Thoughts on Leadership: Do Whatever It Takes

By Gino Blefari

This week’s travels took me to Minneapolis for the HomeServices of America, Inc. board meeting then to Louisville, Kentucky for a leadership meeting hosted by Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Parks & Weisberg, Realtors. After Kentucky I flew to Knoxville, Tennessee—where I write you this week’s blog post—and from here I’ll travel tomorrow to Omaha for the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting. (Expect a recap next week.)

So, all in all it’s been seven days of travel and to be honest, I wouldn’t have it any other way because every stop along this trip has been necessary to create lead measures that will help us accomplish our organization’s goals. Remember, a leader does whatever it takes. As the saying goes, “If you’re interested, you’ll do what’s convenient. If you’re committed, you’ll do what it takes.”

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Thoughts on Leadership: Focus on the Top Line

By Gino Blefari

This week my travels find me in Irvine, CA at our HSF Affiliates headquarters for alignment sessions with prospective brokerages and meetings with our teams. The alignment sessions are always exciting opportunities to meet with innovative companies eager to grow. My personal mission, as you may know, is to help people achieve their goals faster than they would in my absence and for brokerage owners that translates into devising the right strategies that will lead to increased profitability and success for their brokerage.

One way to grow is by increasing your top-line revenue.

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Top 5 Things You Need to Be Successful

By Maria Kazakos

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Thoughts on Leadership: Beyond the Basics

By Gino Blefari

This week my travels found me first in Cincinnati for the National Association of REALTORS® Advisory Group Meeting where speakers included: Lawrence Yun, NAR senior vice president of research; Jeff Barnett, 2018 RES chair and moderator for the meeting; Bill Malkasian, chief advocacy officer, NAR Advocacy Group; Elizabeth Mendenhall, 2018 NAR president; Katie Johnson, NAR senior vice president and general counsel; Eric Eckardt, CEO of Purple Bricks; Jerry Giovaniello, NAR senior vice president and chief lobbyist; and Evan Liddiard, NAR senior tax policy representative and CPA.

Next, I traveled to New Jersey for a Leadership Excellence Forum. I was honored to discuss recruiting at the event, which was themed “Back to Basics.”

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Thoughts on Leadership: The Journey to Somewhere New

By Gino Blefari

This week’s travels took me first to Seattle for AREAA’s 2018 Global + Luxury Summit and next to T3 Summit in Miami, an invite-only think tank for leaders and executives in the residential real estate industry.

I was proud to attend AREAA’s event in Seattle with Peter Turtzo, SVP of international operations for Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices; Rosalie Warner, SVP of network services for HSF Affiliates; Troy Reierson, HSF Affiliates director of business development; and Teresa Palacios Smith, HSF Affiliates vice president of diversity and inclusion. As Teresa says, our organization is working tirelessly to ensure that every facet of what we do mirrors the diversity we find in the marketplace. AREAA was an opportunity to enhance that mission through idea sharing, networking and learning about ways to elevate the standards of our industry.

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Dear Fellow Real Estate Agent: Could you PLEASE Communicate?

By Jake Breen

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Thoughts on Leadership: Crushing It

By Gino Blefari

This week my travels found me first working from Northern California and today in Las Vegas for a dinner meeting with Mark Stark, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Nevada Properties, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Arizona Properties and Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties. Mark’s company was represented at our recent Mavericks meeting, a think tank of network CEOs created to discuss the performance of our brokerages. As the saying goes, “When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates.”

It’s an interesting concept to explore—the idea that measured performance equates to a faster rate of success—especially this week when I’ve had the opportunity to listen to Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book, Crushing It. Ultimately, the book is all about how your individual performance can either wade in perpetual mediocrity or, for the inspired leader, allow you to achieve your dreams. If your performance is the latter, then you’re crushing it.

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Thoughts on Leadership: Coming Full Circle

By Gino Blefari

This week my travels find me in Indiana for the Mavericks meeting hosted by Craig West, CEO/co-owner of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Indiana Realty. (If you don’t know what the Mavericks are, you can read about the Mavericks here but in short, it’s a small think-tank group of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices network member CEOs who meet every six months to perform a peer review of the host company, exchange ideas and help fellow members grow.) I always enjoy these meetings because they’re founded in a strong spirit of innovation and collaboration.

During our meeting, we toured a few Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Indiana Realty offices and one of them was in Carmel, the fifth-largest city in Indiana known internationally for its roundabouts. Since the late 1990s, Carmel has been building and replacing signalized intersections with roundabouts and now boasts about 100, more than any other city in the U.S.

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What to Know If You’re Just Starting Your Real Estate Career

By Josh Stephens

The time has come. You just finished another episode of Million Dollar Listing and decided that you are ready for a career change. You want to become a real estate agent. Why not? It looks to be easy, lucrative and a lot of fun.

However, the top 1% of real estate agents you see on television are not great examples of what it’s like for everyone in the industry, especially those in their first year as agents. In fact, the amount of people that fail within their first year in real estate far exceeds the amount of agents who succeed. The reasons for this vary but ultimately, it is because of the individual’s understanding about what it takes to be a successful real estate agent.

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Thoughts on Leadership: Retrieving the Win

By Gino Blefari

This week my travels find me working from Northern California thanks to the fourth Nor’easter that derailed my East Coast plans while on the way to the airport to catch a flight to New Jersey. Snowed in or not, like much of the country, I’ve caught a serious case of March Madness. The tournament is exciting, fast-paced and most importantly, filled with surprising lessons on leadership.

And no match up this year—perhaps no match up in the history of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament—came replete with as many lessons as did Friday’s game between the No. 16 seed UMBC Golden Retrievers and the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed, the University of Virginia Cavaliers. If you didn’t watch the game or haven’t yet heard, the Retrievers not only beat the Cavaliers, they blew them out of the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, N.C., 74-54.

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