Episode 19: 6 No's Before You Get A Yes: You Don't Get Until You Give With Gino Blefari
You don’t get until you give. This is what Gino Blefari, the CEO of HomeServices of America, learned throughout his real estate career. In today’s discussion with Amy Vetter, Gino shares his journey on understanding the human mindset, not only his own, but others as well, to create an attitude of abundance versus scarcity. Tune in to this episode to discover Gino’s inspirational story as well as his daily practices and learnings along the way on how, by changing your mindset, the sky is the limit of what you can achieve.
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6 No's Before You Get A Yes: You Don't Get Until You Give With Gino Blefari
I interviewed Gino Blefari. He is the Chief Executive Officer of HomeServices of America. He is also the Chairman of HSF Affiliates, which operates the franchise network of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and Real Living Real Estate. He’s been ranked among Top Fifteen Most Powerful Influential Leaders in the Residential Real Estate Industry. He was the 2007 Italian Businessman of the Year by the Italian-American Heritage Foundation. He is also the 2012 Mentor of the Year by the Buffini & Company and the first and only recipient of the Leadership Award for the Tom Ferry Organization and many more awards to name. Gino shared his journey on understanding the human mindset, his own as well as others, to create an attitude of abundance versus scarcity. He shared his inspirational story, his daily practices and learnings along the way on how by changing our mindset, the sky is the limit of what you can achieve.
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I’m with Gino from Berkshire Hathaway Services. Gino, do you want to give a little background on yourself?
Thank you, Amy. This is Gino Blefari. I'm with HomeServices of America, which is the largest residential real estate company in the world from transactions. On the franchise side, we also have Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, which was how you introduced me. I'm the chairman of that and the brand Real Living Real Estate. It's a real estate company that has mortgage title, insurance, brokerage and franchise. You introduced me as the franchise person.
Thank you so much for being on. I met Gino at a conference for Berkshire Hathaway that I was keynoting at. I listened in to his session as well, talking about his personal planning he does each day. It was very impressive. I love to talk to leaders that can share these types of personal habits that they've brought in. I want to start out in your beginnings and what you originally wanted to do when you're a child and forgetting where we are now and how we got there?
As a child, I was going to be the next Willie Mays. He’s a baseball player. All kids want to be a baseball player or football player or something like that. That was in my mind, but my dad always wanted me to be a dentist. For a while, I thought I wanted to be a dentist. Essentially, I ended up in high school working at a golf course. A developer bought the golf course in Silicon Valley as the prices were starting to go up of land there. Instead of building houses around the golf course, the developer decided to plow the entire golf course under and build houses. That was my first introduction to real estate.
It was a journey because I graduated from college and at the time the developer bought the golf course, they had no one to run the golf course. I got a great job at age 22 of being the golf course superintendent, the pro-shop manager, the restaurant manager, the bar manager, the swim club manager. I was even the swim team coach. That came with a house right in the middle of the golf course. There were a couple of other little properties that were on the golf course. All of a sudden, I had almost six rentals myself that came as part of the job. It was a wonderful time. It came to an abrupt ending when they decided to plow it all under.
That started my real estate journey. As a matter of fact, I was on the job because of my reputation for hard work and results in the golf course. They gave me a job and all of a sudden, I found myself in construction. I'm working on construction, not being fulfilled. I don't mind hard work but not being fulfilled. There on the job site one day, a little of BMW pulled up, this dapper man got out and I thought, “What is he doing?” I asked around about him. I found that he was selling the model homes that we were building. It was the old, dumb, dead saying that if a picture is worth a thousand words, the one he portrayed of fun and success caused me immediately to then go out and get a real estate license. That started real estate.
There are a couple of things that I want to go back to. Being a baseball player, how long were you doing that for? When did you decide to stop?
I was never a baseball player.
Is your dad a dentist?
No, my dad wasn't but that was some ambition that he had for me.
What did he do?
He was a tax accountant.
