This week my travels found me in Orange County for leadership meetings and the HSF Affiliates Town Hall. As I discuss initiatives and track our 4DX WIGs with the team, I want to share some key takeaways we’re focused on to create positive, sustainable momentum that may be applied in your own businesses:
By Gino Blefari
This week my travels find me in Washington, D.C. for the REALTORS® Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo held each year in our nation’s capital to provide an opportunity for NAR members to take an active role in advancing the real estate industry, public policy and the association at large. In between meetings I also visited a local Real Living brokerage, Real Living At Home, and spoke to the dynamic team, sharing my eight principles on success and conducting a class on time management.
But tonight as you read this, I’ll be attending the RISMedia Power Broker Awards, where the first-ever Real Estate Newsmaker Awards will be bestowed to several leaders in our industry. These leaders exemplify an outstanding ability to garner positive headlines, a direct result of their effectiveness in creating change. Congratulations to our own Teresa Palacios Smith, VP of Diversity & Inclusion at HSF Affiliates, (pictured in photo above) and Ron Peltier, chairman and CEO of HomeServices of America, Inc., for receiving this prestigious honor!
Additional honorees include: National Association of REALTORS® Chief Executive Officer Bob Goldberg; Howard Hanna Real Estate Services Chief Executive Officer Helen Hanna Casey; RE/MAX Boone Realty CEO and National Association of REALTORS® 2018 President Elizabeth Mendenhall; Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Rand Realty General Manager and Chief Creative Officer Joseph Rand; and HomeSmart International Founder and Chief Executive Officer Matt Widdows.
By Gino Blefari
This week my travels find me first in Omaha for the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Meeting over the weekend, next in Northern California then to Southern California for alignment sessions and Mike Ferry’s 2018 Management Retreat at the Hyatt Regency in Huntington Beach.
As I travel from event to event and meeting to meeting, I’m reminded about the importance of being held accountable to the goals I’ve set. It’s easy to forget your goals in the often chaotic whirlwind of the everyday. Yet, it’s during those moments when you’re at your busiest that you must hold yourself accountable the most.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
By Gino Blefari
This week my travels find me in Irvine, CA at our HSF Affiliates LLC headquarters after a busy week in San Antonio for the 2018 Sales Convention. Our annual Sales Convention is always one of my favorite times of the year, a chance to help inspire our network members to innovate, achieve more and grow their businesses through educational sessions, motivational speakers and collaborative discussions. (As I say, in addition to making great connections and learning something new, I guarantee you’ll meet a colleague at Sales Convention who will be good for at least one more deal this year.) But once the event is done, I always take time to recharge.
The concept is powerful yet sometimes overlooked by leaders. We cannot go full force all the time and if we do, we’ll surely wind up burning out or not being fully committed to those particular actions and initiatives (the lead measures) that help us achieve our Wildly Important Goals.
Thoughts on Leadership 