It's Going To Take A Failure Or Two

     “It’s going to take a failure or two.”  ~ Joe Acker

In my work through the years, one thing I’ve learned is that everyone’s business is harder than it looks. This includes real estate, where buyers and sellers think selling property is easy, until they try to do it on their own.

Similarly, I’ve also learned that most deals and projects are more involved than they first appear. This is typically for one of two reasons. Either someone has (1) not taken the time to appropriately consider the obstacles or (2) they don’t know enough to even consider the obstacles.

When visiting with potential clients and even prospective agents, there have been times my team has left the meeting and someone will say, “They haven’t suffered enough.”

Let me be clear about this direct comment. First, this is a private comment just for our team. Furthermore, it is in NO WAY meant to wish ill upon anyone.

It is simply an observation (and personal opinion) that someone appears to still have a limited understanding of the risks, consequences, and costs of their problems.  

They don’t know what they don’t know. Or they don’t know what they refuse to know.

Failure is a great eye-opener. Well, except for those who refuse to learn the lessons and instead just focus on excuses.

If a buyer, seller, agent, or lender can get past denying or hiding these types of problems, there is a real opportunity to learn from the failures and problems. This is true even on deals that are completed poorly instead of simply being aborted.

The smart professionals learn the lessons of failures, the pain of false optimism, and the need to treat technology and customer service as part of a formal business process instead of magic dust or meaningless marketing.  

When potential clients (and prospective agents) understand better, they often call us back. We can’t force them to hear us at any time. They must arrive in their own way and time. Often that requires a painful failure or two.

The critical lesson here is that experience can teach us if we let it.

We can learn that if we can stop being our own obstacles and communicate more clearly with ourselves, we’ll be better at avoiding self-deceptions that lead to poor choices. Optimism is great, it just has to be realistic optimism.