It is with excruciating pain if you ever have a back pain like sciatica or scoliosis. Back pain is one of the worst pain of all. At one point I had to crawl because every movement hurts.
My first experience was when I turned 40 year old. Certainly 40 year of age hit me with a back pain that lasted for a month. It became an unproductive month. Your physical ability become restricted and hindered you from being active.
The second back pain happened most recently and it was the worst of all. I barely could walk or stand straight. I had to crawl to the car to go see the chiropractor. Fortunately he was able to re-adjust my herniated disc. No pain medication was needed. After a few days I’m functioned normally. However, my scoliosis back is still not straight yet.
The experience with back pain is temporary. Whereas the experience of not doing what we wish in life results in more pain, a lifetime of regrets. Imagine a month wasted, half a year or even a year wasted without taking action or implementing on the things we want to do.
And let’s be honest. We operate the same way with our business. We treat it blindly until something happened. Only when business hurts then we’re motivated to set plan.
In my line of business with CRE, many brokers treat it like a hobby. We don’t have a plan or keep record of our numbers. We don’t know our expenses and potential income. We don’t know what’s working and what doesn’t. We move forward blindly.
The cause of one issue can easily cured. The cause of not putting plans into action is a life long issue. We need to fix that mentality. Take action now.
Cohort is like a companion, a supporter or a group.
I first learned the about cohort from the book by Seth Godin called The Practice. It’s especially good for those who desire to deliver the work. It makes you grounded in your thoughts to create the change you seek to make, then practice and finally ship the work.
Now I parttake in a cohort group through Ship 30 for 30. It is effective to share and engage your works to the community of cohorts.
What I discovered amid an incredibly difficult time is that we become more refined, recognizing our capability to define what needs to remove, delegate and improve upon.
My work allows me to work independently. Boredom easily becomes the enemy. Lack of interaction and collaboration slip my foundation. To improve my foundation I need to renovate it. Connection with cohorts encourages engagement, support and growth.
Cohorts raise the bar and they provide a strong foundation for what’s next.
Cohorts are the sphere of influence that are worth to connect and engage with.
Cohorts are the ones we can learn from and they can help level us up.
Have you taken on a difficult mission? With cohorts’ support we can create possibility:
bounce ideas off of each other
challenge each other
improve each other works
make change possible
Increase your motivation bandwidth by participating with a cohort community.
The world is noisy. Noises that serve as distraction. What keeps us steady and focus while everything spins around us? The basis of all distractions are social media, TV, our phone and an abundance of applications, the news outlets, pleasing others and allowing others’ opinions to affect our own inner voice.
“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. Have the courage to follow your own heart and intuition.” – Steve Jobs
Some experts and influential leaders remove noises with the following:
Put away their phone in a different room before sleep.
Turn off the wifi while working or doing creative activities
Turn negative feedback into opportunity
Surround with people successful than them
Some of these strategies are temporary. We often get loss crawling back to our normal self. We talk ourselves into by making up excuses.
The brain without stimulation our thinking become limited. Our trajectory becomes less important. Life becomes complacent, without attainment. A decade easily passed by without our permission.
How would we solve this destructive problem?
Demand more of ourselves. We’re capable of more than we know. Give us the abundance mindset. Focus on the process to reach attainment.
Work on the simple tasks first. Phone stalled away until morning. Wifi off during creative works. Make no exception.
Work on the best version of ourselves. Deliver what we promise. To remove some of the noises, demand more of ourselves.
Fed expected to leave rates unchanged, hint at economic revival.
The Economic Outlook Press Conference was Live at 11:30AM on April 28, 2021.
The Fed wraps up its two-day policy meeting on Wednesday. The central bank is not expected to take any action, but economists expect it to defend its policy to let inflation run hot. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell holds a press conference after the decision is announced.
The Federal Reserve controls the three tools of monetary policy–open market operations, the discount rate, and reserve requirements. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is responsible for the discount rate and reserve requirements, and the Federal Open Market Committee is responsible for open market operations.
