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You are not defined by your actions but by how you do them. Show up as a person worthy of trust and respect by doing everything you can to commit to excellence. Kofi Nartey shares ten amazing tips and tools to pursue excellence in every aspect of your life and business. Learn how to nurture relationships, build a good reputation, create lasting connections, and design a thriving lifestyle with excellence as your North Star.

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What Happens When You Commit To Excellence?

10 Ways to Use Excellence to Change Your Life and Business

I'm super excited. We're going to talk about commitment to excellence. I'm sure you guys have heard about that from the Raiders. I spent a few minutes with the Raiders. I first heard about the commitment to excellence through that organization. We're going to expand on that and tell you why excellence needs to be your new best friend. I'm going to give you ten amazing tips and tools to help bring excellence to everything that you're doing.

I love sharing things like this that hit across all industries and all aspects of your life. We aren't truly defined by what we do but rather by how we do it. Excellence is a critical part of what you do and how you do it. If we can improve that how in everything that you do, it translates to what you're doing. You bring that to your business, life, parenting, friendships, relationships, and workouts. That how becomes how you define yourself. Excellence is one of the fastest ways to improve your how.

For the real estate industry, we have been in transitioning or shifting market. It's settling down. It's balancing out or whatever words you want to use, but most industries have some aspect, time or period where there is a shift or change. Even in your own personal life, there is a shift, change or moment where you have to stop, brace yourself, and prepare for what's next.

There are some times when things are going good, and we have to think about how we are going to take them to great. That change or shift is usually not a huge shift but a small shift. Let's jump right into this topic and talk about how excellence needs to be your new best friend, and excellence is something that you want to bring to your how that will impact your what and everything that you're doing in life.

I gave this talk to my own team and firm. I had a chance to deliver the same talk at an event called Leaders in Luxury. It's a real estate event. It was at the Four Seasons in Denver. They have beautiful residences. We did a cool tour up there, and the feedback from that was so moving that I wanted to share it with you, my Full Mogul community. I first heard about commitment to excellence with the Raiders organization. I spent a very short time there but as I always tell you, there's something to pull from every experience, whether it's a short amount of time or a long amount of time. Commitment to excellence is one of them.

I'm going to start with a quote from Vince Lombardi, "The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence." We want to look at, are the things that you're doing being done in an excellent way? If not, how can you improve them? I'm going to run through these ten things. Make sure you go back to it and share it with somebody else that needs it. Let's jump right in.

The quality of a person's life is directly proportional to their commitment to excellence. Click To Tweet

Pay Attention To Details

Number one, pay attention to details. It's all about the little things. You have heard about paying attention to details before. What I'm going to add to it is to extract the details. When we're talking about how we do things, there is surface-level communication as to how we do things and what we do. There are steps A, step B, and step C. What if we have A, 1 to 9, B, 1 to 9, and C, 1 to 9? Each step needs to be unpacked so that you can extract the opportunities to elevate the details that you are paying attention to and bringing to what you're doing.

For example, if you're working out. I can say, “Yes, I'm going to have an excellent workout.” That’s way too generic.” What does that mean? Does that mean I'm going to start earlier? What does that mean? Does that mean I'm going to start at 6:00 instead of 7:00. I go to the gym. What am I going to do? Am I going to start with a warm-up? Am I going to start with specific numbers of specific sets for my warm-up? Am I going to do specific weights with specific reps? What is it that I can get very detailed about to elevate the excellence that I'm bringing to it?

You have to do that in life and your jobs. Break down the process to the level of minutia. You don't do this every single day, but if you're looking at ways to be excellent or to elevate what you're doing, you have to unpack each step, each sub-step, and each sub-sub-step to what you're doing. At that point, you could see how to make it better and excellent.

Be Consistent And Persistent

Number two, be consistent and persistent. When we talk about excellence even in luxury real estate, part of that is predictability. That means that you're doing things in a consistent way. That's excellence. Excellence isn't winning one game all season. It's winning consistently. It's performing at your highest and best level consistently. It's taking each step each day in your job and relationship to perform at the best level that you know how at that point in time.

Even in our process with our employees, our friendships or our clients, the other part of being consistent is focusing on not just completion because completing every task is a part of excellence but the journey. The journey is what can make it excellent beyond being normal. Completion is important, but the journey each step of the way is even more important.

I'm in LA in my studio here in Beverly Hills. If I hop on a flight to New York and I'm sitting in commercial seating, I'm going to get there soon. If I'm sitting in first class, it's a different journey and experience. It is leveled up and it is approaching excellence. What aspects of the journey can you elevate as you're chasing down completion? If you don't complete the task, most of the time, that's not excellence.

Always Be On The Road To Be Better

Number three, always be on the road to better. Michael Jordan once said, “I never lost a game. I just ran out of time.” You guys may have heard that before. If we approach each thing that we're doing in life like that, we can always be on the road towards better. I have an acronym for failure. Some of my greatest successes in life are failures, even around Michael Jordan. I listed Michael Jordan's house which had been on the market for years. The house is in Chicago.

I listed it for one year and brought more attention, more video views, and more media than anyone ever had. I changed firm and the listing stayed with my old firm. I had to move on and the property is still for sale. Some people could say that's a failure. I take the word fail as an acronym for Find All Important Lessons. I learned a lot from that and it became a great success for my overall career, the impact that it had, the visibility that it gave me, and even the things that I learned around marketing a property at that level.

