Three books for commercial real estate leaders this holiday season.

CRE Success Principle: The more authentic you are, the more you can build trust, inspire others and drive long-term relationships.

As the year winds down, it’s the perfect time to set the stage for an incredible 2025.

For me, there’s no better way to do that than by diving into a few great books over the holidays—especially ones that help you become a better leader, reclaim your time, and build resilience.

So, in the latest episode of Commercial Real Estate Leadership, I’m sharing my top three book recommendations for commercial real estate leaders:

In Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell, you’ll learn how to master time management, delegate effectively, and build your empire.

Read The Resilience Project by Hugh van Cuylenburg to understand the power of gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness to strengthen your resilience.

And with Discover Your True North by Bill George, you can embrace authentic leadership by understanding your crucibles and aligning your values.

Each of these books can help you lead with purpose, focus on what truly matters, and achieve sustainable growth in the new year.

Want to hear why these made the list and how they can help you? Check out episode 202 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership!

And I’ll have more book recommendations, this time specifically for commercial real estate agents and brokers, in next week’s edition of The CRE Agents’ Weekly on LinkedIn.

Episode transcript:

It's the last working day of the year for me. So, I'm pretty excited and I'm looking forward to recharging my batteries, but also spending some time investing in myself.

And a great way to do that is sitting by the pool reading a book.

So, what I want to do today is to give you three book recommendations.

These books will help you to become a better leader.

They will help you manage your time more effectively and they'll also strengthen your resilience.

So, let's get into it.

Hello, welcome to episode 202 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership. I'm your host, Darren Krakowiak.

Really appreciate you joining us for another episode of the show, the final episode of the year.

We're going to take three weeks off and we'll be back with a new episode for 2025. On the 15th of January is when that new episode will drop.

Now, if you're looking for some more content from us over the break, maybe you want to download a few episodes of the podcast.

When you jump on a plane, download them to your phone if you don't have access to Wi-Fi and you can listen to the podcast in between episodes of your favorite show or any movies that you're watching while you're on the plane.

More than 200 episodes available for you to download.

The other thing that we're going to be serving up over the holiday break is more new editions of the CRE Agents Weekly, which is our LinkedIn newsletter.

If you're not currently subscribed to that, just go to my LinkedIn profile, which is in the show notes and you'll see the CRE Agents Weekly newsletter there.

Subscribe and you'll get a new newsletter from us at the start of each week.

It drops on Tuesday morning, Australia time, which is Monday afternoon in North America.

So, a few ways that you can continue to get content from us, but of course, we will be back in 2025 with Commercial Real Estate Leadership.

Now we've built up bit of a tradition on the podcast over the last few years where just before Christmas, we'll release an episode which talks about some books that we recommend that you read.

And just little side note. Next week's edition of the CRE Agents Weekly will contain four book recommendations for commercial real estate agents specifically.

Today's book has a little bit more of a leadership stance to it.

Certainly, I think there is value in here for commercial real estate agents and brokers who aren't leaders or business owners.

But the ones that I've got for you today on the podcast are probably more for commercial real estate leaders.

So, let's get into the first recommendation, which is Dan Martell's ‘Buy Back Your Time’.

And this is all about time management for, I would say it's got real entrepreneurial sort of bent to it because that's sort of Dan's main audience, business owners.

And he has background in Software as a service (SaaS).

And you want to read this book I think, if you're a commercial real estate leader because time is your most valuable asset and managing it effectively allows you to focus on high impact activities and tasks. And also means you're more likely to avoid burnout.

So, some of the concepts in the book include, well, buying back your time as the title suggests and that's all about delegating tasks that don't align with your zone of genius.

Remember, your zone of genius is what you are good at, what you enjoy and also what it is that you can get paid top dollar to do.

Another thing that is in the book that's really valuable is he goes through a whole system about how to work with an executive assistant or a personal assistant.

And I've helped some of my clients with this drawing from some of the playbooks, I guess that Dan presents in the book, including how to help your assistant to manage your email, a system for that.

And also, the other, I guess core thing that an assistant should be doing, which is being the gatekeeper of your time, managing your calendar.

So, if you have an assistant and they're not currently managing your email or managing your calendar, that chapter alone, which I think is chapter six makes this book well worth the read.

And there are also some great exercises that the book takes you through, including auditing your time, which I personally did this year.

I audited two weeks of my time, literally writing down all of the things that I'm doing over two-week period that gets you very present to where all the time is going.

One of the excuses that I often hear from people is, “I just can't do that because I don't have enough time.”

When you see where all your time is going because you actually take the time to audit it to write down all the things that you are doing.

You realize that you do have more time, you're just not spending it as effectively as you could or should. So, there's that.

