I've been thinking a lot lately about when people call me.
For years, people have called because they needed an auctioneer. Or they needed to sell real estate. Or they had a house full of personal property that needed to be dealt with.
But lately I've found myself wishing people would call me before they know what they need.
That probably sounds a little backwards.
But what if the first decision isn't which service provider to hire?
What if the first decision is figuring out what combination of services actually gets you where you're trying to go?
Because most of the situations I walk into aren't really one-service problems.
There may be real estate to sell, personal property to liquidate, repairs to consider, a move to coordinate, debt to pay, family members with different opinions, timelines that matter, and expenses that continue whether anyone is ready to make a decision or not.
And sometimes people have already started solving those individual pieces before anyone has looked at the entire landscape.
They've talked to a Realtor about the house.
They've talked to someone about selling the contents.
Maybe a neighbor has already offered to buy the property.
Maybe they've called a cleanout company.
Maybe an attorney has given them perfectly good legal advice.
None of those things are necessarily wrong.
But each professional is naturally looking at the situation through the lens of the problem they're being asked to solve.
And I've started to realize that the work I enjoy most happens before we narrow the problem that far.
When I sit down with someone, I want to hear the entire situation.
I think about what they told me—and sometimes what they didn't tell me.
I look at the assets we know about. I want to understand the timeline. I want to know what they're actually trying to accomplish.
Sometimes it makes sense to sell the real estate first. Sometimes the personal property needs to go first. Sometimes both can happen together. Sometimes the thing someone assumed needed to happen doesn't need to happen at all.
And sometimes the biggest issue isn't an asset.
It's readiness.
Two spouses can both say they want to move and still not be in the same place about what that actually means.
Someone can desperately want a difficult situation behind them and be moving so quickly toward relief that they're about to make a decision that isn't in their best interest.
Someone else can be completely confident in the plan they've created—and experience may tell me where that plan is going to cause headaches before they ever get there.
That's where I have realized something about myself:
I don't particularly like putting Band-Aids on problems. I want to help solve them.
That doesn't mean I expect a seller to blindly do everything I recommend. My entire career has involved compromise and collaboration with sellers.
But there's a difference between collaborating on a plan we've developed together and being hired simply to execute a solution someone chose before we ever looked at the whole problem.
If you call me early enough, I'm going to look at the entire situation. I'm going to consider how you can leverage the assets you have within the timeline and circumstances you're dealing with and give those assets their best possible shot.
And sometimes my advice may be that you shouldn't hire us.
I may tell you that the labor involved in doing something is going to eat up too much of what you're trying to gain.
I may suggest a route you haven't considered.
I may tell you that I think another professional or another solution makes more sense.
I can't guarantee what a market will do. Nobody can.
But I can use what I've learned to help you look at the assets you have, the conditions you're operating within, and the different ways available to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish.
Maybe that's why this matters more to me at this point in my career.
I've done enough life to know that money matters. But money has never been what makes a project feel worthwhile to me.
The projects I remember are the ones where I can look back and know:
We left that situation better than we found it.
Sometimes that meant substantially more money for a seller.
Sometimes it meant getting movement in a situation that had been stuck for years.
Sometimes it meant telling someone not to spend money on something that wasn't going to serve them.
And sometimes "better" isn't purely financial at all.
Because the entire landscape includes more than assets.
There are contracts, deadlines, expenses and market conditions.
But there are also people.
There are relationships, emotions, grief, readiness and sometimes people whose needs may not matter contractually but absolutely affect whether a plan will actually work.
You can't always remove the humanity from a situation just because doing so would make the transaction cleaner.
So maybe before you decide that you need an auctioneer, a Realtor, a contractor, a cleanout company—or anyone else—stop for a minute.
Look at the entire landscape.
What are you actually trying to accomplish?
What assets are involved?
What advice are you going to need—not just what services?
What timeline are you working within?
Who will be affected by the decisions?
And does the person you're talking to have enough experience across the situation to help you see how those pieces affect one another?
There is almost always more than one way to get something accomplished.
And if the way that seems like it should solve your problem starts making the whole situation increasingly complicated, maybe that's a good time to pause.
Bring somebody in who has seen enough to help you look at the whole thing again.
Maybe the first step isn't choosing the road.
Maybe it's understanding the landscape well enough to know which road gives you the best shot at getting where you're trying to go.