Federal Open Market Committee
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) consists of twelve members–the seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; and four of the remaining eleven Reserve Bank presidents, who serve one-year terms on a rotating basis.
The FOMC holds eight regularly scheduled meetings per year. At these meetings, the Committee reviews economic and financial conditions, determines the appropriate stance of monetary policy, and assesses the risks to its long-run goals of price stability and sustainable economic growth.
The COVID-19 pandemic is causing tremendous human and economic hardship across the United States and around the world. Amid progress on vaccinations and strong policy support, indicators of economic activity and employment have strengthened. The sectors most adversely affected by the pandemic remain weak but have shown improvement.
Powell says watching housing prices carefully; rise is because of low inventory, strong demand; says clearly strongest housing market since financial crisis
Powell says likely to take ‘some time’ for substantial further progress to be achieved; says fed will do everything we can to support recovery for as long as it takes.
“Readings on inflation have increased and are likely to rise somewhat further before moderating,” Fed chair Powell says. As the economy continues to reopen, “one-time increases in prices are likely to have only transitory effects on inflation.”
Powell says it would take time to move inflation expectations up, would expect that to come with strong labor market.
Powell says he expects people to return to labor force to fill jobs, maybe pay will go up; says may take some months to get back to equilibrium between labor supply and demand.
“Since the beginning of the year, indicators of economic activity and employment have strengthened,” Fed chair Powell says. “the sectors of the economy most adversely affected by the pandemic remain weak, but have shown improvement.”
Powell says during time of reopening we are likely to see upward pressure on prices, but will be temporary; says episode of one-time price increases is not likely to lead to persistent inflation.
Powell says one-time price increases as economy reopens is not likely to lead to persistently high inflation inconsistent with fed’s goals; says if do see inflation expectations materially above 2% would use tools to bring it down.
Powell says supply side will take time to adapt to strong surge in demand; says some asset prices are high.
“The economy is a long way from our goals and is likely to take some time for substantial further progress to be achieved,” he said. “We expect to maintain an accommodative stance to monetary policy until these employment and inflation outcomes are achieved.”
“With regard to interest rates, we continue to expect it will be appropriate to maintain the current zero to 0.25 percent target range for the federal funds rate until labor market conditions have reached levels consistent with the committee’s assessment of maximum employment and inflation has risen to 2% and is on track to moderately exceed 2% for some time,” he added.
Summary:
Federal reserve keeps fed funds range unchanged at 0.00% to 0.25%
Fed discount rate unchanged 0.25%
FOMC: voted 11-0 for fed funds rate action
FOMC: maintains $80 billion Treasury Security buying, $40 billion Mortgage Back Security (MBS) buying, per month
FOMC benchmark interest rate unchanged; target range stands at 0.00% – 0.25%
Interest rate on excess reserves unchanged at 0.10%
FOMC statement says, “amid progress on vaccinations and strong policy support, indicators of economic activity and employment have strengthened”
FOMC: fed will continue bond buying until substantial further progress on goals
Fed continues to inflation “transitory”
FOMC:
1) Near-zero rates, $120 billion in asset purchases monthly;
2) No change in guidance or hint of bond tapering;
3) Economy, labor market have strengthened;
4) Inflation has risen, reflecting transitory factors;
“You will never, never be powerful unless you stop hiding your defects.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb
One of the communication skills I’ve been trying to work on is storytelling. Communication is one of my weaknesses as it is with storytelling. Storytelling has become a key communication between my son and I. My son is my number one audience.
“Everybody has strengths and weaknesses. The key to success is understanding one’s weaknesses and successfully compensating for them. People who lack that ability fail chronically.” Ray Dalio
School rewards the same set of hard skills. Financial modeling. Operations. Excel. In the real world, none of these are the most important skill. And that skill is Storytelling. Here’s why…
We live in a digital age. Technology is eating everything. Skills are more commoditized than ever before. And business is more competitive than ever before. Storytelling is not & will not be commoditized.
