Learning from Beethoven

I am about three quarters of the way through the enormous new Beethoven biography by Jan Swofford; like so many contemporary biographies, it is highly detailed and carefully researched.  It makes one point over and over: in spite of illness, personal crisis, disappointments in love, money problems, the composer always kept his eye on his need to serve his gift, to be true to his vocation. These thoughts reconnected me, as most things do sooner or later, to the real estate brokerage business and how most successfully to ply it.

Our business presents plenty of opportunities for personal growth. Disappointments are chronic. Deals fall through, buyers make a purchase through another agent after a year of work with us or in the wake of a bad Board experience, sellers fire us only to reduce their price to the number we suggested so the new agent can then sell the property in a matter of weeks.  I like to joke with my agents that for some sellers (and developers) there are only two conversations they want to have with us – the property is not selling fast enough, which must be the fault of our marketing, OR the property has sold too fast, which means we underpriced it. As the middleman, we can easily become a target for the frustrations of the principals.

Don’t get me wrong; sometimes this disapprobation is merited. Sometimes agents DO underprice, or overprice. We are not perfect, and every market is a moving target. But generally a Board turndown is not the agent’s fault (certainly everyone who works for Warburg receives extensive training in Board package preparation and we pride ourselves on the completeness and accuracy of our representations), so when we get fired by a buyer who has had a turndown it stings. We put our heart and soul into those packages!

But regardless, we move on. We too owe allegiance to our vocation. An agent who left the business last year after about a year and a half said to me, “I had no idea it would be so HARD.”  In my experience nothing worth having is easily won. Each of our disappointments contributes to making us better at what we do, reminding us again and again that we work in a SERVICE industry and that our feelings are not the ones that count. Lost deals hurt, as do lost clients. I have a 24 hour rule for myself which I developed early in my career: I allow myself to grieve for 24 hours and then I move on. Sometimes that’s a challenge.  But coping with the slings and arrows while keeping the long view, in which over time the successes both outnumber and outweigh the losses-that is what makes a professional!