Mike Browning

Category: Uncategorized

  • Take The Win

    Take The Win

    You don’t also have to announce it.

    Celina’s city council recently approved some incentives to land a second Walmart. I won’t break it down here, but it could be pretty substantial. And probably a smart move, I’d say. Sales tax is one of the few revenue levers a city actually controls, and a big box store just inside your line pulls shoppers in from both sides while the tax dollars only land on yours. So far, so good.

    Then the mayor opened his mouth.

    Ryan Tubbs told the room they were going to build the best Walmart they could “so every resident of Pilot Point comes and visits Celina and shops at Walmart… so that we cause sales tax leakage for our lovely neighbors.”

    He’s not wrong, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Pilot Point residents will drive to the closer store, and Celina banks the tax revenue while Pilot Point’s roads absorb the traffic that got them there.

    But saying it out loud like that is a low status move. It’s also not smart business.

    There’s about a 100% chance Tubbs sits across a table from somebody in Pilot Point again before too long. A road project, a shared utility line, some regional thing nobody can avoid. And now he’s the guy who stood up and gloated about it on the record. Doesn’t matter that he was right. That’s not a great position to negotiate from the next time he needs something from them.

    Win the deal. Then keep your mouth shut about it. Be gracious.

    If you’re a land investor you know this.

    You make your money when you buy, not when you sell. Old idea, still true every time.

    When somebody’s willing to sell below market today, there’s almost always a reason behind it. A health scare, a divorce, a job that’s moving them, an estate nobody in the family wants to deal with, a note coming due next month.

    You didn’t create the situation. You just showed up with a solution when they needed one, and the price reflected the circumstances.

    The deal closes. You’re very happy with the deal. That doesn’t mean you explain to the seller how much you saved, or mention it to their neighbor, or bring it up again down the road when the tract’s worth double.

    You say thank you and you mean it.

    And that you hope your paths cross again, because in this business they usually do, and you want to still be the guy they’d sell to next time.

    Gloating doesn’t get you anything the win didn’t already get you. It just costs you the next deal, or the next referral, or the next seller who was on the fence and heard how you talk about the last one.

    Most of the good deals I’ve gotten over the years came from somebody who trusted me enough to call again.

    People have long memories when you make them feel like the loser.

    PS- If you’d rather hear about a deal before it goes anywhere else, I keep a short list for that. Nothing fancy about it. When something worth a second look clears my screen, the people on the list hear first. No spam, no newsletter, nothing on a schedule.

    [Add me to the list.]

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  • How Am I Supposed to Do That?

    How Am I Supposed to Do That?

    Turns out it’s not a rhetorical question.

    Some people think a good comeback is the whole game.

    When someone makes an unrealistic proposal or a demand that doesn’t work the first thing most people want to do is explain why. Lay out the reasons. Walk through the math. Win the point.

    But winning the point doesn’t do much for you in a negotiation. The other side just digs in, maybe comes up with a competing set of facts and reasons. Worse, they’re no longer thinking about making a deal, they are thinking about not losing. Which isn’t good if you want to make a deal.

    Chris Voss has a fix for this that sounds almost too simple to work.

    Instead of arguing, you ask how you’re supposed to make it happen. Not sarcastic. Not a setup. An actual question. “How am I supposed to take that to the seller when there are two other offers on the table?” Now he’s not defending his number anymore. He’s trying to solve your problem, which used to be his demand.

    Voss calls these calibrated questions. Open-ended, no yes or no available, and they hand your problem to the other person instead of making it a fight. Most people can’t resist answering a question that starts with “how.” Refusing to answer feels rude in a way that refusing to agree never does.

    I had a buyer a while back convinced he could get a large reduction, much more than what was realistic. I could’ve argued comps at him all day and gotten nowhere, because in his head the comps were the ones that made his number look right. So instead I asked him how I was supposed to bring that number to a seller who had competing offers. Then I asked how many people were going to want to work with us in the future if we got a reputation for chiseling and retrading every deal.

    He thought about it, came up with a more realistic number, and we got the deal done.

    Works the other way too. A seller with a too-high price in mind doesn’t need me to lecture him on it. He needs to hear himself try to answer how a buyer’s supposed to make the math work at that price. He’ll usually get there faster than I would’ve gotten him there.

    Statements draw a line and dare the other guy to cross it. Anybody can say no to a line. It’s a lot harder to say no to a question you have to actually sit and answer first.