He had looked at like a dentist would have been a good career versus accounting?
It was probably some prestige type of thing with it that he thought was cool for his son to be. A lot of the old dads in the old days have more traditional ways. They have these aspirations for their kid without the kid even knowing that's what they want to do. You're going to want to try to please your parents.
Did you continue going into that path?
I did but I realized quickly that it wasn't something I wanted to do.
What ended up being your degree in college?
It’s Business Administration with a concentration in Behavioral Science, which was good because it would peel into what you do. It was HR management and I had a minor in labor. I was very interested in labor, the history of labor, labor unions and things like that.
How that ended up playing out to what I can see you as a leader. You were helping with the construction and then started seeing that there's this opportunity in real estate. What happened from there?
Changing Your Mindset: Don't ever number your deals. You don't want anyone to know the number of deals you got going at one time.
I saw the guy in there that sounded like it was having a great time and do it. I decided to get a real estate license. I thought I would work with the developer. I ended up not working with the developer and it got me a real estate license. I turned my TV off for a year and I did all sorts of study that you're into with the mindset with how to be a real estate salesperson. It got into personal growth and things like that, but I stuck it out and I struggled for six whole months. For the life of me, I could not sell a house. This is not through lack of effort. I had turned my television off for a year.
I don't know how many people back then would be able to turn their TV off for a year. Every day all I listened to was cassettes on how to sell real estate. It didn't happen. One particular day I got a call from a friend of mine and he said, “We're thinking about selling our house and we buy another bigger house.” I went out to his house and spent two-and-a-half hours there and found out that he wanted a pipe dream of what was available. I was a little bit depressed. This is on a Thursday night because he was in Sunnyvale. Back at the time, Sunnyvale was much less expensive Sunnyvale, California than it is now.
He wanted four bedrooms. He had a three-bedroom home. He wanted two bathrooms. He had a one bath home. He wanted a special high school and a separate family room. He wanted it all for under $200,000. That particular house at that time had moved to about $215,000. Back in 1985, when interest rates were 14%, if you qualify for $200,000, you didn't qualify for $205,000 or even $210,000 or certainly $215,000 where this was at. I was depressed and I remember having a $1 bill in my pocket for about six months. I’m depressed but not letting anyone know that. On the inside, I was dying and depressed. I never missed a sales meeting. I go to this one sales meeting where they were putting three offices together, the Sunnyvale office, the Saratoga office and the Los Altos office. In our area here, people aren't familiar with the Bay Area. Sunnyvale's more of a mom-and-pop, while Saltos is a very high end. Saratoga is pretty high end. The guy conducting the class was a guy by the name of Alain Pinel, a legendary real estate guy at the time. In fact, there’s a company named after him.
I was in that meeting and he was talking and talking. Pretty soon after he talked for so long, I'm looking around. I'm looking up at the ceiling. I'm looking at this textured ceilings. They have looked like a dinosaur. I happen to look at the wall and I saw the flyer that said, “Coming soon.” It said four bedrooms, three bathrooms, separate fan rooms and a separate dining room. It said all these things that these people wanted. It was for $199,000. It’s a Saratoga agent who has mispriced this home. In other words, the comps were showing a higher rate than that.
I got up, I ripped that flyer off the wall, walked around and collected every one of the flyers on the desk and walked out. I can remember getting eye contact from Alain Pinel. I was the first new person that they hired to this elite company, Fox & Carskadon, and it took me three months to convince them to hire me. They were like, “I think we made a mistake for the next six months.” I drive straight to my friend's house and you'll appreciate this with what your studies are. Fate is a funny thing because he was the deputy sheriff and his wife was a nurse and they happened to be home on Monday.