Win or lose, ask for feedback. You have blind spots. Even if you think, “This failed because of this. It didn't work because of that.” There may be some things that you missed that you will only extract by asking for feedback. Whether you think you did it right or wrong, ask for feedback and leave it open-ended. Don't guide the person that you're asking. That's the only way to get true unfiltered feedback, and tell them that's what you want. You might even have to do blind surveys because some people don't have the guts to tell you how it is. Some people won't call you out on what you're doing wrong. Make sure you have ways to get that true feedback.

Commit To Excellence: Ask for feedback and leave it open-ended if you think you did something wrong. Don't guide the person that you're asking. That's the only way to get true and unfiltered feedback.

Self-Respect And Pride

Number four, self-respect and pride. What I mean by this is a couple of things. Show up to be excellent. Have enough self-respect and pride in anything that you're doing. Whatever you show up for, you're showing up to be excellent. I'll give you an example. It's a fun story. Some of you know that I did acting for years. One of the films that I worked on was Fast and Furious. I was in Fast and Furious 4. Go back, and watch it. I'm in a handful of scenes. You will see me had a good time.

I had the great experience of going to Mexico with a handful of the cast members, Paul Walker, John Ortiz, Laz Alonso, Vin Diesel, and a lot of extras in this little town in Mexico. We had a chance to hang out that month. We were down there. We get to know each other a lot better. Vin Diesel is a superstar. He had his own huge trailer. He had a separate trailer that had a whole gym in it. He let me workout in it. Thanks for that. That was fun. He was always late to set. Vin knows this. The people who worked with him know he was always late to set.

What he told me one day was, “Kofi, I'm showing up to be immortalized.” What he meant was he was going to be on camera. This is going to be a movie that plays and plays. He wanted to make sure that he had his lines ready the way he wanted, his wardrobe the way he wanted to look, and the feel and the energy of the character were right where he wanted for him to be then immortalized.

When we show up in life, appointments, meetings, as a parent and in relationships, we're showing up at that moment to be immortalized. Make sure that you have enough self-pride and respect for yourself to show up with a level of excellence and pride. On top of that, what's your minimum standard? This is still part of number four. What's your minimum standard for that self-respect and pride?

I will give you another quick story. My wife and I took our daughter to Sweden. My wife coached the soccer team. She's a former World Cup player, and our daughter is playing club soccer. My wife put together a team that we took to the Gothia Cup in Gothenburg, Sweden, which was an amazing epic experience. My daughter had three goals in the tournament. She played extremely well. Part of what I told her when we got back was, “You are not the same player now that you were before we left. You have a new bar. You have a new standard. At this point, you can't drop below that bar. You will be doing yourself a disservice.”

When we think about our own lives, the journeys, the jobs that we've worked, the experiences that we've had, the failures and opportunities to find all important lessons, those create new bars and standards for you to live by, stand on and build from. Why is it important to remember that? It’s because we all have moments of challenge.

I woke up one morning and my back was a little bit sore. I worked out the day before. My knees were a little bit sore. I came in. I have clients that are happy and clients that are upset. There are always going to be challenges and things that pull your energy down. Sometimes they are heavier and deeper than that like the loss of a family member, relapses, and things that you shouldn't be doing in life, but those are the most important moments to remember that you have a new bar. You don't fall or slip back into that old self or that old way of being. Those things are detrimental to your health, life and sanity. Screw that. There is a new you and a new bar. Don't go below it. Keep building on what you've done.

Commit To Excellence: There will always be challenges and things that pull your energy down. But those are the most important moments to remember that you have a new bar. You don't fall or slip back to your old self.

Respect Others

Number five is respecting others. We talked about self-respect. The other part is respecting others. This is part of excellence. We have to respect others. We have to respect their time. Time is one of the greatest luxuries that we have. If you are being excellent, usually, that means you are doing something in service to others. You are working with others in some capacity. You are delivering value in some capacity. You have to be respectful of others and their times.

You also have to respect other people's intelligence. This is tied to being excellent. That means respecting their excellence, which means respecting their intelligence. Being straightforward and honest with people is a way of respecting their intelligence. Don't beat around the bush. Don't make up excuses. People can handle great information, but even bad information, challenging information, or difficult information if you are straightforward and honest. Don't be patronizing. Respect people's intelligence and they will respect you more for that.

Take Ownership And Responsibility For Your Reaction

Number six, take ownership and responsibility for your actions. You can only control what you take responsibility for. How many times have I had conversations with people where the first thing they want to say is what somebody else did wrong. They are blaming somebody else for their own actions and life choices. The life choices that you made are life choices that you made. They may have been impacted or influenced by other people. If you don't take control of your narrative, outcome, and daily steps that lead to your big goals, you will not reach your fullest potential, and you will not be able to strive through excellence.

Whatever it is, own it. Own the process. Don't be married to the negative aspects. Don't be married to the setbacks. Own the idea that I control what my next move is going to be and what my next step is going to be. I don't give a whatever about what happened in the first part of my day, last week, last year, or when I was seven years old on the playground. I don't care. I control the next thing that I'm going to do in this next moment. I take responsibility for that. If I mess up, I also will own it. I will apologize. I will learn from it. I will grow from it. I will make it better if I can, and I will build from there, but you have to take ownership and responsibility for that.

