Mike Browning

Tag: Mindset

  • The Danger of Needing It

    The Danger of Needing It

    The second you need the deal, you’ve already given up the good version of it.

    One of the best books on negotiation is Start With No by Jim Camp. Probably the single most important idea in it: neediness is the first thing you have to get control of. Until you do, you’re at the mercy of whoever you’re sitting across from.

    Doesn’t matter if it’s a car, a house, a piece of land, or where you’re going for dinner Friday. Same rule.

    Go shopping for a car and it’s about a sure thing that once you show real interest, the salesman mentions someone else. They’re coming to look at it this afternoon. Or they were in yesterday, said they’d probably be back. Whatever the line is, the point is the same. Make you feel like if you don’t move now, you’re going to lose it.

    And it works. Not because you’re gullible. Because it’s aimed at something real. The second you stop thinking “I like this” and start thinking “I need this,” you’ve handed over the leverage.

    You don’t even notice it happening. You just start agreeing to things you wouldn’t have agreed to an hour earlier.

    Here’s what your brain skates right past. On the way to that lot, you passed a few thousand other cars. Other lots. Other listings. These things are mass produced. If this one gets away from you, there’s another one out there, probably better, and you’ll never think about this one again.

    You need food. You need shelter. Around here you probably need a vehicle of some kind. But you don’t need this particular car. You don’t need this particular house.

    Land’s a little different. No two pieces are exactly alike, so in a technical sense a specific tract really is one of one. But different doesn’t mean irreplaceable. Miss it, and the sun still comes up tomorrow. You still eat dinner. You’ll find something else that checks the boxes, maybe something you like better, and you won’t spend one more minute thinking about the one that got away.

    Wanting something is fine. Wanting it enough to stretch a little, work for it, negotiate hard. Also fine, as long as you’re doing it with your eyes open. Needing it is where it goes sideways.

    That’s when you stop negotiating and start hoping nobody notices you’re begging.

    The people on the other side of the table notice. Even the ones who aren’t trying to work you over will feel the shift, and the good ones absolutely will use it. Not because they’re crooked. Because that’s the game, and you just told them you’re not really playing it anymore.

    The fix isn’t complicated, even if it’s not easy. Notice when you’ve crossed the line from “I’d like this” to “I have to have this.” That’s your signal to slow down, not speed up. Ask yourself what you’re actually risking by waiting a day. Usually the honest answer is: not much. The deadline was mostly invented to make you feel exactly what you’re feeling right now.

    Camp built an entire system around this, and it’s worth your time if you’ve never read it. Whether you’re negotiating a purchase, a sale, a raise, or just trying to get your teenager to clean their room. Once you see how much of negotiation is really about who wants it less, you can’t unsee it.

    Grab a copy here

    It’ll change how you walk into every negotiation. And since everything is a negotiation, it may change your life.

    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.

  • The Sun Is Probably Coming Up Tomorrow

    The Sun Is Probably Coming Up Tomorrow

    You’d be a lot better off operating accordingly.

    Most people wake up these days and, they already know the world is ending before they’ve had their first cup of coffee.

    Used to be you’d flip on the morning news. Maybe Good Morning America. You’d hear some bad news, sure, but then there’d be a segment on a dog that learned to skateboard, or some heartwarming story about a kid raising money for his neighbor. You’d get the weather. Somebody would laugh too loud at something that wasn’t that funny.

    Now people roll over, grab the phone, and start scrolling. And the algorithm figured out a long time ago that outrage keeps you looking longer than a skateboarding dog does. So that’s what it feeds you, nonstop, before you’ve put your feet on the floor.

    Right now it’s the war that was going to end but now it isn’t (oh wait, yes it is, never mind it’s not). Gas is either already too high or about to get worse, depending on which story you read first. Or we’re living in a dystopian nightmare. It’s exhausting, it’ll ruin your morning or your whole day before it starts if you let it.

    But it’s always been this way, just maybe not quite as much in our faces.

    Just a few years ago we were all going to die. A sizable number of serious people were saying civilization was a few days away from coming apart. We’re still here.

