Before there was a Top 5 Podcast, there was a blog. I recently started writing again, and here’s why. Hope it will help you gain clarity, learn new things, and share your superpowers.
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Welcome back to another episode of Top 5. My name is Chance Brown, and I'm going to be your host for today. If this is your first time joining us on Top 5, welcome. We're glad that you're here. This show was designed to give you five simple takeaways from each episode that you can take and go put into your business to help build a great business, whether it's from a blog post that I've written, whether it's from a book that I'm reading, whether it's from just experiential stuff or we have guests on. We want you to be able to take things easily from this that are actionable items that you can go put into your business. So today I'm going to tell you a little bit of a confession. I never really intended to host a podcast. It was never a plan I had. It was never really something that I thought that I would do.
And as you can tell, if you're a follower of this show, it's not the most consistent thing in the universe for me. It's something that as I write, as I do things, as I hear things that I think would be really pertinent to your business, I record. I don't try to do it just for the sake of doing it. And I want to make sure that if we're going to bring guests on, those guests are people that really can help you build your business. I started out writing. I started out writing a blog. And I started years ago writing a blog. And it was just something that I would kind of do in my spare time. I enjoy writing. And so when the pandemic rolled around in early 2020, I was just beating the crap out of my agents trying to tell them, you've got to get on video, you've got to get on video, you've got to get on video. We can't connect person to person, we're going to be separated, whether it's, you know, via zoom, whether it's in person, didn't really matter, we're going to be separated from people for a while. You've got to find a way to connect in person. And the best way to do that is to add video to what you're doing.
Man, so I thought, hey, if I'm going to harp on these people to do this, I really ought to lead by example. I really ought to take the lead and show them how. And so what easier way than to start taking the stuff that I've been writing about anyway, and put it into a podcast format, right? At least that was the thought. The problems are multiple, we can talk about that in probably a different episode, might make a good episode. Number one is inconsistency, which if you follow this show, you know, it's not a, we put this out every Wednesday, we put this out of whatever this, that, whatever. It's whenever I make content that I feel like is worth sharing. And so sometimes there's months that go in between episodes of this show. Anyway, a few months ago, I really started trying to, I really started trying to figure out how to simplify things in my life. I really try, I'm trying to make the best use of time, spending more time one-on-one with my agents or in groups settings with my agents being able to be out visiting our offices as opposed to being in this office, which I spent a lot of time in this office last year.
Well, as I kind of went through this priority list of things that I wanted to do in 2023, one of those things was get back to writing. I really love writing. I'll talk about that in a second, but I really wanted to get back to writing. And so I started my blog back and I'll record content that I write in the blog into this, which might actually lead to it being more consistent because I enjoy writing more than I enjoy recording. And so if you're interested and you want to follow along, if you want to subscribe, it's chancebrown.com, C-H-A-N-C-E-B-R-O-W-N.com. You can go there and I'm posting once a week on average right now. Sometimes I write a little bit more, sometimes I write a little bit less, but I'm trying to put a bunch of stuff into that blog. And I'm going to go back to the old blog and rehash some old things, kind of freshen it up and repost it. And I'll re-record those episodes here as we do it. So look for a lot more content from that. And by virtue of that, more content here. So why returning to this blog? So here's your Top 5. Number one, as I mentioned, I just really, really love to write. As my business has grown, as my family has gotten more, as my kids have gotten older, really, I find that I have less and less time just to myself, right? The kids need to go to this thing. They need to go to that thing. They need to help. They need help with homework. They need whatever that looks like. And then so do my agents.
They need stuff from me. And so between all of those things, there's very little time that I have just to myself. And what I really enjoy doing when I have that time is writing. It's very cathartic to me. It's very just almost therapeutic that after everybody has gone to bed, I can sit down, you know, it's midnight, it's whatever time it is, and just write. There's nobody seeking attention. I can focus on it. It's really, really very simple for me. I'll get into this a little bit more in a second when I talk about how it helps me solidify things. But one of the great things about writing is actually the editing.
So you write, and then as you write, more thoughts come, right? And as you, more thoughts come, you go back and you edit, and then you end with this product. But a lot of times agents will come to me and they'll be like, "Hey, I want to start a blog. I want to do this." And the truth of the matter is a lot of times that that's an avoidance of the things that they really need to do in their business. Because writing a blog is tough. It's not like you just sit down and write some stuff down and hit publish. It takes real time. If I start a blog post at 10:30, 11:00 at night, it's not unusual that that's 2:00 a.m. before I'm finished. I've got everything done with SEO. I've got graphics. I've got good edits. And then usually the next day, I still think of something that needs to be edited because it gets my brain working. So the number one reason, like I said, is just I really love that process. I love to write. And here are some of the reasons why. Number two on our list is it allows me to clear my head. I am the type of person where I constantly got stuff going on in my head. I've constantly got a plan that I want to do with this or an idea on how to tweak that to the point that a lot of times my staff is just like, "Listen, stop. You've got to stop. Put away the idea notebook, stick it over here, and let's just focus on getting what we've done operating really well." For me, writing allows me to get these ideas that I have out of my head and really make it a concrete concept.
