The Year I Failed 40 Times

Today, I'm reflecting on my past (it is #throwbackthursday, after all). 

During my first year in business, 2013-2014, I cold called thousands of homeowners and went on over 40 appointments, meeting with people looking to sell their houses. I signed zero contracts from those appointments. ZERO. 

That's a lot of rejection. 

I kept at it because that's what I had been taught to do. "Cold calling works if you work it. It's a numbers game. Just keep at it," they said. 

And that's true for some people. I saw my colleagues in the office making the same calls, going on the same appointments, and signing contracts. For some reason, my results were not the same. 

And that made me feel like a massive failure. I wanted to quit and almost did, all the time. 

Eventually, I realized I was so much more effective when I built relationships and worked by referral. 

I started noticing that when I went back to the same networking groups a few times, people would remember me. They'd even introduce me to others as "the best Realtor in town" (even though we'd only met once or twice). Bingo. This was it! I'd found my thing. My style of finding business. 

I stopped cold calling - yes there was a lot of guilt around that; that's the subject for another email - and my business grew. AND I enjoyed what I was doing for lead gen. 

The magic is in finding YOUR thing. Not someone else's thing. We're all different.

And remember: not succeeding in one specific thing does not make you a failure! It just means you learned that's not the right path for you.