My professional career and admittingly, my own personal life, has always been about doing more. Working more hours, completing more deals, giving more effort when I was worn out, making more money, having more meetings, adding more “to-dos” to my list. But as I have delved deeper into my journey of professional success AND personal well-being, I have realized that small can sometimes be better. And I have a lot of actual experience to show for that. The problem is, no one, nowhere, is telling anyone this. In today’s age of constant multi-tasking and media attention, the measure of success has become the more you do; the more you do.
Now, I will say that this topic can easily be argued in either direction and that my opinion of this approach is NOT an ‘ALWAYS’ scenario. There are times to go big but certainly not all the time.
After nearly 15 years in the real estate business which included working for larger regional brokerage companies to managing and owning a brokerage company with partners, I am where I am by design, by choice, and with purpose. Owning a boutique full service commercial real estate firm. The results? More professional success and much more personal satisfaction. You see, I chased the societal brainwashing that led me to believe the more you have, the more you get. The more staff, the more income, the more people on your team, the more “Available” signs you have up, the more listings on your website…the more success. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Through my own life experiences, and A LOT of challenges and adversity, I have realized this. Realizing it and actually acting and practicing it are 2 different things, and you must do both.
Truth be told, and I have said this many times, “if you are doing it SMALL, you can do it BIG” …what do i mean by that? If you run a boutique real estate company, you can create the best analytics and pursue and secure the best clients and deals, you do not need to be BIG to do that…period! In fact, in the pursuit and execution of this, the client almost always gets better service by using the “small” approach. You can acquire a “small” investment property that maybe it’s “only” a 20,000 SF strip center or a 10-unit multi-family building (this is the small part) and do it “big,” by going all in and focusing on maximizing the performance of these assets with no distraction on other unrewarding things.
I’m in the middle of reading a great book, “The ONE Thing” by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. It focuses on doing one thing well and cutting out the measurement of success by completing meaningless tasks that are on your to-do list. One of my favorite quotes (so far) is, “Activity is often unrelated to productivity, and busyness rarely takes care of business” …think about that!
