“Life has many ways of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once.”
Paulo Coelho (born 1947); poet, writer
More and more we hear from agents who report that their markets are beginning to heat up. In fact, we know that many real estate markets are beginning to come back strong as we continue to print more signs (and print new signs) for agents who have weathered a down market and see a glimmer on the horizon. We’ve even seen agents who once left the market in despair return to real estate.
Coelho’s quote about life testing us with “all or nothing” situations is something you should think about for the year ahead. Just as many agents had no plan in place (or strategy for surviving) when the market collapsed, just as many will likely not know what to do when the market surges.
In tech, there’s a term called “load balancing.” Load balancing is a process by which the stress placed on servers by high demand is distributed across multiple servers. In this way, a “boom” in traffic doesn’t cause a server to become inundated and crash.
Have you thought about your own capacity recently? At what point would you become overwhelmed with business? What does your bandwidth look like now, and what would your life be like if you had ten more deals going?
While your gut reaction might be, “That’s a problem I can’t wait to have!” you should give some serious thought to the question. The problem with overload is a degradation in service. When things get busy, communication can slip, details can get overlooked, and your reputation can suffer. Who would you lean on for support? How will you know when you’re approaching your personal capacity?
Prepare for this now. It will be easier to act on a plan you have in place than create a plan in the middle of a fire. Rather than fail, consider how you will scale.
Photo credit: James Jordan