Here I come up, I knocked on the door. I'm Mr. Salesman guy, but I don't have a sales yet. I looked at him. I smiled and I said, “Don, you're looking for a home with four bedrooms, aren’t you?” That's a little called a tie-down, “Aren't you? Wouldn’t it? Shouldn't it? Couldn't it?” it's these things you learn. He said, “We are.” I go, “If they had four bedrooms instead of two bedrooms, that would be better, wouldn’t it?” I went through the whole thing of the whole deal and pretty soon, Debbie, his wife is listening in so I knew from all my training that I need to summarize a sale. I said, “If it had four bedrooms, three bathrooms, separate family room, separate dining room, homestead high school and you could get it for $200,000, you'd buy it now, wouldn’t you?” He goes, “We would.” I'm like, “This crap works.”
I say, “Follow me.” I don't have a real estate car. I've still got my little sports car, Alfa Romeo, from the golf course. I have them follow me out to the house. Bear in mind, Amy, it says on the flyer, no show until Friday and it's Monday, but I'm going to sell this house and get out of the real estate business. It's not for me. I knocked on the door, Mr. Teroka answers the door. He's got a paintbrush in his hand. That was in the old days. When you fix your house up, you fixed it up yourself. You painted your house. Now, we'd be sending painters in and doing all those things, but he answers it. I asked him and he says, “No, I can't show the house right now. There's no show until Friday.” I asked him again and he says, “No.” The whole time, one of the trainers, Tommy Hopkins, has ingrained in my head that there are going to be six noes before I get a yes. I'm going through asking him a different way, so I asked him a different way. Finally, I get to the sixth no and I'm sweating. The hair on the back of my neck is up. I looked out at the street where my friends are there. They're puzzled, “Is everything okay?” They can’t hear, but they can see the dialogue going back and forth. He goes to me, “You're not going to give up, are you?” I go, “Nope.” He goes, “Come on in.” I get that and we come in. We're looking at the house like this because all the walls are painted and they love it.
We're going to drive it back to their house. All I'm thinking is this $200,000 times 3% because that's the buyer's agent's share of it. It is $6,000 divided by 2 because I'm on a 50/50 split. I'm going to make $3,000 and I'm going to get out of the real estate business. It's not for me. That's done. They have to sell their house. I go back with this offer that I've written to the two ladies that are the listing agents. They're not even sure how I got in but because I'm so naive and so transparent, they feel sorry for me and they helped me with the offer and they accepted my offer contingent upon the sale of the house in Sunnyvale.
I went back to my office. I’ve never done a listing before. I'm typing this listing up one finger at a time and I type in 6% because that's what I'm trained to do. I head off to the house and I go, “Don and Debbie Stats, good news, we got the offer accepted. Now we have to sell your house.” I have this listing agreement. I get to the 6% and in a twenty-point type, it says it's negotiable. He goes to me, “Isn't the commission negotiable?” I say the only thing I know how to say that I learned how to one of those cassette tapes was, “It's negotiable but I can only go up.” He pauses for a second and he initialed it. I’m like, “This works.” That happened.
Bear in mind, and this is probably where it will come in for your clientele. I'm going to hold an open house in that house now that I've listed, but I've held an open house every weekend for six months as a guy with a $1 bill in his pocket and dejected, “What happened to me?” attitude. My physiology was probably hunched over. I'm like, “I sold that house. I'm going to sell this one and I'm getting out of the real estate business.” I'm like that. The Asians are starting to come into Silicon Valley and honest again, a guy comes in with a little case, little duffel bag with a $162,000 of cash and he wants to buy the house from me right there. I got explained to him, “No, you do the whole thing to a title company,” but now I got that deal done.
