Some fogies among my readers will recognize these lines from Jimi Hendrix's immortal classic "Are you experienced?"I chose these lines because the topic of "experience" has been bandied about quite a bit here as of late. It seems that if you're not an "expert" you should just sit out life on the sidelines and leave the heavy lifting to the "experienced." It begs the question of how the "experienced" got that way? I'd have to assume that before the "experienced" became "experienced" they were not. I can't fault them for that. What I can fault them for now is "experience" descrimination however.
The folks that are now "experienced" were probably not telling you way back when they started not to hire them because they hadn't done any transactions. No, my guess is they were singing a different tune entirely, one like "hey, give the newbie a break, I'm honest and I'll work twice as hard" So when you hear the old dog now saying "only hire an experienced person" what they are really saying is "Now that I'm at the top, I'm sorry but I'm pulling up the ladder because now that I'm "experienced" I can see the light" "oh, and by the way, never mind what I said before, I changed my mind." Hmmm. Would you trust this kind of person? I wouldn't. While experience does count for something in many cases, it's not the beat all end all.
Let me ask you, have you ever known an experienced person to really muck something up? Yeah, me too. Lot's of experienced politicians, CEOs, investment bankers, traders, fund managers, ratings agencies, analysts, you name it, got whacked in the recent market meltdown and took the nation for a ride along with them. Trillions of dollars in wealth was lost because of blind faith in "experience." Have we learned nothing?
Often new people to a field bring fresh insight and unique perspectives, ways of thinking that simply cannot be produced by the insiders in the field because they no longer can see the forest through the trees.
When I got married, I was not experienced in marriage. I had never been married, but I did it anyway. Ditto for having children. Before my first child I had no experience having raising children. I had to grope my way along on both accounts. Same for real estate In spite of those facts I think I've turned about to be a respectable husband, father and real estate agent.
I remember the first person who hired me to sell a home. His sister was a friend of my parents from their church. He was an 80 year old farmer named Laverne Brown. Unfortunatley his sister had alzheimers and had to be moved from her home of 59 years. He knew I had never sold a home, but he trusted that I would do a good job and get it sold for a fair price. Even though it needed updating we priced it above market as he wanted to get the most he could for his sisters care. I was too "inexperienced" to know that this was a bad move and so we received three offers and sold it at full price in about three weeks.
My advice to you, if you're new, or if you want to try something new, just do it. Don't let naysayers and fuddy duddies steal away your life, your ambition and your dreams. Experience has never been gained by passivity, or captured by divine inculcation, it has always been seized and hard won by action and deeds. Make it a great life.
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