August: All about the team
When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
I’ve had a number of different roles in my life so far: son, student, teacher, parent, Realtor, team leader. Along the way, I’ve received plenty of pieces of advice. Here are the best few that have helped me the most in different areas of my life. I hope that by sharing these you get to know me a little bit better, and maybe that one of these will be a piece that you can use.
Make a plan and stick to it.
The advice: “I strongly believe that there are lots of ways to be successful in this business. You choose one of the ways that works, put your head down and stick with it. It doesn’t have to be a perfect plan but you have to choose one and do it.”
The teacher: Russ Perkins, my broker and manager at Royal LePage.
The situation: It was the first days of my new career as a Realtor (c. 2012) here in Ottawa. I was a freshly licensed Realtor and I knew how to write a legally binding offer on a home or list one for sale, but not how to run a business as a Realtor. In the Ontario licensing course they don’t tell you how to find your first client, how to make a good impression at an open house, how to allocate your expenses on a limited budget with an uncertain income (nonexistent at that stage). There are all kinds of different ways to run a business as a Realtor, and Russ’ advice was to stick to one.
How it’s helped me: At the time, I was not only trying to find my way in business, but in life. Gill and I had just moved back to Canada after five years in Macau, and I was still applying for teaching positions in a scarce (at the time) job market. Real Estate was still my fallback plan. Russ’ advice helped me focus on this new career and doing things intentionally. I decided early that I was going to build a business that was made up of great word-of-mouth, repeat clients and referrals, which I can happily say now has been the case over the past 13 years. That advice has kept me from chasing opportunities and paths that weren’t right for me or the way that I wanted to grow my business.
How it will help me going forward: There is always going to be a world of possibility ahead of me. I can’t take every path offered and I can’t control everything that happens on the way, but if I’m thoughtful and make a plan, at least I’ll get where I’m going on purpose and it’s more likely to be somewhere that I want to end up.
Bring the best that you can each day.
The advice: “I see you. I’ve been where you are too, and I’ve failed sometimes too. Give yourself some grace and give what you can and forgive yourself if it’s not that great yet. You’ll get a little better every day.”
The teacher: Howard Stribbell, my head of school (I think he was the High School principal at the time) of the International School of Macau.
The situation: Gill and I were in our first year of teaching in Macau SAR, China. I was teaching Grade One, and I was struggling. I was disorganized, I was a weak teacher relative to my colleagues and I was having a hard time being far away from home in a strange place. I wasn’t sleeping well and my mental health was poor. At one point I announced that I wouldn’t be returning for the second year of my contract, and I believe it was shortly after this that Howard took the time to take me out for a drink off-campus and share his advice. He shared some of his struggles that he’d had as a young teacher, some of the insecurities that he’d felt, and how he’d gotten through them. His advice, which I’ve paraphrased, gave me permission to bring what I could bring to my class each day, even if it wasn’t the best that I knew I could eventually bring. The students would still learn, and I would learn to get better, and importantly I would survive the year.
How it’s helped me: I survived the year. Looking back, it was a challenging situation: a young school that was on a brand new campus and nearly half new staff, including the administrative team. I had two grade team partners who were also having challenging years, and we weren’t able to support each other in all the ways we might have wanted to. I’m grateful for Gill, Howard and all of our friends that helped each other navigate that first year (thanks Pamela, Crystie, Johanne and Cathy!) Gill and I ended up teaching for five wonderful years in Macau, and some of my favourite people and memories are from there now. That advice helped me focus on growth as a teacher rather than perfection. By the end of the five years I was our school’s first Athletic Director in addition to teaching, and I can see the ways that I grew over those years. In my reference letter, Howard wrote a line something like “Nick is proof that hard work can overcome inexperience” and I’ve always treasured that he saw what I could do and not just how I was doing that first year.
