Is there such a thing as luck when it comes to forging a successful and long-lasting real estate career?
It’s a good question, and one I’ve pondered a fair bit over my years in the industry and having worked alongside a number of high-performing agents.
The upshot? It depends on how you look at it and whether you believe “luck” is something that happens to you or is something you create.
But how can you create your own luck, rather than having circumstance dictate your career?
Some interesting definitions
If you happen to have a dictionary handy, there are a couple of definitions that prove interesting and are relevant to the concept of luck.
Opportunity - A time or set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something.
Preparedness - A state of readiness.
Luck - Success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one’s own actions.
Whilst luck in the above definition does have relevance to real estate and life in general, I believe there’s a different way to look at the concept of luck.
In fact, I think there’s a formula involved that allows you to seize the moment, rather than be guided by sheer chance. And when you embrace that formula, it’s far more empowering and a lot more likely to see luck come your way.
A winning formula
Rather than looking at luck as something that happens to you, I prefer to see it as the melding together of opportunity and preparedness.
In other words: Opportunity + Preparedness = Luck
The reason this formula for luck resonates is that I’ve probably seen more people look a gift horse in the mouth and not realise what opportunity they have in their hands than the random chance of luck.
That is, individuals could be so much more luckier by their own choosing. However, they fail to create their own luck because they lack the preparedness when the right opportunity arises.
Some even self-sabotage because they are so conditioned by their self-manifested lack of luck that when it does appear, they have pre-convinced themselves that “they simply can’t be that lucky” and hence miss the opportunity. They reverse their preparedness.
It’s happened to all of us
I can think of lots of situations personally where I lacked the preparedness to embrace an opportunity and create my own luck.
And chances are you can recall quite a few, too. For example, have you ever said any of the following:
- I should have bought that property
- I should never have sold that property
- I should have bought shares in that company
- I should have quit that job
- I should have taken that job
- I should have been more proactive with my Just Listed/Just Sold
- I should have called that contact in my database more often
In these examples the opportunity was there but the preparedness wasn’t.
Now’s the time to create your own luck
In any market, but more particularly in this changed market, those who embrace and apply the formula of melding opportunity with preparedness will create their own luck.
They won’t be waiting for luck to happen to them, they won’t be regretting opportunities lost. They will be ready, willing and able to seize a moment, and turn a situation into good fortune.
Manos Findikakis is the CEO of Agents’Agency
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