I was on the phone with a realtor in South Florida who leads a team of agents. He went blind late in life, and he often says, “I had to lose my vision in order to see.” By the way, he became a realtor after losing his sight.

We were having an incredibly impactful conversation, and then he said some...

There are a million plus real estate agents in the U.S. Well, there are way more than that. The question is, “How many are doing any significant and/or serious business?” I’m going to guess around 200,00 - 300,000 are actually doing business on purpose. What are the other 700,000+ doing? That’s a di...

Two things have become clear to me during this time:

1. Trust and trustworthiness are not the same thing, yet I was often using them interchangeably.
2. Trust - and trustworthiness - is dynamic, not static.

Trust is about someone giving their trust to another. Trustworthiness is about being someon...

Good stewardship is serving others while honoring the trust they placed in you. It is responsibly managing anything extended to your care, ensuring that your actions reflect protection and a commitment to using resources for the greater good.

Good stewards do the right thing, even when doing the ri...

“Levity is a mind-set,” said Naomi Bagdonas, author and lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, specializing in leading with humor and humanity. “It’s looking for reasons to be delighted rather than disappointed in the world around you.”

As a real estate professional:

• When you have...

Let me simply start with: integrity is a massive and critical virtue, and most importantly, I am not the expert on this matter: many more scholars, thinkers, and leaders have developed large bodies of work on this topic. Yet, operating with integrity and restoring it where it’s lacking is, in my exp...

On July 1st, 1776, our founding fathers were struggling mightily to come to a consensus about declaring independence. It was not a foregone conclusion.

At ten o’clock, John Hancock sounded the gavel. Congress was to begin the day’s discussion on independence. John Dickinson, the prominent and once ...

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” — Marcus Aurelius

A good advisor can clear the mirror for you, so to speak. You are that person for your clients.

Operating with perspective is twofold. First, you must be unattached to your vie...

Do you have a relationship-focused business?  Or a transaction-focused business?  I don’t believe they are the same thing.

For bigger groups and organizations, they tend to be focused on transactions.  Individuals seem to be more likely to focus on relationships. But that’s not a hard and fast r...

I don’t know if this is universally true, but my experience with doctors and the public is that the average person goes to the doctor with some problem, and the doctor tells them what to do. Sometimes the patient does what the “doctor orders,” and sometimes the patient does not.

At other times, ...

What does the public think of real estate agents?

They think we are liars.

By the way, the public also thinks we are:

• Never on-time
• Make too much money / overpaid
• Don’t “do” anything
• Unprofessional: in our attire, vocabulary, and actions
• Unreliable
• Pushy and/or Salesy

At any rate, withi...

When shit goes sideways, what do you do?

It’s easy to be curious, patient, and empathetic when things are working. What happens when things are not working? What happens when the client changes their mind? What happens when that big deal falls apart?

Conversely, what do you do when things get ten...