Investment Sales: You can have the luck, I’ll take the work - by Tim Serignese

Is it good luck or good timing? Does good timing happen in the gaps between bad timing and ok timing? What is luck? 

Is it when you reach a desired goal or outcome with a fraction of the effort that you thought it would take? For instance, your intern starts to prospect on the phone and contacts a “ready, willing and able” seller on her third call. After you braced her for hours of dialing. Is that luck? 

The intern from above needs to keep calling whether she hits on the third call or the 300th. If she gets that same seller on call 300 is she still somewhat lucky? Some would say so, it is her first day for crying out loud.

This falls under the old adage of “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” You keep marching forward and at some point you are bound to step in a pile of luck. It is onto something, but still emphasizes luck as if we cannot acknowledge the effort and subsequent win or reward being our destiny and right.

Luck in my opinion is a deceiving evil word. It takes power from people. It deflects from effort and will. The concept of luck does not exist if you are not striving for a goal or outcome in the first place. The intention and work needs to be there before luck can even be thought about. The intern was not lucky because she hit on her 300th call on her first day. She was fulfilling her purpose as it is supposed to be.

As real estate people we only have our time, our brains and our will. And no amount of luck is going to increase our allotted amount of these things. Give away all your luck. You are armed with all you need.

Tim Serignese is an associate broker at The Besen Group, New York, N.Y.