Never be offended. If the offence was intended, the last thing you want to do is to reward the offender by reacting to their slight. Smile and pretend that the slight was intended in good humour. Nothing will infuriate them more. If the offence was unintended, the last thing you want to do is to […]
A note to aspiring real estate investors. It’s always been popular in our industry to underplay and even malign the role that real estate agents play. Don’t fall for that trap. The reverse is true. Real estate agents are in fact your best friend, a crucial conduit to deal flow and a vital shock absorber […]
Read More… from The Importance of Building Trust with Real Estate Agents
How quickly does bad news travel up the line in your company? Quickly is good – but it needs to travel at the speed of light, if you want to be part of a world-class organisation. Why? Because, in business as in medical care, the first 48-hours are often crucial to the optimal management of […]
Read More… from The Importance of Speed in Reporting Bad News
Here’s a lesson my father instilled in me when I was a teenager. What sets a leader apart is not intelligence or hard work – leaders are rarely the most intelligent or hardest working members of their team. What sets a leader apart is their ability to handle pressure. Most people actively avoid pressure. Leadership […]
Spend less time wondering whether higher inflation is on its way, how high it will be or how prolonged. Spend more time asking yourself: if higher inflation does arrive, how will my investment portfolio be impacted and how can I reconfigure my portfolio so that it benefits from higher inflation? Less prediction, more preparation. […]
To young leaders everywhere. Beware, you have something tattooed on your forehead. When 27, I was asked by the Deputy MD of Macquarie Group (the late, great John Caldon) to interview the Bank’s senior leadership and prepare a report on government relations – a senior assignment for a junior executive. When John asked me how […]
You should spend very little time worrying about what your competition is doing. The race is always against yourself: your present-day reality relative to your long term goals and who you are today against who you were yesterday. When you boast that you’ve beaten your peers or competitors, you do well to remember – you […]
A note to investors everywhere. Market cycles are not events that lie outside of us. Cycles are blueprints that exist in our mind. They are part of the very fabric of how we apprehend the world: sunrise and sunset; summer and winter; hope and fear. Therefore, market cycles will always be with us – not […]
A tip for real estate investors everywhere. I call it: The Law of Gravity – namely, that investment returns tend to revert to their long term average over time. Real estate is a non-productive asset – and thus its value is largely a function of the economic and social activity that surrounds it. In the […]
Read More… from The Law of Gravity in Real Estate Investment