That's called two sides. I've got the one sale that I sold them and I’ve got the listing sold and the buy-side. I technically got three deals. I manage to get three more deals so I've got six transactions. I have no idea what I'm doing in business, but I would show up at the office every day at 6:30 in the morning, which most realtors don't start work at 6:30 in the morning. I sat behind this guy by the name of Mike Ray, who was the most brilliant realtor I had ever met and that's why I sat right behind him so I could learn from him. He came in at 7:00. Many times, Amy, it was he and I in this room together. He comes in and I'm numbering my deals. He's looking at me like, “What are you doing, Gino?” I go, “Mike, I'm numbering my deals. I’ve got six deals and that's it. I’ve got no idea what I'm doing.” He says to me, “You don't want to ever number your deals.” I go, “Why?” He said this, and this is a defining moment for me, “I've been watching you for the last six months. I've never seen anyone try as hard as you, anyone listened to as many tapes, read as many books. You don't want anyone to know you've only got six deals going at one time.” I said, “How many should I have, Mike?” He goes, “You should have fifteen.”
I thought about that a million times after that because had he been my manager trying to jack me up so I'd sell more houses so the manager looks good. I might not have had the impact, but there was a dude, nothing to do, no benefit to him that I could do fifteen deals, a man of integrity. It changed my self-image of myself. Thirty days later, I had fifteen deals lined up. Ended up, if you went from that first sale in May to the following May, I sold 52 houses back in 1985 when you didn't have a team that was more than anyone at the best company in the entire Bay Area. That's what happened there. That's propelled me into real estate.
You're saying that changed your mindset and I'm hearing a couple of things. He gave you a number to focus on, but I'm also hearing that it was because he personally cared that you could trust him.
He believed. What got me was he believed in me. The number would be nothing, 15, 10, 20, whatever he said, but he believed in me. He changed my own belief in myself. As soon as that happened, as a salesperson, you perform how you see yourself. I didn't know that at the time. I was seeing myself now from a different lens as someone that could do fifteen deals.
I wanted to hold on that for a moment because number one, we don't always understand the impact we have on other people. He didn't know you were following him around all those months.
He knew. He was brilliant. He understood why I wanted to sit by him and things like that. Not that it mattered to him, but he was fully aware that I was sitting behind him for a reason because he was the best guy. I wanted to observe him.
There's so much in that. A lot of times, someone like him can feel threatened by a person like you too because he can see that you are someone that could be as good as him or be a competitor. In order to take yourself out of that and turn around and give you advice like that to help you along, it takes a lot of self-confidence in himself to do that too. I see a lot of leaders that don't do that.
He was well-beyond his time, as far as number one, he was old enough to be my dad. He had already done it and he had studied. He was a student of mindset. He was a student of success. You're familiar with Jim Rohn, the philosopher that has a zillion tapes and a great trainer. You're familiar with Anthony Robbins. Everybody knows Anthony. Anthony worked for Jim Rohn. Jim Rohn did the same thing that Anthony Robbins did. This guy had worked for Jim Rohn also. He had a very good premise on mindset and keeping your thoughts positive and the different things. He understood success. I know for a second if he would have been threatened, he had already done it.
In the sales world, you don't get a lot of people helping out like that. That's very unique.
It's not as unique as you think as sales start to change. It's a mindset of abundance as opposed to a mindset of scarcity. You do get it. In a lot of the older salespeople, it was scarcity, “If I helped that person, I'm getting a less one.” That's changed. That's evolved over time as people have studied, it's a universal law. You don't get until you give. Good salespeople are starting to learn that more and more. That's why there are many Mastermind groups and things like that are big in real estate right now. I know what you mean before, a scarcity mentality is like, “No, I don't want to tell them that because they might compete against me.”
Changing Your Mindset: Have a mindset of abundance as opposed to a mindset of scarcity, and you will get it.
It's such a pivotal moment of where you're ready to quit, you feel like you aren't good enough, “I can't do this and I've done everything.”
You're saying, “If it's not for me, it's not for me.” That's why my story is almost every realtor story. I'll give you one more story from sixth grade, which it'd be very good for your group there too. I had an incredibly strict sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Delanrol. He was from India. He’s very strict and very hardcore. He taught us only English, Math and some poetry. I can remember my first quarter, Amy, it was terrible because I wanted to be a baseball player. I only got an A in PE. They were having a parent-teacher meeting. My dad took time off from work. My mom's in there. I'm sitting outside, in a chair outside, the door and the walls are paper thin so you can hear everything that's going on.