Be Accountable

Number seven is similar but different. Be accountable to yourself and others. We achieve accountability by habituation, training, and doing things over and over. I think it was Aristotle that said, "We are what we repeatedly do. Therefore, excellence is not an act but a habit.” We have to make sure that we are practicing working on feeding our brains the information, tools, tips, and the things that we need to stay in the right place to be working from the right mental standpoint on a daily basis.

Super simple life hacks. I was listening to a good friend of mine, Sharran. He got an amazing podcast called The Business School. One of the things he said on there was he listens to a podcast every morning. Here I am listening to his podcast, and he was talking about how he listens to a podcast every morning. What have I done over the last few months was every day and every morning in my car, it doesn't matter if my jam is on, was when the radio comes on, I'm putting on a podcast. Thanks, Sharran, for that.

I'm listening to some great podcasts, but it's every day. Its habits. It's doing what other people won't do so you can live how other people will never have the opportunity to live. In one of those podcasts, I also heard a great takeaway, “Don't practice until you get it right. Practice until you can't get it wrong.” Let that sink in. Let success and excellence be second nature to you.

Don't practice until you get it right. Practice until you can't get it wrong. Click To Tweet

T.T.I.N.

Number eight, TTIN. What does TTIN stand for? The Time Is Now. This came from my days at Cal. I played football at Cal. One season leading up to the season, they gave the whole team t-shirts that had, “TTIN, The Time Is Now.” That stuck with me. When we talk about excellence, the next thing that we're going to do, and our full mogul journey, we're going to have a certain amount of information, tools, and resources, but at a certain point, it's time to go. It's time to do it. That time is now.

Start your commitment to excellence now. Even if you don't know how it's going to apply to all aspects of your life, every part of your job, every part of your career, every part of your relationship, there's at least one part of your day-to-day, the balance of your day or your day tomorrow, where you know you can elevate that thing to excellence. I know it's in you. You know it's in you. Start now and ask yourself every day, every hour, and every minute, “Is this the highest and best use of my time?”

Be Passionate About Excellence

Number nine, be passionate about excellence. You have to obsess over excellence. Obsessing over excellence means you're obsessing over the highest and best version of yourself. I'm telling you, you reach a certain point, tools, education and experiences. The highest and best version of you is excellence. That is what we're striving for. That's what we want to unlock and unleash. You have to be passionate about excellence.

For those of you who are running companies, teams, organizations and households, keep this in mind. This is a quote from Steve Jobs. I love it because it's true, “Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.” They are okay with mediocrity and half-assing it. If you are an environment creator, culture creator, running a team, a household or a business, you can try to get those people to conform. Better yet, you can change the environment so it exudes excellence. It screams excellence. It's a culture of excellence. Anyone who's a part of that environment has no choice but to conform. Otherwise, they need to get off the ship or you need to kick them off the ship because that's part of life.

If Not Excellence, Then What?

Number ten, if not excellence, then what? This is not something that is truly a choice. If you're tuning in to this show, that’s because you want to unlock and unleash your full potential across all aspects of your life. That means that doing things in an excellent way at an excellent level is not a choice. It's an obligation. When we look around while walking down the street in our daily lives, we see many people with so much stress, pain, and tension in their eyes and faces.

When you talk to people about life, people suffer from so much depression because they haven't had the opportunity, the willpower, the desire or the commitment to strive for excellence. Mediocrity leads to underperformance, which leads to not utilizing your potential, which leads to disappointment and depression in life.

It's not trying your best and doing your best that makes you sad if you don't succeed. It was knowing that you left something out there that you should have done. There was the effort that you could have put in. There was one more level that you could have taken it to and you quit before getting to that level. One more call you could have made. One more person you could have serviced. One more somebody you could have helped. That little bit of extra effort that you left behind. That's what leads to depression.

People in life look back and say, “I would have, I could have, I should have.” We have an opportunity to erase that terminology from your future and get after it now. Remind yourself of your why. You got to tie all of this. Tie excellence to your why and hold the vision for that. In those moments where you're slowing down, depressed or have doubt, you can remind yourself of the why. It's not even about a huge shift. It's about a small shift and taking one step towards getting back to that level of momentum and excellence.

You got to tell yourself, "I owe it to me to be me." That sounds a little bit like Terrell Owens when he said, "I love me some me." To be honest, there's something to that. I owe it to me to be me because we have a responsibility during our lifetimes to realize all of our God-given gifts and share them with the world. That means I owe it to me to be me. It's another way of saying, "I owe it to be me." If I am the best version of myself, the world will be rewarded. If you are the best version of yourself, the world will be rewarded.

A quick recap. Number one, attention to detail but more importantly, extract the details. Number two, be consistent and persistent. Make sure you're striving towards completion, but the journey is part of the excellence. Number three, always be on the road towards better. Remember FAIL is to Find All Important Lessons. Win or lose, always ask for feedback. Number four, self-respect and pride. Show up to be excellent. Number five, respect others. Respecting their time and intelligence. Number six, take ownership and responsibility. You can only control what you take responsibility for, good or bad.

Number seven, be accountable to yourself and others. We achieve this by training and habituation. Don't practice until you get it right. Practice until you can't get it wrong. Number eight, the time is now. Start your commitment to excellence now. Ask yourself every day, every hour, and every minute, “Is this the highest and best use of my time?” Number nine, be passionate about excellence. You guys are full moguls. I know the passion is there. Tap into it and be passionate about excellence. Number ten, if not excellence, then what? If we're not on full mogul journeys, what are we doing? If we're not chasing, unlocking, and unleashing the best versions of ourselves, what are we doing?

