“You can’t get good by staying home. If you want to get fast, you have to go where the fast guys are.”

-Steve Larsen, Professional mountain biker, road biker and triathlete.

Ten years ago this July Oakley Signs & Graphics launched Tuesday Tactics in the wake of the worst global financial crisis of the 2000s. If you’ve been around real estate long enough, you may just remember the painful downturn and recovery.

For those of you who are relatively new to real estate, you may not have experienced a meltdown in the market. Real estate is cyclical, however, and if you’re in it for a career, you will experience the occasional booms and busts. They joys and frenetic pace of a seller’s market are quickly tempered by the hardcore truths of a buyers’ market.

This week we’ve featured a few scary sounding pieces in our Great Read Round-up. The point is not to bring doom and gloom into your Tuesday, but rather to help prepare you mentally for the possibility of a pending shift. While NAR is predicting “residential growth of a quiet sort,” there are others who see the glass coming up on half-empty.

If you want to thrive in a more challenging market, you need to forge a mindset which will make you more resilient, more savvy, and a little hungrier than your more complacent competitors. To lean on the cycling quote here, you’ll need to figure out how to ride faster than you’re used to riding. And the truth of the matter is, the people who succeed when sales slow and buyers bide their time are those who have trained themselves for down conditions. Adversity makes fast riders. Fast riders know how to leverage one another to move fast together, too.

Act as if the worst is ahead and you’ll rapidly notice the value in doubling down on essentials and making the right moves now. Keep your eyes on crucial metrics. Understand the full implications of tax law changes and interest rate hikes, and be prepared to use those changes to motivate buyers and sellers accordingly. You may be relatively comfortable right now, but be careful about how much you’re taking your comfort zone for granted.

Now is a good time to ride fast.