Well known for his prowess as a real estate executive, many also know Gino Blefari for his power to inspire and motivate, readily sharing his personal strategies for staying physically and mentally strong in the face of any challenge.
During RISMedia’s 36th Annual CEO & Leadership Exchange in Washington, D.C., in September, where more than 400 real estate leaders gathered to discuss obstacles and opportunities, the HomeServices of America CEO and Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices chairman put business talk aside to focus on the building blocks of success—the daily, personal habits necessary to go from good to great. The need to do so, said Blefari, is more urgent than ever.
“Whenever there’s all this change that’s going on, the one thing sometimes you have to do, even though we have to work incredibly hard, you’ve got to work harder on yourself than you do on your job,” he said.
At the root of all personal and business success are keystone habits, Blefari explained.
“Keystone habits create this thing called small wins,” he said. “Once a small win is accomplished, forces are set in motion that favor another small win, and then it can fuel transformative changes.
“We’re trying to find these tiny advantages in a business where victory’s measured if you get the listing and defeat is if you come in second,” he added. “So we’re just looking for that little extra edge.”
Start by taking your ‘MEDS’
By a show of hands, the majority of CEO & Leadership Exchange attendees reported having a daily routine…but many also admitted to not following that routine consistently.
Blefari, on the other hand, starts each day by taking his “MEDS,” an acronym that stands for meditation, exercise, diet and sleep. He pointed to copious research that validates the many benefits of meditation, such as reducing stress, improving brain function and elevating one’s overall mood. Equally as important is exercise. “Try to break a sweat every single day,” said Blefari. “Your gym routine is typically a reflection of your life routine.”
Diet is another essential component of Blefari’s MEDS. A healthy diet, he said, can act like a medicine in terms of improving your health and staving off illness. “If it doesn’t grow on a tree or grow in the ground or have a mother, you probably shouldn’t eat it,” Blefari advised. “And I’d like you to also think of water as a critical nutrient.”
To help illustrate the importance of sleep—the final ingredient in the MEDS recipe—Blefari pointed to the words of Hall of Fame football coach Vince Lombardi who said, “fatigue makes cowards of us all.”
“You get so much value from a good night’s sleep—it can help and heal you,” Blefari explained. “You have a poor night’s sleep, small issues become magnified.”
To ensure a good night’s sleep, Blefari emphasized the importance of establishing a sleep routine. His own sleep routine includes brief exercise after dinner, being ready for bed by 8:00 p.m., then listening to an audiobook to feed his insatiable thirst for knowledge. “I’m a fanatic on learning. So no matter what it is, I’m trying to learn about it,” he said.
Keeping goals front and center
In addition to taking his daily MEDS, which support mind and body, Blefari also devotes time each day toward supporting his mission and goals—aka, his “life plan.”
“My mission is, ‘I help people achieve their goals faster than they would in my absence.’ Then I have a personal vision, a business vision, a physical vision and a company vision, and I’ll recite those out loud,” he said.
After reciting his vision for each life bucket, a process he says takes about 15 minutes total each day, Blefari reads or listens to the inspirational writings of others, such as the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling, excerpts from “Mission: Success!” by Og Mandino, or Napoleon Hill’s self-confidence formula. He also journals, listing three things he’s grateful for, which forces him to filter out the negative and focus on the positive.
Reciting a mantra is another daily must for Blefari. “In the old days, I would say, ‘I am earning X number of dollars or more.’ Right now, I (say), ‘I have perfect health, wealth and fitness.”
These rituals, explained Blefari, help create the right mindset for the day. “I want to get my state to a place of fearlessness, so when I come into work, I’m completely set,” he said. “What I’m doing is programming the non-conscious portion of my brain, which is survival, which means it sets no goals of its own. It doesn’t judge the merit or value. It only tries to carry out the given order.”
Olympic-sized inspiration
To emphasize the importance of keystone habits and the cumulative effects of small wins, Blefari turned to the story of U.S. Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. Behind Phelps’ journey to winning eight gold medals at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing—a feat few believed could be done—was a consistent, pre-race routine. Designed to maximize his physical performance and competitive mindset, this routine included a regimented diet and a series of specific stretches. But it also involved habits that would help Phelps become “the strongest mental swimmer in the world,” said Blefari.
“Phelps had a capacity for obsessiveness,” said Blefari. “But look at every good performer. The elite performers are all obsessive, right? Everybody in this room’s obsessive. So what (Coach Bob) Bowman gives Phelps, which I’m going to try to give you right now, is something that will set him apart from every swimmer in the pool. All he needed to do was target a few specific habits that had nothing to do with swimming. To find those tiny advantages in a sport where victory is measured in thousandths of a second.”
Blefari explained that Phelps knew the details of every race perfectly, and could mentally visualize each step, from standing on the starting block to his mouth breaking the surface of the water. “When Bowman wanted him to get at race speed, he would tell Phelps, ‘just put in the video tape,’ and Phelps would settle down and go out and crush the competition.” Visualizing himself swimming a winning race put Phelps in the right state of mind to do it again.
Phelps’ success, Blefari explained, was fueled by the right habits. “Bowman believed that the key to victory in swimming was creating the right routines,” he said. “Well, I believe that the key to victory in anything we do is creating that right routine and having the discipline to do it every single day.”
Blefari left the audience with the ultimate inspiration—a video of the relay race that led Phelps to his record-breaking 8th gold medal in 2008. The historic win, however, could not have been done without the extraordinary performance of Phelps’ teammate Jason Lezak. This allowed Blefari to impart his final lesson.
“You can be the greatest swimmer in the world,” he said. “But if you’ve got a great coach and you’ve got a great team, that’ll be even better.
“If you think about our whole collective group,” he added, “we’ve got great coaches, and we’ve got one great team of real estate that we can all be together on.”