    I still slip and argue the number sometimes. Old habit. But the times I remember to just ask, it goes better, and I don’t have to be right in the room to get the outcome I wanted.

    This is the third one I’ve pulled from Never Split the Difference, and I’m running out of ways to say the same thing. Buy the book. You’ll use this stuff in a lot more places than a purchase agreement.

    Get it Here

    PS- That link goes through Amazon, and I’m an affiliate. Doesn’t cost you a dime more, but if you click through and buy the book, or anything else while you’re there, I get a small commission.

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  • Things Are Headed South

    Things Are Headed South

    And we plan to get there first.

    Yesterday I talked about how things seem to be getting worse and worse in the world, and how people tend to want to put things off until the situation looks a little more stable.

    It’s not just having kids, it goes into things like changing jobs, starting or expanding a business, or doing anything that involves risk (that is, anything at all). But if you wait for perfect conditions to arrive to do something, you’ll likely never do anything at all.

    Most of the time, the “right time” is now.

    If you time it perfectly, great. Most of the time you won’t. But if you learn to succeed when circumstances aren’t ideal, you’ll be that much better positioned when they improve.

    So in the interest of taking our own advice, while everyone is saying things are headed south figuratively, we are heading south literally.

    To Hillsboro.

    Introducing MBR Land Group, our Hill County-based land brokerage operation serving Hill County and the surrounding area.

    My brother Matt lives in Hillsboro and is the guy to talk to if you’re looking to buy or sell lots or land down that way. Or pretty much anything but residential.

    Matt can be reached at matt@browningre.com or by phone at 254.324.6969

    If you own land in the area, you’re probably not looking to sell today. Or maybe ever. But between data centers, wind farms and future growth, things may be starting to look a little different than you expected.

    Things change, often quickly. It’s better to have information and know how things stand before you need it instead of scrambling after the fact.

    The MBR Land Reality Check gives you a clear eyed view of what’s going on in the area around your property and helps you know what it might be worth today. You get real comps, real analysis and insight from people who handle land for a living.

    Not house sellers moonlighting as land agents.

    It’s free. Better yet, there’s no obligation or pressure to list, and you won’t end up in a buzzword filled presentation just because you wanted some basic information.

    Is it a bad idea to know where things stand?

    Give yourself permission to look!

    Check it out here.

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  • Probably Even Worse Than You Think

    Probably Even Worse Than You Think

    But remember who’s in charge.

    It’s not uncommon today to hear young adults talk about not wanting to have kids. Laying aside the ones that are just being selfish (without always realizing it), there’s usually a couple of main reasons for it.

    One is that they feel they should wait until they are more financially stable. Which at least shows some forward thinking, though I think most people who waited to have kids will tell you they wish they started sooner. It turns out there’s never a “good time” financially, and you tend to figure out how to make it work.

    Not to mention when you’re younger you have more energy to chase the little bundle of joy around.

    The other big reason is that the world is in such a terrible state now, they want to be able to act noble for not “bringing another life into a fallen world.”

    They aren’t wrong that things are in a sorry state. You can’t turn on a TV or look at your phone without seeing that, and it only seems to be going in one direction.

    If anything, what we see probably doesn’t even really show us how bad things really are. There’s almost certainly depravity going on that’s even worse than what we are told about. It’s enough to make anyone want to curl up in a ball and not do much of anything.

    But it’s always been this way.

    Terrible wars as far back as we want to look. People mistreating each other. The holocaust. The brutality and decadence of the Roman world.

    All the way back to Sodom and Gomorrah, it’s never been particularly good.

    But here’s the other thing, God was in charge then and he’s in charge now. If we only know two things for sure, it would be these: that we are closer to the end now than we ever have been, but we don’t know how close. And that everything will be reckoned and brought back to order. We don’t have to know how or when to trust it will happen.

    If you were sick, and a doctor told you he had a 100% cure but it would require a period of extreme discomfort, you could withstand it because you know what’s on the other side.

    So when God has told you that things will be worked out but there will be tribulation in the meantime, know you can withstand that too.

    And get to listening for what God wants you to do, and do it. Because you can.

    P.S.- If you’d like to read through the Bible this year, you can join us at His Word Together.

    No commentary. No telling you what to think. Nothing to buy. Nothing fancy.

    Just steady time in the Word.

    Check it out here.

  • Only Two Problems

    Only Two Problems

    Most people only solve one.

