Avoiding shiny objects and staying on track.

CRE Success Principle: When professionals connect with peers in a structured group, accountability rises, insights multiply, and results compound.

In commercial real estate, opportunity is everywhere. New ideas, markets, and approaches to business can tempt us away from what matters most.

But if there is one lesson I have learned, it is that specialisation beats chasing shiny objects every time.

The Power of Focus

When you define your niche and focus your energy, you get results faster and deliver more value to clients.

Distractions might look attractive, but they often slow progress and dilute impact.

Building a Strong Community

One of the ways I’ve grown my business is by creating a community of like-minded commercial real estate principals.

By bringing clients together in mastermind settings, they benefit not just from my insights but from each other’s experiences. Accountability and collaboration make the results even stronger.

Finding True Passion

I believe there are five traits that create success in commercial real estate: passion, persistence, positive thinking, preparation, and professionalism.

Passion doesn’t have to mean loving real estate itself. It can be about leadership, helping others, or simply striving to win. The key is finding what energizes you and using that to fuel your business.

If you want to learn how stayed focused, build community, and find your passion to drive lasting results, check out episode 238 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership. 

Episode transcript:

We live in a world of abundance and opportunity.

And that means that sometimes we could get distracted because there are always shiny objects that come along and try and entice us to stop what we are focused on and to start pursuing other things.

But that is not always the right course.

In today’s episode, which is the final installment of the interview that I had on the Real Estate Renovators with Rex Afrasiabi and Chanell McAsey, I am talking about the importance of specialization, of having focus, of defining your niche, because that is probably the fastest route to get to the results that you want, and also it allows you to deliver the best possible results for your clients.

This is episode 238 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership. My name is Darren Krakowiak. I help commercial real estate principals to lead their people to better performance, to grow revenue in their business faster, and have less stress in their lives.

And last episode, I told you that I was just about ready to close the doors on this first ever founding members cohort intake of CRE Success Agent Accelerator, the program which is all for commercial real estate agents, where we are helping them to stop just operating with the best of intentions and to start operating with the highest of standards.

I actually talk a little bit about my plan to relaunch the program in today’s episode, and I talk about the monthly calls in the program. Well, we have enhanced that; it is now weekly calls.

And I have just hired two fantastic coaches to support me in the delivery of the program, including an amazing mindset coach who is going to help our members in the program.

We have got, by the way, 10 members in there. We sold out the first cohorts, and we have another cohort that we will be doing at the end of this month.

The mindset coach is going to be responsible for helping our members find their motivation, their mojo, removing blockages, shifting beliefs, and moving closer towards what our members want.

We have also got an amazing accountability coach that we just hired in the program as well.

So, it is a massive upgrade on the previous iteration of the program that we have for commercial real estate agents.

If you want to know more, if you want to be the first to be invited into the next cohort—the last one sold out—join the waitlist at cresuccess.co/waitlist

So, back to the final installment of my interview on the Real Estate Renovators.

We talked a little bit about how I built the business after 11 years overseas. It was through a lot of prospecting in the early days, and still, I am not averse to picking up the phone and making a cold call. I try and warm them up a bit, but I still do that to this day.

We talk about the way that clients—commercial real estate principal clients—become qualified to join a special group that we have, which is a really tight-knit community.

I will talk about some of the activities that we do together within that group and how commercial real estate principals can join that group.

And finally, we talk about where passion comes from. And I make a couple of maybe slightly cross references in this episode, including one to an old friend of mine called Duncan, who I used to work with.

If I had my time over again, maybe I might have just slightly explained the way that I referenced Duncan and also the woman in the red dress, which I talk about as well when talking about specialization.

But, you know, I said it, and this is the raw footage, so I am sharing it with you right now.

I hope you enjoy this final installment of my interview on the Real Estate Renovators.

Interview:

Chanell:

CRE Success is also about community. I know that is a big part of your business. How has building a like-minded network elevated your business?

Rex:

So, can I step back and just say—can you elaborate on how you built the community? What is the community?

Darren:

Well, mainly through graft. I built my business mainly through prospecting. When I came back to Australia, I did not have a lot of relationships that were long-standing in commercial real estate.

Rex:

You’ve gone for 11 years.

Darren:

Yes, I was gone for a long time. And also, the people who I serve now—they are not with the firms that I worked for. They are working with those independent boutique and franchised firms. So, the first thing I had to do was to go out there and generate leads, prospect them, and recruit them as clients.

