How I built a successful business by embracing mistakes

I often get asked by my colleagues in the Berlin real estate industry how we became successful, and how we keep building on our success. So I decided to share my thoughts on this with you here and, I guarantee, most people will not like the answer! Why? Because the road to success is a difficult one, involving persistence and making a lot of mistakes.

The first piece of advice I can share is to value your team. Foster an environment of motivation, experimentation, and constant learning. Be generous in sharing your expertise and time with your employees, and in turn they will be motivated to work hard and learn constantly. When you make it clear, through your own example, that experimenting – looking for new answers to old problems – is a good thing, what you develop is a group of people who support, encourage, and work for each other. It’s about trust!

Creating positive internal dynamics translates to the relationships you build with your clients. We provide 360 degree service and a personalised approach to our clients because it comes naturally to us, based on how we treat each other as a team. This in turn drives our success as a business, which cycles back into team motivation. Check out ‘A habit for success’ for more of my thoughts on team building.

Now, remember that difficult road to success that I mentioned earlier? It’s full of problematic potholes. But, if you have a positive attitude towards problems, you can transform them from potholes into opportunities. Problems are valuable, they inspire you to think and work creatively. When you create a new a solution to an old problem, you don’t just solve a problem, you might actually also create a new opportunity; one you probably wouldn’t even have considered if you hadn’t looked at problem solving in a positive manner. 

Through constant learning and developing, we have achieved success and are motivated to keep building on our success. We learn not only from problems, but from our failures too. We have built a successful Berlin real estate agency by acknowledging the importance of failing well – every mistake is an opportunity to learn how to do things better. 

I know a lot of successful people, from actors to business people to musicians, who work towards their goals with 100% devotion, learning constantly, trying things out, falling on their faces, and getting up again. Nobody achieves success overnight. Through persistence and being devoted to what you do, and playing the game long enough, you can get a part of the cookie. That's how it is! That’s how I became a top-ranking seller at Ziegert/KnightFrank, and how I keep building on the success of my own business. 

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