Authority compounds on LinkedIn. Absence compounds, too.

Earlier this month, about a hundred loan officers found out their company was being sold. Envoy Mortgage was buying Mason-McDuffie’s distributed retail operation, a billion dollars of production moving with it, closing by the end of August. Within days, agents who’d been working with those originators went looking to see where they’d landed. Recruiters at competing shops did the same thing, faster. All of them looked in one place, and it wasn’t Instagram. Where your referral partners are already looking LinkedIn is where this industry keeps its professional identity, whether anybody’s tending to it or not. Your profile is live right now. It ranks for your name; it’s the first thing a stranger finds and it’s telling people what you do and who you work for. Whatever it says today is what it said to everyone who checked since the last time you updated it. The people who can hand you business are on that platform and almost nowhere else in a working capacity. The agent choosing which lender to hand her buyer. The branch manager building a short list. The title rep, the capital partner, the recruiter with a seat to fill and eleven names on a spreadsheet. NAR’s technology data puts 87% o...