    Before that, a particular election was going to send everything straight into the toilet. Whichever one you’re thinking of, someone said that about it. They all came and went and things are moving along. Most people would never even notice a difference if they weren’t told about it.

    Before that, the housing market had crashed and the same people who swore the crash wasn’t coming turned around and swore it would never recover. It recovered so much that now those same people say nobody can afford a house.

    Before that, terrorists were going to get us all. Hasn’t happened yet.

    Before that, the oceans were going to swallow everything if we didn’t figure out how to control the temperature of the sun. Still waiting on that one too, Al.

    Before that, nuclear holocaust by 1985. Wrong again.

    Before that, economic malaise was all we had to look forward to. Until things started growing so fast the 80s were known as the decade of greed.

    Eventually something is going to get us. That’s just the nature of things.

    But until then, you’ve got a life to live. And a morning to get through. If you spend it marinating in whatever disaster the algorithm decided you should be upset about today, you’ll make worse decisions, be harder to be around, and see problems everywhere, including in places that are actually fine.

    Here’s a pretty decent rule of thumb: if someone says it’s different this time or we will never recover from (insert problem here), they probably aren’t worth listening to.

    There will always be a reason to run and hide, if you just look for one.

    But the sun’s probably coming up tomorrow. Plan accordingly.

    PS- Most landowners aren’t looking to make a move right now.

    But the ones who do best tend to be the ones who already know where things stand before the moment comes. Not waiting to see how the news cycle shakes out.

    That’s what the MBR Land Reality Check is for. It looks at nearby sales, current listings, development pressure, and the details that affect value but 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 how to think about both, you can sign up below and get these posts in your inbox.

    Register to Receive Posts Via Email!

    By submitting, I understand I will receive marketing emails and blog posts from Mike Browning Realty and/or associated companies. Unsubscribe at any time.

  • The Big Deal Isn’t Harder

    The Big Deal Isn’t Harder

    Don’t spend your whole life playing penny ante games.

    Early in my career I spent months working a deal. Drove the area, ran the comps, found the right buyer, got it closed. Made about a thousand dollars on it.

    I was working with my dad at the time, so he saw all of it. The driving around, the dead ends, the slow grind toward a buyer. He told me I’d done everything right, worked it the way it should be worked. Then he told me something I didn’t fully get at the time.

    He said it isn’t any harder to work a big deal than a small one.

    I argued with that a little in my head. Surely the bigger deal has more moving parts, more zeros, more ways to mess it up. More people who’d notice if you got it wrong.

    He was right and I was wrong. (Don’t tell him I said that.) The work is close to identical. Find someone who wants to buy, someone who wants to sell, put them together and get something done that leaves everyone better off. What changes is the number at the end, and that number doesn’t ask you to do anything different to get there.

    Most of what makes the big version feel harder isn’t the deal. It’s you. You start adding weight to it that isn’t actually there. Bigger feels like it should require more, so you tense up, slow down, second-guess yourself in ways you never would on something smaller. The deal didn’t get harder. You did.

    It applies to most things, and most people never test it. Making two hundred thousand a year isn’t meaningfully harder than making forty. It’s a different set of habits, different deals, different conversations, but it isn’t five times the effort or five times the stress. People assume the bigger number requires being a different kind of person. Mostly it just requires not getting in your own way at the size you’re currently working.

    People spend years circling the smaller version of something because it felt safer, only to find out later the bigger version asked the same of them. If not less. They just hadn’t been willing to find out.

    PS- Most landowners aren’t thinking about a deal of any size today.

    But the ones who do well, big or small, tend to be the ones who stopped sizing up the work before they’d even started it.

    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.

    Register to Receive Posts Via Email!

    By submitting, I understand I will receive marketing emails and blog posts from Mike Browning Realty and/or associated companies. Unsubscribe at any time.

  • The World As It Is

    The World As It Is

    Things work a lot better when you align yourself with reality, instead of expecting it to conform to you.

    Some people spend a lot of energy being offended by things that were never about them.

