You can’t win every fight you get into. At some point you will be under prepared, out maneuvered or you may not know that a battle is underway. And then sometimes you enter a fight with the intention to lose. When you are on a winning streak it can sometimes get into your head. Suddenly…
Iteration and Success
Most of the time you have the opportunity to try something, get it to 80% complete and roll out a prototype for market testing. Once you collect some feedback you can go back to the garage, fix it up a bit and re-release (hopefully capturing a huge chunk of market share). Lather, rinse, repeat –…
Are you that client?
Or maybe you treat all clients as if they are “that client.” If you haven’t ever read through the posts over at Clients from Hell then you really don’t know what you are missing. It’s not real estate clients, but all of us from service industries will see the same personality types at work. Sometimes…
Take the road less traveled
When faced with a location decision, at some point you will be faced with the question of do you want to be near your competitors or off on your own? For many retailers they often choose the route of being near others with similar businesses. Furniture stores often want to be within less than a…
Following the theme of dramatic change…
The QWERTY keyboard layout was originally invented to slow down typists so that they wouldn’t jam the keys on a typewriter. How many decades later is it since that need disappeared? How long ago should the US have moved to the metric system to be in alignment with the rest of the world? Change is…
Let your anarchy out.
Sometimes it’s important to go against the system and be the bad boy. Wear black leather to the black tie event. Tell your clients that they are wrong – and back it up. Step up to the industry icons and show them that how they built their empires no longer applies. Let your personal Rage…
Reinventing what already exists
One of the hardest things to do in a job is to scrap everything previously put together or thought about and start with the creation of an entirely new foundation. Why reinvent Quality Assurance programs when Lean and Six Sigma exist and obviously do quite well in many environments? If they don’t match exactly what…
Chuck Norris and Real Estate
Chuck Norris never leases a building, buildings lease Chuck Norris. When Chuck Norris enters a building it gets automatic LEED certification. Little known reason for the difference between rentable square feet and usable square feet – it is the tribute to Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door. Chuck Norris never calls the…
Power of the 2×2 Matrix
The 2×2 matrix is one of the most powerful tools in anyone’s analysis toolbox. Be careful not to overuse it but it can serve a very useful purpose – simplifying a problem by breaking it down into 2 components and ranking how well some alternatives score against those components. Often when we got bogged down…
Enjoy the Location
In real estate you’ll see lots of different places and buildings. Enjoy them all. I haven’t been in a building yet that hasn’t had a charm all of its own. Whether commercial tower, industrial big box distribution or manufacturing there’s a story behind the walls. A personality that is just beneath the surface. Every design…