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This post was updated Oct. 7, 2024.
The rollercoaster ride of being an independent contractor and working on commission is not for everyone. Even seasoned professionals hit slumps in their pipeline, and they begin to wonder if they can navigate another sales cycle without regular closings to pump up their reserves.
Managing anxiety around financial irregularities requires patience, planning and persistence. Finding a strategy to overcome and put those negative feelings aside is an act of self-preservation in this high-stakes, high-intensity market.
Anxiety can sit beside you like an unwanted monster, and it can weigh down your normal solutions of solving problems and prospecting by creating doubt and fear that you are not doing enough.
Here are four strategies to help you move through the anxiety, stay focused and keep your mind on your money (and not your money on your mind) while working through adjusting commission structures and payouts.
Know what you owe
It’s essential to take time to understand how much income you need to cover your essentials and stash away funds for your reserve. If your first thought when you wake up in the morning is about how you are going to pay your bills, you have a major income problem.
Working by commission takes careful planning, budgeting, and a knack for self-restraint against blowing big payouts on fancy cars and vacations. If you are a real estate agent, you also need to be an expert on personal finance and investments. It’s the only way to stay in — and move forward in — the game of life.
Know how much debt you owe, plush up your reserves, and have every dollar that comes in commission allocated. Anxiety thrives on worst-case scenarios and unanswered questions. Map out your finances, and “eat the frog” — or tackle your hardest task first — to start chipping away at commission anxiety.
Lean in on management and mentorship for support
You cannot do this alone. Every agent needs a support system, especially someone to grab a cuppa with to debrief, vent and offer encouragement. Your management team should offer resources to help you not just sell but also build a lifelong career. Your management should be invested in you and your well-being.
If, at this point, your management team has been “hands off,” or as I like to call it, “hunger games” (may the odds be ever in your favor), then it’s probably time to find a new place to hang your license. Great leadership and office support systems should remove your anxiety, not encourage it or make it worse.
A great squad will help level out rising anxiety because there will be expectations and systems in place to help you adapt to upcoming changes smoothly.
Take a digital break
Get off social media. Seriously. One of the biggest drivers in commission or pipeline anxiety is FOMO (fear of missing out) or death by comparison against other agents.
Why are you stalking other agents? Why do you spend so much time talking about someone who has thousands of dollars to invest in marketing and a full team behind them when you are a one-person show?
To avoid this mind trap, ask yourself these questions:
- Would their success feel like the same success in my life?
- Could I handle that overhead?
- Do I really want to spend all that time on TikTok?
- Does my schedule even allow for me to make that much content?
- Is their style my style or even my personality?
If you are having anxiety about your own pipeline, but cannot articulate what you are actively doing to fix it — Houston, there is a problem. (It’s an even worse problem if you can explain what six other more successful agents are doing.)
Take a week off of social media. Unfollow your competition. Get crystal clear about what you want your marketing to look like. Watch your anxiety slowly come down and your brand message build up.
Take care of yourself
One of the first things I need to ask myself when I am feeling anxious is if I have been taking good care of myself (eating, resting, exercising, keeping my schedule from being overloaded) and usually one or all of those things are off course.
Admitting you have anxiety about the upcoming commission changes does not mean you are weak, or a terrible agent. It means that you are human, and your career is entering a new season that you need to prepare for. Every season requires new skills, tools, and mindset shifts. Working on being less rigid and more dynamic will help you work through those changes.
This means you probably need to dial back the following:
- Screentime
- Drinking
- Caffeine
- Junk food
- Late nights
- Spending time with toxic people
- Old systems that no longer serve your career
- The hard way
And embrace the following:
- Rest
- Exercise
- Whole foods
- Water
- Time with friends and family (or pets or people you like)
- New systems that allow you to work smarter rather than harder
- The path of least resistance
Your pep talk
Are you doing enough? It depends. Seriously, you may be doing all the right things, and business is just hard to come by in your market. Anxiety will live beside you until you get it under control.
That might mean working on generating other income. That might mean finding a new team. That might even mean working in a different type of position in real estate. (Are you a fantastic admin or creative with marketing?)
For the seasoned pros, the folks that have been doing this for more than a decade, you know what this is. You have been through this more times than you can count. Look at your anxiety, and tell it that you are the boss — and hand it an official eviction notice.
Don’t let pipeline anxiety rule your life. Stay vigilant and remember that your personal value has nothing to do with your sales and everything to do with the content of your character.
Rachael Hite is a former agent, a business development specialist, fair housing advocate, copy editor, and is currently perfecting her long game selling forever homes in a retirement continuing care community in Northern Virginia. You can connect with her about life, marketing and business on Instagram.
