I'm in the Grantham studio with Christopher Watkin for his Letting Agent Podcast, and he goes straight in.
"Why do over two thirds of estate and letting agents manage with a fear of failure as opposed to a goal of success? Talk to me."
I turn it back on him. "Is it just estate agents and letting agents that are afraid of failure?"
"It's probably everyone," he says.
"Or is it everybody? Exactly that."
Chris went on to describe what that fear looks like in an agency. Procrastinating. Market share slipping year by year. Sitting on the fence. Reacting to competitors' campaigns and never driving anything themselves.
That was July 2019. Fear of failure doesn't care what job you do.
Afraid to fail, afraid to succeed
I told Chris there are people who say it's a tough business to be in. "And if you describe it as that, guess what it's going to be."
The voice you listen to more than anyone's is the one in your own head. So flip it. If everyone else is saying it's getting harder, that's a great opportunity, because it doesn't have to be getting harder for you. "Now, it's very easy to say. It's much harder to do."
I talked about a theory that says we've got three brains: reptilian, then a monkey or chimp brain, then the human one. Everything we experience gets filtered in that order, and the reptilian bit asks first whether this is going to hurt me. "And so from that point of view, just taking that one question alone, we can very easily catastrophise anything."
Then I went off on what I warned Chris might sound like a weird tangent. I grew up in Southampton, and one of its better known musical exports is Craig David. The way I see it, everyone loved him, then the parodies started, and he ended up living in the US for a while before coming back years later and making a successful career again. British culture can be like that: "We'll build you up, and once your head's too high, we're just going to lop it off."
So we're scared of failing, and we're scared of succeeding in case people decide we've got arrogant. Most of the successful people I've met are as down to earth as they've always been. But put both fears together and I said it plainly to Chris. "You're going to be afraid to start."
One question for when you're stuck
After the reptilian brain comes the monkey brain, which is all feelings. "And if I don't like the way I feel about it, I can't apply logic to it." Most marketing starts with logic, which is back to front. Reassure first, then deal with how it makes people feel, then give the logical reasons. And do the same with yourself.
That's why I'm a big believer in having a primary question. One question you ask whenever you get stuck. If you've named your ideal customer, it might be what would Chris want. It might be what would love do. "I want to avoid fear, so what would love do in this situation?"
I've met people whose question is how they give themselves a pay raise. That would never be mine, "because for me it's not all about the money, it's about the impact". Pick one that fits the values you have and the future you're trying to build.
Chris said Tom Panos asks what advice he'd give a friend who came to him with the same problem. Same thing. (I wrote more on that idea in Would you talk to a friend like that?)
You are your own number one client
I told Chris about a coach I'd worked with about five years before. She was brilliant, and she's a good friend now. Even then I was doing coaching stuff, and at the time of the show I was doing a lot of it. She asked me one question.
"Neil, you do coaching. If you were talking to your number one client who was in this situation, what advice would you give them?"
Then she followed it with this. "You are your own number one client."
I said to her, "It's mind-blowing. But every time I deal with you from now on I'm going to ask myself that question." She'd made herself a bit less useful to me in one go, and it was time to find other people for different ideas. "It was incredibly powerful."
Watch the full chat
If you've got nothing else
Right at the end I gave Chris a fallback, for anyone who doesn't have a question of their own yet. "Does it really matter?"
"And what I mean by that is, if I look back in 12 months or 24 months or 10 years, will I even remember this?"
"Probably not," said Chris.
First published July 2019 on Christopher Watkin's Letting Agent Podcast.
