Every big mistake comes with a bill and a lesson. The trick is making sure you collect the lesson. Once you embrace that learning opportunities often arrive dressed up as mistakes, you stop waiting for the “perfect time” and start taking smarter risks. Without risk, there is no opportunity. But with risk comes vulnerability—to other people’s opinions, and to your own inner critic. At one point, I found myself running three real estate offices, with plans for a fourth and fif

The wrong goal can break you just as quickly as no goal at all. Goals are essential. What cannot be measured cannot be improved. But not all goals are created equal. Some are so “safe” they never stretch you. Others are so unrealistic they quietly destroy your motivation because you’re always behind. When I first sat down with my manager in real estate, he asked what my goal was. Bright-eyed and bushy tailed, I said, “I want to be the Number One salesperson in Ray White SA.”

If you’re always “too busy” but not moving forward, you don’t have a time problem—you have a priorities problem. “Paralysis by analysis” is real. Many capable people get stuck overthinking every move while others, often with less talent, simply get on with it and win. In high-volume, sales-based industries, chasing perfection on every single task can quietly send you broke. Early on, I lost count of how many times new salespeople told me they needed a training session on time

If you lost your business tomorrow, would you still know who you are? “Get a donkey” sounds like strange advice in a sales context, but stay with me. I mean your thing outside of work that grounds you, feeds your soul, and reminds you there’s more to life than your next settlement. For me, it literally became donkeys—two of them, in fact. Running your own business, whether you’re the director or effectively running a business within someone else’s, can be demanding and downri