Recipe of a champion

While you can daydream for free, goals don’t come without a price. Time. Effort. Sacrifice. And sweat. How will you pay for your goals? – Usain Bolt

By Michael Davoren, Managing Director, RE/MAX Australia & RE/MAX New Zealand

The 2020 challenge to the real estate industry is recognising that while change is aplenty, the basics are still the basics. We expect our service to be exceptional because our clients should expect, and receive, the exceptional.

It’s 2020, the Year of the Tokyo Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXXII Olympiad.

Athletes have prepared and continue to prepare as they vie for positions on their country’s Olympic team.

They must be wary… Too many experts, too much advice, too much technology, too much noise…

They must choose wisely…

Like the athletes, every person in the business of real estate must be in a constant state of focus as they work toward goals, with their concentration fully on their clients.

Goal number one for the Olympic athletes is to make the team. Goal two is then to perform at their best. And on to the next goal and the next goal until they are standing on the dais with a medal.

In real estate, our Olympics are forever.

Our industry faces a great many challenges from the usual competition within the industry – other agents, other brands – to competition from outside our industry in the form of other entities wanting to take their place on the real estate dais.

Just like the athletes competing with others from their country for a place, then competing beyond, there is no time to be distracted. Athletes’ past performances are carefully monitored. We do the same in real estate, looking at market performance and individual performance.

In all cases, when you look at performances over a previous 12 months, doing the same as you have done won’t guarantee you to achieve what you have - or better. And a past year can be a mixed bag of performances!

Learning must be continuous. Coach and athlete must be in sync with the goal at hand and as they move from one goal to the next. There are steps along the way. And there are rules and regulations. You can’t take the shortcuts just to ‘win’.

It involves having the right strategies and matching up your plan with the right coach. Even the highestperforming athlete will have a coach whose job it is to help create and implement the plan; and tweak the plan along the way.

That, too, is the world of real estate. What’s your strategy… your plan?

On the path to greatness, be it in Olympic sports or in real estate, why do some become champions while others fall short? Perhaps champions share these characteristics, regardless of their talents.

• Champions dream big, have vision and set goals. • Champions think strategically. • Champions reach goals through plans that work. • Champions are confident and say, ‘I can’. • Champions are willing to learn, understand weaknesses and train to strengthen them, and view competitors as partners who provide challenges and the chance to improve. • Champions have extraordinary determination and commitment, the courage to risk failure, turn failure into feedback, and accept setbacks as something to learn from. • Champions recognise the power of passion. • Champions know sacrifice and discipline. • Champions never give up.

Did Ash Barty, at the start of 2019, think she would, or could, win the French Open? I’m sure she did, because she is a champion!