Did you ever have the experience that someone in the audience gives you a “you think you are so smart” look when you are elaborating your point of view?
For me, this happens often during my presentation or at the Q&A session, in an industry talk or at my own event.
But that doesn’t bother me at all. Because I know that I am really not so smart.
In primary school, my academic results were far from satisfactory. I was always daydreaming. My dad took pity of my skinny look and told my mum not to put any pressure on me. If this daughter couldn’t study, she could go sell ice-cream. Not too bad, right?
It didn’t help that I have an identical twin sister who was always first in class. I guess it was the result of some uneven distribution of intelligence when we were conceived.
When my twin sister was studying for her Psychology master’s degree, one day she asked me whether I would be upset if I know my IQ is only average according to the test result.
Why would I? Frankly, I consider having average IQ a bonus to me.
Once when I was in Primary 4, the teacher wrote a maths problem on the blackboard. Then she asked me to come forward to solve it.
As expected, I was at a loss in front of the whole class. I just proved that my weakness in maths was consistently consistent. The teacher had to show me every step to come up with the correct answer. Suddenly, she lost her patience and pushed my head against the blackboard.
That was painful. But it didn’t make me any smarter.
Anyway, I studied very hard in Secondary 3 and finally topped the class in all thirteen academic subjects, except Mathematics. Until my O-Level, I never managed to finish all the questions in time in a maths exam.
Last year when my elder daughter scored A-star in her PSLE Mathematics without going for tuition, I know very well that gene is not from me.
It was not until my flat-viewing days that I trained myself to do mental calculations without using my fingers or a calculator. I couldn’t show the agents or owners that I was secretly working out the net return of the property.
Not just because I wanted to hide the fact that I am an experienced home buyer. I also had to prevent anyone from pushing my head against the wall again if I made any wrong calculation.
How far can high IQ take you?
How can a “not so smart” person like me make the right decisions in property investment? Is having high intelligence important in investment?
Multimillionaire entrepreneur and real estate investor Christian Jagodzinski (who has very high IQ himself) said IQ is often overrated. Success in business has nothing to do with intelligence. From his experience, he found many highly intelligent people who are not successful in the business world.
There are three reasons why:
1. They are only good at understanding logical connections as measured by IQ tests.
People with high IQ can determine pretty fast whether another person also has high intelligence. But they may not know how to analyse people or determine whether a person is honest and trustworthy.
2. They over-analyse problems and over-complicate things.
Having high intelligence can only help to get things done quickly up to a certain point. People with high IQ often overlook a quick solution to a problem. In business, it is more important to be efficient than to be intelligent.
3. They are very bad at selling.
People with high IQ tend to sell their ideas and products with logical arguments. They get frustrated quickly when others cannot follow their logic. As a result, they find it hard to convince customers to buy, employers to hire them, or employees to follow them.
No wonder we don’t see successful businessmen telling the media that their success is due to high IQ. In fact, those who boast their high IQ scores are often young people and freshly out of college.
Christian Jagodzinski really makes average IQ scorers like me feel a lot better.
Five qualities of a successful property investor
In my book No B.S. Guide to Property Investment, I have an article that talks about what I believe are the five important qualities of a successful property investor:
1. The burning passion;
2. Hard work;
3. Persistence;
4. Patience; and
5. Ability to take timely actions.
Compared with high IQ, high EQ is more important to determine one’s success in property investment.
In life, we don’t need intelligence. But we need wisdom.
In property investment, we don’t need high IQ. But we need high EQ and FQ.
To be a good property investor, we don’t need to be smart. But we need to be street-smart.
To make money from properties, we don’t need to be clever. But we need to be knowledgeable.
– Property Soul
A highly-educated person may not have the right people skills. A clever person doesn’t necessarily have self-awareness. A smart person can be too smart at times and commits silly mistakes.
Ken Fisher knows very well why highly intelligent people and highly educated professionals are often bad investors.
“Very well read bright people who pay close attention to the market often make pretty bad investing decisions. There is usually one simple reason for this: They inadvertently get sucked into the consensus view.”
“Group think can happen no matter how careful and studied your methods are. Many folks see investing as a discipline, art or science, which sounds good, but their methods morph into the conventional wisdom – usually dangerous in investing. All follow the rules dictating the same result”
“Many doctors, lawyers and engineers are prone to this. Not because there is anything wrong with them as people. It isn’t their fault! But their professional training leads them there. In their professional lives, they used rule-based methodology, and there it works but in market it doesn’t. They expect market to be linear and rational, just like the systems they build and work with daily.”
– Ken Fisher, Beat the Crowd: How You Can Out-Invest the Herd by Thinking Differently
You will shine one day
If you have a child who is not so smart like me, read what Yoshichi Shimada (岛田洋七), an accomplished Japanese comedian and writer, shared about his gramma’s life wisdom in his book Gabai Granny (佐贺的超级阿嬷):
Once I showed grandma my results slip and whispered,
“Sorry, they are all 1 or 2 (full mark is 5).”
Grandma looked at me with surprise,
“Why do you say that? Never mind. Add all the marks together and you have 5.”
“Oh, can you really add the marks up in a result slip?”
“Why not? Life is not about results, but adding efforts together. Not everyone can be a remarkable person. Some contribute their brains. Some contribute their labour. Society is all about adding efforts together.”
Listen to the pleads of not-so-smart kids in Taiwanese illustrator and writer Jimmy Liao’s (幾米) book Don’t blame me, it’s not my fault (我的错都是大人的错):
When I turn out to be different from your expectations
Please love the original me
Dote on the original me
Praise the original me
Trust your child will shine one day. In their own way.
Did you watch my video “2018 Singapore Property Market – what developers, agents, banks and analysts are hiding from you”? Watch it now!
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99% of jobs also don’t require high IQ … and whether you do well in your career or profession also don’t depend on high IQ (unless you’re in very niche research & development). 🙂
Most of the very successful people I’ve met or worked with have high EQ + high integrity + moderate/above average IQ. They are the kind of people where after a while, you feel motivated & energized to work with them or collaborate on projects, and you have strong trust that they have got your back. It’s a blessing from heaven to have such a boss or mentor early in your career … and many of them had similar experience when they started out.
Straight-As and 1st class honours will open doors to the best starting jobs & salaries. But how far one progresses in life and career depends more on other X factors.
In real life, it’s hard to find somebody who is intelligent, has high EQ and also high integrity. Because of property investment, I have met many smart people. Some have good people skills too. But they may not be trustworthy. Time can tell. To me, the last point is most important.
That is a nice article posted!
“Did you ever have the experience that someone in the audience gives you a “you think you are so smart” look when you are elaborating your point of view?”
Next time this happens, please confidently shoot them a return look “I am smart in my own way and I do not need to be judged by you thank you very much”
Thanks. Glad you like this article.!
Haha. That’s a good one. I welcome any feedback but I am not too bothered by negative comments.
Being a blogger, there will definitely be readers who agree or disagree with what you said; people who like you or hate you.
As an independent blogger, I don’t have to write or say anything to please anyone. I can pick the topics, the facts and the angles that appeal to me.