I was reading an article over at Sports Illustrated about Jay Glazer’s Gym and how he trains NFL players using MMA. It was supposed to be just some NFL off season story that I read and forgot about 5 minutes after reading it but it stuck with me. Days after reading it I was still thinking about the message that came through to me: Don’t train to be the best at your job today, train so that you are the best at the next job up from you so that you dominate your job today.
This is an idea that holds a ton of merit to me. If you are advising a client on the best building for them to occupy for the next five years a good advisor will tell them about the deal content, what it means to their financials, how it is better than any other option on the market and how the workspace can meet their operational needs. A great advisor will include the potential impact of the space on their R&D efforts based on potential labor market conditions, point out the top line revenue impact similar companies have seen from relocating a service to this new market and recommend a workplace group to help ensure the space increases their productivity.
A dominant advisor isn’t focused on a specific real estate deal at all because that’s a small picture in the broader project around realigning the business with the economic changes that have occurred in the last 10 years and their entire business is misaligned with the trends of labor and industry around the country and globe. A dominant advisor knows how to position a single deal in a market into broad enterprise impacting strategy because a single location can change the entire fortunes of a business if done right.
To get to that position you have to train yourself. If you want to be dominant in CRE technology you better be training yourself in how Dropbox or Slack or Facebook are changing industries and how you would do the same. If you want to be a dominant CRE advisor you better know everything that runs through a CEO/CFO/COO’s head on a daily basis – including the non-real estate thoughts and those had better be the same thoughts you are having daily.
If you want to dominate anything, you have to be able to step into the ring at a much higher level and hold your own.