In this issue, among other things, I break down how Glennda Baker, the Queen of TikTok, became the most recognizable face in real estate video.

Because while TikTok was her “claim to fame,” she’s been selling real estate since “Jesus was a baby.” And she excels in ways that often get overlooked because of the shiny penny, TikTok.

And YES, if you’ve been following my content, you know I’ll get into her marketing, content (buckets), TikTok strategy, systems & her 60 videos in 1 day break down etc. too!

So I was curious: how did she ACTUALLY find success in real estate?

I hope you enjoy it!

— Andrew

🎥 How the Queen of TikTok ACTUALLY Became the Most Recognizable Face in Real Estate Video

“Oh, my stars & stripes…” If you don’t know who Glennda Baker is, then either you've been living under a rock for the past few years or you don’t have a TikTok account.

What’s even crazier than her ‘recent massive’ claim to fame is that she’s “been selling real estate since Jesus was a baby,” most of us only see her 881,000 followers on TikTok and ask how she did it?

We all see the flashy ‘finish line.’

Being known as the ‘Realtor of Rappers,’ working with legendary people like selling Robin Meade & Hines Ward’s homes, plus selling the 2 most expensive homes in Cobb County in 2022.

But few of us ask, "How did she overcome everything & become successful in the first 26-28 years to get where she is today?”

Here’s how she became the Michael Jordan of real estate:

Glennda grew up humbly in a wealthy part of Cobb County (Atlanta), Druid Hills, but bounced around apartments with her single mother. Her mom would drive by Glennda’s, now dream home & tell her, “one day….” Growing up around wealth was an early inspiration.

But her life wasn’t all glitter & rainbows… She was last picked on the playground and bullied as a kid. However, this, unknowingly at the time, helped shape Glennda into who she is today.

• Authentic.

• Empathic.

• Resilient.

• And unapologetically herself.

She barely got out of high school.

Didn’t go to college.

So she went into modeling it Atlanta.

She was always into fashion, so she would make her own clothes and sell them to her friends. Working and selling shoes at department stores since 16.

Her clothing was recognized when she went to model, the owner of the showroom asked, “Who made that?”

She responds, “I made this in my bedroom.”

And the owner said “I think we could sell these!”

Glennda responded, “No, no, no. I’m here to model.” The modeling money was good.

But the lady insisted, “Let’s sell them. Put 10 more together and lets sell them if you don’t make as much as you would make being a model then I’ll pay you the money you would’ve made as a model and we’ll call it a day.”

Glennda, “Okay!”

And at the first show, she sold over $45,000 worth of clothes in 1 day. Wholesale.

After doing 2 years of designing & manufacturing clothes, she ran into a situation where a NY buyer purposely bounced his check back in the ’90s because it would cost her more to fly up there and deal with it than just let it go.

She told her mom, and her mom said, “Pumpkin, you need to sell real estate.” So to this day, Glennda credits her mother's dream of homeownership for inspiring her career in real estate.

That happened in July, and by September 13th, she decided to join, but with a new baby. She needed a paycheck.

So she said, “I’ll go and be a real estate assistant.”

Modeling Success to Find Your Own

And her unconventional real estate journey started in 1992 when she followed Mike Ferry’s book, How to Develop a Six-Figure Income in Real Estate, which told her to seek out the best agents to work with.

In the first interview, she met with the Relo queens, but they told her they “hated her.” She was “too bouncy for us, and we don’t want anyone that bubbly.'“

She thought retail was mean…

In the second interview, she loved them! The interview went great. Their rapport and they loved Glennda…

But they denied her a real estate assistant job because they knew she wouldn’t be an assistant for long because of her personality, and they didn’t want to train their ‘competition.’

The third broker she interviewed was someone she met through the development company her mom worked with.

So Glennda tells her she has been reading this book and following everything it says.

She doesn’t have her license.

But she had 5 listings…

Confused and surprised, she asks, “How?”

The book says, to call everybody you know and ask them, "Do you want to buy a house or sell a house?”

So Glennda did, and 5 people said they would list with her.

So while she may be the only agent in history to have 5 listings before she started, she carried that same relentless drive to find a way into the industry.

She was hired. Again, she found the best agent in the office, “Murray Park,” and asked if she could move her desk next to her.

So by sitting next to her, she listened and observed everything so she could model success.

Every time Murray needed copies, Glennda would offer to make them and print 26 when Murray needed 25, so she could keep 1.

When Murray needed help setting up open houses, Glennda would offer to help as well.

