How to make your commercial real estate career goals come true

There’s one big thing you should do to create a more certain future for your commercial real estate career.

I’m talking about it in episode 105 of CRE Success: The Podcast – check out the player below to listen now.

In this final edition in a special series of episodes with Whitney Sewell of The Real Estate Syndication Show, I’m also sharing my predictions about the future of commercial real estate, including:

•  More emphasis on diversity,  
•  A bigger (pun intended) focus on scale,
•  The declining importance of personal relationships relative to specialisation and data, and
•  The increased use of processes that create efficiencies and broaden the talent pool for the industry to draw from.

Whether you agree with these predictions or not, knowing what they are and understanding the thought process behind them will help you formulate goals that are more aligned with whatever the future may bring.

You can read a transcript with a snippet from this interview below – this includes some goal-setting practices and daily habits that helped me achieve more consistent results as a commercial real estate agent.

Interview transcript:

WS: With your experience in commercial real estate, and obviously, you're working with numerous people in this industry now, do you have any predictions or any thoughts on the current market and what you see happening today or what you expect over the next, say, six to twelve months?

 DK: Well, I think in terms of leadership, I think we're less likely to see people who are not interested in leadership. Or just on who has been in organizations for a long time given that responsibility. I think commercial real estate organizations are much more likely to reflect what's going on in other industries and have more focus on a people-focused leadership approach. So, I think that's likely to be something that we'll see. I think that commercial real estate as an industry, in my opinion, is a little bit of a dinosaur and a little bit of a laggard in some ways in terms of the culture and in terms of diversity, and representation. It's probably a little bit better in Australia than it is from what I've heard in North America, but still, it's, if you get out of the big firms, once you're not in the big firms, it's still generally one shade of color and one gender, it's fairly well-represented in commercial real estate. So, I think that will continue to change. Maybe it's not a year, but I think that commercial real estate of our time will start to more accurately reflect what's going on in the rest of the population. Because it will need to, because commercial real estate is something that more and more people from an investment side are getting into particularly as our residential becomes a less attractive investment vehicle for some people because of a range of reasons. I think more people will be looking at other opportunities and that will include commercial and that will create more opportunities for different people to be able to serve clients in the marketplace. So, the two things I would say are more of a focus on leadership and leadership being a core competency within organizations. More of a focus on some modern things like technology, personal branding, but also some of the things that we value more in modern society, like diversity, for example.

WS: What about some daily habits that you have, Darren, that you are disciplined about that have helped you achieve success?

DK: So I don't do this recently but when I used to - and that's just 'cause I'm a bit more chilled out, 'cause I'm getting a little bit older - but when I was a man in a hurry on a mission, I used to like listening to - I'm still that person but just a little bit more chill - one thing I used to like doing was I would record my goals. I'd record them on my phone, and then I'd listen to them every day. And I'd also have them in my calendar as a reminder that would pop up every day, and I would just be reminded of these are the sort of things that I'm working towards. I think that's a really good thing to do. Other people like to put post-it notes up, whether it's on your fridge or your bathroom mirror, somewhere where you're gonna see it every day. Just so you can remind yourself of what's important. It's a good way just to remind your mind about what matters. The other one is just a bit of daily exercise. I think that's good for your mental health, for your physical health, to remain active, and to be as healthy as you can be. It's still relevant, I think, to the question you asked.

WS: Yeah, all those things play a role together. No doubt about it.