This one might be a little bit sales-y… but hear me out! When you’re in a commissioned base job (or self employed) it generally doesn’t work for you to “hold back.” Logically I’ve known this, I’ve been in commissioned sales for 6 years. For various reasons not particularly interesting I’ve often made decisions to not do what was common among my peers. I felt like holding onto these things gave me some control of my destiny and wasn’t “necessary” for me to do my job effectively. For a while I was right… then things started changing.

For those who haven’t tried buying or selling a home in the last 5 years, let me tell you, 2020 and 2021 were legendary years in mortgage. Rates were low, prices were reasonable, and people had money for down payments. With limited experience, I managed to close a number of loans that would make 10 and 20 year veterans in the space green with envy. All this accomplished without promoting myself on social media, giving out my personal cell phone, and limited effort on the weekends.

Enter 2022… inflation is on the rise, and so are interest rates, and home prices. I began to realize that I would need to make some changes if I was to continue to survive in the industry. The easiest things to change was to my explicit to customers my availability on weekends and evenings and to give out my personal cell phone for ease of access. I was most afraid of this, it felt like I would be answering calls and texts at all times and having to give up family time. The reality was customers are usually understanding of my time and when they do reach out, it’s important (like making an offer or issues impacting closing). It was actually a blessing since having easy access to me, also meant I had easy access to my customers too. It was a win-win.

So why write this now? Well, because social media. I have largely given up on big scale, algorithmic social media. I’ve kept my facebook and instagram accounts, largely so I can still use modern-day Craigslist, aka Facebook Marketplace. While I don’t love giving my personal data away for free to the world’s largest corporations, the people I care most about (my family, church, and referral partners) are all on facebook/instagram. And so I’ve started posting stories and getting back into that world to make sure I’m were my circle of people are too. I can already feel a difference in how I’m connecting with people and I think this may be a final missing piece of going all in.

Believe it or not, this isn’t about social media. With this final(?) piece of letting go, I can feel my mindset shift. I’m approaching business differently than I had last year when i wasn’t doing anything with social media. I feel like I’m approaching everything with more clarity and focus largely because I’m not “holding on” to something that wasn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme. While I would love for my whole circle to own their social presence (micro.one is a dollar per month guys!) it’s just not realistic to stay in touch with my larger circle in niche smaller circles. So I will do both!