    There’s a line that’s been passed around for years, usually credited to Jim Rohn, who said he got it from Neil Armstrong.

    Going to the moon only involves two problems. How to get there, and how to get back.

    The key is you don’t leave until you’ve solved both.

    Rural land investment is pretty similar, although a lot of people ignore one of the problems.

    First problem is pretty straightforward. You find something underpriced in an area where you expect values to grow. Then you run all the traps, and if it checks out you have something worth buying.

    What a lot of people forget is the second problem. What’s the plan for unwinding it on the back end?

    Then they buy it anyway.

    Ask how they get back out and you’ll usually get a shrug. Something about how land always goes up.

    There are only so many ways out of a piece of ground, and they’re all worth knowing before you own it. Hold it and sell it whole to somebody who wants what you wanted. Split it into smaller tracts, since smaller acreage generally brings more per acre. Develop it, if the location and the money and your patience all happen to line up. Put a building on it and collect rent. Farm it or lease it and let it carry itself while you wait.

    None of those is the right answer. The point is knowing which one you’re betting on.

    You don’t want to be rigid about it. Things change. Sometimes a better exit shows up than the one you planned on. A road gets built, a neighbor decides he’d rather be your buyer than your neighbor. Someone shows up with a plan you never considered and offers you a price you didn’t expect.

    When that happens you don’t turn it down, and you don’t fret about being “wrong” about how you would exit.

    But there’s a difference between changing your plan and never having one.

    And there’s a difference between a deal that looks good going in and a deal you know how to get out of.

    A land deal needs to work today, on today’s numbers. It also needs a believable way back out before you write the check. Both, not one.

    Miss the first one and you overpaid. That stings, and you find out about it fairly quick.

    Miss the second one and you didn’t buy an investment. You bought a place to keep your money where you can’t reach it.

    That one’s quieter. Nobody finds out for years.

    Then they need the money.

    P.S. Most of what crosses my screen doesn’t survive the first problem, let alone the second. When something clears both — priced right today, with a way back out I can actually explain — I send a short note to a small list of people who asked to see them.

    No spam, no newsletter, nothing on a schedule. Just a note when there’s something worth looking at.

    Check it out here

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  • “You’re Right”

    “You’re Right”

    I don’t mean it.

    I’ve said it plenty of times and almost never meant it.

    Usually I’m on the wrong side of a desk somewhere. Buying a vehicle and sitting through the extended warranty pitch. Standing in a furniture store while somebody walks me through the protection plan…the one that covers everything except whatever eventually happens to it.

    I’ve already decided. I’m not doing it. Decided a while back, quietly, and now I’m just looking for a clean way out of the conversation.

    And the man keeps going. He’s got reasons. Some of them are decent reasons.

    So I tell him he’s right.

    Not because he moved me. Because I want it to be over.

    Then I read Never Split the Difference and found out that’s a known thing, and that it has a matching pair.

    Chris Voss says “you’re right” is the one you don’t want. When somebody hands you that, you’ve lost them. They’ve stopped arguing, they’d like you to stop talking, and nothing has changed except they’re now looking for the door.

    What you want to hear is “that’s right.”

    One word different. Opposite meanings. “That’s right” comes out of somebody when you’ve just described their own situation back to them better than they’d have put it themselves. It isn’t agreement with your argument. It’s recognition. And you only get there by shutting up long enough to have actually listened.

    Once you know the difference you start hearing it everywhere. My wife. My kids. Anybody who’s ever wrapped up a conversation with me a little earlier than I expected.

    The catch is you have to give up being the smartest man in the room to get there. You don’t get to lead with what you know, which is generally the whole reason you opened your mouth. Most people can’t stand that. Which is exactly why it keeps working for the ones who can.

    I still tell the warranty guy he’s right. Some things you don’t fix.

    But I quit taking it as a compliment when somebody says it to me.

    Never Split the Difference is full of these. Small distinctions that sound like nothing until you catch one happening to you in real time.

    Get it Here

    PS- That link goes through Amazon, and I’m an affiliate. Doesn’t cost you a dime more, but if you click through and buy the book, or anything else while you’re there, I get a small commission.

  • Sign Your Own Checks

    Sign Your Own Checks

    We all need advice, but don’t turn over control.

