So it seems that every five minutes, there's a Zoom meeting or a video or a face, a social media post about the rates going up, the inventory is down, and all the things that you and me and

Faye Roe's Army can't do anything about. So let me tell you, it's not that those types of

conversations aren't important. It's just that they are not a function of my activity

that actually increases my market share.

In other words, those activities don't do me any good in my business.

I mean, it might help for my personal investing in the stock market,

but for my mortgage business, those things, well, they are what they are.

And they're that way for all the lenders. And so what I thought

about whether rates are up or rates are down, it's a level playing field for everybody, right?

Everybody's rates are, everybody's rates are up, everybody's rates are down. So I don't have an

advantage one way or the other. So it's a level playing field, even if that playing field is at a higher

altitude and oxygen is a little thin. I oftentimes think that when I do focus on those things,

what's really happening? It's it's me looking to not do those activities that actually make me money, you know, doing the actual

activity that makes the phone rings so that we can take yet another mortgage application.

So you go, all right, Carl, what do we focus on?

So I have found three major things to focus on in my business, it's done me very well.

Number one, sell what's on the shelf,

sell what's on the shelf. Look, the vast amount of time, we're all selling the same programs,

the same rates, like nobody has magic money. My rates go up, so do yours, so does everybody else's, right? So

some of that time that you might be spending on charts and graphs that's guessing what

rates are going to be next December, well, I'm going to spend that same time getting another

customer selling what's on this shelf, both now and in December.

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