Growth is a good thing. The platform you want to be running your business on is the one that is regularly growing and evolving better to suit the market and the needs of its users. After all, real estate is a competitive game, so it's important to have the best tools to give you a leg up on the competition.

Growth isn't always easy, though. With new functionality comes new things to learn, and we all have limited time. I don't have any big secrets that will take away all the challenges out of staying up to date on a platform that is always growing, but I do have a few suggestions that I hope will make your life a little easier when it comes to running your business on one.

Just like your old high school basketball coach used to say, focus on the fundamentals. Ok, I've never had a basketball coach, but you get the idea. There are certain fundamentals that need to remain the same for a feature or function to be what it is. For example, an email campaign system is built around creating a series of emails, setting a date for those emails to go out, and then defining the customers to which those emails will be sent. Whatever else it does, it will always do those things. If it didn't, it would be something entirely different. Therefore, when learning or training on the Campaigns and Action Plans system in the DeltaNETâ„¢, make that your focus. Then, regardless of what else is added to it, you'll always be able to use it for its core function.

Also, as we add things, you'll only be learning how those things relate to that core function. You don't need to relearn the whole thing from scratch simply because you can now use it to send a text message instead of an email. You just need to learn that a single deviation in the process you were already familiar with will result in a text message being sent instead of an email. This same concept works for just about everything in the DeltaNETâ„¢.

Our Social Connector functionality would be another excellent example of this. We're constantly making improvements to that system. Trust me, I'm the one remaking the training videos each time. However, every change has just been built onto the core functionality of that system. Fundamentally, you connect this system to your social media account; it watches for some event to take place, then it creates a post on your social media page about that event. For example, if you link up your Facebook page and turn the "new listing" posts on, the system will post it to your Facebook page every time you get a new listing. Every other part of it is some extension of that — either posting to different social media platforms or settings related to how often it posts, what the post looks like, what kind of events will trigger it. As long as you keep the fundamentals in mind, every addition becomes much easier to follow.

Next, keep in mind that not every update is something that requires new training. When we update existing functionality in the DeltaNETâ„¢, we're always doing our best to add it in a way that makes the system easier to use, not harder. For example, adding a new customer to the system used to involve a "wizard" that required around eight steps to complete. We changed that to make it a single, intuitive step that was kicked off by the same Add Customer button. There was no training required there. It was as if we changed it to be what it always should have been, and, in doing so, we saw that users took to it without any new instruction whatsoever.

Another thing that I find makes it easier to work with a growing platform is staying up to date with the changes. This is especially important for new functionality. You can work through and adopt updates to the existing functionality with the concepts we've been over, but when it comes to new stuff, the best thing you can do is stay on top of it. It's easy to get a notification on some new features and file it away for later, but you don't want to let them build up on you. Usually, it only takes a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the new functionality because, as I mentioned earlier, we do our best to make it easy to use.

Nevertheless, if you let a dozen new features build up on you and then try to learn them all at once, it's a much more daunting task. The biggest problem here is that you either find yourself frustrated by all you need to learn or find yourself not using the new functionality. You certainly don't want to be left in the dark on some functionality that can simplify running your business. It might seem like more work upfront to go over each new thing as it's released, but you'll thank yourself in the long run.

In my typical fashion, I've left the most important advice for last. You need to do your best not to get frustrated. In general, technology seems to have this unique way of frustrating people like nothing else I've ever seen. I don't know if it's because the machine really does seem to have a mind of its own (I promise that it doesn't. At least not yet.), or that we know, deep down, it's generally our fault that it's not doing what we expect it to, but the fact remains. Computers drive people crazy. When the machine isn't cooperating, whether it be the DeltaNET™, your new iPhone, or your car stereo, take a moment to take a deep breath and remind yourself that the machine doesn't hate you. Even if it is a little temperamental. Also, at least at far as the DeltaNET™ is concerned, remember that we're here to help you. I'm not sure we can help you with your car stereo, though. You might need to check with the dealer on that one.