That brings us to the end of our episode. If you like this message, if it resonated with you or if it's going to move the needle in your business in any capacity, let me know. Like and share the show. DM me on social media and say, “I tuned into your show. It was amazing. I had this specific takeaway." Let's keep building. Let's keep growing. Let's keep going, full mogul.

Important Links

• Leaders in Luxury
• The Business School

Are you considering launching a new business or adding a new product or service to your existing business? If yes, then you MUST listen to this podcast first. We will discuss the problem with a traditional SWOT Analysis, as well as the importance of TAM and PMF. Learn how to embrace one good opportunity that will bring you rewarding results and help bridge gaps in the marketplace – even if it will not be your life-long venture.

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Launching A New Business: SWOT vs. OTSW

The Most Important Podcast You Can Listen To Before Launching A New Business

I’m super excited to have you back on this Full Mogul journey, which is the relentless pursuit of the best version of yourself across all aspects of your life. You are on the Full Mogul journey with me. I'm excited to be a part of your journey. Hopefully, it's been helpful. This is going to be one of my favorite episodes so far. It's going to be a quick one but a critical one. The title of this episode is Launching A New Business, SWOT versus OTSW. This may be the most important episode you are going to read before launching a new business or adding a new product or service to your business.

I know a lot of you guys out there are entrepreneurs. A lot of you are in the real estate industry like I am, investors and financial planners and there are a lot of athletes out there but all of us have those moments where we're going to launch something new. There's been a spark in us that tells us we have the talent, gift and idea that we want to bring to the world. If we're going to do something like this, there's a little bit of analysis that immediately comes into play.

What Is SWOT?

Let's start at the beginning. What is SWOT? Let's define SWOT because this applies to whether you're launching a new business, adding an arm or service to your business, a new partnership in your business and anything that is going to be different from what you're doing in terms of starting from scratch, adding on, in addition to, will do something similar to a SWOT analysis. It's an old-school business term.

It still comes up from time to time but SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This is a term that's used in business school training. It's evolved quite a bit. We look at something called the total addressable market. You can google that. It's another version of a SWOT analysis. It's the total addressable market that you'll have for your product or service. Take a read at that as well.

For this episode’s purposes, we're going to stick with SWOT because it ties into re-engineering those letters into what I described as OTSW. Starting with the idea, “I'm good at something. I've created something cool so I want to make a business out of it. I want to create a service, company, storefront or online store but is there a market for it?” Let's jump right into that.

There are some benefits of SWOT. If we even break it down, it is Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. What are the strengths that you have? Normally, that's the easiest thing to identify because the idea, concept, theory and service were born out of strength. That gift that you have gave you that creative spark to say, “I'm going to turn this into a business.” It's not too hard to identify the strengths. Weaknesses are a little bit harder to identify but some of them are blind spots.

Also, you look at the business you want to get into or start and there might be some glaring weaknesses like licensing or a location that you need and a certain skillset that you don't have. Those are all weaknesses that will be part of your analysis as to whether or not this is a viable thing to pursue. What opportunities exist in the marketplace for this service, product and strength that you're bringing? Is there a TAM or Total Addressable Market? How big is that marketplace? Those are also something that has to be addressed.

The T is for Threats. What are the threats to the business or idea that you have? Who's the competition for the business or idea that you have? When we look at the competition, we have to look at it beyond who's doing what you're doing in the marketplace. Just because there's somebody who's doing it, doesn't mean that you can't do it too and you can't do it better.

Just because somebody is doing something doesn’t mean you can’t do it too or do it better. Click To Tweet

Sometimes that lets you know that there's an addressable market for it. If that company is already thriving but there's no competition and they're not dominating the market, they're doing well, that might be an indication that with that threat or particular competitor, there's room to take them down or gain market share that they don't have access to or you can claw away from them.

There's also the threat of technology. A lot of times businesses don't think that they can be undercut by technology. You think of simple things like the Polaroid camera but then we went to digital. People got rid of the film. Kodak lost a lot of money because they created film then we went to digital and SIM cards. Everything's in the cloud. These are technological threats to select business models. Almost every industry, service and product needs to consider technological threats.

“Can AI or Artificial Intelligence replace what you're doing? Can a computer do it much faster and more efficiently? When people turn to that before they turn to you, what is your value add?” These are all threats. Coming back to the overall SWOT analysis, it can be a great filter to run your idea through, “What are my strengths? What are the weaknesses that I need to make up for or mitigate? What are the opportunities in the marketplace? What are the threats as well?” The challenge with this is if you start and lead with just your strengths and bull rush or move forward into a market, into what is “opportunity,” you may fall flat on your face. I'm going to tell you why.

What Is OTSW?

Let's reverse-engineer those letters. It's not exactly backward but we're reverse-engineering it. For the acronym's sake, we're going to call it OTSW. The reason that I full-heartedly believe in OTSW and why I've leaned into this concept is because you have to start with the opportunity in a marketplace. Where does the opportunity lie? What is not being serviced to the level or the extent that the consumer wants, needs or would appreciate if it occurs? That's where the opportunity lies.

We have to start with where the opportunity is. We look at the threats and then next to the strengths. We look at our strengths, the strengths of our product, service and skillset or whatever we're harnessing, putting together for this new venture. “What are the strengths that me, my service or my product has to fill that opportunity?”

New Business: Look at your strengths, as well as the strengths of your offers and skill sets, when putting together a new venture that can fill a market opportunity.