Mr. Delanrol had no filter. It wasn't his style to be politically correct. He told my parents with me listening to what a terrible student I was and how I was not applying myself that I only cared about sports. I can remember being so upset. My dad had taken time off from work to be there. We're driving home and I'm crying because I can't believe this whole thing. You’ve got those doubts in your head. It’s when someone says, “You can't do it. You've got that little chip on your shoulder.” I decided I'm going to study like mad. Finally, after that first-quarter debacle that we had, we had our first test and I did pretty good but I'm still not confident about it because I don't know yet.
Mr. Delanrol had all the tests in his hand and he walked up to the front and I'm thinking, “I hope I did okay,” because now I've got like the buyer's remorse that maybe I didn't do okay. He called me Blefadi and my last name is Blefari but he would pronounce it Blefadi. He would sound it out, “Blefadi, come here.” I come up to the front of the room and I'm standing there and I'm thinking, “Did I blow this test too?” He holds the test up in there and he goes, “The highest grade is Blefadi. If Blefadi can get an A, every one of you can get an A.” That's not the nicest thing to say about you, but that is a true story. Maybe I've had a pretty successful real estate career, but what I tell every new realtor coming in, if Blefadi can do it, they can do it too. There are some messages in there.
It reminded me of my own story. It's funny how these little things happen. While you were talking, I was thinking about, “Is that something you're born with?” I had a fourth-grade teacher that hated me and I don't know why. I remember my parents going to the conference and they came home and said that the teacher does not like me. I was always trying hard and she would mark me down on every paper and I go up to her and I'm like, “I got this.” I remember always being confused and she'd mark me down. In fifth grade, I got knocked down a level in all my classes because my grades were not what they were supposed to be. I was frustrated. I took these IQ type tests to place you in the grades. I studied for it. I kept every textbook, every piece of homework from fourth grade. I studied for this thing because I'm wanting to get back to where I thought I should be. I do think that there's something within you that's a fighter to do those things or are you going to start believing like what you could have done was believed what he said and hung your hat for the year. You wonder what drives that and some and how others may take that completely different. It's interesting. After you’ve got your career going and you were a top sales agent, how did you end up where you are?
Let me pick this story up with them with that. Now I'm a successful agent at Fox & Carskadon and I have my Little League baseball coach. There comes baseball back in there, who had a little company called Contempo Realty and wanted me to come work with him, so I do. I become a partner there. We grew that company. We sell it in 1997 to a Realogy, which is the big Coldwell Banker, the other big real estate company in the country. I have a five-year non-compete that I stay there with them as the president of my old company.
When my five-year non-compete is up and the entrepreneurial juices start flowing again, I moved to start another company. I start this company called Intero. I started Intero at the end of 2002. Intero becomes the fastest organically grown real estate company in the history of real estate. They've been keeping track for 106 years. It grows organically. In other words, no mergers, no acquisitions faster than any company. We ended up doing $1.64 billion in sales during our first year. Here’s a perspective for you, there are 80,000 real estate companies, 83 did $1 billion and we do $1.64 billion. We passed 79,920 companies in our first year.
The next year, we do $6.5 billion, all organically, no mergers, no acquisition. We become the fastest growing real estate company back to back. We do Intero from 2003 basically. In 2014, I'm driving to one of my manager's offices to give them their quarterly bonus check. I get a call completely out of the blue from the chairman of HomeServices, Ron Peltier. He says, “Gino, Warren loves real estate.” I didn't realize he was talking about Warren Buffett, but he was. He said, “He bought a franchise network from Brookfield, which was the old Prudential network and the old GMAC network. They're looking for a CEO and we want to know if you want to do it. We haven't talked to anyone else, but we want to know if you want to do it, I'll call you back in a week.”
