Early in my career, a new brokerage came to town, and the sky fell. At least that is what it sounded like in every office, every hallway and every Realtor conversation I overheard.
If you have ever felt your stomach drop at a headline about the end of real estate agents, this post is for you. I want to tell you what happened, what saved me, and why I still keep my blinders on today. You are reading this for free, so consider it a gift from one Realtor to another.
Table of Contents
The Day the Sky Fell
The Beauty of Being Brand New
Do You Know Why They Put Blinders on Horses?
What Looking Left and Right Really Costs
My Proof: 2008
The Online Search Platform I Barely Remember
Mindset Is Not a Magic Trick
Five Ways to Keep Your Blinders On This Week
The Sky Is Always Falling
Join Me on Wednesdays
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Reading
The Day the Sky Fell
The new brokerage had a simple model. They charged a very low listing commission, and the sellers did most of the work themselves.
I watched agents all around me get scared. These were experienced agents. Good agents. Panic set in. This is the end of real estate as we know it. They will put us out of business. This changes everything. How do we compete with that?
I remember how loud it was. Nobody was calm. Everybody had an opinion, and most of the opinions began with the words "what if."
The Beauty of Being Brand New
Here is the part I did not understand at the time. I was brand new, so I had no idea what the business was supposed to be like. Yet.
While everyone else saw the sky falling, I did not, because I had nothing to compare it to. The agents around me were measuring today against how things used to be. I had no "used to be." I had a phone, a list of people I knew, and a license I was excited to use.
I am not telling you to stay naïve. I am telling you that what you compare things to has a lot of power over how scared you feel. If you are new, you may have an advantage you have not noticed. If you are not new, you can borrow it. Look at the situation as if you were seeing it for the first time and ask, what do I actually need to do today?
Do You Know Why They Put Blinders on Horses?
Somewhere in the middle of all that noise, a mentor of mine pulled me aside and asked me a question I have been passing along ever since.
"Do you know why they put blinders on horses?"
I said no, why?
"So they can't look left or right. They can only look ahead. Focus on yourself, because that's all that matters."
I did not write that on a sticky note or turn it into a fancy system. I just carried it around. It is one of the simplest pieces of advice I have ever been given, and I would put it up against anything I have ever paid to learn.
What Looking Left and Right Really Costs
I cannot tell you how many times that advice has saved me. Every panic, and there have been a few, has been a left-or-right problem.
Something over there is coming. Somebody over there is doing it cheaper, faster, shinier.
And every time, the agents who suffered most were not the ones the new thing actually affected. They were the ones who spent the whole season looking sideways.
Think about what looking sideways takes from you. It takes your attention first. Then it takes your time, because you are reading and arguing and worrying instead of calling people. Then it takes your confidence, because the more you watch someone else's race, the worse your own feels. By the time the season is over, you have not lost a single client to the new thing. You have lost a season to the worry about it.
A horse with blinders is not ignoring the race. The horse is running its own.
My Proof: 2008
You want to know my proof? 2008.
If there was ever a year the sky actually, genuinely fell, it was in 2008. The market collapsed. The headlines were apocalyptic. Agents were leaving the business in droves.
And in 2008, I sold more units than I have sold in any year of my career, before or since. We are talking triple digits, as an agent only about four years in.
Why? I was still new enough that I did not know any different. Nobody had successfully taught me to be scared yet. I just kept my blinders on, kept calling my people, kept showing up, while the sky was falling in the housing market.
I am not saying the market did not matter. It mattered a great deal, and many good agents had a very hard time. I am saying that what I did every day stayed the same, and that turned out to be the part I could control.
The Online Search Platform I Barely Remember
I will give you one more confession, because it makes the point better than any argument could.
People sometimes ask me what I remember about the day a certain online housing search platform for buyers arrived on the scene. It was not owned by Realtors. It had the estimates, the cool graphics and all the details at buyers' fingertips.
