Our 100th episode is out now…but that’s not cause for celebration!

In the 2016 presidential election campaign, when the number of countries Hillary Clinton visited as Secretary of State was listed as an accomplishment, Carly Fiorina (a GOP hopeful) pointedly said that “flying is an activity, it’s not an accomplishment”.

Well, I’ve just released the 100^th episode of CRE Success: The Podcast, and Carly Fiorina’s zinger is ringing in my mind, so I’m not celebrating…after all, releasing 100 episodes is just an activity, it’s not necessarily an accomplishment!

So, the focus of this episode is to present the model of leadership.

This is an outline of the system that I’ve created, following my years in commercial real estate, to help business owners and leaders to develop their people and grow their business.

You can learn more about how the system can help your business while listening to episode 100 of CRE Success: The Podcast.

Episode transcript:

On today's episode, I'm going to be presenting a model of leadership in commercial real estate.

And I'm also going to be just humbly and not to self-indulgently, I hope, marking a minor milestone for this show. 

Hello, and welcome to episode 100 of CRE Success: The Podcast. My name is Darren Krakowiak. And I help commercial real estate leaders to develop their people and grow their business. 

This is the final episode of leadership that I'm going to be preparing for you as part of this series of episodes.

So, if leadership hasn't been of the greatest interest to you, I appreciate you hanging in there while I've been sharing this content.

And if it is of interest to you, I hope you're enjoying it. And I really believe that today's final episode will bring everything together for you.

Now, if you're in the earlier camp of people who probably aren't so interested in leadership, but you are interested in other aspects of success in commercial real estate, I do want to invite you to join our next live and free workshop covering 'The seven keys to success in commercial real estate.' 

Of course, commercial real estate markets are going through a period of uncertainty right now.

But one thing that you can be certain of is that the core skills that are required to reach prolific levels of performance, those fundamentals will continue to remain the same.

And I'm going to be telling you what they are and also sharing a simple way that you can level up in each of those keys as part of this live and free workshop to grab your free ticket. 

Within one week of this episode being aired, go to cresuccess.co/keys. We are hosting this live and free workshop on the 18th of August.

So, if you're available to join that workshop, and you're hearing this podcast before that date, I look forward to seeing you there.

Now I did mention at the top of the show that we do need to mark a milestone. And that milestone is 100 episodes. 

So, I don't want to make too much of a big deal about it because I am reminded of this moment from the 2016 US Presidential Campaign.

That was the one that was Hillary versus Trump. 

And Hillary was criticized for all manner of things, but one criticism which I don't know if it's stuck.

It kind of resonated with me even though it wasn't completely fair, but it was a good line was one that came from an also ran on the Republican side named Carly Fiorina.

Now Carly Fiorina is an ex-CEO of HP, a very accomplished businesswoman.

Didn't do that well in the presidential nomination steaks, but she was tapped on the shoulder by Ted Cruz to be his running mate, which was their last-ditch attempt to stop Trump from becoming the Republican nominee.

Now we all know how that ended.

Maybe I'm going into too much detail. I'm a real buff when it comes to US presidential politics, particularly those campaigns around 08 12 16 to a lesser extent 20, I really got into those.

But anyway, the line that Carly Fiorina used against Hillary Clinton when Hillary Clinton talked about her accomplishments, she used to say that ‘You've visited X number of countries.’ 

And Carly Fiorina used to say, "Well, flying is an activity. It's not an accomplishment."

So, I am mindful of that, because 100 podcast episodes is just having done 100 podcast episodes. It is not necessarily an accomplishment.

But what it does demonstrate is some consistency, because we've put out all of these episodes.

In fact, the last 50 have been done every single week.

And I guess some of the benefits for me have been because we've recorded these episodes to camera and uploaded them to YouTube, is that I've gotten better at talking directly to camera and talking extemporaneously.

I've got a friend who listens to the show, who told me he likes that word extemporaneously.

It just means to speak continuously without relying too heavily on notes. And I do rely on notes a little bit, but not too much.

I've gotten better at that. So that's been a benefit.

I've also got a library of content now that is available for me to leverage in the future.

If I decide to stop doing the podcast, I can always point people to the content that exists.

And I've deliberately tried to make the content relatively evergreen. So, it is an asset that can be leveraged into the future.

And the other thing I think it's helped me with is dealing with negative feedback from in particular people who don't even listen to the podcast.

So sometimes I'll promote an aspect of the podcast. And I'll put a little bit of mayo if you like, on the explanation of what we're going to be talking about.

And that's a hook just to try and hook people in and to say something controversial.

And sometimes people will take the hook very literally and go, "Hey, that's wrong, because of this, this and this." 

And I've got to use my self-control and self-discipline to not bite at people's little comments, or they happens occasionally, and instead just not get drawn into an argument.

And I think probably a while ago, I would have been someone who would have taken that very personally lost, limited, sleep over it and gotten upset.

But I don't so much anymore. So yes, releasing 100 episodes is an activity, it's not necessarily an accomplishment, but there are certain benefits that are derived from it.

So that's the way I wanted to mark the 100 episodes.

Today, I'm talking about a model of leadership.

And I've been letting you know about the program that we provide commercial real estate leaders to help them develop their people and grow their business.

And I've invited you if you're interested to go to cresuccess.co/leadership.

What I wanted to do today is talk about 10 of the deliverables that come from working with me on that program. 

And if you're not someone who's looking to get support by working with me in that program, I'm going to give you some information that you can go away and self-educate yourself on some of these aspects of leadership. 

So, one thing that we go through is a business plan.

