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Photo attribution www.biddingforgood.com |
For those of you not scoring at home, Arizona squeaked by a motivated San Diego State Aztec team in the final seconds. March is college basketball tournament time!
As a disclaimer, I provide Location Advice to owners and occupants of industrial buildings in southern California...AKA, I sell and lease commercial real estate for a living and have since 1984. This qualifies me as some sort of an expert...I believe!
Our call this morning (to plan our upcoming LinkedIn event) also with Yuhannes Watts, Matt Smith, and Linda Day Harrison directed my thoughts toward the NCAA tournament and the commercial real estate brokerage business.
I have concluded that the NCAA tournament has nothing on us #CRE brokers!
Everyday is sudden death: You lose, you go home...a cold hard reality in both the brokerage business and the NCAA tournament. Unfortunately second place in the brokerage business doesn't pay very well.
You can do EVERYTHING correctly and still lose: Take the San Diego State Aztecs. They played a brilliant game, fundamentally sound against the top seed in the west...and still lost. I think back to a presentation that I made last year on an assignment in which I was well qualified...building size, location, deal structure, etc. I didn't get the deal...but I did everything correctly. What I took away from the loss was more valuable than the assignment...You can do EVERYTHING correctly and still lose...deal with it! I now face the reality that this will happen to me at least once each year.The earlier in the year it happens, the better...it's over for this year!
There ARE David and Goliath stories: Anyone have Mercer winning against Duke? Liar...Someone much smarter than I once opined that "80% of life is showing up". I am not for a moment minimizing the Mercer win...AMAZING. What I am saying is that is a good idea to prepare, show up, and compete...you can't always predict the outcome...that is why we play the game.
Those guys make it look easy: The average college basketball player is 6'5" and weighs 215 pounds. They are large, fast, graceful dudes who make traversing a 94 foot basketball court in split seconds and then vaulting five and a half feet off the ground appear human....did I mention all while bouncing a ball. If you observe, from afar, top producers in the commercial real estate biz, closing deals looks easy. What you don't see in both the basketball and brokerage example is the hours upon hours of "sweat" and "loss" that lead to the consistent closings (wins).
The Final Four is just the beginning: This just gets you a chance to grab the gold ring...nothing more. Similar to being selected to compete for a commercial real estate assignment...you've been invited to the dance with no guarantee you'll dance with Cinderella. You may only get close enough to hear the band!
So enjoy the madness this March...and maybe even enjoy a bit of college basketball!