I was taken back by that because I already had a company. He called back a week later. I said, “I appreciate this offer, but I'm the owner of an independent company right now, it would be awkward to own Intero and be the president of a brand.” He said, “If you accept this position, we'll make that transition possible for you and we'll buy Intero.” That was another interesting piece because we had gone pretty far with Intero and maybe I'd taken on three more partners at that time. Everybody was a little bit restless on wanting to do more or have a different role, but there are only many roles when you have your little company. “I'm going to be the CEO, sorry. I'm the founder. I’m the guy.” Everybody else has their own ambition. It worked out well with the company.
On May 17th, 2014, we sold Intero Real Estate Services to Warren Buffett’s HomeServices of America. I’ve got to tell you at that time I had a real sense of pride because Warren Buffett who is known worldwide as making prudent business decisions after research, not only came to the conclusion that he wanted to buy Intero, but he was fine with me being the CEO of the company that carries his brand name, Berkshire Hathaway.
We're Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and we were one of the first ones to be able to use the Berkshire name. Since then, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Berkshire Hathaway Auto, there are a few other Berkshire Hathaways, but that was a pretty cool thing. I did that job for several years. I grew that network and in January 2019, I got a call from Ron and he said, “I'm going to need some more help. We've grown so big. We're the largest real estate company in the world. I need to replace myself.” He was the CEO. “I need to replace myself as CEO. I’d like to know if you'd like to do that.” On January 15th, I took on that job. Now, I’m the CEO of the parent company to Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, the franchise brand, it's called HSF Affiliates. We have a mortgage. We have a title. We have insurance. We are positioned to do what the consumer has been looking for all the time. It is a one-stop-shop and we can do your mortgage. We can do your title. We can do your insurance. We can even sell you a franchise and sell your house. We can do those five things and that's all we do.
That's quite a journey. For meeting you, you're very personable, you know the people around you from a personal relationship standpoint, I can pick that up. How do you feel you've been able to keep that authenticity throughout your journey and that you're still involved in other people's personal journey?
The success I have had in real estate has been a fair amount by my own effort of hard but not at all the only thing. I’ve had many mentors along the way that Mike Ray and Bob Moles. Bob Moles gave me my opportunity at Contempo. Jerry Hotman, who was an outside investor that lent me money when we built Intero. Ron Peltier for having the confidence to ask me to be the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, the franchise piece and HomeServices of America. There are have been many people along the way and some of it is luck, some of it is you're at the right place at the right time. There are all sorts of things that play into it. I always try to be mindful of that. You get up in the morning and you look in the mirror, if you have a CEO in your title damped on your forehead, you've lost your way. Smugness comes before arrogance and I believe arrogance is the precursor to disaster. Once you think you know it all, your slide to mediocrity is already beginning. That's that piece to always remember. It's part of my routine. I remind myself of these things every single day. My mission is I help people achieve their goals faster than they would in my absence.
From a real estate aspect, I have the best platform in the world to do that. I didn't realize that you were in the audience when I talked. I was talking about my life plan. Be mindful of it. Don't take yourself too seriously because a lot of people have helped along the way. It was a journey. I've got title guy, Kevin Barrett, if I needed a property profile, he got that quick. If I needed this information, he got it quick. He was there to help me along the way.
When I was listening to you talk about your daily practice and I don't know if you can do it in a brief way, but how you think that practice obviously helped you as a human being, but as a leader to keep you grounded as well.
Probably it might have been even 1986 as I started to study. I discovered I had to have the right mindset, almost be like a fearless mindset when I started my day because when you eat what you kill as a salesperson, there's a lot to sometimes worry about. I developed this routine. There were a few things that got me going. You'll see athletes listening to like hip hop music or something like that. Mine was that poem by Rudyard Kipling that Mr. Delanrol from sixth grade, one of the poems he made us memorize. I had that on my credenza and that would be something I would read every day. If you ever pull out that poem or anybody reading pulls out that poem, it's got some lines like this, “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting too.” It's got such great things for leadership or even this land, “If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools or watch the things you gave your life to broken and stoop and build them up with worn-out tools.” It's got all sorts of things like that.
