Here’s some of the worst advice I received as a real estate agent

An old boss once told me that I will have "made it" once I was making a certain amount of money.

That was bad advice for a range of reasons.

Firstly, it was a low number versus what is possible in our industry and what I could achieve – he was projecting his own limiting beliefs onto me.

Secondly, having something significant to work towards (rather than just an arbitrary amount of money nominated by someone else) will help you feel more fulfilled once you hit your goal.

Thirdly, knowing what your financial goals will mean for your life, rather than just focusing on the number itself, will typically bring you greater motivation to keep going and actually hit the target.

The best and worst advice I’ve received is our topic on episode 102 of CRE Success: The Podcast.

Episode transcript:

Have you ever received some really bad advice?

I've received some bad advice. I've given out bad advice. I've acted on my own poor advice. But let me give you some good advice right now.

If you want to have a better life, don't follow the bad advice. Okay, that's kind of obvious.

But today we're talking about the best and the worst advice that I've received over my career in commercial real estate. Stay tuned.

Hello, welcome to episode 102 of CRE Success: The Podcast. My name is Darren Krakowiak. I help commercial real estate leaders to develop their people and to grow their business.

As always, really appreciate the fact that you're joining us today. And if you do enjoy the show, please go ahead and leave us a five-star rating on Apple podcasts.

I generally don't ask people to do that when I occasionally meet people who listen to the show. And I met someone recently. And I meant to ask her to hit that five-star button, because she had an iPhone.

She was using Apple podcasts, but I didn't because I don't know why if I lack the nerve or the gumption to do it.

But what I will do right now is I'm going to say, "Maria, I know you're listening, you're probably vacuuming right now you told me you like to clean, while you're listening to the show. I want you to put the vacuum cleaner down and go into your apple podcasts app and click the five-star button. Because that really helps us to get this content out to more people."

And if you can do it as well, not just Maria, I would really appreciate it.

So today we're talking about good and bad advice. And in this episode, it's also from Sam Wilson's podcast, which is called 'How to Scale Commercial Real Estate.'

It's another portion of that interview, which I thought was share worthy. So, I hope you enjoy that.

And before I do play the clip from Sam's podcast, I thought I'd also share some advice that I've received since starting this business.

Now in the interview, I'm talking more about advice that I received while I worked as a commercial real estate professional in an agency.

But since I've started this business, I've also received some good and bad advice.

So, one piece of bad advice I've received was to go all in on clubhouse.

Now you probably don't know what clubhouse is. But if you don't, you will be wondering, well, why would you want to do that? And if you do know what it is, well, you're probably thinking, yeah, that was bad advice.

Clubhouse is this audio only app. And it was really big in early 2021, I guess well, people were still locked in their homes or less inclined to go out. And it was just people talking about stuff.

And someone told me that there's someone who had quite a big following on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn is sort of my main channel apart from the podcast for communicating with my audience.

They said, "Oh, you've got to get on clubhouse. It's really great. It'll be great for growing your profile and building your business."

I gave it up after I think one or two months, but it was one or two months of, I guess distraction.

And it showed me that I do have a little bit of a tendency towards shiny object syndrome. Because yes, I got distracted.

And I started spending time talking about this platform called clubhouse.

The good advice is to keep going. And the only way of course that you could fail is if you give up so if you keep going, you will keep marching towards the success which is inevitable in your life.

So that wasn't bad advice. But some good advice on the other hand that I got early on, and I still continue to get is when people just tell me when I talk about struggles or when I mentioned, "Oh, you know, it's not going as well as I would like, or I wish we were growing faster, or I wish this was going better."

So really like keep going as good advice. So, if you're feeling like giving up, remember that you can decide to keep going.

Alright, I'm going to pass over the reins now to Sam Wilson to ask me a question about advice.

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Sam Wilson
When you think back on your business career, what's some good advice or bad advice maybe that you've heard along the way that you'd like for people to avoid or you'd like for people to take to heart?

Darren Krakowiak
So, one that I'm sure most of your listeners would know is that debt is okay. And I probably I was taught that debt is bad and you know, whenever you've got debt, you want to pay it off. But not all debt is bad debt. And that took me a while to learn and understand. And that was bad advice but I learned that it is actually okay to have debt because some leverage can help you a buy and expand more and to do more things. So that was bad advice that I came to understand. Some good advice that I got, I think, was to be magnanimous. And magnanimous is a word that means to basically treat people kindly, even when they're not giving you any reason to be kind to them. And it was told to me before I was promoted into a certain role where I had a lot more responsibility, and I probably in that role, would have been able to lord it over a lot of people. And this person basically said to me, "Hey, when you've got this much responsibility, it's really important that you demonstrate magnanimity, and that is that even when people are giving you the opportunity to not be kind, that you are kind to others." And I think that often in commercial real estate, it's a very competitive industry where people sometimes don't always treat each other kindly. There is an opportunity for us to rise above it, and to be the person who demonstrates magnanimity and to be magnanimous.

