The deeper I got into real-estate investing, the clearer it has become that this was, is, and will always be a people business. The better we understand human nature, the easier it is to understand how different people behave differently under different circumstances.
For someone like me, who is not exactly sociable by nature, it has been a long road to get to where I am today in terms of being comfortable dealing with people.
To those whom I met within the last few years, this revelation probably comes as a complete surprise. But to someone like my husband, who has known me for over four decades, the effects of the transformation have been nothing short of night and day.
So why did I change? Well, I had no choice.
Over time, it became crystal clear to me that simply gaining the technical knowledge of making real-estate deals happen was not enough. I NEEDED to change and become comfortable dealing with people – or else the chances of succeeding in this business were going to be little to none. And I knew that I HAD to succeed in this business – or else I would be putting at risk my freedom that I had been able to enjoy in this country until the stock-market crash of 2000.
I owe my transformation to a series of training programs, some as early as when I was still in corporate America. Here is a list of some of the major ones:
- Dale Carnegie – for public speaking
- Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)
- Proper responses to customer objections
- Scripts to follow
- Negotiation skills
In addition to starting out being non-sociable, I needed to learn all of the above skills in my second language.
If you are in the mode of “whatever it takes” to become successful in this business, then this is my message to you: “If I can do it, so can YOU!”
Happy investing!