In my time as a Realtor, that advice really helped me when I was new to realize that I didn’t have to have it all figured out yet, but that as long as I had the fundamentals in place to safely guide my clients and build my business, I could build to where I wanted to be.
How it will help me going forward: Real estate has lots of little failures that happen: The house that needs a price reduction or doesn’t sell, or the client that works with a different Realtor. I can control some of the factors that make these failures happen, and some are out of my control. Howard’s advice helps me to focus on what I can control, and bring what I can to each challenge without expecting a perfect outcome.
Now that I’m the leader of a team, I hope that I’m also able to teach Karim, Chelsea and Hannah and our future teammates to do their best, but give themselves grace when things don’t go perfectly.
Success leaves clues.
The advice: Success leaves clues.
The teacher: Valerie Holly, one of the managers at my brokerage.
The situation: I’ve actually heard variations of this advice all through my student and professional careers. As a teacher I often heard that it was best not to “reinvent the wheel,” and that it’s better than okay to borrow and steal great ideas to use with your students in your teaching practice. Val’s phrasing sums it up best, though.
How it’s helped me: As a teacher and now as a Realtor, I have colleagues who’ve succeeded in their field and I can learn from them by emulating the best things that they do. Thank you Gillian, Ian and Beth Windsor, Eli Udell, Rob Marland, Tom Storey and all of the people I’ve borrowed from over the years.
How it will help me going forward: I continue to learn from successful people in and outside of my field every day. I’ve also committed to being a person who shares. I believe that great ideas are meant to be shared, so I continue to teach at my brokerage and I make my team’s wiki publicly available to colleagues and competitors alike. By sharing, we all succeed.
Never try to make a happy baby happier.
The advice: Never try to make a happy baby happier.
The teacher: Jack Black (yes, the actor/musician), though I think it was conveyed to me second-hand by my wife Gillian.
The situation: Being a new parent, struggling as we all do through sleepless nights and confusing situations. The advice literally meant, “when your baby is happy and content, don’t change anything. Don’t try to make him even happier. Happy is good enough and if you mess with it, it will more than likely end in disaster.”
How it’s helped me: Out of all the parenting advice I’ve ever heard, this one has been the most true and it’s the only one I feel confident enough to share if someone asks (I try not to give unsolicited parenting advice). When I remember to follow this advice, I think it results in our boys being happier, and a better experience as parents because we aren’t agonizing about whether our kids are happy enough.
How it will help me going forward: Gill and I are parents for the rest of our lives, so it will help us even when we’re adults.
At work, this advice helps remind me that happiness in business is an ongoing balancing act, not a destination. Sometimes things are humming along great (like they are these days) and I should appreciate that.
Community and connection is the goal.
The advice:The market tells us we don’t have enough. Community reminds us that we do
The teacher: Seth Godin. He’s a marketer and author of some of my favourite books on culture and marketing. His podcast Akimbo is excellent.
The situation: This is one of only two quotations that I have on my office wall (the other being “Let’s get real or let’s not play.”) I think about it a lot in my business ever since I read it.
How it’s helped me: I spend a lot (in the spring market, most) of my waking hours in my business and with my team. My team and I can either choose to be a grind-it-out, cold-calling type of business and work with strangers, or build a business where we provide expertise, share knowledge and build community with the people around us. One of those approaches will wear us out, while the one we’ve chosen enriches us, not just in the longevity of our business but in the quality of our lives, in our clients’ lives and in the feel of our community. We’re just one little Real Estate team, but we hope that we’re contributing.
How it will help me going forward: Real Estate is my chosen profession until informed otherwise, and I’d like to feel like my team and I are doing it in a way that we can be proud of , and that Gill, Jack and Aaron will be proud of me for. Community reminds us that we have enough, and that serving others is the point of it all.
Thanks for reading this one. It was a pretty personal one and I thank you for letting me share a bit of myself with you this month.
If you have a best piece of advice, I’d love to hear it. If you know someone who could use any of these words of advice, I hope that you share it with them.
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