What Went Around Then Has Stayed Around Today

My first by-lined article in this publication appeared exactly twenty years ago this month, at which point in time I had devoted twothirds of my then 62 years on the planet to a career in real estate. This odyssey was first as a salesman, then as a broker, trainer, writer, course designer, entrepreneur, corporate executive, globe-trotting professional speaker and, finally, an enthusiastic participant in the active retirement which continues to this very moment.

A couple of years prior to my debut in The REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONAL “Columny,” its then-and-now Editor/Publisher, Ed DesRoches, biographed my first four decades in the field, with emphasis on the progress of The Klock Company, Realtors®, from (as he aptly put it) “the brink to the bank.” I was, at the time, a battle-scarred survivor of rookie jitters, dumb decisions, bad breaks, inflations, deflations, stagflations, financing crises and the hardships of “kinetic solvency,” the scary science of staying barely beyond wolfbite when “things” got tough.

Ed’s profile, a generous five-page spread, had a happy ending, with the acquisition of the company by Coldwell Banker, then a subsidiary of Sears, and my gradual retreat from active management responsibilities. That trek has led me to my personal variation of existentialism (“I write, therefore I am”), which is where you find me today.


CRITERIA FOR SUCCESS

This column, however, is not about me or my past life. Rather, its focus is on a sidebar in that 1986 article, listing my “Criteria For Success,” which are presented here exactly as written then:

1.) Everything else must rank as a poor second in importance to the reputations of the company and the individuals in it.

2.) The company must never be a “body shop” or a repository for parttime dabblers.

3.) Education must begin on “day one” and never end, for both newcomers and veterans.

4.) There must always be room for personal growth and self-betterment.

5.) Full recognition must be given for individual and group accomplishments.

6.) Compensation must have built-in incentives to reward superior achievement.

7.) There must be no “special deals”; policies and pay scales must apply equally from the president to the newest trainee.

8.) Scrupulous fairness in dealings among all members of the staff must prevail, without exception.

9.) Extensive feedback from the field (ideally through some advisory council vehicle).

Elsewhere, the article recounted our company’s birth pains in 1974, which we euphemistically described as “just about the worst boom year on the record” in Florida. We quickly concluded and subsequently proved that it was (still is, incidentally) a lot less expensive and a lot more effective to train new people from the ground up than to hire away from the competition seasoned practitioners who had grown accustomed to easy pickings in earlier years.

Also, we learned, out of stark necessity, how to cut expenses to (and into, if need be) the bone and to prepare budgets for both the best and worst case scenarios — this last strategy enabling us to both survive a brutal downturn and capitalize on the rebound that eventually followed. As a matter of frightening fact, our “doomsday deficit” projections came within a pittance of reality before the financial tide turned in our favor and we began a welcome sprint, as aforementioned from the brink to the bank.

Ultimately, it proved to be a steady pathway from the gut-wrenching grip of an economic downturn to domination in a highly competitive market. The point to be made here is not that I am some sort of oracle or that I became, as one friendly wag once put it, “a legend in my own mind.”

CERTAIN ABIDING TRUTHS

It is to observe that, while there have been both evolutionary and revolutionary changes in our industry during my lifetime, there are certain abiding truths which stand the test of time and can be, as herein, restated verbatim a generation and more after they are first cited. Among them are the “Criteria For Success” noted above and the lessons we learned during, before and after that “disappointing boom” in the mid-seventies.

All of them, with some necessary massaging, can be applied to today’s conditions, tending to support the notion that what goes around comes around and what went around often comes back to stay. A suggestion from the sidelines: Reread this opusette and apply whatever you can to the situation in which you find yourself today— either as a leader or as a follower — then do what you can to make “things” break your way.

This final thought: You and your people can’t do better than they know how, so don’t skimp on training when you’re trimming the expense budget; it’s the goose that will lay the golden eggs of your future. As a familiar saying reminds us, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”