A year and a half ago I was in a marketing workshop and they were talking about choosing marketing platform that felt natural to you. That's when I thought about the blog I started the next day--September 2022.
I have thought about it since then, but. Life. Still, it's the platform I like the most and I want to do a better job at marketing, which I sort of hate, but also sort of love because isn't marketing just about networking? isn't networking just about connection? Isn't connection the actual point of all the things we do?
And so I am blogging and I enjoy it. Thanks for being here.
Reading: I am currently listening to "Girl Gone Mad" by Avery Bishop. It's woman's fiction suspense. I picked it because Audible was having a "Reader" sale and this one is done by Cassandra Campbell. Cassandra has been the reader for some of my historical fictions and I love her historical voice, but I'm not as familiar with her contemporary voice so I bought this book because of her--lucky for me, the books is also very good. I'm liking it a lot--both the reading and the story. It's about a group of mean girls 14 years after they severely bullied another girl, and how someone decides to retaliate. Right now I have three different ideas on what's happening and only one plot hole I'm waiting to get resolved. Really good.
Writing: I am 2/3 of the way through book one of a new series. My writing brain feels a little bit like the clippers you left in the garden last year and just found now that the snow has melted. A little stiff, sort of rusty, but salvageable. I've always found mystery a challenge--I don't feel like a naturally clever person so it takes a lot of brain power. Brain power that has had to share space these last five years with a new career, a new marriage, a new home (or two) and some new ways of knowing and understanding myself and the world and living a life I'm excited to wake up to every day. I am finally to a point where I can see the challenges as simply that, challenges, rather than disasters. It's not been an easy time, but I am far enough through to be able to look back and see progress and even improvement in several specific areas of my inner self, which I'm so grateful for. People have been telling me this would happen and, frankly, I did not believe them. But it's happened. Beauty for ashes instead of ashes for beauty. I am under contract for a new mystery series. I have seven weeks to finish but those rusty gears are remembering how much I adore a deadline. I'll share more details down the road.
Real Estate: After several months of very little happening, things are picking up. 2023 was one of the slowest years for real estate agents in decades. Not even 2008 was as depressed as 2023 because short sales and foreclosures kept realtors working and people buying. There are plenty of reasons why 2023 was what it was, but the biggest one (IMHO) is that interest rates almost doubled; an unprecedented increase that made all of us suck in our breath and hold it. Many smarty-pantses knew it was coming--the falsely low-interest rates of 2020 had to balance out somewhere--but even the smarty-pantses didn't expect it to try to correct in one year. Don't get me wrong, it's not fixed, but it's closer to a realistic percentage and real estate in Utah and Idaho is showing a more balanced market than we've had for years. A perfect interest rate is between 4-5% and we're not there yet, but we're making progress. I have three under contracts right now (two in Idaho and one in Utah) with one set to close this week; all of my UC clients are buyers. I have a listing in Salt Lake coming up next week and another that's within a few weeks (I hope) of making it on the MLS. I am watching different market forecasters, staying up on market trends, learning and growing so that I can be the best I can be. I am managing my career through family, friends, repeat, and referral business, which has been my goal from the start. It means I might not do as many transactions, but it is my happy place working with people who want to work with me because they know me in one way or another. We get to start from a place of trust and everything goes smoother when that is our foundation. Owning a home is still the best investment you can make toward gaining wealth and security and if you want to talk housing, I would love to talk that through with you. In Idaho, I work through My Idaho Agents. In Utah, I work through Lumina Real Estate.
Here's my cheesing marketing meme of the week. Also, cabbage is a natural testosterone booster and we all need some good vitamin T :-)
