The five things I give an F about (so I’m not just about business).

CRE Success Principle: Leaders who stay connected to the people, passions, and pursuits that matter to them outside of work tend to lead with more clarity and energy.

It’s easy to start the new financial year by setting another revenue goal. But is that what matters most?

This year, I’ve been encouraging my private clients to think holistically – and set goals that reflect what truly matters to them.

Because success isn’t just measured by money in the bank. It’s also about how your business supports your life.

In Episode 231 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership, I share five F-words: family (and friends), fitness, flying, football and finances.

These are things that give my work meaning and my business purpose.

I also share the concept of a ‘freedom goal’ – a target that reflects your personal motivators and helps you make business decisions that align with your lifestyle and values. 

So as you plan for another financial year, this episode is your invitation to think beyond the numbers – and to set goals that energise you, not just grow your revenue. 

Episode transcript:

For the start of the 2025-2026 financial year here in Australia, I've been setting three goals with my clients. A financial goal, a cultural goal, and a freedom goal.

And the freedom goal really represents what it is that they give an F about outside of their business.

And to help you identify what freedom means to you, in today's episode, I'm talking about the five things that I give an F about, so I'm not just all about business.

Hello, welcome to Commercial Real Estate Leadership. I'm Darren Krakowiak. We're up to episode 231.

I help commercial real estate principals to lead their people better, to grow their business faster, and to have less stress in their lives.

And the way that we've been doing this with my private clients this month is working with them to set three goals: A financial goal, a cultural goal, and a freedom goal.

So we set a number of financial goals based on various metrics that we track in the business across sales, leasing, and property management in terms of total revenue, in terms of productivity per person, in terms of transaction size and property management, annual recurring revenue per tenancy.

There are a lot of metrics that we track, but I ask my clients to just set one financial goal which will be meaningful for them, that would contribute to the overall financial goals.

I ask them to also set one cultural goal. A cultural goal being really related to the culture of the business, the values that are represented and reflected within the business, whether that's a change that they can make in terms of how they're showing up in the business or something which they would like to see reflected in the business to ensure that that's a business that they're proud of and that the people inside the business are happy to be there.

And also when people are dealing with the business, they get that positive impression because of the way things are done and how it feels to interact with people in the business.

And then there was the freedom goal. Now, the freedom goal balances those commitments that are made on business and also on, I guess, personal commitments that people make from a professional sense.

Now, if you're all about growing your business, but there's no point to it in terms of what's important to you outside of business, it means that you're going to, I guess, lack of meaning in your life.

And that's why I believe you need something or a list of things outside of what you do to give your work more meaning.

Now, with some of my clients, identifying what the freedom goal should be wasn't straightforward and easy. For some of them, it was. For some of them, it wasn't because some of my clients are selfless people. They want to, I guess, just serve their business, serve their people within it and work as hard as they can for their families.

But when they say something like that, I say, well, family is a reason, right? That's a freedom goal. What can we do to maybe help you spend some more time with your family that is so important to you?

So what I thought I'd do in today's episode is list some of my favourite F words, that is words that start with the letter F that matter most to me outside of business that represent freedom and fun.

And maybe one of those will help you identify something that you should set as a freedom goal in 2025, 2026.

So let's get into it. The first one was family and friends. So family is kind of like that North Star for a lot of us and it's the biggest ‘why’ there is.

Friends, I think having good friends is important. It's kind of a little inner circle that keeps you grounded. A couple of my friends like to remind me of what an idiot I used to be.

And that is, I guess, grounding, right? It reminds you that where you came from and it also keeps you, I guess, centred and not allowing you to get too far ahead of yourself.

Second one for me is fitness. So fitness for me is about, you know, committing from a discipline sense to go to the gym five times a week.

It gives me that energy, it clears my head and it does keep me healthy, particularly given that my diet probably isn't as disciplined as I am when it comes to going to the gym.

The third F word for me is flying. So flying in terms of travel. I've always loved travel. I love getting on an aeroplane. I like being able to jet off somewhere. It's a great representation of freedom.

And I also enjoy discussing the airline industry. I like talking about frequent flyer points, tiers of membership in loyalty programmes and also talking about hotels.

In fact, the travel section of the weekend newspapers is one of the first sections that I read on the weekend.

Number four for me in terms of F words that I give an F about is football. So the Carleton Football Club is my team in the AFL. Hasn't been a fantastic year, but I've still followed. I've gone along to seven games, I think now.

And there are other elements of football that I like as well, apart from just football itself. There's the footy tipping element, which I'm very competitive at, although I haven't had a great year this year. In previous years though, I've been right into it and committed to actually doing everything I can to try and win the footy tipping competition.

