WEDNESDAY JOURNAL, Jan 17, 2024
The carrot or the stick.
It didn’t snow any more last night.
But we still have six or eight inches of snow from Monday on the ground. So here we sit, waiting for time to pass. Maybe get above freezing by the weekend.
Peoples expectations.
One of my jobs is that of a real estate broker. having done that for 38 years, i watched the industry change and tried to change with it.
In traditional real estate, a seller would pledge thousands of dollars to a listing agent to help sell his house.
In the seller’s opinion, whatever they pledged to the agent was too much. Either he sold it too fast and therefore didn’t earn all that money, or he didn’t sell it fast enough, therefore didn’t earn all that money.
When I decided to change the methods of my company to straight do-it-yourself, people thought it was wonderful.
I went to the seller’s house and looked at it with them. I would sit at their kitchen table sometimes for hours, educating them on this new, money-saving system, where I would put their house in the MLS and they would sell it.
I took the pictures of their house inside and out and loaded them into the MLS all for $349.
Now I work all over the state.
Nowadays, I work all over the state, instead of the 12 counties around Nashville as I used to. Now that I can’t spend hours at their kitchen table, and I don’t take their pictures or get a “for sale” sign made for them, I only have service packages for $95, $195 and $295 at mlsDon.com instead of 349.
I have recently had prospective customers incensed that i am not taking their pictures for them. Knoxville and Memphis are pretty far away from my office. and my service has always been designed for do-it-yourselfers. All I spent on digital photography was necessary at the time, but now, most people just use their phones.
But some people do expect more and more. They have different motivations.
Now, I do a lot of writing, as well as operating a state-wide real estate FSBO website where sellers can still have their house in the MLS for relatively tiny amounts of money.
New writers.
Occasionally I have the opportunity to speak with new online writers about their writing.
Writing is not terribly difficult to do, but sometimes it’s hard to stay motivated.
Why anyone writes is quite varied, person to person.
Some write for the fun of it.
Some write, thinking they are going to make money.
The problem happens when the money or the fun stops or never happens.
The carrot or the stick.
When one or both dry up, the problem is more than likely that the writer never settled into the right niche.
If the money is the motivation, the process can be long, and patience can run out, and we are left with only the stick to motivate us. And, believe me, if you force yourself to write about things you are not interested in, that is a stick.
If the topic the writer specializes in is something they enjoy doing, AND talking about, then that enjoyment is a carrot that is obtainable.
Final Thoughts
If I get a chance to speak with new writers, I will usually tell them not to confine themselves to a niche. If you do, however, and it is not one they truly enjoy., they will regret it and possibly lose interest.
Have fun, eat the carrot. Even if the money NEVER comes, at least you had a good time.
If the money ever does come, it may be even better than you had hoped for.
Thanks.