When you lose a game, the score doesn’t follow you into the next one. Zero to zero, clean slate. But your habits? Those travel with you everywhere. The way you prepare. The way you follow up. The standard you hold when nobody’s watching. Those don’t reset at the final whistle.
And here’s where it gets uncomfortable: the same is true when you win.
The Market Was the Score. The Habits Were Yours.
2020 to 2022 was a historic score. Agents who hadn’t prospected in years were closing deals because the market handed them business. Broker-owners hit numbers they’d never seen. Affiliate partners were fielding more referrals than they could handle.
The score was 10 to nothing. And it felt like winning.
But here’s what that environment actually did: it let a lot of people practice bad habits at scale. Skipping follow-up because the next buyer was already calling. Skipping pricing conversations because everything sold anyway. Recruiting without a real value proposition because agents were moving on their own.
The score masked the habits.
Then 2023 arrived. The score reset. And the habits showed up exactly as they’d been practiced — which, for a lot of people, wasn’t well.
Execute the Same Way at 0 to 10
You want to execute the same way whether the score is 10 to 0 or 0 to 10. Not because the score doesn’t matter – it does. But because the score isn’t what you’re actually building.
The broker who built disciplined recruiting habits during the down years – calling consistently, following up systematically, always leading with a genuine value proposition – recruited well in 2020, recruited well in 2022, and is recruiting well right now. The score changed. The approach didn’t.
The broker who relied on the hot market to do their recruiting for them? Starting over. And starting over in a cold market with habits built in a hot one is brutal.
Your Previous Reps Are in the Room With You
Every call you make today is a rep. Every follow-up you skip is a rep. Every time you prospect when you don’t feel like it – that’s a rep too.
I talk to agents whose pipeline is thin and they don’t understand why. Then I ask what their prospecting looked like the last six months when business was decent. The answer is usually: I didn’t have to work as hard, so I didn’t.
The pipeline doesn’t lie. It’s a reflection of the reps.
Standards Beat Motivation Every Time
Motivation is tied to the score. When business is good, motivation is easy. When it’s slow, motivation disappears. If your activity depends on how motivated you feel, your pipeline peaks and valleys with the market.
Standards don’t care what the score is. You call the same number of people. You run the same onboarding process at 50 agents or 150. The broker-owners who have survived multiple market cycles all have this in common: they got boring on purpose. They found the standard that worked and held it when it was hard to hold.
For recruiters and affiliate partners: your habits in a slow market are your portfolio. The agents considering a move in the next cycle remember who showed up consistently – who called when there was nothing to sell. The score of your last year doesn’t transfer. The reputation you built running those plays? That absolutely does.
Circumstances are temporary. But the habits you’re building right now will show up in the next round regardless of what the score says today.
What are your habits actually building?
Win The Day!
