Watching this industry from the sidelines for half a decade is a strange education. You see which relationships were built on service, and which ones only survived because someone was still picking up the phone.
Mine mostly survived. Clients I hadn't spoken to in years called the day I came back on the desk — not because I'd marketed to them, but because the file I closed for them in 2019 is still the mortgage they're living with.
That's the habit I kept: close it right the first time, and trust takes care of itself. Everything else about the business, I was happy to rebuild.