The Five-Minute Call That Saved Weeks

[Drago Stanimirovic]

One of the things nobody tells you about this business is that you're not just evaluating properties. You're evaluating people.

Over the years, I've realized that this job requires a strange combination of skills. Part lender. Part detective. Part psychologist. And every now and then... part police investigator.

Not because people are bad. Because people are human.

I've stopped believing that most problems come from people deliberately trying to deceive you. More often, they come from something much more ordinary. People tell the story the way they see it. And the way we see our own story is almost never completely objective.

We all do it. We remember the facts that support our decisions. We minimize the ones that don't. We explain away mistakes that would sound obvious if they belonged to someone else.

Psychologists have a name for it. Cognitive dissonance. Our brains work surprisingly hard to make us feel consistent, even when reality is a little messier.

That's why one person says, "The tenant is only a week behind." Another says, "The renovation is basically finished." Or, "It's just a small issue."

None of those statements are necessarily lies. They're often honest descriptions...

...of the version of reality that feels most comfortable to the person telling the story.

That's why, every now and then, I'll make a phone call that isn't really about documents or numbers. It's about listening.

Asking one more question. Hearing the hesitation. Noticing what's being left out as much as what's being said.

Sometimes that five-minute conversation saves weeks of work later. Not because I caught someone trying to fool me. Because together we uncovered the part of the story that neither of us had fully appreciated yet.

You need enough skepticism to ask difficult questions. But you also need enough goodwill to help people solve the problem once you find it.

If all I wanted to do was catch people making mistakes... I'd probably have become a police officer.

I have far more respect for helping someone get from where they are... to where they're trying to go. To me, that's a better use of those skills.

(Has one conversation ever completely changed your understanding of a deal - not because someone lied, but because the full story finally came out?)