    Someone says something careless. Or acts a certain way in public, or online, or at work. And someone else sees it and decides it was aimed at them personally. Now there’s a problem to solve. A wrong to correct. A wound that needs acknowledging.

    A lot of times the other person wasn’t thinking about them at all.

    People are self-absorbed, although usually in ordinary, harmless ways. They’re worried about their own day, their own bills, their own kid’s homework. The comment that landed wrong, the look that seemed pointed, the rule that felt unfair. Most of it is just noise other people are making while they live their own lives. It only becomes about you if you decide it is.

    Obviously I’m not saying bad behavior doesn’t exist. People are rude and small and unfair plenty. As the saying goes, some people are just jerks.

    But there’s a difference between noticing things and letting those things ruin your day, or organizing your life around the idea that the world should have treated you a certain way and now owes you something for not doing it.

    That’s exhausting. And it doesn’t change anything. Whatever happened still happened. All that’s changed is you’ve spent the afternoon carrying it around.

    The people who do best are the ones who deal with the world as it actually behaves instead of how they wish it did. And move forward accordingly. That doesn’t mean you can’t be disappointed at times, but it happens to everyone.

    This is one of those concepts you see everywhere once you notice it for the first time.

    A seller looks at their property and decides what they want it to be worth. Based on what they put into it, what they need out of it, what the neighbor claimed his sold for at the mailbox. None of that is the market. The market doesn’t know what you need and doesn’t owe you a number.

    You can list at an unrealistic number you wish were true, but I don’t recommend it. Buyers will simply ignore you, politely or not, and the property sits.

    You can price it at what the market will actually pay, today, with the buyers who actually exist, and move forward. Or you can wait. And maybe later things will be more to your liking.

    Both are real choices. Waiting for the market to come around to your number may be the right call. Nobody knows the future, but in north Texas land has tended to rise over time. If you’re not in a hurry, or don’t need to sell, it might be the best choice.

    But the market isn’t being unfair to you for not acting like you wish it would. It isn’t being anything. It’s just being a market.

    PS-Most landowners aren’t trying to figure out a number today.

    But when the time comes, the ones who already understand what the market is actually doing make better decisions than the ones still arguing with it.

    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 It 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.

  • Accurate Thinking Beats Positive Thinking

    Accurate Thinking Beats Positive Thinking

    Mindset matters, but only if it’s grounded in reality

    Your mindset is simply the way you look at things and how you approach them.

    It matters more than most people want to admit.

    If you believe you can learn, adapt, and figure things out, you’ll usually do better than someone who believes they’re stuck or destined to fail. Not because belief is magic, but because it determines how you act, what you try, and what you dismiss before you ever start.

    Most of this runs below the surface.

    We hear things that sound right and let them in without much resistance. Over time, those ideas start running our decision-making on autopilot. We rarely stop to ask where they came from or whether they actually hold up in the real world.

    Television, social media, teachers, friends, coworkers. All of them install things into our operating system. Sometimes intentional, sometimes not. Either way, it doesn’t matter.

    Once something is installed, we stop treating it like a suggestion and start treating it like reality. We act as if it’s true. And when it’s wrong, we often move backward while feeling justified the entire time.

    A simple example.

    Roughly two-thirds of college students say socialism is better than capitalism. Setting politics aside, ask the obvious question: what evidence did they use to reach that conclusion?

    They didn’t test it.
    They didn’t analyze outcomes.
    They didn’t reason their way there.

    It was told to them by someone they trusted. It sounded compassionate. It felt sophisticated. So it went in unchallenged.

    Installed.

    Now it quietly influences how they think about money, work, responsibility, and incentives. Often in ways that run directly against their own long-term interests.

    This happens everywhere.

    Business is full of unexamined beliefs:

    “Everything is a numbers game.”
    “The early bird always wins.”
    “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

    Some of these ideas are partially true in narrow situations.

    Others are sloppy generalizations people repeat because they sound wise.

    Bad experiences don’t automatically make you stronger. Plenty of people are damaged by them. Strength comes from how someone responds afterward, not from trauma by default. Believing otherwise can actually lead people to seek chaos or failure as if it’s a growth strategy.

