Those pictures above are my brain…my thoughts caught and reeled in…organized.  Tamed and more useful.

I’m sure you have that thing that plagues your mind, your nights, in the eep hour before sleep comes…between the miles which separate home and work….during the downtime of just getting through a day.  While it may plague you, it’s also the hope, the optimism and anticipation that keeps you alive and sane. 

Thoughts can flit through and seem so concrete and possible, only to be lost in between the coming, the going and the eventual stop and inertia that would allow for recording those ideas.  If only the thoughts would cooperate and be there when it’s more convenient.

It’s easy to think ideas…it ain’t easy to catch ‘em, keep ‘em, tame ‘em.

On some level I have always been aware that my little room filled with Post-its® would strike most people as odd…or at least beg some sort of question.  But it’s just been the way I write.  I wrote an entire book that way.

Some of the people that have wandered into my room come right out with questions or a joke.  Others ignore it for a good portion of whatever conversation we are having until, like any elephant in the corner of the room, they gotta ask.

And it’s usually something to the tune of, “What are all the stickies for?”

The simple answer – it’s 382 blog pieces I am writing.  382 pieces to a larger message.  Bite sized.  Digestable.  Organized and interlinking.

In essence, it’s my brain, or at least the plaguing portions of it ready to be put to some use and no longer bothersome.  You can do that with sticky notes and a little room more easily than in your actual brain.  Brains are too complex and never stay still.

People are asking me “what” the notes on the wall are for…but deep down they really want to know “why”.

It’s no big surprise to people that have ever known me that I am a writer.  Neither is it all that surprising to them that I am a real estate agent.  Separately, respectively, both can make sense to almost any of them.  But for me to write about real estate surprises them.

I always intended on writing.  Real estate in many ways was the flexible career to allow for the writing.  I didn’t set out to write a book about real estate.  ‘Til the plaguing thoughts.  That took some time and experience.  Ignorance is bliss, as they say.

A writing professor in college taught me that a writer needs the non-fiction behind the fiction in order to “sell” books…to publishers and eventually the public.  At the time I only saw myself writing fiction.  In essence, she was saying that people would want to know the true story behind the person that wrote the story…or the story about the story.

Now, here I am writing non-fiction.

Turns out, in a way, the same thing applies, a bit in reverse…you need your story, your “big why”, as the buzz words go in business nowadays.  You need your story.  Not necessarily your fiction behind the non-fiction, but rather your true, colorful story behind your writing, your business, your whatever.

We are all all-consumed with the desire for the back-story…the digestible story we can get behind and believe in.  The “why” before the “what”.

I can dig that.  In fact, it sorta falls into my wheelhouse.  But in my years, I have come to appreciate that while we all enjoy and crave the “big why” behind a person, company or product, underlyingly, their “big what” is really what matters…but you gotta get people to that point.  They gotta care about you before they care about your big what.

Let’s get to the point.

There’s a million real estate agents in the U.S. (give or take) at the moment, and I am sure each has their own big (or at least a little) “why”…but all with very similar “whats”.  The vast majority do things just about the same way.  A lot of unique stories – unique “whys” – but very few differences in terms of how and what they do. 

I know, I know, every agent reading this will swear that they do things differently…better than the next.  Problem is, I’m pretty darn sure a lot of the consumers who will read this view most agents as doing pretty much the same things, the same ways, for pretty much the same fees.  Granted, those fees are never the same from one consumer to the next.  Depends on how much they are buying or selling a house for.

I should have known that Post-its® had a story.

I didn’t know it until I realized I was going to be writing this particular piece.  The backstory, the “why”, didn’t cause me to use them.  They simply existed when I entered the business world and were there for me to use.

There were also no rules as to how to use them.  They had a typical way of being used, but nobody said I couldn’t use them on my office walls.  Turns out, if you Google images of Post-its® you’ll find that people use them in a lot of different ways than were originally intended.  Turns out…I’m not so odd.

Check out the story of how Post-its® came to be, if you don’t already know.

Long story short…back in the ’60′s a scientist at 3M was actually trying make a really strong adhesive, but instead what he created was what is now on the back of Post-its®…a not so strong adhesive.  It ended up being dubbed “a solution without a problem”.

Eventually, a colleague of his started using the adhesive to create a sticky bookmark for himself.  That then led to creating the product we now know.  They were originally one size and color.  Now they are all sorts of colors and sizes.

Real estate agents, while certainly unique, certainly different shapes and sizes and certainly some more useful and valuable than others, all function in much the same way and pretty much the same terms.  (Although legally there is no standard way or fee.)  This has been the case with little variation throughout the history of the industry.

Companies and agents with change and difference in mind do come…but they also typically go.  There are reasons for this.  And the reasons are not necessarily because the consumer doesn’t want change. 

But the lack of traction and staying power, the lack of ability to stay in business, gain market share and create lasting change is so often pointed to by many within the industry as evidence that the way things are, and the way things are done, need not be fiddled with.  It must stay the same and be done the same way.  After all, just look, no company or agent can possibly survive being that different.  The consumer truly just doesn’t want different or see the value in different.

I think change and difference is wanted and will be chosen by consumers, as long as consumers have, know of and aren’t predisposed to mistrusting different.

So, that’s what and why there’s Post-its® on the walls of my little box of a room…

…to get people thinking outside the box.

Get it out of my brain and into others’.

To pose solutions to problems within the real estate industry most want to swear don’t exist…or that no solution is even needed.