Sam Wilson
I love that. I love that. It's the idea of the John Mann's book, 'The Go-Giver.' I don't know if you've read any of that. But I've got a couple here. Yeah. And he's come on the show a couple of times. So, it's been fun, fun to have him on. I mean, esteemed company. Yeah, it's been fun to have John on the show. But you know, and talk about that, like, what does it mean to be a go giver? Like, what does it mean? You know, and that's a big word. I mean, not to spell magnanimous. That's a lot of letters. But you know, to be magnanimous, and to kind of be that go giver, which, you know, be kind to people that maybe you don't even necessarily have to even acknowledge. Like, hey, you know what, I want to help you. And I feel like I see that a lot, actually. I mean, yes, commercial real estate is a competitive landscape, no doubt. A lot of ego and a lot of people and a lot of money. And when anytime you have that you get a competitive landscape. But you know, certainly I've also found it to be a very collaborative industry in its own right, which is probably one of the things that I've enjoyed the most about. And I say that a lot to people who are unfamiliar with it. It's the strangest industry, because we do podcasts like this, where we just freely share information about how to get deals, how to build teams, how to go out and, you know, make acquisitions, follow up. And it's like, this is just weird. I mean, I've been in other industries, where it's like, very closed, very closed loop. But so, I think there's a bit there's a bit of both of those, but I love that. Certainly, love that encouragement. Did you cover bad advice? You said something about debt being bad.

Darren Krakowiak
Yeah, that was the one I had for you at that point. Other one that I think was bad advice was, I was told by a former boss to, "Okay, you need to make this amount of money. And once you make that amount of money, then you're doing well." I kind of took that to heart. And I think focusing on money, and it's in and of itself is not a good thing to focus on. Like, it's great to have financial goals, and there's nothing wrong with making money. But once you make that amount of money, you'll find out that your cups are full, yet you're not fully satisfied, right, there's always going to be more money that you can make. So I think having something more significant to focus on than just making a certain amount of money is some bad advice that I was following until I, you know, started to realize that there needs to be more to life than just making money.

Sam Wilson
What did you do to shift your perspective?

Darren Krakowiak
Probably, I guess I had a family, you know. I got married, I'm matured. I think that just comes from years, and maturity, because for many years, I was really focused on making money. And I love some of the trappings that come from having money of, you know, flying business class, and little things like staying at nice hotels, which I still enjoy. But I think that I was attaching a lot of status to that, as opposed to sort of thinking about, I think that when you're making a lot of money, and that's your measure of success. It can paper over some of the other cracks that exist in your life, whether that is issues with personal relationships, issues with your health. And what happened, I guess, for me is that eventually the things that your paper over, you know, they get exposed. And then you realize that the money that you're making isn't ultimately fulfilling you and giving you a balanced life that is going to help you be satisfied in in the long term.

Sam Wilson
Right? I think that's great. When you say all that, I think of the term just why, like why is it that I'm doing what I'm doing? What is the goal for my why, like, if I make x well, then what am I going to do with it? Or why am I going to get there? And so, I've had to go through that myself actually, several times when I go, "Okay, I see friends in the commercial real estate business, you know, they're killing it. They're DECA millionaires at this point." And they have huge companies and I go, "Do I want to be you? No, I really don't." like I don't want to get there. Like I can be in debt with x because it solves why I'm going out and working. Like I have a small, far smaller figure in mind that I go, okay, when I can do that. That'll free up X, you know, x y, and then I can go do what I want. So, I think I think that's really sound advice and I certainly appreciate it. Darren it's been awesome having you come on today. Are there any last closing thoughts that you have you'd like to share with our listeners?

Darren Krakowiak
Be more generous in your life? Yeah, you did send through a list of things about things we might talk about. And one of the things that was on there was, you know, how do you measure success and I thought about that. And I was thinking about how it could be used to be about money, it'll be when I have this many investment properties or, but what I started to realize was it's actually about my ability to be a bit more calm, to be more kind to be more generous than I was in the past. So, I think if you can move your measures of success to have some financial ones in there, that's okay, but also help some non-financial KPIs in your life. I think that's a good place to get to as well.