And I think forecasting three years into the future of what you expect your business to do is something that all business leaders should be doing.

Because having a three-year outlook helps you understand where are the gaps, and where do we need to plug holes in a business in order for us to get there. 

And I've talked about the four ways to grow a commercial real estate business in a previous episode. 

And you can identify what are the four things that are available to me, it’s organic growth, it's mergers and acquisitions. It's also moving into new markets, and of course, retention, and recruitment.

And if we're forecasting X amount of revenue, I realize that we're not going to get there just through organic growth, then we can move one of those other levers in order to achieve the result that we're looking for in 2 or 3-years time.

So that's the benefit of that forecast.

And I also recommend as part of that business plan, having an organization chart to make sure that we know who is responsible for driving and managing the performance of the people in the business who are going to produce those results for us.

The next thing that I encourage my clients to do is to have a vision. And we covered this in Episode 97, 'The vision things.'

You can go back and listen to that if you want to know specifically what I mean about vision.

We then get into internal meetings. And there are three sets of weekly meetings that I recommend clients have.

And I've got a particular process around how those meetings should be run, in order for them to be productive, a productive use of time, but also to add to the productivity and the results in the business.

And one of those meetings is one-on-one meetings, which I talked about in last week's episode, which is called 'Goals or ceiling systems, our floors.'

We then get into talking about culture. And that was what we discussed in Episode 98 of the show, which was 'The fish rots from the head.'

And this is about driving a high-performance culture which is underpinned by your leadership and also reflects your core values.

So, when you're clear about what your values are, you can then hire people and attract people who reflect and are attracted to those values.

And one really important part of this element is to make sure that we are managing performance through an annual review process.

And I think one of the traps that some people can fall into is well, if people are remunerated based on their production, then there's no need to review their performance.

But I believe that there is and that's what we talk about at that section of the program. 

We then get into strategic priorities. And strategic priorities are just the big things that we need to set as important markers in the business that everyone in the business understands.

So, their decision making is guided by those big principles.

And by being guided by those big principles, it will help us achieve the vision and the business plan and also reflect the culture that we've built in the business.

We then get into branding and I've done so many episodes on branding in the podcast.

A couple of that, you can go back and listen to Episode 78, 'Are you talking to me'. Episode 59, 'I'm not the LinkedIn police, but.'

And this is all about getting more confident with your own personal branding.

And making sure there is some alignment with the company's brand, and also your own brand, and taking steps to enhance the company's reputation, using online platforms.

We then get into structure. And structure is all about understanding your role, and what the business needs from you as a leader, and where you are best placed to operate in the business.

So, some people are still, if you like on the tools, is what one of my clients calls it, some are very much at that high leadership level and some people want to transition.

Well, we need to do to make sure that certain roles and responsibilities are filled as we transition from working it.

If you like managerial tasks to leadership tasks, and also giving the business what it needs in order to get to where we want it to go, if we decide that we actually want to be more of a player coach, someone who's still contributing to the production of the business.

Next up is systems. And systems again, we talked about that in Episode 99 last week, 'Goals are ceiling, systems or floors'.

We talked about CRM systems, for example. This is all about leveraging technology, making sure that we're willing to outsource when that is in the business interest.

Number 10 is talking about clients. And couple of things I want to say about clients.

One is that specialization can be something which is worth doing, or at least being very intentional about who it is we want to go after. 

If you go back and listen to Episode 75 of the show, I talk a bit about that.

We want to have a strategy to find when and grow clients. And we also want to be willing to let go of certain clients that we are no longer best placed to serve. 

And that could be because of the evolution of the business, it could be because we no longer want to serve those clients.

And I'm actually just finished a session for our members on this very topic about how we need to let go of certain clients in order to let in better ones.

And finally, the final session on people is something that we cover inside the program.

And this is particularly relevant for business owners, talking about an exit strategy for the business and also finding new owners of the business.

But if you're not working inside a business, which is owned by you or by the owners, it's also about identifying talent, doing a talent review and understanding the ambitions of people inside your team.

Because some people have certain ambitions that they want to achieve. 

It may be through promotion, it may be through recognition, it may be through financial goals, it may be through additional responsibilities, other people are likely to be attracted to other things. 

And we need to understand what drives people. We need to understand what people's potential is and also rank their performance in order to have a proper people strategy. 

So, what I've done for you there is just give you a little taste of what the leadership program outline is.

That's the model of leadership that I've created, and that I teach inside our Agency Solutions Program that is available for commercial real estate leaders.

If you do want to know more about that program, go ahead and visit cresuccess.co/leadership for more information.

Now, I do want to take this opportunity to say thank you for listening. I really appreciate every single person who does listen to this podcast. 

I know that it's time out of your day. I know that if you're watching us on YouTube, that you've got to put up with looking at my face for the entire 10 or 15 minutes while we cover the content that I hope you find useful.

And I really do appreciate every single person who takes the time to consume this content.

I create this content for you.

And if it's improving you and helping you get to where you want to be in just a small way, then it is achieving the goal that I set out to achieve when I started to create this podcast.

And you know, that's why I continue doing it.

Every single week, there have been times where I've thought about giving up where I thought is this the best use of my time.

And I still sometimes ask myself that.

And then occasionally I'll get an email from someone or I'll receive a message on social media.

Or I'll be talking to a prospect and they'll tell me, "You know, I've listened to your show and I like this or that." 

And I realized, okay, that is why I'm doing it because it has an impact and it's helping people.

So, if that is you, thank you so much for listening and as I always say, thank you for listening to today's episode and I will speak to you soon.