By Hudson Holder, CDO of DS Murphy and SRA
October marks the real start of fall in our family and our favorite time of year.
Pros: More time with friends and family, more time outside, football, bonfires, hoodies, less grass to cut, smores, national championship runs, Halloween, not dripping sweat measuring houses, harvest moons, beautiful leaves changing color everywhere you look, Friday night lights.
Cons: pumpkin spice latte charges on the Holder credit card, Halloween. Halloween is a pro and a con for sure. In their heart, people are Halloween people or they are not Halloween people. It is like dog people and cat people. My hypothesis is that most cat people are Halloween people but dog people are wildcards.
I think our love of the season is because fall always represents a time of change and something fresh. Fall means different things to different people – but the season has always been a time of change and a signal pointing to the value of change in our lives. A literal breath of fresh air on the first cool fall morning is a breath of fresh air for the soul! Sorry Floridians – you may need to do a google search about the existence of four distinct seasons.
When we are grinding in the appraisal business, sometimes it seems like the long hot summer that just won’t come to an end – that is when we are needing something fresh in our business lives. Let’s face it – lender appraisal work can be a grind – deadline driven with little human interaction and thankless at times.
For me, I always get a breath of fresh air when I have in person interaction about our appraisal business – usually in the form of networking (events, sales meetings, lunch & learns) or teaching with the Academy. I always feel very encouraged and motivated after teaching a group of agents. Sometimes it is spending more time with a client to help them make a decision about real estate or consulting about how to maximize value – I think we are innately wired to need social interaction and wired to experience satisfaction when helping people. We don’t necessarily get that satisfaction in the office cranking out reports for a thankless AMC run by robots in California – no offense to California and no offense to robots.
If you were to ask any of our instructors with the Academy, they would tell you that teaching is the most fulfilling thing they do because of the human interaction and relationships built. We really are a service business at the end of the day. Not coincidentally, our most experienced Academy Instructors carry a workload that is 90%+ GP appraisal work. No revisions, higher fees, longer deadlines, no portals, no inspection update emails. There is no substitute for connecting and relationship building in-person in a world where we all get 100 spam emails, calls and texts in a day.
The weather is nice and there are a lot of fun activities going on around town. People are generally getting together more in celebration of the changing of the seasons and everything that follows. It is an excellent time to get out of the office and interact with people – it might be the fresh perspective you need for more professional satisfaction and it will certainly lead to more appraisal work! If you are interested in teaching or networking but don’t know where to start, please let me know. We can help with materials and presentations. Interacting with people does not mean you have to learn to teach 3-hour CE classes – it can be as simple as attending classes taught by someone else, preparing an elevator pitch, offering to talk for 10 minutes at a local real estate office, etc.
DS Murphy is a sponsor at a fall festival event on October 29th in Alpharetta – anyone is welcome to attend. If you have fall festivals in your area or other events that would be good networking opportunities – take the leap!