In this business, each file you complete is another brick in your wall.

The first walls (years) form the foundation that you are building your business success on. With a strong foundation, it’s up to you how many levels you build upon it.

What strengthens a wall? Many things, but a key is the mortar in between the bricks.

The mortar represents the dozens, hundreds maybe, of conversations that went into each brick in the wall. It is the interactions with the client, the referral partner, the Realtor, the underwriter, the lender BDM, the office manager, the coworkers… basically anyone and everyone who helped you nudge that file across the finish line — turning it into a brick in your wall.

A key ingredient in that mortar is also all of the files that failed to fund… how you handled the people involved, what lessons you learned, and what you applied to future files. That experience of failure — not just your own experience of it, but the observation of others watching you deal with it (or worse, others dealing with the fallout from your failure) — all plays into how strong that mortar is.

As we progress in our careers, and in life, we realize that as important as each brick is, it’s those critical experiences in between the wins that matter the most to our future. The healthier and more evenly balanced that mortar in between the bricks, the longer lasting our foundation.

It’s the mortar that holds you together as well.

So, whether this week was bricks or mostly mortar, make sure it is all quality all the time and you’ll have an amazing structure!