So after a few weeks, she finally got her license, and she had all her collateral templates ready to go.

After learning everything she could, she started executing Mike Ferry’s book.

1) Know your market. Develop a farm.🏘️

Living in an apartment with a baby, Glennda knew that she wouldn’t be able to farm her area, so she found the nicest neighborhoods in the area. She decided she was going to “sell in these neighborhoods with these fancy houses.”

She makes a book with a picture, the tax records, and details of EVERY SINGLE house. She studied them. Every single one…

2) Be visible in your community.👀 

She didn’t live in a fancy neighborhood, so “no lie,” she drove her car, took her baby, and parked her car at the pool at the clubhouse. And every night when she knew people would be outside walking their dogs or the neighborhood, she took her kid for a stroll through all of those neighborhoods at 7 pm.

She would wave and say hi to everyone. Smile. Stroll.

3) Market to your farm.📬

She listened to a presentation from her office and started sending newsletters to her farm.

4) Preview houses on the farm.👁️

She went and previewed all of the houses before everyone else. And it was even better with the seller home. Remember, there were no fancy showing services. So she called and made appointments.

She told the sellers, “I want to preview your house at 123 Banana Street. I’m not going to be with my client, I’m just coming because there’s a lot of homes in your neighborhood, and I’m the expert in your neighborhood, and I just wanted to make sure I know what’s available. It’s fine if you’re home.” 

And while she’s there, she would say, “Nobody knows the home better than you.”

So the homeowners gave her the tour.

As a result, listings would expire and they would call and say they’d love to list their house with her.

From September to December, she became the #1 agent in the office…

She continued:

• Studying the homes

• Getting to know the homeowners deeply

• Mailers / Newsletters

• School events

• Community events

• Branded water bottles

• Swag

• Gifting & Baked Goods

• Tipping waiters, valet, door people, etc. $2 bills to be memorable

Over the years, she has handled many notable transactions and sold over $70M in 2022.

1. Become an expert in your market. Knowledge = Expertise = Power

2. Be visible in your market.

3. Work your market.

Glennda’s unique value propositions 🔑 

Glennda emphatically expresses her unique difference in why & how she sold Hines Ward's home when other agents couldn’t.

1) Pricing.💰

Other agents promised Hines $5,000,000 but Glennda knew that was too high. They told him whatever he needed to hear just to get the listing.

She does the research and discovery before and then asks the homeowner what they think, “what do you think its worth?” because if you never ask you can never unpack it and address the elephant in the room that will only go larger.

And then you never get the listing.

2) Packaging. 🎁 

Glennda and her team have a 113-point checklist from listing to live launch.

Similar to a few other agents I know and some I’ve learned from like Tim Smith, Glennda makes sure that the home is the best it can be before it’s listed.

This means managing core things so the seller doesn’t need to:

• improvements

• contractors

• cleaning

• decluttering

• staging, etc.

This is crucial because the only way to get ‘top dollar’, which most promise but few follow through on, is by having a premium product.

Premium products command premium prices when they’re in a tier of their own.

Having a systemized checklist helps her operationalize the process to produce a high standard of excellence.

So while Glennda is an expert with marketing and packaging homes…

But what’s even more important to her is finding the buyer who will pay the most money.

Out of her 137 transactions last year, ONLY 2 transactions fell through…

A 98.5% success rate on high volume is a testament to her high standards.

Glennda believes strongly, “Why do top attorneys get paid more than new attorneys?”

Why does Michael Jordan and Tom Brady get paid more than the rest of their competition?

Tom Brady gets paid for execution. Glennda gets paid to carry the ball to the end zone.

So while Glennda is an expert with:

1. Building relationships at scale

2. Knowing her farm better than everyone else

3. Executing real estate with the highest standard of excellence

Glennda’s secret sauce is gifting 💝

“Surprise and Delight.” 10% of her yearly GCI is invested in her gifting program.

One of her “go-to gifts” is food from Baked by Melissa (Cookies, Cupcakes & Brownies). She emphasizes the human connection formed when someone accepts food from you.

It’s easy to overwhelm yourself, but if you have a “Suite of 5 gifts” for example, then you make it easier on yourself.

Her “Diamond Squad” team is the backbone and the structure is uniquely set up for this luxury client experience. '

She built out a ‘navy seal team’ operationally, even with a full time Client experience liason.

Regardless of price point, Glennda says often that most luxury agents only want to sell the luxury homes.