    That’s not resilience. That’s bad thinking.

    Here’s the core point.

    Your belief system governs your outcomes more than tactics ever will. If your beliefs about yourself, money, work, or success are flawed, you’re operating with a handicap.

    The fix isn’t positive thinking.

    The fix is accurate thinking.

    That means slowing down when you hit resistance in your own beliefs and asking hard questions. Where did this idea come from? What evidence supports it? Where does it break?

    Anything added to your belief system should earn its place.

    If a belief can’t survive contact with reality, it doesn’t deserve to run your life.

    If you value clear thinking and straightforward talk, you can get more like this in your inbox here:

    Sign Up Here!

    PS — If you know someone who might benefit from this kind of thinking or straightforward real estate talk, feel free to forward it.

  • A Small Shift That Changes Everything

    A Small Shift That Changes Everything

    Adjust the frame in your mind, and your life looks different.

    The way you look at things makes a big difference in how your life looks.

    When one of my daughters was little, there were nights after a long day where it was my turn to feed her and I really didn’t want to do it. I wasn’t angry. I was just tired and being pulled away from something I wanted to keep doing.

    One night it hit me that this wasn’t going to last very long. There would come a time when she wouldn’t need me to feed her at all. And more than that, I’d probably wish I could.

    And that’s exactly what happened.

    But before it happened, once I had that thought my attitude towards the whole thing changed.

    Afterwards I never got irritated about stopping what I was doing to feed the baby.

    If anything, I went too far the other direction. I didn’t want anyone else to do it because I didn’t want to miss one. That caused its own problems.

    Turns out other people like feeding babies too.

    Nothing about the situation changed. The only thing that changed was how I framed it.

    That happens all the time in life. The way you think about something can completely change your attitude toward it, even when the facts stay the same.

    It happens in real estate constantly.

    A deal falls apart. A buyer changes their mind. Someone won’t agree to terms you need them to agree to. It doesn’t work. That can be frustrating, especially when you’ve invested time and effort into it.

    What I’ve found, though, is that when you stay on your principles, something better usually comes along fairly quickly. The same thing happens with clients.

    When the bad ones move on, good ones tend to replace them.

    It’s not magic. It’s not a guarantee. Sometimes things just are what they are.

    But you still get a choice. You can get upset and stew over it, or you can choose to look at it as something that’s likely working out for the best, even if you don’t see how yet.

    That mindset alone improves your attitude and your demeanor, and that tends to improve everything else that follows.

    Get More Like This Here!

    PS- You’re probably not ready to buy or sell land today. You might even be thinking the plan is to never sell. But things change.

    Would it be a bad idea to prepare for it like it’s something that could happen, even if it probably won’t?

    Kind of like having a gun for self defense. Everyone plans and hopes to never use it for that. But it’s better to have it and not need it than vice versa.

    I offer a free, no obligation analysis on any non-residential property. It includes actual comps (with real prices) near your tract, along with other things like planned development, utility info, market trends etc.

    I also listen to people, and offer straight talk and integrity. And I’m the sort of guy who tries to look at things in a positive light.

    Could it ever be a bad idea to just check it out?

    Click Below:

    Got a lot you might want to sell?
    Get a FREE, no obligation report on what it could sell for today.
    Get Your Lot Valuation

    Own land instead?
    Get a report for that here:
    Get Your Land Value

    Just a glutton for punishment?
    Sign up now to get more articles like this in your email.
    Sign Up Now

  • What Gratitude Really Does for You

    What Gratitude Really Does for You

    Gratitude isn’t magic — it’s maintenance.

    Thanksgiving always puts people in the mindset of being grateful, but the truth is you shouldn’t save it for a holiday.

    Being genuinely thankful — on purpose, every day — changes how you operate.

    Not in a mystical way. Not in a “manifest it” way.

    Just in the plain-old practical way that your brain behaves better when it’s not being dragged around by negativity.

    And gratitude is one of the simplest tools you can use for that.

    Here’s the practice I use, and it works whether you’re having a great week or you’re barely keeping it together:

    Come up with three things you’re grateful for. Today.
    Nothing fancy. No forced positivity.
    Just three true things.

