May’s Men’s Health (raiding the hubby’s magazine stash again) featured 5 guys exemplifying the 5 pillars of success (ambition, intuition, focus, courage and leadership). Within it, they interviewed mega successful L.A. Real Estate Broker Jonah Wilson (yeah, son of Beach Boy Carl Wilson). One of his laws was to never fear the flush.
“It’s not that hard to make a hundred grand in real estate if you know a few people who want to buy or sell a house,” Wilson says. “But you can only go so far on connections, or you’ll be flushed out when the market takes a downturn.” The simplest remedy: tenacity. The best raise their game because they want to stay.
You see this in every area. A market (real estate, energy stocks, blogging, etc) gets hot. What I call “tourists” jump in, trying to make a quick buck. The market tanks. The tourists leave and only a few with guts and persistence are left (look at Margaret Moore with her medieval romances, one of the few authors in that once hot sub-genre remaining).
Are you a tourist or a professional? It depends on whether you anticipate the flush or not. It will come. It always does (eventually and not usually when you think it will). Have you planned for it? Can you ride it out?