The view from my fence this morning is decidedly fall, thanks to the leaves the nor’easter knocked down overnight.

For months, fall has been the marker. After Labor Day. After the Jewish holidays. Once October starts, everyone will be back, and the market will get moving.

Well, here we are.

And already, I’m hearing the next one: let’s see what happens with the midterms.

There’s always an after. After the election. After the next Fed meeting. After rates come down. After things feel a little more certain.

That’s the problem with waiting for certainty. The finish line keeps moving.

Sometimes waiting is absolutely the right move. There are decisions that deserve more information, better timing, or simply another beat. But there’s a difference between waiting for something specific that could actually change your decision and waiting for the world to give you permission to make one.

The latter can keep you on the fence for a very long time.

And the view from up there isn’t bad. You can see every reason not to move.

Your clients may be perfectly happy there, and sometimes they should be. A seller who isn’t ready isn’t ready. A buyer who wants to see what happens with rates doesn’t necessarily need to be talked into buying right now. Good advising isn’t about pushing people into decisions because you’re tired of waiting for them to make one.

But here’s where I think agents get into trouble, and honestly, where I think most of us get into trouble outside of work too: your clients’ waiting becomes your waiting. Someone else’s hesitation quietly becomes your excuse.

It’s not just clients. It’s the partner who isn’t ready to have the hard conversation, so neither are you. The friend who keeps saying “someday” about the Tuscany trip, so you quietly stop planning it. The aging parent who can’t decide about the house, so your own plans stay just as vague. Somewhere along the way, someone else’s timeline started running your life, and you didn’t even notice the handoff.

You start watching the same markers they are, and without really deciding to, you put your own life on hold right alongside theirs. It’s an easy thing to do, because waiting on someone else always feels safer than committing to your own timeline. If nothing happens, it’s not really your fault. You were just waiting.

Those are two very different things.

Your client can wait. Your job is to stay close enough that when they’re ready to move, you’re still the person they want beside them. But you also have a business to run while they do.

That doesn’t mean prospecting harder or manufacturing urgency where there isn’t any. It means refusing to hand your own momentum over to the market, or to anyone else’s timeline.

Call the person you haven’t talked to in six months. Have the conversation you’ve been putting off. Follow up with the seller who said “maybe fall” and find out what they’re actually thinking now. Make the appointment you keep rescheduling. Go meet someone new.

None of that guarantees a deal, or any outcome at all. But it builds momentum, and momentum is the thing you actually control.

Momentum doesn’t wait for certainty. It’s built one unremarkable action at a time, whether or not the market ever cooperates.

And it does something most people don’t give it credit for. It’s not really about the deal, or the goal, or whatever you’re technically working toward. Every time you make the call, have the hard conversation, or show up somewhere new, you’re proving something to yourself: that you don’t need anyone’s permission to keep moving. That evidence adds up. It’s how you build the kind of trust in yourself that lets you get off the fence the next time, and the time after that.

Stillness convinces you you’re stuck. Motion, even small motion, reminds you that you’re not.

That’s what I keep coming back to as October arrives. There will always be another marker on the horizon, another reason a buyer or seller, or you, might choose to wait a little longer.

Let them have their fence.

You just can’t build your business, or your life, sitting on it with them.