Mike Browning

Tag: business relationships

  • Nobody Will Ever Know

    Nobody Will Ever Know

    Except some times they do.

    The cashier hands you fifteen dollars in change on a five dollar purchase. You gave her a ten, but she thought it was a twenty. You could keep it. Odds are nobody finds out. Or they will find out they are a little short later, but won’t know it was you who benefitted.

    Same with the number you rounded in your favor. The little fib about why you’re late. The expense you didn’t mention up front because it was small, and you figured it was less likely to kill the sale later than if you pointed it out now. The kind of thing that makes everybody love buying a car.

    Usually, nobody notices. And on the rare occasion somebody does, it’s almost never the person who will later be deciding whether to hire you or do business with you.

    But sometimes it is, and you never get told in advance which time that’s going to be.

    So look at what’s actually on the table. Ten bucks on one side. A client, a partner, or a deal on the other. It isn’t close, and nobody would take that bet if it were laid out in front of them.

    It’s important to practice complete honesty on the stuff that doesn’t matter. Especially there, where it costs you little and nobody’s watching. That’s where the habit gets built.

    Because one day you’ll be in a pinch. The deal’s wobbling, or you’re behind on something and someone wants to know why. Lying might look like the easy way out, at least short term.

    If honesty is already just what you do, you don’t have to decide anything in that moment. If it isn’t, that’s a bad time to start figuring out where the line is.

    And the lie doesn’t pay off. Not when the price is a relationship instead of ten dollars.

    It’s the kind of thing Jeff Olson talks about in The Slight Edge. Small choices that are easy to make and just as easy to skip, with nothing to show for them today. Being honest when it’s free is one of those choices. So is the other kind.

    The people who matter won’t say anything, either. No confrontation, no warning. They’ll just quietly move on, and you’ll spend a while wondering why the calls stopped.

    Get it Here

    P.S. 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.

  • Punctuality = Integrity

    Punctuality = Integrity

    It’s built fifteen minutes at a time.

    Last week I talked about the majority reliably being wrong, and how that teaches you what not to do. You just quietly stop doing what everyone else does, and let the results show up later. No need to announce it.

    Here’s another one almost nobody will notice. Which is exactly why it works.

    Everybody’s in a hurry. We’ve got a supercomputer in our pocket that’s supposed to make everything faster, so naturally we’ve filled it up with optimizing and multitasking. But of course we all still feel behind.

    Behind enough that most people have decided that showing up when you said you would is optional. Fifteen minutes late isn’t really late anymore. It’s just how it is.

    When your whole day depends on other people doing things at the time they said they’d do them, one person running late doesn’t just cost you fifteen minutes. It costs you the next three things you had lined up behind it too.

    The thing we forget is that it’s not just us who has too much to do. It’s everyone else as well.

    That anxiety that wells up when somebody throws off your day by being late? Other people feel it when you’re late too.

    So here’s the move.

    Be on time. Every time.

    Not most of the time. Not “on time for me.” On time by the clock, the way you agreed to it.

    Don’t make a thing out of it. That’s its own kind of annoying, and it puts people on notice to check. Just show up when you said you would, do what you said you’d do, and let it sit there.

    Your counterpart notices. Maybe not out loud. Probably not even consciously most of the time. But somewhere in the back of their head, a little file gets updated.

    This guy does what he says he’s going to do.

    And when they’re dealing with you, they feel a little less anxious about things. They may not even be able to tell you why.

    Deals get done with people you don’t have to manage. Repeat business goes to whoever didn’t make the first transaction a headache. None of that gets decided in a meeting. It gets decided quietly, the way most real decisions do, based on a pattern somebody noticed and never mentioned.

    Showing up on time isn’t dramatic. Most people aren’t going to thank you for it in the moment. That’s kind of the point.

    It’s boring, it’s free, and enough people don’t do it that it’s still one of the cheapest ways to stand out.

    This is the same math as The Slight Edge, the Jeff Olson book I mentioned a couple weeks back. Small, easy actions that are just as easy to skip, done consistently long enough that the compounding takes over and does the rest.

    Being fifteen minutes late doesn’t feel like it costs anything.

    Being on time doesn’t feel like it earns anything.

    Neither one shows up on a scoreboard today.

    Check the scoreboard again in a year.

    Get it Here

    P.S. 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.

  • 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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  • Things Change. That’s Not the Problem.

    Things Change. That’s Not the Problem.

    The schedule changed. Nobody called.

    My daughter started her first job recently. Retail. Big store.

    She’s a couple weeks in. Shows up on time, good attitude, does what she’s asked. In retail, that combination already puts you ahead of a significant portion of the workforce. The industry runs around 60% annual turnover. No-call-no-shows are a daily problem for store managers. Someone who just reliably shows up is one less thing to worry about.

    Which means they’ll notice. And eventually they’ll start asking more of her. She’s already getting way more hours than she initially expected. That’s fine. That’s how it works. You accommodate when you can, especially when you’re new. You never know who’s watching or where people end up. I have clients who’ve hired six-figure salespeople out of fast food drive-thrus because someone made an impression.

    But there’s a line.

    She has a friend leaving the country. Going away party scheduled around my daughter’s work schedule. She was off at 4, plenty of time. Except she looked back at the schedule and her shift had been moved. Hours later. Nobody asked. Nobody called. It was just different.

    That’s not a scheduling issue. That’s a respect issue.

    She was upset. I was able to talk her through how to approach it and she got things switched back. The boss said the only reason she changed it was that my daughter had written “open to any hours” on her application. Which is true. But a reasonable person knows that if you’re scheduled off, you’re not just sitting around waiting to work. You’re living your life. Sometimes a change is no big deal. Sometimes it’s a huge deal.

    Things change. The market moves. A buyer falls through. A timeline shifts. I’ve seen deals that looked simple get complicated fast and complicated ones come together out of nowhere. That’s just how it works and there’s no point pretending otherwise.

    But there’s a difference between things changing and someone changing things on you without a conversation.

    If something shifts that affects your timeline, your plans, what you thought was going to happen, you’re going to hear it from me first. Not after the fact. Not when it’s already done. You’re not going to look at the schedule one day and find out it’s been changed.

    You control this. That part doesn’t move.

    I can’t promise everything goes according to plan. Nobody can. What I can promise is that you’re never going to feel like you woke up and someone had already decided something for you.

    PS – Most landowners aren’t planning to sell today.

    But things can change quickly. When the time comes, the people who already understand the market tend to make better decisions.

    That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for. It looks at nearby sales, current listings, development pressure, and the details affecting value that aren’t obvious from the road.

    Is it a bad idea to know where things stand?

    Get Yours Here

    PPS- If you’re not ready for a Reality Check but enjoy reading about land, markets, and negotiation, you can sign up below and get these posts in your inbox.

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