I built my business almost entirely through relationships and referrals.
But it didn't start that way.
Early in my real estate career, I spent a lot of time trying to win business from people I didn't know.
Despite all of that effort, most of the business I was actually doing was coming from people I already had relationships with and the people they introduced me to.
Once I saw that clearly, I started asking a different question:
What if I focused more of my energy on serving the people already in my community?
People I already knew. People I already cared about. People whose lives I was already a part of.
That changed the way I thought about building a business.
I think it's an easy trap when starting something new. We assume growth begins with finding strangers who might buy from us, while the community already around us can become almost invisible.
Sometimes we don't want the people we know to think we're selling to them. Sometimes we assume our existing community isn't large enough to support what we're trying to build.
My experience pushed me in the opposite direction:
Serve the community that's already there exceptionally well, and let it grow from there.
Over the years, that idea has led me well beyond real estate.
I've thought a lot about how to stay connected as life gets busier. How to have better conversations. How to understand people when the stakes get higher. How to be useful when there's absolutely no business involved.
And I've learned that serving people well requires me to manage myself too—my actions, my time, my priorities and my willingness to make decisions. Built on Relationships is a collection of ideas, practices and perspectives I've developed and adopted along the way.
This isn't a formula for turning relationships into transactions.
The thinking is much simpler:
Start with people.
My professional expertise will only be useful to someone occasionally. Life gives us far more opportunities to listen, remember, connect people, share what we know and help each other.
Business can grow from that.
So can a pretty meaningful life.
You don't need to read this from beginning to end. Start wherever something interests you.
Take whatever is useful, change what doesn't fit, and make it your own.