Now that has happened, there is the opportunity for me to bring some of those clients together. And so, one thing that I have done is I started coaching some of my clients. You only qualify for this if you have been with me for one year, and if you are within a certain revenue range, and—yeah, I can say this—if I believe that you will be a good person for the group, because I do not want to interrupt the ecosystem.

But I coach some of my clients now in a group, and that is a community in and of itself.

Rex:

So, creating communities

Darren:

Yes, it is a couple of things that creates some more leverage in my business because rather than doing one-on-one, I am coaching a group of people at the same time. But the results that they are getting are even better when they are in the group.

Because they are not only accountable to me, they are accountable to each other. They are not only hearing my insights; they are hearing each other’s insights. They have been through the program with me, they have learnt my frameworks, my mechanisms, they have applied them.

Maybe they have applied something that one of the other group members have not, and that is the opportunity for them.

We do things like where we go under the hood of certain businesses—and Tony has done it, and a number of my other clients have done it—where they say, “These are my numbers. These are some challenges that I am facing. You know, what do you guys think?”

Another thing I did is I had all of those clients that are in the group in Melbourne—it was May—and we had a half-day masterminding session where there were two main agenda items. One of them was, “What is something great that has happened in my business?” Once we heard all of them, we then identified one person to unpack how they achieved that result.

And the next thing we did is talk about one problem in your business that you would like the group to help you solve, and everyone got 20 minutes allocated to solve that problem. And then we went to the footy in a corporate box and had some fun.

Rex:

Awesome!

Darren:

So, that is how you generate community, right? Through bringing like-minded people together.

Rex:

This is your community, effectively then.

Chanell:

What is your vision for the next chapter?

Darren:

I feel like I have neglected a little bit my program—or not neglected the program, I have neglected the growth of the program for commercial real estate agents.

I have got a fantastic digital course, which is called Top Performer. It has 6 modules which cover mindset, prospecting, personal branding, winning more listings, time management, and also what I call client accumulation, which is getting more repeat business referrals, that sort of thing.

But I have been really focused on my commercial real estate principal clients, and I have not done a lot when it comes to promoting that digital course. There is a membership that exists within that as well.

So that is the next thing I want to do. I want to scale that up a bit because I have done the hard work of actually creating this digital product.

And it is very leveraged because the main way to get the result from that product is to watch the videos, to do the accountability exercises that we send you after the videos, and to turn up for the monthly calls. We have got a monthly training session for commercial real estate agents.

Rex:

So, can I add some things—and sorry to interrupt you. Why just commercial?

I love the principles on leadership, mindset. All of this is not just for commercial agents; it’s not on residential. Yes, some of the intricacies of how to upgrade is different, but have you thought about expanding?

I know we have discussed this before. I wanted to discuss it on camera because I think—I have seen it firsthand what you provide to your clients. I have heard it from your clients firsthand. And I have seen it.

What you offer is a holistic approach. You go in and you find out, even with Tony and others, that your management is too high, your trust accounting is too high.

Most coaches are telling you, “This is how you call people; this is your script and dialogue.” You do not do that. You delve deep into someone’s business.

I think commercial agents are doing phenomenal as a result of your coaching, but there is no one—and you say there are residential coaches—I do not know of any residential coaches that do what you do. I genuinely do not.

Chanell:

It's like a business audit, almost like a complete audit of the business.

Rex:

In all aspects, from leadership to benchmarking. They usually go to six different people to get that course. I think some of my residential clients are going to benefit from this so much. So, it is probably selfish for their purposes, but they are good friends as well.

So, have you thought about expanding it to a residential?

Darren:

That said you raised it with me the other day on the Zoom call for this interview.

Rex:

And sorry to put you on camera like this.

Darren:

I have not yet. Probably I want to reach a certain threshold in my business before I start doing other things.

One of the things that I have learned is that specialization is important.

There is always going to be—I do not know if you guys follow Alex Hormozi, but he talks about the woman in the red dress, right? In The Matrix, when Neo is doing his training exercises, there is this hot woman that walks past him. And it is distracting, right? That is sort of like all these other business ideas that people come to me with. With the greatest of respect, they are shiny objects or distractions.

I feel like I have got some more things to do when it comes to commercial real estate that are going to help me hit my income goals. I think I need to hit that certain threshold first.

