Over the years, we have helped many luxury real estate marketing professionals and independent brokerage firms sucessfully challenge the incumbent market leader by exposing a secret. Market leaders often get complacent!
If you have become complacent, sooner or later a challenger will notice the target on your back. So, here is how to up your game: Stay curious, sharpen your saw and cultivate an beginner’s mind.
Staying curious means becoming a lifelong learner. Sharpening the saw is Stephen Covey’s 7th Habit of Highly Effective People. It means “preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have-You”. Having a beginner’s mind is a Zen term for seeing situations with fresh eyes including your own area of expertise.
Recently, we subscribed to a fabulous online continuing education service called “Master Class” which we wholeheartedly recommend. It features classes from top athletes like Stephen Curry and Serena Williams, famous musicians such as Yo Yo Ma and Ringo Star, master chefs like Thomas Keller, scientists, movie makers, authors, business leaders and much, much more.
To sharpen my saw as brand strategist I took a class by a famous graphic designer whose clients range from Giorgio Armani to The Salvador Dali Museum in Florida. One of the optional assignments was to create a logo using your own name. The idea was to convey as much about yourself as possible in a single image.
It turned out to be an amazing, fun learning experience both in graphic design technique (use of color and texture) and also in the skill of distilling volumes of information into a single image. Since Ron is a fairly common name I decided to also incorporate my middle name, Evan, which I use only on ID’s like my driver’s licences and passport (Ronald Evan Seigel).
Here are the thoughts that I attempted to distill in the image above:
Alexandra and I met while in college at a independent center where we studied Western approaches to Eastern philosopies such as Zen, Taoism, Buddism and Hinduism. Aesthetically, I have always been attracted to the sheer simplicity of Japanese and Chinese art forms. I was fortunate to study Bonsai with the #1 Bonsai master in the USA. I have practiced yoga and meditation my entire adult life and now also practice Tai Chi and Qigong. I love zeroing in on details as much as gaining an expanded perspective; like yin and yang, striking a balance between these two ways of being focused in the present moment is key. And, I am a firm believer that life is supposed to be fun.
One of the astonishing take-aways from this assignment for me was noticing that the exact same red color looks totally different against different background colors. See if you can notice this phenomenon, too! This has encouraged me to take more time to ask others about their perspective, given their diverse backgrounds.
To up your game: Stay curious, sharpen your saw, cultivate a beginner’s mind. And, have more fun!