How Many People Did You Care About in the Last 90 Days?

Sometimes business just shows up and I honestly don't know where it came from.

And my first instinct is to credit whatever I've been doing lately.

Must be the social media. Must be the blog. Must be that thing I started three months ago.

But when I actually sit down and trace it back, it's almost never that.

It's a person.

And usually, it's a person I made sure knew I cared about them.

Not during the deal. Everybody cares during the deal.

Fifteen days after closing. Twenty days. Thirty.

Just calling to see how they're settling in.

Nothing to sell. Nothing to ask for.

And then not forgetting about them the next quarter. Or the next year.

I've missed people. I've gotten busy. I've looked up and realized too much time had passed.

I'm not perfect at this.

But I've been doing this long enough to recognize a pattern.

When I trace business back to where it really came from, I keep finding people.

Years ago, I had a first-time homebuyer call me.

She had been working with another agent and it hadn't gone well. So I picked it up and started working with her.

And we worked.

For probably six or seven months, we tried to get her into a house.

Eventually, we did.

It wasn't some massive transaction. It was a starter home.

But for her, it was a big deal.

She was buying her first house.

We finally made it to the closing table, she got her house, and I was just happy it had a good ending.

I didn't walk out of that closing thinking about what it might turn into.

There wasn't anything else to measure.

The deal was done.

About two weeks later, her dad called me.

I'd spoken with him some during the process, but I didn't really know what the call was about.

He told me he owned fifteen rental properties that he wanted to sell.

Then he basically said:

"I appreciate the way you worked with my daughter, and I'd like for you to handle them."

Fifteen properties.

Because of the way I treated one person buying her first starter home.

There was no marketing plan that could have shown me that six months earlier.

There was no KPI for it.

No spreadsheet could have told me, "If you keep showing up for this girl long enough, her dad is eventually going to call you with fifteen properties."

I couldn't measure it because I didn't know it existed.

And I think that's the part we miss when we say:

Put people first and the money will follow.

We've all heard it.

I've never met an agent who thinks it's wrong.

So I don't think we have a belief problem.

I think we have a patience problem.

We believe it.

We just don't always do it long enough to find out if it's true.

Because relationships don't give you an immediate scoreboard.

You call somebody just to check on them.

Nothing happens.

You help somebody who can't do anything for you right now.

Nothing happens.

You stay late. You answer another phone call. You keep working on the deal that isn't going to make you much money anyway.

Nothing happens.

At least not that you can see.

Meanwhile, almost everything else in this industry gives us a number.

Leads. Conversion rates. Impressions. Open rates. Appointments.

Something moves and tells us the work mattered.

Relationships usually don't.

That's what makes putting people first an act of faith.

You have to believe that doing right by people is worth doing even when there is no immediate return attached to it.

And sometimes there never will be.

That's important too.

Not every person you serve is going to send you fifteen properties.

They don't owe you anything.

That's not the point.

The point is becoming the kind of person who serves them the same either way.

I've just lived long enough in this business now to see what tends to happen over time.

People remember.

And the numbers back up the value of those long-term relationships. NAR's 2026 Member Profile found that the typical member gets 28% of their business from past clients and customers, while REALTORS® with more than 16 years in the business get about half of their customer pipeline from repeat business.

I don't think that's because somebody suddenly becomes a marketing genius after sixteen years.

I think they've had sixteen years to care about people.

Sixteen years of closings.

Sixteen years of phone calls.

Sixteen years of birthdays, kids, moves, problems, celebrations and conversations that had nothing to do with real estate.

That's what compounds.

Almost everything else resets.

Your pipeline can reset.

Production goes back to zero.

But the people you've taken care of don't disappear just because the calendar changed.

And maybe that's why I'm thinking about this differently now.

We spend so much energy asking:

How do I get more leads?

How do I get more followers?

How do I have more conversations?

How do I get more people into my world?

Maybe we should spend a little more time asking what we're doing with the people who are already here.

So here's the question I've been asking myself:

How many people did I genuinely care about in the last ninety days?

Not market to.

Not put into a campaign.

Not ask for a referral.

Care about.

And more importantly...

Did they know it?

Because caring about somebody quietly doesn't do much for them.

Call them.

Check on them.

Remember something that matters to them.

Show up when there isn't a commission attached.

Serve them without expecting anything back.

Then have enough faith to stop keeping score.

Because after all these years, I think that's what put the people first and the money will follow actually means.

You don't serve people because you know where the money is going to come from.

You serve people because it's the right thing to do.

And you trust that, over time, everything else has a way of taking care of itself.

A Reminder to feed your fire, 

Lyle