Other elements of football I like is, it's something to follow, which is about leadership. The leadership within the clubs from an organisational sense, but also in football from the captain to the coach and the leadership group. It's about organisations. It's about culture. It's about teams and also the people and their roles within it.

Number five for me in terms of F words that I give an F about is finances. Now I know I said finances, cultural and freedom goals were the three categories, but finance is something that's important to me in my personal life as well.

And I think having your finances in a good condition is a type of freedom to pursue. Money won't make you happy, but it does amplify how you feel.

So if you're already a grumpy person, more money's probably going to make you just, it'll give you the ability to be more grumpy.

But if you're happy, it'll probably give you the ability to spread more positivity into the world. It does make life easier and more comfortable as well if you have your finances in order.

And one little hack that I heard from Alex Hormozi, which I really liked, it was, “Don't open your phone in the morning and look at your emails or look at your social media. The first thing that you want to look at is your bank account, because what you focus on is where your attention is.”

So having a look at your bank account, I don't do that by the way, I'm not that obsessed, but I do have certain financial goals I'm working towards pursuing because they represent the freedom, the financial freedom that I want in my life.

Now, there are a few honourable mentions in terms of other F words that I wanted to share with you that are important to me or that are interests of mine in my life.

One of them is federal politics. So both here in Australia and also in the US, federal politics is something that I've always followed since I was a teenager.

Now it's probably a bit of a distraction. It's low vibe when I compare following federal politics to say football.

Football is not low vibe. You're not going to get into a heated argument with someone about football, it might invoke some passion, but it's probably not going to change your opinion about the other person or them change their opinion of you based on your beliefs or your allegiances in football, whereas in politics it can.

So I recognise that it's probably not always a positive interest to have, but at the end of the day, I do love it. And if I was going to be on a TV show and they let you pick your category, for me, it would be federal politics in Australia or US presidential politics.

Another F word that I love is food. But I'm not a foodie, for me, it's mainly junk food.

So we just had our seventh year wedding anniversary this month, Juwon and I. And we were in Bali and we went to this restaurant called Koral.

You can look it up, it's Koral with a K and it's a fancy restaurant. It was probably the most money I've ever spent on one lunch anyway in my life. But while it was definitely nice, it was like inside this cave aquarium, it was pretty cool.

But I'm more interested in things like pizza, ribs, burgers, ice cream, lollies, chocolate. When I go overseas, I am interested in, like in Bali, having the Nasi goreng, but I actually like trialling the food at breakfast on holidays, right?

So rather than just having bacon and eggs every morning, I like to go to the local breakfast section where they've got the rice and the chicken and the different flavours.

And that's where I'll be interested in trying some local cuisine. And then at lunch and dinner, I can order pizza and burgers are the things that I actually like. So yeah, food is another one for me.

Films is another F word that I give an F about. My first job was at a cinema when I was 14 years old. And I used to go to this cinema nearly every week. I was obsessed with films and I got that job. And my favourite films are Cinema Paradiso and Manhattan.

And I probably don't watch as many movies as I would like now, but just last weekend, I did watch a movie, Zombieland, which was probably at the beginning of all this post-apocalyptic, anyway, the zombie era of movies. It was one of the first ones, Woody Harrelson. It was really good. So I enjoyed being able to sit there for 90 minutes and just relax. That's a type of freedom.

And one other F word that represents freedom for me and that is important to me and that I give an F about is frequency. And I don't mean in terms of vibrations and all of that.

I just made it in terms of a radio frequency because anyone who knows me from when I was a kid knew that I was also obsessed with radio.

And it's still something that there's a podcast about radio now that I like listening to, just because it reminds me of when I worked in radio as a teenager and as a young man.

And my favourite frequency as a kid was 101.1. And I ended up working there for a couple of years as an announcer. So that was something that I set out to do that I wanted to do that I accomplished and that I still have some very fond memories of.

So there are some things that are important to me. They're the things that I give an F about that represent freedom, that represent fun.

And I hope that me sharing this has just maybe illuminated in you the things that are important to you.

So the question I've got for you is what do you give an F about?

And they don't all have to be things that start with the letter F as I've done just for the alliteration and the hook that hopefully we'll create from the content that flows from this episode.

But it's really just about, you know, what are the five Fs that represent freedom for you? They could be P's, they could be Q's, they don't even have to start with the same letter because you're probably not going to make a podcast about it.

But reconnecting with the things that are important to you can help give meaning to all the work that you're doing in your business.

That is our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening. I will speak to you soon.