UNINTENTIONAL CONSEQUENCES OF COVID-19

By: Blayne St. James, Owner/Broker
Licensed in: CO, KS, UT & NM

First off I hope every person reading this article has not been too negatively affected by COVID 19! My family and I feel blessed to have pulled through these highly unfortunate serious of events relatively unscathed. It’s easy for the media to portray the negative aspects of the pandemic because let’s face it, drama sells. I want to take a few moments to highlight the positive impact COVID 19 has had on our family and business. The nature of our business is rush, hustle, and push to the next showing, listing appointment or contract. It’s a fast-paced business where we are always pretty much on call. Don’t get me wrong, I love what we do and feel like I’m “living the dream”. However, we’re always on the phone and computers, which makes it difficult to focus on anything besides work. Distracted is probably a great word, to sum up, my thoughts. If you sell a high volume of properties like many of my agents, this leaves very little margin to truly engaging family and clients to develop relationships beyond surface levels.

We at the St. James household and started having sit down family dinners again. I took both of my boys on two different turkey hunts where they connected on their first birds. My wife and I went on a few dates (probably owe her several more)—all the things I should have been doing more frequently, to begin with. I made a conscious effort to reach out to many of my clients I thought might be struggling to see how they were doing. I sent emails and made calls to verify clients’ needs haven’t changed. I connected with past buyers and sellers to see if they were having any issues with their properties and to say hello. Do you know what the unintentional consequences of COVID 19 had on us? Stronger family ties and better client relationships! We created lifelong memories, and our business skyrocketed in a seemingly dire economic downturn. Lesson learned!