Mike Browning

Tag: opportunity

  • The Wall That Keeps Out Disappointment

    The Wall That Keeps Out Disappointment

    It keeps other things out too.

    Most of us spend a lot of time and go to a lot of effort to prevent bad things from happening to us.

    Some of it is smart. Like wearing your seatbelt. Looking both ways before crossing the street. Requiring your bank to call and verify with you verbally before wiring money to or from your account.

    Common sense, in other words. Low-effort things that can prevent major problems.

    But we tend to overdo it. And overestimate our ability to stop anything bad from ever happening.

    Some people try to build a wall around their lives that will keep problems or disappointment from affecting them.

    And the wall can be surprisingly effective. Most of the time anyway. Today we won’t get into all the things people thought would protect them that turned out not to.

    But the thing to remember is that the wall you build against problems keeps other things out too.

    Like opportunity.

    A lot of people want total certainty before making a move on anything. But you can never have it.

    Or they act like the worst thing that can happen is making a mistake or failing at something. But the only way to never make mistakes is to never do anything. And failing is one of the best ways to learn.

    The idea isn’t to be reckless. It’s to lower the wall enough that some of the good can get in.

    Will that result in more problems than you otherwise would have had?

    Possibly. Probably, even.

    But you’ll probably have more successes too.

    And have more fun.

    P.S. If you own land, you know it’s smart to know where you stand with it. Even if you’re not planning to sell, things change, and sometimes they change fast.

    Better to know ahead of time and not need the information than to be scrambling when you suddenly do.

    It’s also important to remember that deciding to look isn’t the same as deciding to act.

    Not selling is the right move for most people most of the time. But you don’t know what’s right for you if you don’t look.

    So give yourself permission.

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

    And it’s free.

    Check it out here.

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  • 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.

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