When we look at overall business success, the overall wealth that can be created, the overall size of a business and growth and scale, it's where the quality meets the quantity. The quality of the service that you're providing, the need for that service and the quantity at which you can provide it. It’s that scale at which you can provide it.

You look at things like Amazon. It has a great quality of service and a huge scale in terms of the market. Even Starbucks. The coffee is pretty good. You might like Coffee Bean better, your local Blue Bottle or whatever coffee shop you go to in your neighborhood. There's a huge addressable market, the efficiency of that. Other things tie into Starbucks like the brand. They've created a great brand for themselves, a culture of being tied to Starbucks but there's a huge addressable market and then they applied their strengths to that market.

I did mention at the top that SWOT has been replaced with product market fit and that's the degree to which your product satisfies strong market demand. This is something about Marc Andreessen, a famous entrepreneur. Google him if you haven't read about him. There is a lot to learn there but he coined this phrase back in 2007. We look at that product market fit, the opportunities in the marketplace and what strengths we have to fill them.

Real-Life Examples

I'll give you a couple of real-life examples. I got into real estate in 2003. I got my broker's license in 2006. It’s been rocking and rolling ever since. It's been a huge learning curve since the beginning. I feel like I'm a 5th-degree black belt but still have more stripes to add to my belt. There's always something new to learn. When I got into real estate, I quickly realized that it was a huge market. There was total demand for the market but you also had to have a specialization or a niche within the market.

Real estate is a huge market. Despite having high demand, you must have a specialization or niche within it. Click To Tweet

There were so many real estate agents in 2003. Everybody I knew was either doing something in real estate or acting in LA. Here I am, I was doing both. I was an actor and a real estate agent so I needed to have a focus. I initially focused on condos and townhomes but I'm going to fast forward to when I transitioned into luxury real estate, more specifically sports and entertainment as a niche.

I looked at the opportunities, threats and competition but I also first recognized that there was a void in servicing sports and entertainment clients in understanding their lifestyle, the ebbs and flows of income, the need for privacy or security, the quick transitions that they often have to make, the traveling for work, the doing a $2 billion movie 1 year and not working for 3 years but you have the funds to get financed.

Lenders understand that there were all these nuanced differences in working with this type of clientele. I was in the heart of the entertainment industry here in LA. I had been part of the industry and sports world with my sports experience at Berkeley with my shot at the NFL with the Raiders. I had seen all of these aspects and nuances of this specific clientele. I saw that it was under service and no one owned that niche or specialized in it. That's where the opportunity was.

I looked at my strengths to apply. I had exposure to the niche and an understanding of their lifestyle. I knew a lot about real estate at that time. I had my broker's license. I had already been managing other people so I had a lot of contractual experience. I was good in my field and now I was going to take it to another level of specialization to service that market that was underserviced where there was a huge opportunity.

I've seen agents because I've built a great national brand with that. I get to speak around the country. It's a blessing to do and share that. A lot of agents want to get into sports and entertainment. The first thing I ask them is, “Is there a marketplace for it? Is there an opportunity?” They'll say, “John Elway lives down the street from me and I'd love to get his business.” “It's John Elway's third home in an area of Texas where he likes to fish.” There are no other sports teams or celebrities. I'm just making up this example.

You have to make sure that the opportunity is there. I've seen it with entrepreneurs whom we've given guidance to. I've given advisory services to help them with creating their brand, idea and strategy but they create an amazing widget or they're a technopreneur or an engineer. They're great at computer science. They can create an amazing backend and they feel great about their product but there isn't truly an addressable market. There isn't an opportunity that is truly scalable for what they've built.

Sometimes there is and there are other aspects that are missing like the right marketing strategy, packaging, branding and messaging, what type of marketing you're going to use and the name of your product. We'll get into some of that other stuff later. The first thing is to take that because we are entrepreneurs.

Moguls tend to be entrepreneurs. We're not going to deny the fact that it often starts with strength and sparks an idea but then we take that idea before we launch or move forward and we hold it up against OTSW. “What are the opportunities? Where does the opportunity lie? Where is the total addressable market? How big is that total addressable market? What is that product market fit? What are the threats to it? What are my strengths in service and bringing this to the marketplace in a unique way or a Blue Ocean Strategy way that I'm creating in a non-competitive space because what I'm doing is nuanced and different enough that I can excel without competition or at least get a huge head start on my competition in this industry?” We then finally move forward.

We are looking at the W, the Weaknesses and what gaps we need to fill. What things do we need to put in place to increase our chances of major success? Another great book to read is Blue Ocean Strategy. It's by Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. I read it in business school. I have reread it 2 or 3 times. It’s another great book recommendation.

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant

That blue ocean is defined as the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost to open up a new market space and create new demand. That's how they defined it in the book. It's about capturing the uncontested marketplace, the market space that doesn't have the same level as the red ocean, which is all the sharks, blood and where everybody is competing. That way, if you go to the blue ocean, you're making that competition irrelevant. You always got to move and swim towards the blue ocean, looking towards that ocean, where the O or Opportunities lie and where your strengths have the greatest chance of success.

Questioning Yourself

It comes back to questions. I have people say, “Does this limit me to doing things that fill gaps in the marketplace? Do I have to start by looking for those gaps in the marketplace? What if I'm not passionate about filling those voids? What if I want to do my thing?” You're an entrepreneur, which means you have to think through this process. You may have 1, 2, 3 or 4 gifts. I know you do. You have to look at which gift has the largest opportunity to help you reach the highest and best version of yourself as a Full Mogul.

