View from the Mountain: Sticking to your knitting

A few decades of experience in the business world has taught me the value of getting good at what you do. Depending on your skill level, the field you are tackling, and your ability to learn, becoming at expert can take months or even years.

Every time I changed jobs at Apple, I went through six months of extreme work to get to the top of my game. In a highly competitive business environment, you cannot relax even when you really know your job, but you especially cannot relax when you are learning your job.

Often the challenge that is hardest to overcome is a manager unwilling to give you the time to master your job. It is important to realize the distinction between a manager and a leader. A leader is supportive in letting you learn your job but also is forgiving of the inevitable mistakes. A manager will try to do your job for you and often try to embarrass you when mistakes are made.

You will go much farther with a leader than with a manager. Unfortunately in today's business climate, leaders are in short supply because most businesses care more about their quarterly metrics than they do about establishing a business that will endure over the long term.

As an aside, you can find CEOs who act like managers. Sometimes this causes a leadership vacuum below the CEO because anyone with skills that might challenge the CEO is driven off. For an example of this you can ponder who is going to replace Steve Jobs at Apple.

So if sticking to your knitting is good why would someone go off and try something which requires them to struggle for six months in order to get good at what they are doing? Is that not abandoning your knitting for something foreign?

First off sticking to your knitting is a broad term and can be taken to extremes. If I had stayed in K-12 computer sales at Apple, I would never have become director of federal sales. If I had stayed on the farm selling bulls and balers, I would have never made it to Apple. While my transition to real estate has not been as financially successful as I would like, I am very good at the job now. I learn something all the time, but that has consistent across my careers on the farm, in computers, and real estate.

If you want an excellent experience in finding a home with water access on the North Carolina coast, I can say with confidence that I can do that exceptionally well.

Second, we live in a world that is steadily changing. If you had told me in 1982 that I would spend part of my career after Apple selling email, I would have looked at you with a blank stare. I certainly did not know about email in 1982. We have to change or one day we will wake up and find there is no market for buggy whips.

So to me sticking to my knitting is continuing to develop my skills at understanding the needs of my clients and learning how to better fulfill those needs no matter what service or product that I am selling. Learning how to provide a customer with the right amount of information and interaction while sparking their interest in working with me has been consistent across all of my careers.

The challenge has been mixing the right amount of personal interaction with technology to keep the clients happy and allow me to make a living. It is all about communication.

Where we are in the world real estate world is similar to many fields but probably real estate is a little more technology infused than most fields.

From web sites and social media to photos and virtual tours, real estate uses it all today. Staying on top of all the technology is a huge challenge, but offers rich rewards to the clients who work with you. Rarely are there questions that cannot be answered with stunning visual clarity or from online databases.

One of the nice things about real estate is that you do not have to worry about the manager and leader issues since to a large extent you are your own boss.

If you have a bad boss, you do not have to look very far to find the problem.

Experience has also taught me that it all looks better from the beach.