Patience is profitable

What most people seem to miss about Warren Buffett's success is that he has played one game for a very long time. Sure he's smart and knows what he's doing. But most importantly he was never in a hurry, and he was in it for the long run - like, his whole life.

"$81.5 billion of Warren Buffett's $84.5 billion net worth
came after his 65th birthday.
Our minds are not built to handle such absurdities."

• - Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

The other piece to this puzzle: Buffett had a third partner way back in the 60's and 70's named Rick Guerin. Most people are familiar with Buffett's partner, Charlie Munger, but most people have never heard of Rick Guerin. Buffett once recapped his thoughts on Guerin to investor Mohnish Pabrai, again from The Psychology of Money:

"[Warren said] Charlie and I always knew that we would become incredibly wealthy. We were not in a hurry to get wealthy, we knew it would happen. Rick was just as smart as us, but he was in a hurry." What happened was that in the 1973-1974 downturn, Rick was levered with margin loans. And the stock market went down almost 70% in those two years, so he got margin calls. He sold his Berkshire stock to Warren-Warren actually said "I bought Rick's Berkshire stock"-at under $40 a piece. Rick was forced to sell because he was levered."

Or you could say he was in a hurry.

Have you ever seen agents in a hurry to do business?  Is that ever you? Are you chasing bad leads/clients to "hurry" your success?

The other path: developing and nurturing relationships (captured in your database).

Which one will serve you over the long run? The answer is obvious, but you need to see that for yourself. The real answer is in what you do every day.

Agents come to me all the time, "What else can I do to do business now?" No one has any patience! Trusting your database is...hard. You must develop a practice of patience. It takes faith. It takes discipline. Most agents would rather chase the lead in front of them because that seems...more tangible? It's the hit of immediate gratification. 

What is much harder is to see that your real success in real estate comes when you have been at it for a decade or two, and you have built a database of loyal, trusting, and affluent clients that count on you to handle not only their real estate needs, but those of their family and friends.

People in a hurry are likely to scurry out of the business when things get hard. People with patience know they have a foundation strong enough to withstand and outlast any market.