You also have to realize that this is not always a lifetime commitment but it's something that you owe yourself to exercise that opportunity and that gift, take it to its highest level of potential where what you have achieved and the ultimate potential of that gift are staring each other eye to eye, then you can move on to the next thing.

Part of that process is whatever strength you've identified running it through OTSW. It has to be something that you do have a genuine passion for. You shouldn't do something that you dislike. You do have to do something that you have passion about but it doesn't necessarily have to be your life's work or the thing you're going to do for the next 30, 40 or 50 years. You might do it for 5 to 10 years and say, “I'm liking this. I've scaled. I'm going to do it for ten more.”

I've been in real estate for many years. There's a natural progression to how I've built my business, growing from just being an agent, to then being a broker, being an assistant manager, launching offices, building my team, specializing in sports and entertainment, building a national brand, expanding into new development, having my firm and residential agents that I support their growth. We have a new development team and investment arm. That has allowed me to add chapter after chapter to a book that continues to be interesting to me.

Some people reach a certain point and need to change industries. Think of what you're applying your gift to, this product, service, idea, additional arm to your business and this new service you want to launch. You've run it through the filter. You're going to do it. It may not be your life's work forever but it can be an amazing chapter in your book.

Sometimes, it's a new book. Don't be afraid to say, “The chapters of that particular book are done. It's time for me to write a new book with new chapters and a new vision for my life.” It might start with this amazing new idea that you have. The process, outcome or impact is going to be based on the passion that you have that gets you up every day, moving towards this success that you have calculated based on switching SWOT to OTSW.

I’ll give you one Kofism before we conclude here. Kofism is my life philosophy, “None of us were born to do what we are doing. The more we can overlay our gifts, passions, hard skills and soft skills, the more we will find alignment with what we're doing and joy in what we're doing.” Here’s a personal example. Was I born to do real estate? I don't think so. Could I apply my gifts to other things? Definitely.

I found so much alignment in this career with things that I'm passionate about, good at and like to do, everything from marketing to creativity, business strategy, negotiations, working with people and loving properties, architecture and building a real estate firm. Also, aspects of development, new development and the investment that can build generational wealth for myself and my clients. That's a lot. As long as I get to apply my gifts toward these pursuits for myself for the agents that work with me and my clients, I'm winning. It keeps my passion going.

In conclusion, SWOT versus OTSW before launching a new business, adding a new product or service to your line of business, company or store, try to find the biggest, most lucrative or scalable and self-fulfilling gap in the marketplace that you can fill. With that, this concludes this episode. I hope you enjoyed this. Please share. If you want to add to the story of SWOT versus OTSW, product market fit and total addressable market, please ping me. Find me on Instagram, @Kofi_Celebrity. Ping me on the website, FullMogul.com. I love to hear from you and your feedback. Let's keep going on this Full Mogul journey together. Take care. Bye.

Important Links

• Blue Ocean Strategy
• @Kofi_Celebrity – Instagram

It's not about winning or losing. It's about always winning! This is what a winning mindset is all about. And if we are going to be ruthlessly honest with each other, we need that kind of mindset, whether in sports, business or life. Nobody is going to give you a participation trophy in real life. And if we don't value winning, we're keeping ourselves from to the best version of ourselves. How do we embody this winning mindset, then? Join in as Kofi Nartey discusses this hot topic with his better half Mimi Nartey.

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It’s About Always Winning! With Mimi Nartey

3 Ways To Having A Winning Mindset

I'm super excited to talk about something that gets talked about a lot in our society and that's winning or losing or this idea of participation awards and what I call BS on that. This episode is called It's Not About Winning or Losing, It's About Always Winning. I have my special guest/permanent guest. I put a ring on it and I'm stuck with my lifetime guest who's going to be joining me on quite a bit of this show.

It's great to have another great mind at the table to bounce these ideas off of, specifically in this situation. I've got my wife here, Dr. Mimi Nartey. She's also a former World Cup athlete and a former silver medalist in the African Cup of Nations. She gets it and will bring all of that knowledge and ability to the world of even business consulting. She's the CEO whisperer in my life. Welcome back.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be on, especially to talk about this. One thing about us is we both share a passion for winning. That's for sure.

We both have that mama mentality as well. Where did this idea even start? Bear with us. We're going to race through a lot of great concepts and leave you with at least three ways to have a winning mindset. We had different approaches to this so you might even get six ways to have a winning mindset but this was born out of this whole idea of participation awards. In 2022, our 13-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son both played sports. The note to self that made me say, “I'm going to do an episode on this,” is my high school daughter. They had a meeting at the school with the athletic director. He was standing there and said, "It's not about wins or losses. It's about building a positive culture.” At that moment, my gut yelled BS.

We both looked at each other and we were like, "What?"

What did your gut say at that moment?

It's pretty much the same thing. I understand where some of this is coming from. Especially for young players, we want to look at prioritizing development. Even as business leaders, we are trying to develop ourselves but I don't think that we have to shy away from the framework of winning as we pursue that development because there are a lot of benefits that come from the Pursuit of the W.

I want to touch on both what it means as it relates to sports and business, even a few bullet points and then we're going to finish with those ways to have a winning mindset. The whole concept was born out of sports and this idea of participation awards. My only caveat for this is the idea of it's always about winning. It kicks in at the competitive level. When you're a child or a toddler learning the sport, participation is fine.