She sells everything from a few hundred thousand dollar homes and rentals to multi-million dollar estates.

The reason most rappers, celebrities, etc. use her is that she helps with the dirt (rentals and low-value homes, not just the sexy ones). This is a common theme that Ben Moss (600+ celebrity/athlete clients) talks about too.

Glennda believes in lifelong learning and constantly evolving to keep pace with the dynamic real estate landscape. These lessons of lifelong learning and modeling success helped her join multiple different coaching programs learning from other top agents.

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks…” or can you?

The Rise of the Queen of TikTok: Glennda Baker 📱 

By the numbers:

• 344,000 views a day

• 2.5 mil views a week

• Over 23 million total views

• 881,000 followers

This is all free thanks to her content.

At the beginning, Glennda told one her business coaches, “I’m not a TikToker.”

So how in the world could an ‘older’ individual in Atlanta who sells luxury homes find success on a ‘kids’ app?

Modeling Success Again ✂️

She met with a local videographer, Denver, to help film her videos.

Denver told her, “You know you can shoot from your phone?” 

Glennda’s response was, “Yea but that’s not an extension of my brand.”

The financial commitment for 6 months meant h*ll or high water, she was committed.

She started by doing traditional videos looking at the camera, but they realized that was unnatural for her.

So instead, she modeled Matthew Hussey’s style of looking slightly off-camera to another person, so it looked more like a conversation.

And on camera, she embraced her ‘alter ego’ the real estate goddess by learning to let go of the past traumas she now owns it.

Once upon a time I sold a big ass house…💰

She’s come a long way since her posts in a Porsche on Facebook…

The “Once upon a time a sold a big ass house” was her first MAJOR viral hit.

She started TikTok in October 2020, and by May 2021, she had 30,000 followers.

She posted the video in the morning at 8:30 am:

• The first few hours she got 200,000 views

• By 11 am she had 800,000 views

• Now it has over 10.5M views, and cross all platforms it has over 120M views

1) Authenticity ❤️

“I work with Tik Tok directly and they said to me you are very intriguing to us because you don't do anything on video…

So they're like you don't really do anything and you have the stickiest

audience once somebody follows you they do not unfollow and you have the highest engagement of any person in your demographic in your field!”

People love her imperfections.

1. I’m just myself (Real)

2. People, now they’ll get the truth.

3. They know they’ll see behind the scenes (Raw)

A few may be saying, but I’m in luxury….

But her 3.5M listing and buyer found her on TikTok.

She listed a $3M house from TikTok.

Plus a $5M House from Instagram.

The owner of the Hawks recognized her voice from TikTok.

It’s because she’s

• Refreshing.

• Relatable.

Even when she curses it adds to her authenticity.

2) Glennda’s Content 🤳 

Focus on the content, not the camera, quantity, etc.

• What would you tell YOUR BEST FRIEND?

• What would you tell YOUR BEST CLIENT?

• What would you tell YOUR THERAPIST?

THOSE are the THINGS people want to hear.

Consumers don’t know the business. They want to know the behind-the-scenes. The nuts and bolts of the business.

Zillow is real estate porn.

Realtors are brokers of knowledge.

They want intel they CAN’T GET on the internet. Period.

Glennda’s Content buckets 🪣 

1. Sugar & Spice Real Estate Advice

2. Storytime. Real-time stories.

3) Her secret sauce: storytelling 📖 

Glennda grew up around storytelling so whether she intentionally does this or not, she has become a master storyteller:

• Start with a bang. The story “idea” up front.

• Shock & awe

• Failure & mistakes

• Lessons

She believes content (video) is crucial in real estate because agents get to:

1. Create the narrative

2. Control the narrative of your community

Glennda’s System & Structure ⚙️

There’s no content calendar. And no schedule.

She used to text Denver all the time or make notes in her phone, but that changed when Jewel set up a Google Form on her phone.

So there’s not a lot of prep.

Google form → spreadsheet → go over & knock out the spreadsheet

These are her 3 questions:

1. Idea

2. Link / Reference / Source

3. How will I Glendify it?

Glennda’s Day in the Life: 60 videos in 1 day 🗓️

She only shoots 1 day a month, but for 11 hours. Filming at her home makes her feel more comfortable and allows her to change outfits. This helps make the process easier.

