Black Swan is continually dedicated to improving our skills, communication, and teamwork to better serve our community and be the best property management company ever–all of which benefits our investors with increased returns! At our Q1 company retreat in February, we focused on our goals for the year and how to reach them FASTER. Between team bonding, mindset exercises, and learning about the basic human needs, we reviewed our goals for Black Swan in 2022 and beyond.
One of the questions we focused on while we reviewed our goals for the year was this: will it make the boat go faster? No, not a literal boat–we prefer our wings–but the metaphorical business boat that we’re all on. The question essentially translates to: will it make us reach our goals faster?
After a disappointing 7th place finish at the World Championship, the 1998 Great Britain Men’s Eight rowing team set a goal for themselves: win an Olympic Gold Medal in two years. This is a team that consistently finished in the bottom at their races, the goal seemed crazy. Impossible. So, they challenged everything they did with the simple question: “Will it make the boat go faster?” If it did, they kept that process. If it didn’t, they’d change that process and try something new. They focused on their performance, and low and behold, two years later, the team won Gold at the Sydney Olympics. The question Will it Make the Boat Go Faster became a best-selling book and later a consultancy service, since their philosophy was so universal.
We’ve taken the question, will it make the boat go faster, and applied it to Black Swan. The whole team reviewed their daily processes–from fund management to leasing to maintenance–and asked themselves if those processes make us reach our goal of building a billion dollar company faster. We were identifying what holds us back and what pushes us forward. It was a very insightful exercise.
In the name of radical transparency, we want to share the results of this exercise, in hopes that you might be able to implement these processes in your own life. We learned that overthinking, procrastination, uncertainty, and perfectionism do NOT make the boat go faster, they slow us down. It felt great to identify those things, get them off our chests, and kick them to the curb. We also learned that lots of things DO make the Black Swan boat go faster. We identified trust, organization, accountability, and ownership, and focused on how to keep doing those things every day.
The formula is really that simple. In this quick exercise, we found numerous ways to alter our daily routines so we can work smarter, not harder. To do all things with intention. To get there faster. This works for managing more properties, and for going from launching a $10M fund to launching a $30M fund in six months. We’ve created a trust-driven, high performance work culture so that we can be the best property owners and managers out there.
You can work smarter, too, to be the best version of yourself. Think about something you do every day and ask yourself: is this making me reach my goals faster? Is this helping me toward the gold medal in my life? It can be as big as reviewing your work structure, as minute as scrutinizing the 10 minutes you spend scrolling on your phone in the morning.
Let’s make the boat go faster together.
Join us in Rochester, Minnesota July 15-17 for Black Swan | Real Estate | Real Life, our first-ever in person event. Tickets are on sale NOW through June 24.
We can’t wait to see you.
We’re here to flip the script, to lead with intention, and to make the world a better place to live. As we review our goals and edit our processes, our mission remains the same: to help as many people as possible find the financial freedom that we get to enjoy every single day. We’re here to give you the inspiration and support you need–for all things real estate investing, and for your personal life too. We’re here to guide you to financial freedom as fast as we can get you there, with intention and transparency.