Parents like us are keeping score on the sideline but you don't even keep score. If the kids don't keep score, it's fine. Everybody gets a medal so you feel good about it. To be honest, even if everybody gets a medal, it lends itself to the argument that we're ultimately going to make that winning means something. It’s because, at a later stage, when it does get competitive, you only get the medal when you win. You've seen some of this whole participation thing. What is your disclaimer for this?

The disclaimer piggybacks on what you're talking about that there is a certain stage when someone is being introduced to something where we're trying to give a very foundational basis. We're not going to emphasize winning or losing as much but still, the object of the game is to win. I feel like whenever the context is there's a winner and a loser, winning matters.

If you're not the winner, then you're what?

You're the loser. One more little frame for the disclaimer. On the corporate side, people have also been trying to implement and pull this into business because they're trying to pit cooperation against a winning mentality. These are not the right things.

As we talk about sports and this idea of participating, creating a culture and what it's about, the challenge that a lot of these athletic directors and coaches have is they're not just being judged on their wins and losses. They are being judged on culture and trying to have what I call a great podium to speak on. When I was at Cal and played football at Berkeley, we had three different head coaches. We had one coach who had come off a national championship. We had Steve Mariucci who was there for one year, then got picked up by the Niners, then we had our third coach, I won't name, who was great at the podium but not great as a head coach. This whole idea of building a positive culture is about keeping your job at the podium.

It's not about what's ultimately in the interest of the players and even that, keeping your job at the podium is a short-term view because if you want to build the right and sustainable culture, it has to be a culture built on a winning mindset. Winning matters because having that winning mindset affects how you prepare, perform and self-evaluate host game time.

If you want to really build the right culture, a sustainable culture, it has to be a culture built on a winning mindset. Click To Tweet

At the end of the day, I feel like it didn't make him noble. Coaches and athletic directors, in general, don't make them any noble or you're on some higher plane to say it's not about winning. It's an oversimplified podium talk. I don't know if this is the reason why but within a couple of months later, that athletic director was gone. It was interesting too because we had all of the different coaches in the room for the different sports. The athletic director kicked off the event and then they opened it up for you to go meet the other coaches. We have soccer coaches and there were track coaches that we were interested in speaking with. One of the first things they said was, "For us, it's about winning.”

It's going to affect the mindset that the players come to that sport with. It's setting the expectations so that you can push yourself further in your preparation time so that I can ask more of you in real-time in the game because this is what we're pursuing. In post-game, whether we did win or lose, because the objective was winning, we have something to evaluate.

Even as we start at that early age and transition into the competitive level, it does need to be a healthy environment but healthy doesn't mean it's not competitive. It becomes a healthy competition and some of the greatest takeaways in sports. I met with 30 of the Arizona Cardinals. They flew me out to Phoenix and I had a great session with them. Half of it is about real estate but the other half is about life and transferable skills. Some of the skills you take away from sports are resiliency, dealing with challenges, heartache, loss and winning.

One of the big benefits of winning is that it can show you what's possible. That's been my experience as an athlete, having played at the Division one college level, national team level and professionally. There have been moments where I have stretched myself and I've seen us as a team stretch ourselves further than what we ever believed, particularly we’re representing the Women's National Team of Ghana. I have a TEDx Talk where I talk about the impact of soccer on the lives of these women and how it's such an empowerment vehicle to be able to have access to sports. A big part of that is because there's the opportunity for them to show themselves that they are winners in a literal and metaphorical sense. I talk a great deal about that in that.

One of the big benefits of winning is that it shows you what's possible. Click To Tweet

What's cool is that once you've had that experience and feeling, it can never be taken away from you. When you have those moments of victory in sports, even a game-winning shot and scoring a goal in a loss, it's a personal win for you. You never even forget the goals and the touchdowns you scored and the three-pointers you hit. I was in fifth grade and had the kickball kick to win the game. It was a walk-off homer kickball kick. I'll never forget the feeling it gave me.

On the flip side of this, what's also important is I feel that losing may be the only path to authentic self-acceptance but only if you are trying to win. Losing is probably one of the only paths to authentic self-acceptance but only in a situation where you are trying to win. If you were not able to win at that moment, you have to deal with that loss, look at yourself in the mirror, accept yourself and pick yourself back up. That is a level of self-acceptance. It comes through the process of attempting the win and falling short.

That's deep because it's easy to accept a winner. It's harder to accept a loss and “a loser.” You still remember how you were wired. You also can even reference the work you put in, which brings me to another point as it relates to sports. If we're not trying to win, then what are we practicing for, especially at the competitive level? When the coaches are saying, “We can do this better. You should turn this way and you need to do this,” what is that for? It's for a specific outcome. What's that outcome? It’s winning.

If we're not trying to win, then what the heck are we practicing for? Click To Tweet

I've also spent a lot of years, probably about 25 years, as a competitive youth soccer coach. Not only have I experienced this on the player side but I've also experienced this on the coaching side. Not to toot my own horn but I've only had one losing season as a coach ever and that was the year of COVID. We had been promoted to a new league because we had won our previous league. We were all set back and I had these eleven-year-old girls that were going through this global pandemic.

As we know, children bore the brunt of this. It was a very tough season because we suffered loss after loss. It was difficult to train and for us to find a rhythm but once we started winning again, the wins were what indicated that we had weathered this storm. That was our indicator that we were back. We have survived this and this chapter has closed. We are moving back into a new chapter for ourselves.

