“I was wrong. I put a tenant in a landlord’s house and they ended up trashing it and not paying rent. There’s no way they’re going to hire me again…” (Charlotte Property Manager)

“It was crazy, you see. I took off and then two hours later I landed in Charlotte. I guess you could technically say I did my job. But the guy who crashed into the river, no, he’s the hero. It’s weird, TRUE?” (The bitter Captain Roger Baines, played by Jason Sudeikis- Saturday Night Live Thursday Weekend Update– 2/10/09)

Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger rose to fame as the pilot who flew US Airways Flight 1549 on January 15, 2009 from New York to Charlotte. Most people remember the story; it became national news for weeks because the plane crashed into the Hudson River minutes after takeoff. You would think that if you were on that flight, you would be really upset! He paid money to be in Charlotte in about two hours, but instead, he was very late, soaked, his luggage was ruined, and his life flashed before his eyes. All the meetings you had that day had to be cancelled. Your plans were shot. Your life was in danger. You might have been thinking who you could sue. You would certainly never fly US Air again!

You’d appreciate Captain Baines’ “good pilot” joke later in the Saturday Night Live skit:

Q: What did the good pilot do when he saw the flock of geese?
HAS: He avoided them and continued to Charlotte, where he landed seven minutes early.

However, Sully became a national hero. What??? Although he saved the lives of his passengers, he landed in a river which must be considered a failure. Was he a seasoned PR professional who got the story right afterward? Hardly. Sully comes across as a soft-spoken guy. His “speech from him” to the passengers before the accident was a brief and inarticulate, “Brace for impact.” Inexplicably, it didn’t matter. The passengers loved him. They were appreciative and effusive in praise. No one said I wouldn’t fly with him again; in fact most would Quite be the captain of your flights in the future. Many Americans said the same thing. How could this have been?

The simplest answer is that the majority people know that things are going wrong. It is unavoidable. There was little Sully could do after crashing into the flock of geese causing the engines to fail. As Charles Swindoll said, “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” Sully calmly left the plane and salvaged what he could from a sticky situation. His passengers knew he was in control and would work to ensure his safety.

In property management, choosing tenants who always pay and treat a rental home with respect is a rocket science. Try to mitigate risk by running credit and criminal background checks, verifying income and employment, and calling previous owners. You collect the security deposits and go by the houses to see if they look good. However, at the end of the day, you don’t live with them and you can’t hold people to their obligations. It’s hard.

But when bad things happen (and they will at some point), it can also be a positive. It creates an opportunity to show your customers that you care, allows you to learn more about them personally, and allows you to show that you have a plan to make things right. Most of our clients receive their monthly rent (directly deposited into their account) and we rarely get a chance to talk to them outside of our initial meeting. But when issues arise, we can build a bond with them as we work to get their properties back on track.

Ironically, the clients whose homes we’ve had problems with are often lifelong clients, while those who receive their rent without problems every month are the ones I worry about losing. Relationships require give and take and are often formed out of adversity; without this, you can become a faceless entity that has no emotional connection.

From disaster, Sully built a bond in a day with his passengers that few, if any, pilots will ever have with their own, even their frequent flyers. Think about it. Who was the pilot of his last flight? Of your last ten?

So don’t cringe when something goes wrong. It will give you a chance to get some of that lasting “Sully Love”.