Getting hired is one of the hardest things to do. The anxiety level is always high.

At Hotel AG, getting hired on a listing is the single most important trait you can have as a hotel broker. Without the ability to sit in front of a seller and earn his trust, you will never make it our line of work. Over the years, I have hired some of the best educated and best trained folks that didn’t make it. I have hired lawyers, appraisers, and market study specialists along with all levels of executives. It always comes down to one factor: getting hired.

That’s our business, but I would imagine that every job and every business has its tell-all factors. Without the ability to succeed at those factors, you won’t last long.

I find that regardless of what your business or job is that if you put yourself in your manager’s shoes, you will realize what is important in his/her eyes. Knowing what’s important will allow you to focus on those points. As everyone knows, I spent many years in the food business. During that experience, I learned many things about business that I would not have learned otherwise. The food business is so tough because there are so many areas that impact the guest. In the hotel world, the guest just needs a smiling face at check in and a clean room. The owner has all day to get these two points right. In the food business, there are no less than 10 constant guest impact areas from the look of the restaurant to the speed of the order to the food quality.

It is often said that you can run a 100-room hotel easier than you can run a 2-seat restaurant. The client’s expectation in the food business is so great that very few new restaurants make it.

I say all of that because in every business, there are important things to watch for but also the real important things. It is knowing the real important things and factors that will determine your longevity in that business or in that job. So, in hotel brokerage it doesn’t matter what your education is (I am proof of that), or your speaking ability is (I am also the proof of that), but it comes down to if people like you and trust you. I don’t care if you sell hotels, cut grass, wait tables, pastor a church, or you work for a large company, your success always comes down to if the people around you like you, trust you, and respect you.

People can see a phony a mile away. Even little children and dogs can tell if they can trust the person. The only folks that think trust is not important are the untrustworthy men and women. I also believe that taking a close look at yourself is the only way to improve your working life.

It is often said that the two most important things that will change you over the next five years are the people you meet and the books you read. I like to add a third component to that, and it is the relationship you have with your heavenly father. If you can improve those three areas, there is a great chance you will improve you. KT

In business, longer is usually not better. More business professionals want to get to the point quickly so a decision can be made.

My mentor, Harmon Born, used to say “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” What he means is that when we really focus on a project, the simple way is usually the best approach. I get these emails from companies that are long, and it takes a chunk of time to get to the point. In reality, they could have zeroed in on the subject in about one paragraph.

An example of when you want to be long winded is if you are an appraiser. An appraisal is never read completely because it is so very long and goes painfully into verbiage about every aspect of the property that is being appraised. With an appraisal, there needs to be a weighty factor involved; the report needs to be thick, so when it goes in the file no one will question if it was done well.

Aside from the appraisal example, the better approach is to be on point and focused whether it is speaking or the written word.

There is no better example of this subject than Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. A guy by the name of Edward Everett, who was a politician, pastor, educator and diplomat, spoke right before Lincoln was to make his address. Everett’s speech was two hours long and 13,607 words. Aside from the fact that the audience tuned him out after five minutes, he wanted to show everyone how smart he was, and he especially wanted Lincoln to be impressed with him. After he finished, the President of the United States steps up and delivered a three paragraph speech known as the Gettysburg address. It was so short that it stunned the audience. Lincoln only spoke for a few minutes and sat back down. I have often wondered what Everett thought after the President finished in a few minutes and he talked on and on for two hours.

Ask yourself, which speech got more recognition? Obviously it was Lincoln’s, and that little speech has gone into history as one of the finest examples of English public oratory.

We have a term at Hotel AG called SIBKIS. It means to “see it big and keep it simple.” So, when Harmon Born said that if he had more time, he would have written a shorter letter, I knew what he meant. KT

Everyone is different, and we all have different personalities. I am continually amazed at what drives other people.

I worked with a broker 13 years ago who was undoubtedly the messiest man I had ever worked with. The filing system he had was a stack on his desk for each deal he was working on; that stack stayed on his desk until the transaction closed. I have a good friend that is an LA attorney, and he is the same way. His office is a complete and total disaster. Both of these guys were successful and the clutter didn’t faze them at all.

I am on the opposite end of that spectrum because everything I do has to be organized from the car to the closet to the office to my email inbox. It has to be clean and organized. I worked with a guy once that was a commercial contractor. When I saw his office, I made a decision that’s how I wanted to be. His desk literally did not have anything on it. Just the clean wood top. Every deal has its own file, and he would work on one file at a time and once completed, he would put the file away. Since then, I have always had every deal in its own file and off of my desk.

There is no right or wrong way to do things because everyone is different. For me, getting an area like a garage cleaned up and organized actually helps me think clearer; getting my office straight and in order helps me sell better. For me it is almost spiritual, but not to the point of compulsion.

I will say that when I was in the Marines, they didn’t give us the option of deciding how we liked things. Ha. No, we were told how to do everything down to how to fold our underwear. Then, were inspected to make sure we did it just like they told us. You don’t see sloppy Marines. I guess I did learn some things while I was in.

So, try it both ways and then decide for yourself which way you like it best. See how you think better. In regards to organization, don’t just keep doing things the same way without trying it another way. You may surprise yourself and realize that the environment you are in may help you think clearer or trigger a better thought process. It is all opinions and again, there is not a wrong way or a right way. KT

One of the core philosophies at Hotel AG is to tell the client what you can do and then simply go do it. We do not tell hotel clients what they want to hear regarding the value of their hotel, rather we tell them what they need to hear. We do not want to tell a client a value that is above where we truly believe we can sell the asset for because we will be sitting in front of that same client 6 months later trying to explain why it didn’t work.

There are many things we all learned when we were little kids. Maybe we need a refresher course. A few things we learned are as follows:

Listen to the teacher

Play fair with others

Always tell the truth

No scratching or hitting

Use your inside voice

Never lie

Do the best you can

Don’t take things that aren’t yours

Hold hands and stick together

Those simple things we learned are all still good instructions for us as adults. Whatever your business is, it is still the simple things that determine whether you are successful or not and whether people trust and hire you. In our business, we believe people hire who they trust and like. We also believe that while phones, emails, texts are all good, we find the market maker is when you go see them in person. I believe when you get face-to-face is where the magic happens.

So, whoever you work for, whatever your company is, and regardless of your line of work, follow these same rules. I believe if you do these things, you will go further in your job, be more successful in what you do, and change more lives you come in contact with. KT