Honestly, I do not remember much. And not because I am old now! I remember Realtors being mad. I remember it being new and foreign and scary. But I could not tell you how it affected my business, because I was busy that day. Probably on the phone with somebody, checking in on them to see how I could help.
That is the whole lesson in one memory. The big scary thing showed up, and I was doing the most boring and reliable work in this business. I was talking to people.
Mindset Is Not a Magic Trick
Here is what I have come to believe, and I mean this gently, because I have felt the fear too.
If you do not tell yourself the sky is falling, the sky is actually not going to fall. Not on you, anyway.
Mindset is not a magic trick. It does not change the market. It changes what you do inside the market, and that turns out to be almost the whole game.
Two agents can read the same headline on the same morning. One of them closes the laptop and picks up the phone. The other one reads six more articles, texts three friends about it and goes to lunch feeling sick. Same headline. Same market. Very different week.
Five Ways to Keep Your Blinders On This Week
If you would like something to do with all of this, here are five things you may want to try.
None of them are complicated.
Name the direction. The next time a headline gives you that drop in your stomach, ask yourself whether it is a left-or-right problem or a straight-ahead problem. If it is over there and you cannot control it, it is a left-or-right problem.
Ask one question. Does this change who I call today? Most of the time the honest answer is no. Make the call anyway.
Put a time limit on the noise. Pick a short window each day to read industry news, and then close it. You do not have to be uninformed. You just do not have to be soaked in it.
Keep your daily contact going. Panic loves an empty calendar. A handful of calls or notes to the people in your business each day leaves very little room for worry.
Talk to another Realtor. A fear that sounds huge in your head often sounds smaller out loud. Say it to a friend, a mentor or a room full of agents, and see what happens to it.
Notice that none of these ask you to predict anything. I have never been good at predicting what is coming next in real estate, and I have stopped trying. I just try to be a person worth calling when it arrives.
The Sky Is Always Falling
The panics all blur together eventually. That is the secret nobody tells you when you are standing inside one.
Every few years, something arrives that is absolutely, positively going to replace real estate agents. And every few years, it turns out that the thing being replaced was never the agent. It was just one more piece of the paperwork or the process.
The sky is always falling. The houses keep selling. Keep your blinders on.
Join Me on Wednesdays
At Today's Organized Agent, I talk about the things that matter: client care, systems and using your AI to help you. Every Wednesday, I host an Agent Collaboration on Zoom at 10 AM ET. It is free, and it is a good hour of your time. You can register here: todaysorganizedagent.com/collaboration
I also write a weekly article on Substack. You can subscribe here: michelledemopolis.substack.com
I would love to hear from you. What is the loudest thing you are hearing in the business right now? Talk to me!
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do they put blinders on horses?
Blinders keep a horse from seeing to the left or right, so it can only look ahead. A mentor of mine used that picture to teach me to focus on my own business instead of watching everyone else's.
How do I stop worrying about changes in the real estate industry?
I do not think you stop worrying completely, and I still feel it too. What helps me is asking whether the change affects who I call and what I do today. If it does not, I keep going with my daily work and let the headline pass.
Will new technology and low-commission brokerages replace real estate agents?
Every few years, something arrives that people say will replace agents. In my experience, what gets replaced is a piece of the paperwork or the process, not the relationship. I cannot predict the future, but I can tell you that the agents who kept talking to their people did well through the changes I have seen.
How did you do so well in 2008 when the market collapsed?
I was about four years into the business and still new enough that nobody had taught me to be scared yet. I kept my blinders on, kept calling my people and kept showing up. I sold more units in 2008 than in any other year of my career.
Does mindset really change your real estate business?
Mindset does not change the market. It changes what you do inside the market. If you stay in the habit of daily contact and helping people, your business keeps moving even when the headlines are loud.
What should a new agent do when everyone around them is panicking?
Do not borrow their fear. You may not have an "old normal" to compare to, which can be an advantage. Pick a small daily action, like contacting a few people, and do it every day no matter what you hear.