As a relatively young broker, one of the lessons of the real estate downturn has been the benefit that adversity and experience can provide. Our market entered its downturn in earnest in 2007 and we saw the lack of transaction activity that the initial downturn brings. As a young broker, you need feedback for what you are doing in order to benchmark the effectiveness of your strategies. When nothing you do works (in part because of the market), you’re not getting any feedback as to your tactics. If you look at it in terms of A/B testing, if you try A you fail, try B you fail, try C you fail. That’s the bad part of a downturn.

Here’s the good part (where I will rely heavily on a clip from HBO’s Deadwood in order to make my point). Taking a beating isn’t that bad. When you’ve been through a really bad market and things start to get better, you have the confidence to handle what the market will bring in the future. Adversity and failure can be really great things provided you’re willing to learn from them. I could go on, but this Deadwood clip does the point better justice than I can. Al Swearengen is one of the great all time television characters, for my money better than Tony Soprano. He’s something of a noble realist and I think this point nails it.

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