The thing about like never giving up, “If you can force your heart, nerve and center to serve your turn long after they are gone. Hold on, when there is nothing in you except the will that says to them, ‘hold on.’” I always thought of myself when I was trying to sell the house and the buyer house after house and so hold on, I was inspired by that. Rudyard Kipling is one. I was fortunate enough to have a guy by the name of Og Mandino as a mentor in the ‘90s. Og Mandino wrote the book, The Greatest Salesman In The World, twelve very spiritual books. You will relate to Og Mandino very much on what you do there.
In one of his books, Mission Success!, there was a piece in there, and I was listening to it because I'm auditorial. It was like, “I will live this day as all good actors do when they're on stage only in the moment. I cannot perform at my best on this day by regretting my previous acts, mistakes or worrying about the scenes to come. I'll take off my coat and make dust in the world. I realized the busier I am, the less harm I may have to suffer. The tastier will be my food, the sweeter my sleep, the better satisfied I will be with my place in the world.” It's three minutes of like, “Now I understand the secret of changing the attitudes of others and I have to change my own,” or things like, “If I walk away from any challenge now, my self-esteem will be forever scarred. If I cease to grow a little, I'll become smaller. I reject the stationary position because it's always the beginning of the end.”
Things like that, “I'll keep a smile on my face and in my heart, even when it hurts now. I know the world is a looking glass and gives back to me the reflection of my own soul.” Technically, I am programming my whole brain even my reticular activating system, part of my brain, to notice these things throughout the day because they were part of my routine. There was another one that Napoleon Hill book, Think and Grow Rich. There’s a self-confidence formula in the book. There were four things I would read and that would totally change my state. I programmed good stuff into my head right then. What you focus on expands, you start to notice it. You notice it out there. I notice to do more of the right things by programming those right things in my head.
Not focusing on negativity so it was very powerful. I love that you shared that. I'd like to end the show with a few rapid-fire questions. You pick a category. The category is either family or friends, money, spiritual or health.
Changing Your Mindset: There are only so many roles when you have your little company.
Let's do one on money for the heck of it.
Things or actions I don't have that I want with money. What do you want that you don't have?
When it comes to money, I have what I want. I sold the seventh-largest real estate company in the country and I bought this sport coat a few years ago and I'm still wearing it.
What are the things or actions that I don't have that I don't want with money?
I don't want to lose it.
Lastly, what are the things that I do have that I don't want as far as money?
The potential complacency that it could give you. I don't think I have that, but I'm pleased but not satisfied.
I appreciate you sharing what you shared, it's going to mean a lot to a lot of people. Is there anything you want to make sure that people take away from this conversation that you haven't been able to say or you want to make sure that's a big takeaway for them?
I'll give you a couple of takeaways. One, I made it pretty clear that if I did it, they could do it and whatever done all that anyway. It's always a journey. It's not a destination piece. It's a journey. There are many things that happen along the way, people that you run into that help you, luck that you might have and all sorts of circumstances sometimes come together.
You have to keep your eyes open to it. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I appreciate the conversation.
Changing Your Mindset: The world is a looking glass that gives you back the reflection of your own soul.
It’s the same here too, Amy. I hope it went okay.
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I want to reflect upon some of the great teachings that he had shared during his journey of becoming a leader, and the work that it takes and perseverance in order to achieve the success and goals that you set up for yourself. It is an interesting background of how he started and got his interest in the real estate industry. Even more important is what he did in college, understanding behavior and human mindset, which ended helping to serve him and the goals that he set for himself throughout his life. I love the part with sales that a lot of times, people don’t succeed in sales because they can’t take the rejection. It doesn’t have to be in sales, it can be anything that we go out and ask for, that next promotion, someone to help you with a project. Whatever it is, it is having the confidence to find a way to ask a question to get success. The way he looked at with six noes before you get a yes, I realized that there is always another way to ask a question and it has to be a negotiable. If you are going to ask selfishly, you are not always going to get the result that you want. This serves as whether in business or personal life.
