Most people are ruled by their emotions. Under pressure, they let panic set in and make the fastest and most expedient decisions possible to get out of the pain they are in. This is the opposite approach to take when under pressure if you want to find any level of success. Processing the issue and breaking it down into components to be analyzed so a proper solution can be reached is how success is created. Achieving worthwhile goals and pursuing challenging feats is about solving problems. Those who learn to become experts at problem solving will in turn achieve at the highest levels.
Under pressure, a real life scenario
In my industry of real estate, the entire business is predicated around solving gigantic problems for the people you wish to get business from and do business with. Every single day for me is a new challenge or problem I need to process and tackle the best way possible. The only way to do that is to take the emotional response of fear that naturally occurs from pressure and replace it with a calm and logical demeanor. There have been countless times where I’ve been under pressure. A lot of things come down to the wire. You need to be prepared for this and be trusting of the process you’ve set for yourself through reason and logic. Let me walk through a real life example of how I processed a recent deal I did under pressure and ultimately produced a satisfactory result.
Back in January, I purchased a property in Gibsonton, Florida, with the intention to sell it with financing in a way that I could net money in cash flow every month. This method is one I use often to create monthly cash flow for myself called a wrap. It consists of taking over a loan with a low interest rate from a seller and selling it to a new buyer with a higher interest rate. The difference between the two interest rates is my cash flow.
When we took on the investment, we allotted three months reserves off the bat to cover our holding expenses. We developed a plan that consisted of different types of advertisement including Facebook ads, a Zillow listing, and posting about it in local Facebook groups. After a month went by, we had little to no showings for the property with no offer to speak of. This was a little bit concerning to us at the time, but we pressed on. By the end of the next month, we still didn’t have our buyer. We were running out of money fast, and after a few more weeks we would have to come out of pocket to start covering the mortgage. This was not an ideal situation, and in most cases, this would cause someone to start panicking. Our emotions started playing tricks on us, making us believe that our strategy was wrong and that we should give up and try and get rid of the property for a loss. It was clear I needed to process this issue with my partners and come up with a solution that made sense for us to make money on this deal.
While picking apart this issue, we realized one extremely important thing. Those who were doing the same strategy as us were using the same forms of advertisement and making connections the same way. It wasn’t our method we needed to change, it was our expectations on timeframe. Most people were selling their wrap deals in 3-6 months and we had only allotted holding expenses for the bare minimum of three. Now that we had discovered the root of our issue, time, we needed to be prepared to deal with this issue by having more of our capital ready for this deal and in future deals we plan on using this method for. Processing our problem effectively ultimately led to a simple yet critical refinement of our process performing wraps moving forward. We would now need at least 6 months of reserves earmarked for our wrap deals in order for our methods to take full effect and bear fruit.
Luckily, we were able to sell the property and generate sizable cash flow in just a few short days after we processed our issue, however the lesson we learned from this experience better prepared us for future similar endeavors.
Fear impedes decision making
When we are under intense pressure to perform, it is entirely natural to feel fear. The thoughts of failure start to reveal themselves in your brain. You begin to question everything you’ve done up to that point wondering what you did wrong and how to get yourself out of this mess you’ve created before it gets any worse! Most of the time, our emotional reaction leads us to an extremely avoidable route of failure. By simply breaking down issues so that we can analyze them rather than react to them, we increase our chances of success immeasurably! Emotions are almost always your enemy when it comes to clear and proper decision making. Don’t let fear cloud your ability to carefully process issues. If you do, it could be your downfall.