    I saw an article about Kathy Ireland last week, which said she was suing her longtime business managers. The suit alleges they used a power of attorney she’d granted them to take out loans and open credit cards in her name, and quietly ran up something like $100 million in the process. Ireland says she only found out about this when she and her husband were trying to help one of their kids buy a house, and the mortgage application was denied.

    Probably not much fun to wake up thinking you have a 9-figure net worth, only to find out you can’t cosign on a smaller mortgage.

    I also saw a press release where the managers’ attorney called the suit frivolous. So who really knows? I don’t pay a ton of attention to the news, but maybe one day we will see how it shakes out.

    You see it all the time with athletes on a smaller scale. They sign on with a management firm, give them too much authority and trust, and find out one day that all their money is gone.

    It’s a good reminder that handing someone the pen isn’t the same as getting good advice.

    We all need advice in some areas. So get advice. Get a lot of it. But if the person advising you tells you it’s easier if you just let them handle it, that you don’t need to be bothered with the details, it’s time to find a new advisor.

    Anyone who is my client knows the deal. I will put in the work. And I’ll get you the info you need (good and bad). I’ll explain to you the pros and cons of whatever decision is on the table. And try to help you get where you want to be.

    But you’re going to be the one who makes the decision. And the one who signs your name on anything.

    You don’t need to know everything about your land or your business. You just need to be the one who’s still deciding.

    P.S. Most landowners who request an MBR Land Reality Check aren’t planning to sell. They simply want to know where they stand before they ever need the answer. It’s recent comparable sales, current market activity, and my opinion of what a reasonable buyer might pay today. No obligation to sell. Is it a bad idea to know?

    [Request Your MBR Land Reality Check]

    P.P.S. If you want more like this, I write regularly about land, markets, and what’s happening with growth here in North Texas.

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  • You’d Think I’d Know Better By Now

    You’d Think I’d Know Better By Now

    And I do, except when it comes to the action part.

    You’ve probably read this in a hundred places: It’s good to learn from your own mistakes. It’s better to learn from somebody else’s, because theirs are cheaper.

    Fine advice. Works pretty good on the small stuff. Watch someone touch something hot, and it’s a pretty safe bet you won’t do it yourself.

    Unless you’re me, then you’re going to touch it immediately to see if it really was as hot as the other guy acted like it was.

    Kidding. Sort of. Either way, when it comes to important things the “other guy’s experience” thing doesn’t seem to transfer at all.

    Think about the last time you got a new vehicle. Or moved into a new place. Or had a commission come in bigger than you’d figured on.

    It feels good. For a few days it feels like more than good, like things have finally settled into their right spots, and you catch yourself thinking some version of okay, now we’re fine.

    Then it wears off. Nothing dramatic about it. It just quietly stops being new, and you’re the same man you were before it showed up, sitting in a better truck.

    I’ve run that cycle more times than I care to write down.

    I have gotten better at one part of it. Now I generally know going in that it isn’t going to work. I can see the whole thing coming, before I ever start.

    And I do it anyway.

    Because maybe this time is going to be the one where it all works.

    But if you’re going to borrow a man’s experience on this particular question, you may as well borrow from the one with the best data in history.

    Solomon had more money than anybody. Scripture says he made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones. Wisest man alive on top of it, people traveled in from other countries just to hear him talk. Built the temple. Built himself a house that took thirteen years. Planted vineyards, made gardens and pools, bought herds and servants, hired people to sing to him. Says plainly that he refused himself nothing his eyes wanted.

    Never been a better example to study, and never will be.

    His answer was vapor. Chasing after the wind.

    He wasn’t guessing and he wasn’t broke when he said it. A man who never had “eff you money” saying money won’t satisfy is easy enough to wave off. Solomon had every bit of it and filed the same report.

    And here’s the part that makes it worse. Solomon didn’t have any better luck acting on what he knew than the rest of us do.

    He walked away from God anyway. Wisest man who ever lived, God appeared to him in person twice, and he still finished up with his heart somewhere else.

    Knowing better wasn’t his problem either. Doing better was.

    That’s worth thinking about when we tell ourselves we’ll make the right decision later.

    Wednesday night the Powerball ran up over a billion dollars.

    A billion. With every bit of what I’ve just written sitting right there in my head, did I buy a ticket?

    You bet I did.

    Somebody won it. Wasn’t me. Which is probably a mercy, though I’d have liked the chance to confirm it for myself.

    It was never a shortage of evidence.

    Solomon had the evidence too.

    P.S.

    If you’d like to read through the Bible this year, you can join us at His Word Together.