And when I do that, I know fairly quickly whether it's a good concept or a bad concept. I know whether it's something that I need to just throw out or it's something that I really like to do. I don't know that until I start to put it down on paper. It's like you're taking something that just doesn't make any sense at all and all of a sudden, boom, it's clear and it's right in front of you. And I think that whether you like to write from a writing standpoint, like you want to publish something or you're going to publish a blog post or you just need help taking the idea you have and making it concrete or building a process around it, I'm a huge fan of getting that on paper, getting it out in front of you. Now, I have a very visual person, so that really helps me a lot. But when you take those thoughts out of your brain and you put them on paper and that you can view it in front of you, whether it's a timeline, whether it's a chart or a graph, whether it's a spreadsheet, it doesn't really matter. However you do it, put it on paper and it becomes a concrete thing. It becomes a real thing.
And so I think that is very, very powerful. And I'll get to another reason why in a minute. But for me, it takes the clutter out of my head and just sets it in a place that I can use it, as opposed to just confusing and keep me up at night and things like that. I like to pretend, this is point number three, that I am a creative person. I come on both sides of my family from a pretty long line of creative people, people who can sing, people who can play musical instruments, people who are actors. I've got all of these people in my family. I inherited zero of those genes. I got gout and a receding hairline. Those are the genes that I got from that side of the family, both sides of the family. And so writing allows me to think I'm being creative. It allows me to pretend like I get to play in that world. I also like to cook, so I use that as my outlet sometimes as well. But it really becomes the idea factory for a lot of things. And when I'm writing, a lot of times I'll get graphic ideas so I can go into Canva and play around with that.
There's just a lot there that helps me pretend that I'm creative. But in reality, the outcome is I actually do get some creative ideas when I sit down and start writing. And I'll just, as my thoughts go, so will the ideas graphically, or I need to record this, or we need to make a change to that, or whatever it is that helps me be a little more creative, a little more innovative, and have some input into the impact of whether it's what I'm writing, or whether what it's I'm recording, or what we're teaching in the brokerage, or I'm teaching somewhere else. This really allows me to take that creativity that's in my head to a next level. And by virtue of that, number four on the list is it helps me learn.
Because when I start to take that kind of abstract idea that I talked about earlier, and put it in on paper, I start to do more research on it. I start to look for who's the expert on this? Who can I reach out to and call? Who might I bring on to this podcast as a guest because of this, right? It makes what I'm doing more of a living, breathing thing. It takes what I'm doing and really allows me to dig deeper so that it's not just a surface level, "Oh, we want to do this. We want to do this, but why?" And once we get that why, then what's the why behind that? And what's the why behind that? And then you start reaching into the hows, and wins, and things like that, that are going to help you actually take what you're doing and implement it. And when you start to look at implementation and systemization and process-driven pieces of that puzzle, that's when you really start to learn how. You really start to learn the basics, and then as you really get good at the basics, you start to expand that into more advanced topics, and you really learn and learn and learn. Which leads us to the fifth and final thing of why I'm back to writing more than I'm going to be, more than I haven't in the past couple of years, is it helps me teach. So whether it's this outlet in a podcast, or whether it's in our brokerage, or I teach for our state association, our local association, whatever that looks like, it really helps me teach. And by virtue of that, let's go back to number four again a little bit. Teaching helps you learn, right? You become a master at your subject matter when you go teach it. A lot of times I'll have my daughter when she's trying to learn something in school, teach it to me. Like go read about it, and then come in and teach it to me, and the retention is almost always better. So not only does it help me learn when I write, but it helps me teach as I learn. And that is a cycle. So as I teach, I learn more, and I become an expert at that. When I become an expert at that, then I can expand on it, and I can go different avenues with it. And so it's this really great cycle. So there you have it. There's your top five reasons why I restarted my blog because you were just dying to hear that this morning.
Number one, I really love to write. Number two, it allows me to clear my head. Number three, it lets me pretend to be creative. And numbers four and five, it helps me learn. And by virtue of that, it helps me teach, which helps me learn, which helps me teach. Cycle, right? So there you go. ChanceBrown.com is the blog if you want to go in and read it. Like I said, as I build content in there, I'm going to record it here. So you will get the best of both worlds, whether you want to read, or you want to listen, or you want to watch. So thank you for joining me this morning on another episode of Top 5. I hope this was helpful. I hope you'll take some time to just try it out. Whatever ideas in your head, sit down with a piece of paper, sit down on your rebuttal, sit down with a spreadsheet, whatever you need to do, and get it out of your head and into a concrete format where you can expand on it, where you can learn from it, where you can build a processor system around it and make that thing that's in your head a tangible, living, breathing thing in your business. I hope you have a great day. Thank you for joining us on Top 5, and I will see you soon.