Shoot Day Schedule:

• 7:00 am - getting ready

• 8:00 to 8:10 am - morning Coaching Call with Sharran

• 8:10 to 8:30 am - frame out the morning

• 8:30 to 11:30 am - shoot straight

• 11:30 to 12:30 pm - break for lunch

• 12:30 to 1:00 pm - frame out the afternoon

• 1:00 to 7:00 or 7:30 - shoot

This is how she gets 50-60 videos in 1 day. 11 hours. 9 hours of straight filming. So about 5-6+ videos an hour

Then posts every morning anytime from 6:30 to 9:30 am to all platforms.

But she didn’t with 60 videos or posting daily. You eat the elephant 1 bite at a time. She only started with posting 2x per week. Aka 8 videos a month.

Glennda is busy, so by limiting shooting to 1 day a month, that lets her focus on her business the rest of the time.

So what’s next?

Even though she already posts a ton of content, she’s now added:

• Glitter and Gay (with Tyler Whitman Season 2)

• Glennda’s Gazetta (newsletter)

• Glennda’s Gurus (her own interview series with her gurus in real estate)

• Masterclasses (like her 1 day Storytelling Bootcamp), Masterminds, Events and way more.

From the outside, it looks like she’s taking her brand to an even higher level. The future is bright for this star.🌟 

🧱 How Veronica Figueroa went from single mom to selling 2,000 homes per year 

From 16 & pregnant, divorced at 24, bankrupt, broken, Veronica could’ve been a statistic, but she rose from the ashes, let go of her past trauma, and became a titan in the real estate industry.

She became an amazing operator scaling to the #1 team in the world at eXp with over 2,000 homes sold, and even though they’ll drop to 600-800 homes this year, she’s turning the ship as she’s driving it.

In this episode of Breaking and Building Leaders with Veronica Figueroa we talk about

- her journey facing personal demons from being bullied
- resentment from parent
- masking feelings with toxic behavior like alcohol
- intentional hiring & building a strong culture to become the #1 team
- becoming a great real estate operator to sell 2,000 homes
- hiring a data scientist
- prospecting with better data
- tips for agents to build relationships at scale
- how to become the authority in a specific community
- how to create content that brings value to your community
- her leadership training
- women in leadership and WAY more.

This was a great one! I hope you enjoy the conversation.

💪 How to Be Effective In Your Toughest Days

Let’s get real.

Every day is not the same. The market takes a hit, you have a fight with your spouse, the deal falls through, you have a sick kid at home, or you just woke up in a terrible mood…

…but you know what? You have to show up (basically) the same. 

Unless a major loss has occurred, you have to maintain consistency, optimism, and push. For yourself, your work, and anything you hope to achieve. You have to be able to compartmentalize, place things mentally on the shelf, and pull into mode.

People rely on you to be who they need you to be…and this is true in every single role you’ll ever encounter.

There is a reason they call leadership a “role” - you have to step into it and play the part even on days when you don’t feel your best or your world is not at 100%.

It isn’t just a CEO that has to do this…it’s in your executive role, in entrepreneurship, in customer-facing gig work, or even while making YouTube videos. In team meetings, online, with customers, or with coworkers. You’ve got to be “on.”

You have to show up for them, and you have to show up for yourself…and it can be exhausting. Most people don’t get it right, but those who do can maintain focus, do what they need to do, and mentally parse out the things they can control or address in the moment from the things they can’t.

Sometimes it means you have to keep things to yourself.

It keeps the business moving, your career moving, and it doesn’t have *stall points* that hinder forward motion. You will have to step over some personal obstacles that block others, run forward, and come back to them later.

From Dr. Julie Gurney, she’s a great twitter follow.

🔥 Other Interesting Finds:

• ChatGPT Web Browsing, Text-to-3D & Plug-ins are rolling out to more people. These are big news.

• Why TikTok trends are not enough to grow. You need to utilize the Flash, Flicker and Flare model. 

• How Ali Abdaal gained 4 million YouTube subscribers in his spare time.

• Why this AI Twitter headline actually caught my eye, from 0 to 750k/monthly visits with AI content.

• Why Brian Chesky is like the cockroach that won’t die

📝 In Case You Missed It:

• Last Week’s Issue about $770M World Class Listing Videos, 29-Page Listing Marketing Deck & May Content Drop

That's it for today! See you next week!

If you have any questions, then reply & let me know so I can make sure that I'm not just making stuff out of my head, but answering the questions you care about!

Let's have an amazing week!

Andrew Bayon

P.S. It would mean the world to me if you found value from ANY of the content I put out, if you could subscribe to Breaking and Building Leaders on YouTube or Podcast IF you think you may like it & share it with 1 person!

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