Storytelling gives us an opportunity to prove who we are as entrepreneurs, particularly in a competitive space. We work with clients and business owners of various backgrounds. Helping them secure a location to build their business that generate income for them and their family shows we are doing the right thing. When we secured a listing with a prominent landlord, we told the story why handing us the listing was worth it. Sharing the stories and the obstacles each business went through give us legitimacy.
Great storytelling is the crystal key to make things happen for yourself as a builder.
Grow audience requires preparation and repetition. Think about your audience the same way a business thinks about a potential customer. You are solving a problem for someone. Your goal is to take them from inaction to action. Great storytelling helps them understand why action is in their best interest.
What value and incentives are you adding to your audience. Catering your story to your audience is about understanding:
who they are
how they like to be spoken to
what incentives drive them
I remember being super nervous speaking in front of 200-300 audience on a conference at a trade mission. It was nerve-racking and intense. But with preparation, you built confidence and skill to hone your talk. Two ways to achieve nervous equilibrium:
Preparation
Bulleted notes, simulate your exact environment, anticipate audience questions.
Perspective
It is an incredible privilege to have a captive audience & even if you bomb it, it’s an amazing learning experience.
For now, my number one audience is still my son. Who’s your number one audience? Let’s start from there.
A general post on what a day in the life of a Commercial Real Estate Broker is like for most successful CRE professionals in comparison to my schedule. It shows how hard successful brokers work and manage their time effectively.
I have been wanting to track my time to understand what my day is like and why often times I feel unproductive. My work time has been condensed down to 2-3 hours during the pandemic time.
6:00AM: Wake up. Check emails, news and financial market. Most CRE brokers would exercise and ready to the office by 7:00AM.
7:00 AM: Check emails, news and financial market. Most CRE brokers head to their office, get caffeinated and ready to review the day. One of the brokers even do a Tuesday Traffic video to capture the day and advice to clients.
8:00 AM: Prepare and wake up the kid for online school. CRE brokers would meet their sales team to start the productive day. Team consists of admin, marketing and sales, listing updates, new properties on the market, to do and prospecting list.
9:00 AM: Read and write on various topics. Plan for the day. Most CRE brokers time block for 2-3 hours to tackles the to do, the follow up and the prospecting list.
10:00 AM: Arrive to the office. Review plan for the day. Respond to emails. Review CRM and schedule. Work on the priorities. Most CRE brokers work on prospecting for 2-3 hours.
11:00 AM: One hour of productive work – follow up calls. Need to work on the prospect call list. Most CRE brokers finalize their list of to do and prospecting.
12:00 PM: Work can drift off here due to distractions – social media, web browsing, random calls. Most CRE brokers do lunch with someone or schedule a lunch with someone differently throughout the week.
1:00 PM: Maybe a quick lunch or snacking inside the office. Most CRE brokers head to their meetings or tours they planned the previous days or earlier in the morning.
2:00 PM: Most meetings and tours happen during the afternoon time. Most CRE brokers have meetings with clients and touring properties.
3:00 PM: Back to the office. Review emails, update CRM, and plan for the next day or rest of the week. Most CRE brokers continues with clients meeting and touring.
4:00 PM: Work in the business – listings, marketing and sales. Most CRE brokers are back to the office to return calls and emails. Prepare LOI, secure signatures, negotiate a deal and secure new listing.
5:00 PM: Complete all follow up and return calls and messages. Most CRE brokers wrap up, go home or to another meeting.
6:00 PM: Finish up. Maybe a little bit of web browsing. Extracurricular stuffs. Some CRE brokers would have night or dinner meetings with clients since some clients are only available after business hours.
After a brief writing on this topic, I have come to realized how much more I can do to have productive days that can lead to very successful career in commercial real estate.
All CRE brokers need to have the following:
Big Goals
Daily Planning
Delegation (teamwork)
Time Blocking (Prospecting, Client meetings and tours)
Systems (office operation, delegation, time management, prospecting, marketing, sales, and follow up)
Accountability
Follow Through
Followed up & maintained the connection with clients
Follow up! Don’t always take
Ask yourself, “How can I help my clients?”
Ask them, “What is your biggest problem & how can I solve it?”