    Every day.

    They can be small. In fact, they usually are.

    Dinner tasted good.
    Traffic wasn’t awful.
    You slept well.
    Your kid called.
    Your dog was glad to see you.
    You finished a task you’d been avoiding.
    The weather cooperated.

    Doesn’t matter what it is.

    It just has to be real.

    You don’t have to write them down, but I usually do, because it forces me to actually stop and notice them. When I type it or email it to myself, it lands in a different way. It sticks.

    And that’s the whole point:

    To get your mind used to noticing what’s good instead of letting it run laps around whatever’s irritating you.

    People underestimate how much this matters.

    Your results improve when your attitude improves — and your attitude improves when you deliberately look at what’s not going wrong.

    It doesn’t fix everything. But it keeps you steadier.

    And most of the time, steady wins.

    So this Thanksgiving, sure — be grateful.
    But don’t stop on Friday.
    Keep going.
    Three things a day.
    Simple, honest, small.

    Do it long enough and it will change more than your mood.

    Happy Thanksgiving!

    Want posts like this sent to you automatically?

    Get them in your email here — no spam, no pestering, just the daily posts.

    Sign Up Here!

  • You Blew It. Big Time. Now What?

    You Blew It. Big Time. Now What?

    Mistakes are unavoidable. Wallowing in self-pity isn’t.

    I’ve been writing the last few days about planning, breaking things down to small pieces, and controlling what you can control.

    But even with that, it can still go sideways.

    Sometimes it’s not your fault.

    But what about when you just blow it?

    We’ve all made a bad call in the middle of something important.

    Said the wrong thing. Picked the wrong strategy. Misread a person.

    Maybe you got caught off guard and went along with something you shouldn’t have.

    Maybe you pushed too hard when you should have asked one more question.

    It happens to everybody. Even when you plan well, think clearly, and go in with the right mindset.

    The issue isn’t really the mistake. The real issue is what happens after the mistake.

    Most people go into a kind of self-punishment spiral. They relive it in their head while they’re still in the middle of the situation.

    They start questioning themselves.

    They start “trying” harder.

    Their emotions creep in.

    And then they make a second mistake. Then a third. Before long the whole thing has rolled downhill.

    Jim Camp talks about this in Start With No. His point is that once a decision is made, it’s made.

    You don’t go back and replay it in the moment. You move to the next action.

    No dwelling. No self-judging. No rewriting the past while you’re still in the middle of the mission.

    There’s a sports version of this that makes the idea even clearer.

    Think about a cornerback in football. A corner can be perfect on 58 plays and get beat once — and that one play might be a touchdown on national TV that everyone remembers.

    It’s a tough position. You’re exposed. Everyone sees your mistakes.

    The ones who succeed don’t have better physical gifts. They have short memories.

    If they get beat on a route and spend the next five plays stewing about it — they’ll get beat again. And again.

    Because their attention isn’t on the next snap anymore. It’s on the last one.

    But the good ones don’t pretend the mistake never happened. They don’t ignore it. They just wait to deal with it.

    After the game, they’ll go to the film room. Slow everything down. Look for what tipped the receiver’s route. Study how their hips opened. Look at footwork and spacing. Then they learn from it.

    But not during the game.

    During the game, all that matters is the next play.

    And it’s the same everywhere else — business, negotiation, family, anything that matters.

    You’re going to make mistakes. Even with good planning. Even with experience.

    Even when you know better.

    The key is not to drag the last mistake into the next decision.

    Handle the moment you’re in. Then, when it’s over, look back honestly and learn from it.

    One snap at a time.

    Like this? Subscribe Here!

    PS- You’re probably tired of me flogging these books. But if you actually bought one you wouldn’t be.

    For one you’d probably still be busy reading it. But mostly, you’d understand why I keep hammering on it.

    They are that good.

    If I know of something that will help you and don’t keep telling you about it, what does that say about me?

    Click below and pick one, you won’t be sorry.

    Recommended Reading

    (Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Clicking that link may earn me a small commission, at no extra cost to you.)