It is important to understand the needs of another person and how do you keep pivoting that question to get the outcome that you want, but also to serve the person that you are trying to get something from, that they are getting something from that as well. It is something that’s missing a lot of times when we go out for certain things that we want in our lives. We are focused on what these things are. We are not necessarily taking it into consideration what is important to the other person and how do we make it to that person feels good about the decision to help as well or to buy or whatever that decision is?
From the standpoint of perseverance, when he talked about how he had no sales, he was working so hard every single day, the important part was that he showed up. He didn’t give up. He set a timeline for himself of how long he is going to keep doing this for. Until that timeline was going to end, he will work his fullest every single day. That starts with him showing up at 6:30 in the morning at the office and finding mentors. This is important that aren’t necessarily new or corporate entity set you up with. He identified who he wanted to learned from and started sitting behind him or being where he was so that he could learn and gain from them. A lot of times, we have mentors that don’t even know that they are our mentor. In this case, what ended up being a pivotal moment for him is that these mentors started seeing that he started doing that and believed that he can make it. It is important that we understand that we have certain accomplishments. It is how we give back to the people who were struggling just like we were when we started out. How do give them the tips that are going to make it important or critical for giving that hurdle to accomplish what you want?
He also talked about his sixth-grade teacher who didn’t enjoy him as a student, but because of the way that the teacher treated him, he took it as a challenge rather taking it personally. A lot of times, when people respond to the ways that we didn’t expect, we start wondering with us instead of realizing what their experiences and perception of we don’t know. All we know is who we can be the best that we can be. He took on the challenge and ended up getting his highest grade with that teacher and his teacher saying, “If he can do it, everyone can do it.” That ended up being a mantra for him as he went through his life. What types of things can we pull out from our experiences and use this as our mantra to ignite us and inspire us to stay on the journey, even if we are feeling it is too hard. Rounding, throwing it in and repeating that mantra that will help us. He shared his daily practices that he calls a fearless mindset to ensure that every day, he shows up with energy so that he could be the best that he can be for the people around him and himself.
I think we overlooked how important it is on how we start our day and how we set our mindset to achieve the things that we want, rather than the day happening to us. How do we get the day going the day we want it? He shared a few of the things he’s done during his daily practice. One, he reads this poem from sixth-grade that helps him to get inspired and fired up for the day. He talks about different energy or attitude he wants to create through the day rather than just being about himself, it is also about how he affects others. That is important for anything that we want to succeed in life, that we are very aware of how we affect others so that they want to be in our orbit and they want to share energy with us. The other thing is how important these daily practices are in self-confidence building and making sure that he is focused on the things that he wants to be focused on. If there are things coming up for him, where he doesn’t feel confident, what kind of shifts would he need to make on that day? All in all, one of the biggest messages I got from my conversation with Gino is it is always a journey, not a destination. There are many things that can happen along the way if we stay aware and decide where we might want to pivot along the way to achieve the life that we desire.
Important Links:
@GinoBlefari on Instagram
About Gino Blefari
Gino Blefari is the chief executive officer for HomeServices of America, the country’s largest residential real estate brokerage company based on transactions. He is also chairman of HSF Affiliates LLC which operates the franchise networks of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and Real Living Real Estate. Gino is the chairman of both brands, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and Real Living Real Estate.
Blefari joined the HomeServices of America family from Silicon Valley, CA-based Intero Real Estate Services, Inc., which he founded in 2002 and through mid-2014 served as its president and CEO. Under Blefari’s direction, Intero became the fastest organically growing companies in the history of real estate.
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