    No commentary. No telling you what to think. Nothing to buy. Nothing fancy.

    Just steady time in the Word.

    Check it out here.

    PPS.

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  • Deport Yourself

    Deport Yourself

    (Let me explain.)

    Deport is a town.

    It’s in Lamar County, southeast of Paris, a couple of hours northeast of Dallas if the traffic cooperates… which, headed that direction, it usually does. Farm ground every way you look, a highway through the middle, a few streets on either side of it. I’ve never been. Yet.

    There’s a tract out there that came through my screen, the one I run looking for land priced under its area.

    Around 35 acres with good road frontage, in the $200K range. It’s been sitting a while, and reduced this week. So maybe there’s some motivation.

    There’s a difference between land that’s cheap and land that’s priced wrong. Most cheap land is cheap for a reason. Too much flood, no frontage, an easement straight through the middle, and finding the reason is a lot of what I do in a given week. On this one I haven’t found it yet.

    But it’s also about two hours from most of you.

    I’m not going to dress it up as something it isn’t. It’s not a development deal. Given the size and the frontage, it’d split into three. Above 10 acres you don’t have to plat, and it’s large enough to qualify for an ag exemption. Smaller acreage sells for more per acre than larger, so there’s a faster way out of it if you want one.

    But it’s probably just a quiet buy and hold. Somewhere you park some money with low holding costs.

    I think it’s a good deal, just not an exciting one.

    If you want more specifics email me at mike@browningre.com and we can make that happen.

    It’s been sitting a while. It’ll probably sit a while longer.

    That’s usually how these go, right up until they don’t.

    P.S. I run these screens several times a week and almost nothing survives them. Too much flood, no frontage, an easement through the middle, a solar farm going in next door. When something does make it through, I send a short email to a small list of people who asked to see them.

    No spam, no newsletter, nothing on a schedule. Just a note when there’s actually something worth looking at.

    Check it out here

  • Nobody Ever Wins an Argument

    Nobody Ever Wins an Argument

    (They just get tired of having it.)

    A few years ago I decided to quit discussing politics and current events with other people. For the most part. I still fall into it from time to time, but usually just end up realizing I wasted my time.

    Not because I ran out of things to say. I just noticed something.

    It doesn’t matter how good my facts are, how airtight the logic, or how many times I’ve clearly won the exchange in my own head on the drive home. The other person never once said, “Huh, good point. I’ve changed my mind.”

    They found a different fact. Or decided mine didn’t count. Or got quiet and waited for their turn to talk again.

    It happens with sports too, although the stakes are usually lower. Somebody’s convinced the game is rigged against their team, their quarterback is elite (or he sucks), or the coach should’ve been fired two years ago.

    You can show them the stats. Use logic. Doesn’t matter. They’ve already got their own stats, and if they don’t, they’ll find some. Or make them up.

    I used to think this meant people were just bad at arguing, or too stubborn to admit when they were wrong.

    Then I read Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss.

    Voss spent years as an FBI hostage negotiator, and one of the things he learned was that moving a conversation forward often had less to do with presenting the better argument than making the other person feel understood.

    He’d say things like, “It sounds like you’re feeling backed into a corner,” and then wait. He wasn’t agreeing with them. He wasn’t trying to solve anything yet. He was naming what he thought the other person was feeling and giving them a chance to correct him if he had it wrong.

    And being wrong wasn’t necessarily a problem. When someone corrected him, they were explaining themselves. Now they weren’t defending themselves against his argument. They were helping him understand their position.

    There’s a difference between winning a conversation and actually moving one forward.

    Most every argument I’ve ever “won” ended with the other person more locked in, not less. But when I name what I think someone is thinking or feeling, without immediately trying to fix or correct it, the conversation usually goes somewhere.

    That’s a strange thing to learn from a guy who negotiated with people holding hostages. Stranger still is how often it applies to conversations that have nothing to do with a crisis at all.

    After Jim Camp’s Start With No, Never Split the Difference has probably helped me more with negotiation than any other book. They aren’t the same system, but they’re similar enough that a lot of Voss’s ideas fit naturally with Camp’s.

    Like I’ve said several times, basically everything involves negotiation. So if you get better at it, you improve your life across the board.

    If you’ve read Start With No, I’d recommend Never Split the Difference next.

    Is it crazy to think it’s worth improving a skill that touches almost every area of your life?

    Get It Here

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