The True Cost Of Selling Your Soul

Nobody sets out to sell their soul. It happens gradually.

You start a business because you want independence. You want to build something of your own. You want to do things differently. You want to create something you can eventually be proud of. And ultimately, you want to be paid what you're worth.

It's a noble ambition.

Then reality arrives...

The bills need paying. The clients need looking after. The staff need managing.

And in the middle of it all, the government changes the rules. They increase taxes and force employment costs to rise.

Then technology changes. Artificial intelligence arrives.

And suddenly, you're not building the business you dreamed about. You're stuck just trying to survive the business you've created.

This is where things become dangerous. Because when you're exhausted, you stop looking for better answers. Instead, your brain is biologically hard-wired to look for safe ones.

So, you end up following the crowd. You buy the thing everyone else is buying. You use the portal everyone else uses. You copy the same marketing everyone else uses. You lower your fees to charge what everyone else charges.

And eventually... You become exactly what you never intended to become:

A commodity.

That's the real cost of selling your soul. Not one dramatic decision. Thousands of tiny compromises made in moments of quiet desperation because nobody else bears the burden of responsibility.

"I'll sort that out when things calm down."

"I can't afford to try something different right now."

"Everyone uses Rightmove."

"That's just what agents charge."

"That's how conveyancing works."

"We've always done it this way."

And perhaps the most dangerous one of all:

"I'll change it when I've got more time."

Let's face facts for a moment - you won't. Because the ever-changing nature of business rarely gives you more time. There will always be another problem. Another (awkward) client. Another piece of regulation that needs complying with. Another member of staff. Another bill. Another crisis.

The finish line is constantly moving away from us.

So if you're waiting for the day when everything finally settles down and you can start working on your business rather than constantly working in it... I'm afraid to say that day may never come.

And this is where I think many good business owners in the property world have become trapped. They are not stupid. They are not lazy - far from it. And they are not lacking in ambition.

They're simply exhausted! And enduring months of exhaustion creates a very powerful survival instinct. It makes you defend the things you already know rather than explore the things you don't.

Which is completely understandable, especially in an industry where so many people have been burned before. We've seen countless "revolutionary" and "game-changing" solutions arrive full of empty promises to transform estate agency or the wider property market.

We've seen new portals. New platforms. New lead-generation systems. New technologies. New promises.

Some have failed spectacularly. Others have simply delivered results that never came close to the promises made.

And when you've been burned once, it's very easy to decide: Never again.

The problem is that "never again" can become a prison. Reticence sets in and you start treating every new idea as another scam. Every new platform as another portal that's doomed to fail. Every different business model as another sales pitch.

And eventually you become so cynical that you reject the very thing that could have helped you. And here's the bad news - that isn't scepticism - it's fear disguised as wisdom.

The Maverick doesn't blindly believe every new idea. Far from it. Instead, a Maverick asks better questions:

What problem does this actually solve?

What is different about it?

Who benefits if it succeeds?

What happens if I do nothing?

And then...

What might happen if I tried it?

Because experimentation is not recklessness. It's how you discover what works and what doesn't.

For instance, if we think about estate agency, around half of all properties listed for sale each year don't ultimately complete. Yet an enormous amount of faith continues to be placed in the traditional model of:

Win the instruction (at all costs). Put it on the portal. Wait for the buyer. Hope the chain holds together. Repeat.

When we look at it, that's not really a strategy - it's merely habit. And habits become dangerous when the environment around them changes, like what is happening to the property market across the UK right now.

The same applies to the business of conveyancing. Take on more files. Charge less - or give away your profit margin as a "referral fee". Work harder for less money. Try to employ more people to process the overwhelming amount of work. Take on more referral work. Hope the numbers eventually work out - after all, you're busy, so you must be making money, right?

In the majority of cases, that's not a sustainable business model. It's an endurance test!

So what do the people who are thriving do differently?

Put simply - they experiment. They test. They measure. And they question. They stop assuming that the biggest player must automatically be the best option. They stop believing that the mainstream route is the safest route.

They realised long ago that sometimes the greatest risk is doing nothing - especially if you want to earn what you're worth.

Because here's the reality - there are estate agents, conveyancers and mortgage brokers earning multiples of what other professionals in their respective industries are earning.

They didn't get there by doing ten times more of exactly the same thing. Instead, they tried something different. They tested it. They refined it. And they kept going.

That's what adopting The Maverick Mindset means. Not being different for the sake of being different, but being prepared to find out what actually works.

Because if you're earning one unit and someone else in your industry is earning five or ten units, there are only two possibilities. They're working five or ten times harder, or they've discovered a better model.

And if it's the latter...perhaps you should find out what they're doing?

Not copy them. Learn from them.

Then build something better yourself. Because this is what we want to achieve through The Maverick Movement.

Not launch another product or another platform. And certainly not promise that everything will suddenly become easy.

We're ultimately working towards helping good property professionals to build better businesses. More profitable businesses and more resilient businesses. Businesses that aren't completely dependent upon the next listing, the next referral, the next lead or the next government incentive to create a market upswing.

Businesses that can create something even more valuable. A legacy. Because you didn't go into business to become exhausted. And you didn't become independent so you could spend your life being controlled by somebody else's business model.

You didn't build your reputation over decades so that an algorithm could decide your worth. And you certainly didn't spend twenty or thirty years becoming an expert so that your expertise could be reduced to a line of code on a price comparison website.

So perhaps it's time to ask yourself an uncomfortable question:

What have you sacrificed to remain safe?

Your time? Your independence? Your ambition? Your ability to experiment? Your profitability? Perhaps even your original reason for starting the business? Your family? Your loved ones? Or the quiet promises you made to yourself that no one else knows about, but you?

If the answer makes you uncomfortable, that's most likely a very good thing. Because discomfort is often where change begins.

You don't need to throw everything away tomorrow. You don't need to bet the business on an untested idea. You simply need to start experimenting again.

One small change. One different approach. One new conversation. One assumption challenged. One part of your business redesigned. Then measure what happens.

Because the biggest businesses weren't built by people who never made mistakes. They were built by people who were willing to discover what didn't work. And then try something else, knowing that the winning strategy could change their destiny forever.

That's The Maverick Mindset.

A Maverick doesn't sell their soul to the status quo simply because it feels safe.

They question it. Test it. Challenge it. And probe it to see if there's a better way...

Mavericks have the courage and self-belief to find it. Because the reality is, when you start looking, you may discover that the thing you thought was protecting your business...was actually holding it back.

Perhaps the greatest price you can pay in business isn't the cost of trying something new, it's the cost of never trying anything new at all.

So have courage - adopt The Maverick Mindset and start questioning the assumptions you've made along the way that have led you to this point. Because you may find the safest thing you can do might be to stop doing what everyone else is doing.