And also, he's got this idea of the time value matrix which we actually covered in episode 178 of the show.

And he talks about why really managing and knowing where your time is going is essential.

And I think that's essential in our industry.

It's a fast-paced industry. It's been a difficult year.

So, if you want to manage your time more effectively in 2025 pick up this book that's got heaps of actionable steps that will free up your time and help you to operate at your highest level.

Alright, let's get into the second book on the list, which is ‘The Resilience Project’ by Hugh van Cuylenburg.

And this is a book which touches on things like mental health and also well-being.

And it's relevant because Commercial Real Estate Leadership is stressful, especially when markets are challenging, as I just mentioned, they have been in 2024.

So mental health and resilience are keys to sustaining long-term success.

They're things that sometimes people don't prioritize as much as they should.

And in this book, here gives you three pillars for resilience and also the recipe for success, which is gratitude, empathy and mindfulness (GEM).

And if you want to know how these principles can be applied to your leadership in commercial real estate context, it could be practicing gratitude with your team, having empathy with your clients and also you using mindfulness to become more present when you need to be.

There are some fantastic personal stories from Hugh in this book.

One about his sister when they were growing up.

There's one about a young man named ‘Beefy’; is the nickname, very Aussie.

Young man obsessed with the Collingwood football club and cricket, but not two of my favorite things.

But I really resonated with that story and I actually found some videos on Facebook where there's a particular part of the book where Beefy gets to go and be the water boy for the Collingwood football club and gives them motivational speech, which was sensational.

And then there was one story about a boy that Hugh met when he was teaching in India, whose name was Stanzin.

And Hugh describes this boy as the kindest boy he's ever met.

And the stories just in and of itself are incredible and they are told in way that illustrates the real transformational power of resilience, of gratitude in particular, when you think about Stanzin.

Anyway, the author also goes through some of his own struggles to get the resilience project off the ground.

And I got to say, this is a must read for anyone looking to be happier, more contented and to live a fulfilling life.

Once I'd read it, I started to see the resilience project everywhere.

On my daughter's kindergarten, they've got the sign at the front at the local library. I've seen they're doing stuff with the resilience project.

This book impacted me so much that I even went out and bought the journal, which is every day they give you different prompts that you can write about.

And I've never been one to journal and I did it for two or three days and then I lost interest.

So, I should probably maybe 2025 I will commit right here and now to do this for one month in 2025.

So, when I come back from holidays, I will start writing at this every day.

Now, I've made the commitment as we talked about in the show about goals, you make a commitment to somebody else that's more likely to get done.

So, I will do that. Really recommend the book, The Resilience Project.

I've even thought about how do we get these guys to come in and speak to our clients? Really fantastic.

So that's The Resilience Project.

And the third book I want to recommend for you today is this one by Bill George, which is called ‘Discover Your True North’.

And this is all about the idea of authentic leadership.

And I think you hear this term ‘authentic leadership’ a bit and it's really making the point that leadership isn't just about deals and numbers, it's about people.

And the more authentic you are, the more you can build trust, the more you can inspire people and drive long-term relationships.

So, the idea of having a ‘True North’ is like having an internal compass for your decision making and leadership.

So being really, I guess, clear about what's important to you, what your values are and what drives your decision making.

The book has tons of great stories from leaders who have embraced authenticity to achieve that great thing that they have achieved in their lives and in business.

And one particular part of this book that I guess really spoke to me was understanding how your crucibles, which is sort of the things that perhaps aren't so great that have happened in your life, help you find your purpose that aligns your business and personal goals and helps you have more fulfilling professional journey.

So, if you want to lead with authenticity, if you want to find deeper purpose in the work that you do, this can be a great guide to help you do that.

So, they're the three books that I'm recommending for 2024.

Well, I guess they're my recommendations for you this year.

You might not get around to reading them all this year, which is okay.

Dan Martell's ‘Buy Back Your Time’, check out Dan's stuff on YouTube by the way, it's really, really good.

And we've also got Hugh van with ‘The Resilience Project’ and Bill George ‘Discover Your True North’.

Just a quick note to say it's been an amazing year for CRE Success, fantastic results for the business.

And I'm really grateful to you for listening to the show.

I hope you do have a relaxing holiday season and a very happy New Year.

And let's make 2025 our best year yet.

And before I go, I just want to say that if you want to have a jump starts in January, let's book a call.

Let's help you set some goals.

Let's help you create a plan that you can put into action and then get the results that you want in 2025.

Go to our Instagram profile @cresuccess

Send me a DM with the word “GROW” and we can take the next steps to set that up for now.

Thank you so much for listening. I will speak to you soon.