I recently took my son to the music store because he expressed an interest in taking drum lessons. After watching a very lively drum solo demonstration, we spoke to the associate in the store. To my surprise he showed us a drum pad. Not a drum set, but a drum pad and a stool. He explained, “The deal is, you need to learn how to hold your sticks. Learn how to strike properly, and learn cadence.” He further explained that if I bought my Son a drum set, that he would be all over the place, and never really learn the skills necessary to be a drummer. Progress is simple.
In the beginning of my real estate career my partner and I bought a two family building in Baltimore. When we bought it, the two units needed varying degrees of work. One apartment looked awful, while the other was in much better shape but still required some work. I responded according to my programming, and fell on the grenade. We spent weekend after weekend working on the apartment that needed the most work. We recruited friends, bought tools, read books and solved problem after problem. I guess at the time it must have felt important, necessary or fulfilling to be working that hard against a problem. If we had worked smart however we would have completed the work on the unit that needed less work, and rented it out, while we worked on the other unit. Progress through the simple.
Over the years I have taught scores of people on varying topics in real estate. I still teach, but no longer in a classroom setting, now as active participants in my own business. The deal is that students must work the ground floor by meeting prospects and making appointments. You wouldn’t believe how much difficulty people add to this very simple process. You see in their programming the task isn’t hard enough to validate the results they want. In their programming they want huge success, so they believe that they must do extremely hard work. They have yet to realize that we progress through the simple.
So many people seek success in fields such as real estate and bury themselves in a sea of “education”. There are endless topics in real estate for which you can buy very detailed and very costly books/CDs/study course/mentoring packages. As the years go by and they haven’t done a single meaningful deal they may wonder if they should have simply learned first to hold a stick, how to strike, and Cadence.
-The Opinion, 2006
