Re: How To Deal With Fear? - Posted by JPiper
Posted by JPiper on March 21, 1999 at 10:24:36:
Welcome to the real world. We all feel fear of something?..the question is whether you will allow your fears to inhibit your progress. As a first step I would recommend a book named “Feel the Fear And Do It Anyway” by Susan Jeffers.
Actually I would suggest that feeling fear is healthy in many cases. Feeling fear of getting hit by a car might cause you to look both ways before crossing a street. After you look both ways, and assure yourself that no cars are coming, you feel safe in crossing. In real estate, knowledge is a little like “looking both ways”. Knowledge gives you part of the background that will enable you to avoid the major pitfalls that might cross your path in your real estate endeavors.
I was especially interested in your fear that “something wrong might occur”. As a note of reality, I can tell you that something wrong ALWAYS seems to occur. I can’t think of a transaction I’ve been involved in where something wrong hasn’t occurred. To this day, after years in this business, when I find a property that seems to be an outstanding deal, the thought that ALWAYS crosses my mind is “What’s wrong here? Why didn’t someone else buy this deal? What am I missing?”
This thought does not stop me from making my offer. I make the offer, but I make it with contingencies. I check out all the details that I have checked out thousands of times before. The contingency will allow me to walk from the deal if there is something I didn’t catch at first, something really wrong.
Even then, things go wrong. Your contractor doesn’t show up. Your contractor does sub-par work. Your contractor walks off the job. It takes longer to sell the property than you expected. Your buyer backs out of the deal. Your lender decides not to make your buyer the loan. The lender goes bankrupt in the middle of your deal (yes, it happens). Your ad doesn’t produce a response. The new buyer doesn’t make his payment. This list goes on and on.
Problems are a part of this business. “Things going wrong” are a part of the business, and a part of life. You make large profits from learning how to deal with problems?..learning how to solve a situation that goes wrong. If you are entering this business expecting things not to go wrong, you’ll be sorely disappointed. I promise you they will.
What you learn after a while is that things not only go wrong, but that you should plan for things to go wrong. This is why you make offers with contingencies. You can walk away. You make offers with ample profit margins, because when an unexpected event occurs you can still make a profit. You over-estimate your expenses, because things go wrong. You set aside some monthly payments on a loan, because the tenant might not pay one month. You don’t do deals where your margins are too skinny.
Finally, I think it would be important to note that “things going wrong” is called “experience”. You learn from experience, it’s the very best teacher. One of the valuable things about this website is that you are able to learn some things that some of us learned through experience?..that rather rude awakening that “Oh oh, I didn’t figure enough money into my deal for carrying costs”. But rest assured that you will still make mistakes, that things will still go wrong. Rest assured that even after years of experience I still make mistakes, and things still go wrong. I simply acknowledge that things going wrong is reality. I plan my business affairs around the idea that something always goes wrong.
JPiper