If you’re awake middle of the night unable to go back to sleep, it’s probably the affect of many things. Perhaps it’s the excessive number of wine glasses, many unfinished projects, a fight with your partner, an unstable financial situation, an overly analyzed problem or simply the affects of the pandemic on the livelihood of our well-beings. Or perhaps you’re excited of a brand new day. Whatever it is, we all have struggles and sufferings of some sorts. The struggles are real.
We lean toward the future to plan ahead. We pave the way to follow the path of success. We set our goals. But what is success? Our many desires are great distractions. We struggle with wanting too many things. Yet we learn less as we get older. We become complacent to current environment and what society planned for us. Our college years age reminded us how active we were with constant learning and education. Our learnings were stimulating that never ceased to stop. This reminds us to pick up books and reading again. It reminds us we can be lifelong student and educator. We all define success differently. The success is our ability to change, the consistent works that produce results, and our way of adapting to new environment. Success is simply your happiness. Simplify by having one great desire to have laser-sharp focus on.
For a long time I’ve been waiting to keep track of my times, sometimes daily, or weekly. Like Jerry Seinfeld said, “writing is the hardest thing in the world.” Commitment to write or post daily is not a simple task neither. As of recently, I’d like to remember what I’m doing and what my inspirations are. Someone had said inspiration is perishable, it runs out. If I don’t act on it now, it’s gone.
Reading
Non-Fiction: The Lives of the Stoics by Ryan Holiday. Great history of so many philosophers in the Roman times compiled into a single book. You can read about each philosopher on how each defined stoicism, who they taught and how they practice that created Stoic into modern time. A wealth of knowledge and wisdom to put into practice and be inspire. Follow Ryan Holiday as he’s a great forward thinking author.
Fiction: The Last Duel by Eric Jager. This novel is being adapted to screenplay by Matt Damon and Ben Afflect. The film is expected to release end of this year. It also stars Matt Damon and Ben Afflect, directed by none other than Ridley Scott (The Gladiator). When it’s rumored to be the next screenplay adaptation I picked it up right away. I want to read before watching. The novel is so well written it feels like like a history book. That’s just reading only a quarter into the novel.
Watching
Finding the time to watch TV or movies at home can be difficult especially when you have a little one at home. Often times, the things to watch end up being my son Winston’s entertainment. My enjoyment is to be immersed into a two hours movie without any disruption. I have been picky as to what to watch when I have that privilege time. First, I have to see what critics and reviews have to say first. Second, what type of genre it is. It’s a lot more exciting if it’s a thriller drama genre.
This week I was able to watch one of the new films I’ve been reading on the reviews.
‘Promising Young Woman‘ starring Carey Mulligan. Directed by Emerald Fennell. Most critics raved this incredible film as the top film of the 2020. And yes it is so good to sit through this well executed pace film. If you’re into sort of revenge type of movies this is a good choice.
One of the other movies I’m hoping to catch this weekend is Palm Springs, currently on Hulu.
What am working on
It’s beginning to feel like really hard labor work. I’m prepping and planning to build our house. Consider it as the most ambitious projects yet. It’s not even a renovation but a complete built out from a vacant land without any infrastructure. I’ll be documenting all the very little steps as we begin construction. We’re in our final phase of getting the permits after two maybe three years long. If you have the patience and reserve capital, perhaps it can be rewarding and proud.
The next step is to be in the zone, envisioning what the house looks like, know the construction process and how realistic the timeline from beginning to completion. This requires lots of studying, literally putting the house together on paper with all the details.
Parenting
Raising kids is never easy especially when you don’t have a firm structure to guide your children as they grow. Rachel has been great with household rules and authoritative demeanor that gets Winston to listen and obey. Whereas a more loose and genuine structure like me needs to build an effective communication and structure with Winston to get him to understands and guide him as he grows to be the man with character and virtue.
Exercising
It feels like a first step every time. A simple commitment to walk or run needs you take the first step, and that’s out of the house. Get dress and get out.
Set your mind. Make the commitment. Put in the work.
