worth seeing.
  • Market emails — monthly, built from TRREB HPI data through your existing CMA pipeline. Real numbers, one chart, one conclusion.
  • Avatar / AI listing tours — every listing gets one, using the tools named in the deck.
  • Google Business Profile — weekly post, rotating blog → new listing → sold case study → YouTube tour.
  • $25+ boost behind whichever post performs best organically each week. Not before it proves itself.

Done when: four full weeks of the rotation run without you rebuilding the process each time.

Weeks 9–12 Write it down Sessions 01 & 06

"We rarely rise to our goals, we always fall back to our systems." One SOP per week from the 15-system library, in this order — chosen because each one unblocks the next.

  1. Database management — the leading number has nowhere to live without it.
  2. AI search & brand visibility — codify what you built in weeks 1–2 so it repeats.
  3. Lead conversion — merge with the conversion playbook you already wrote.
  4. Attribution & ROI by lead source — otherwise you cannot tell which of the four channels earned the deal.
  5. Business dashboard — the weekly scoreboard, made permanent.

Done when: another person could run your database and your content week from the written document alone.

Part IV — The scoreboard

What gets checked on Friday

Leading numbers at the top, lagging numbers below. If the top three hold for twelve weeks, the bottom two take care of themselves.

Weekly targets
MetricTargetFloorWhere it's tracked
Conversations — real two-way2515Master contacts sheet
Coffee meetings — face to face32Calendar
Content shipped — video + blog21Content calendar
Google Business Profile posts11GBP
Listing appointments booked21CRM
Listings taken1—CRM

One caution on the Childers data

Every number in session 02 is United States data — NAR, Realtor.com, Fannie Mae, MBA. Days on market, the foreclosure curve, the 6.1–6.6% rate band and the $48.7T equity figure do not describe Oakville and should never appear in client-facing material as though they do. Use the shape of the analysis — especially the DOM-to-discount curve — and rebuild it from TRREB and Bank of Canada figures. Borrowed US statistics are the fastest way to lose a listing appointment to someone who knows the local number.