Then I might be able to transfer some of those frameworks, mechanisms, philosophies, beliefs, and processes through to other sectors.

It is funny you mention residential. I have probably more thought about commercial mortgage brokers as the next iteration of my business. Or it could be just expanding internationally with more intention, because all of my private clients are in Australia. We do have members in other countries, but there are a lot of expansion opportunities there.

As I think about it while talking to you, Rex and Chanell, one thing is that the quality of the product might suffer a bit if I was looking for it to work for more people.

I think the product that I offer works because it is focused on a particular person, which is that commercial real estate principal—or, in the case of the membership and the digital course, it is for commercial real estate agents.

Can other people glean value from what I have to say? Yeah, of course. But when I am delivering the coaching, when I am delivering the training, I have one person in mind, and that is a commercial real estate agent.

Chanell:

I think you have got to have your niche, master your niche.

Rex:

 And I love the passion for it. The passion is your commercial, no matter what, isn’t?

Darren:

You are not going to be a seller.

Chanell:

I love it. For anyone thinking about entering the commercial space before we wrap this up, Darren, what is one piece of advice you would give them?

Darren:

When I first launched CRE Success back in 2020, creating an ebook was one way to create a little funnel. So, I thought, “OK, I will write an ebook.”

I identified five principles that all started with the letter P—or five traits, I guess—that I would recommend that should exist in order to be successful in commercial real estate.

When I was working for some of those big firms, sometimes people would ask me, “What are the things that make you successful, or what are the traits that make you successful, as opposed to the activities or the tasks?”

The five principles, or the five traits, are passion, persistence, positive thinking, preparation, and professionalism.

 So, they're the five elements that I believed should be present.

I always had the four that I enlisted after passion. I always knew it was persistence, positive thinking, preparation, and professionalism. Passion was the one that I struggled with, because I am not really passionate per se about real estate.

I am passionate about what I do—helping clients, leadership, helping people be the best version of themselves. It’s just, the easiest way for me to help people do that is through the experience that I have in commercial real estate. So, I have passion for that.

I always had passion for what I did, whether it was just because I was competitive and liked to win, or passion as a leader, or ambition to make more money, or to rise through the ranks in these different corporate environments. My passion was there. I just had not identified that it was the thing that gave me the drive to help me be successful.

So, the answer to your question I’d be thinking about: do I have those five things?

If you do not have passion for real estate, if you do not have passion—if someone is watching this and is not in real estate— you don't need to have passion for what you do. You just need to be able to get some passion from what you do, or have passion about a certain aspect of it.

One thing that a guy told me one time—it is not too crass, so I can say it. He was very good at meeting women. I said to him, “Duncan, how do you do it? You are not the best-looking guy.”

And he said to me, “Well, you know what? I just find something about them I like, and I focus on that.”

What a great insight. You need to find what it is that you like about what you do and focus on that. That is where the passion will come from.

There is a bit of online chatter about whether you need passion about what you do. Should you just focus on making money? I think as long as you can find something to be passionate about within what you do, that will be the thing that makes going to work or getting out of bed every day not a chore.

Rex:

So, why? If you do not have that passion, it is hard to get up on those hard days. But if it is your driving force, your passion, then it is easy to go through anything because you want to.

Chanell:

Niggling sound in the back of your head that gets you up in the morning. There is always something. It could be money, it could be people, it could be the environment, it could be the culture—it could be anything. You just have to find that one thing.

Darren:

And when people say money—yes, we are in this industry, a lot of people do make money—but there is always a reason why, right?

It could be significance, it could be for their family, it could be to do good in the world, it could be to be top of the scoreboard.

So, what is the reason why you want this thing? That is the passion. OK, well, that is what we are going after.

Rex:

It should never be money, because there’s only so many cars, boats, houses you can have.

Chanell:

Darren, thank you so much. This has been amazing. We will leave all the details of your business in the links below. And who knows what is next to come? I am thinking a book.

Rex:

I think if there are any commercial agents—and I genuinely mean this—even if you are not a principal, if you do not have a coach, reach out to Darren.

Because he will probably change how you do your business. I genuinely mean that. I have seen it all from your clients. Not all your clients, but some of your clients.

Chanell:

Thank you so much, Darren. I really appreciate your time, and we will see you on the next episode of Real Estate Renovators. Bye.