All I’ve been thinking about over the past 11 days going into 2021. My determination is to wake up early at 6am, make my coffee, check the market and do some reading. Exercise has always been an important aspect of my life. The next few steps are to put exercise in my first priority. With this cold misty weather, we all want to sleep in or snooze for 10 or 30 minutes more. A two or three mile runs can be easily done within the those snoozed times.
Yesterday I went on a hike with a friend, a cohort, that turned into more like a bootcamp deep hike, pulls up and rock lifting. Tom has been one of those guys who is always reinventing himself with new ideas, new motivation and new plans. We had discussions about businesses, current works and what we can do to be better. The benefits of having a cohort to exercise with:
keep each other accountable
share thought provoking ideas
help each other challenge
The pandemic takes a huge toll at businesses including commercial real estate. Adapting to the new norm and the way of conducting business, we continues to push and challenge ourselves. As a commercial real estate advisor, here are some questions I ask myself.
What’s your goal for 2021?
What are the lead metrics behind that goal?
Who’s going to hold you accountable to those goals?
Some of the obvious plannings would come down to asking yourself how to achieve those goals.
How many deals do you need to transact to hit your financial goals
How many opportunities do you need to convert?
How many meetings do you need to have?
How many conversations do you need to have?
How many calls do you need to make? 6: How many letters and messages do you need to send?
Now, the hard part is the doing and keeping track of the works. Truly, the hardest part is to keep yourself accountable. One phone call or one online message can shift the entire schedule. And you don’t want that to happened.
Let’s review year 2020 as a forward approach to 2021. What we have accomplished, struggled and learned in 2020 will determine a better outcome in 2021. We also ought to review what were positive and negative so we can focus on what would considered best in 2021. One of the strategies I find most effective is Tim Ferris’s approach to New Year’s resolution. He created a year-in-review with two columns: positive and negative. Then reviewed the list by asking “What 20% of each column produced the most reliable or powerful peaks?” For the positive ones, do more of those immediately. For the negative ones, put them on “Not-to-do-List.”
As this is an exercise, we must spend 30 minutes to an hour to complete this approach.
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Here is Tim Ferris’s blog based on the strategy:
“P.S. Last year, around this time, many of you found the text below helpful. I am including it again, as this what I do every year. Have a wonderful NYE!
I’m often asked about how I approach New Year’s resolutions. The truth is that I no longer approach them at all, even though I did for decades. Why the change? I have found “past year reviews” (PYR) more informed, valuable, and actionable than half-blindly looking forward with broad resolutions. I did my first PYR after a mentor’s young daughter died of cancer on December 31st, roughly eight years ago, and I’ve done it every year since. It takes 30-60 minutes and looks like this:
1 Grab a notepad and create two columns: POSITIVE and NEGATIVE.
2 Go through your calendar from the last year, looking at every week.
3 For each week, jot down on the pad any people or activities or commitments that triggered peak positive or negative emotions for that month. Put them in their respective columns.
4 Once you’ve gone through the past year, look at your notepad list and ask, “What 20% of each column produced the most reliable or powerful peaks?”
5 Based on the answers, take your “positive” leaders and schedule more of them in the new year. Get them on the calendar now! Book things with friends and prepay for activities/events/commitments that you know work. It’s not real until it’s in the calendar. That’s step one. Step two is to take your “negative” leaders, put “NOT-TO-DO LIST” at the top, and put them somewhere you can see them each morning for the first few weeks of 2019. These are the people and things you *know* make you miserable, so don’t put them on your calendar out of obligation, guilt, FOMO, or other nonsense.
That’s it! If you try it, let me know how it goes.
And just remember: it’s not enough to remove the negative. That simply creates a void. Get the positive things on the calendar ASAP, lest they get crowded out by the bullshit and noise that will otherwise fill your days. Good luck and godspeed!”
Jeff Vo
Jeff is a Vice-President at GD Commercial with more than 16 years experience. Jeff’s specialty areas are targeted geographically in Silicon Valley, catering to the many demands and requirements of entrepreneurs and investors.