That term resiliency comes up there. You are your adjectives, not your nouns. It's your adjectives that you bring to everything you're doing. Being resilient is an adjective. If you can bring that not only to sports but to life, it's a life tool that will take you places because life is not easy. Even every mogul that we know that we read about, if you read their autobiographies and get the truth, they're on such a rollercoaster ride of successes and failures and wins and losses. We see them at the pinnacle of where they are not knowing that the journey was full of that. Resiliency is something that you can even learn from sports to carry you into those business pursuits.

How do you know that you've been resilient? Ultimately, there has to be an external objective evaluation tool measure. It's back when you are able to find the way to win. That's resilience.

Even that loss, it's all about getting better. If you think about the athletes that lose a championship game, they stay on the field to see the other teams celebrate. I love those moments because they want to remember that feeling and use it as motivation. I always say, “Progress doesn't mean that you don't have feelings.” It's about how you manage the feelings. Sometimes, it’s nice to own the challenging feeling, own the negative feeling and remember what that feeling's like so that you can stand on that feeling and be motivated by that feeling to do better, tweak the things you need, improve the ways you need to improve and not have that feeling again.

Emotions are important tools for us if we know how to leverage them appropriately.

Even simply stated as a full mogul philosophy. If we don't value winning, we're cheating ourselves and pushing ourselves to be the best version of ourselves. Only through valuing winning that you say, “How do I win? How do I maximize, unlock and unleash my potential to get me to the place where I'm positioned for success?”

It's funny that you say that because I was thinking about it on the way here. I don't think I do anything without defining what the win is for me. Even simple things seem almost irrelevant but that's the way that you get that sense of empowerment and satisfaction. You're able to glean information from what you're experiencing to move forward and leverage it into other things.

This made me think about a couple of 30,000-foot philosophical ideas I want to share. I want to jump into the business side. One of the ideas was Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This is tied to the hierarchy of needs. Self-actualization is at the highest part of the pyramid. It refers to self-actualization as the desire to be the best one can be. As part of your hierarchy of needs as a human, there's a desire to be the best version of yourself that you can be.

It's even built-in to full mogul, winning and pursuing winning because the best version of yourself isn't preparing to lose. It's preparing to win. Even if you don't win, it's the preparation that has pushed you to your highest level of potential. The loss gives you things to take away and learn from but that makes you feel good knowing that you left it all on the field.

When you're saying that, people are trying to shift towards being process-oriented but it's the process towards winning.

Some people have heard the story of Hernán Cortéz of Spain. In early 1500, they went to war and burned their boats so there was no way to go back, even if we go back further to 300 or 400 BC. There was the book, The Art of War by Sun Tzu. He introduced the idea of burning the boats and bridges, supporting the arguments that soldiers without the option of taking flight are more likely to prevail over their objective. When we look at winning and if we are going into winning saying, “It's not about whether we win or lose. It's about the culture of the team and this, that and the other,” you’ve already introduced the concept that losing is okay. You're not fighting to be your best at that moment because you've already been given a way out. I don't like that.

I agree with you. It is a matter of having the courage to be vulnerable and articulate that you desire to win. You stand behind that whether you win or lose. It's character-building.

I promise we're going to jump into the business side of things but I wanted to touch on this idea of the win versus the spin, where we focus on the actual win versus using that spin language to cover up or make a loss okay like, “It's okay.” There are teachable and coachable moments but we have to embrace and own the outcomes that have come from even a loss. By owning that is the only way you can control it to get better. It's the accountability and responsibility piece for your actions.

Sometimes in competitions, you are outmatched objectively. Every game can be deconstructed into moments of equality or even dominance. Your genius comes in the decisions that shift the momentum towards those exceptional moments and opportunities. This is the same in business in life. I know you're saying you want to transition but it's not about the spin to your point. There are times when you are legitimately outmatched. Can you do the critical analysis to find those moments that you can exploit to find victory?

Winning in sports is what we've touched on. This is the participation award version for business. Let's make it a win-win for both sides. It's podium talk in business. You go into negotiations with everything, whether you own your business or you're in sales or not. There are so many moments in business that are actual negotiations and there are negotiations where someone is going to win and someone is going to lose.

Someone is going to feel good about it and not so good about it. Both sides will feel okay about it. There's some version of that. That's happening whether you are trying to get a job, negotiating for a new position, a new salary or in a group setting for your thoughts to be heard. All of these things are small wins or small losses. Business fully has to integrate this concept of winning or losing.

What you've said ties back to what I was saying that whenever there's a context, a clear winner or loser and it's going up against someone else for a specific contract, a grant or whatever it is that you're doing, there's going to be the one person who is awarded that thing. There will be the rest of the people who were not awarded so it is a competitive context in all different realms of business. You can find those moments where it's only going to one person. Nobody is going to give you a participation award and you're not going to be able to pay your bills with that participation trophy. It does boil down to being able to leverage a winning mindset in those situations.

You hear this idea of winning at all costs. It's not about winning at all costs. It is about winning with integrity and ethics. The way that you do that is, at least to me personally, I put pressure on myself to win in those moments and win with ethics and integrity. The pressure causes me to prepare better for the meeting, the conversation and the negotiation I'm going into. What does that look like in terms of tangible takeaways? I'm going to run my numbers 2 or 3 times and know those numbers.

It's not about winning at all costs. It is about winning with integrity and with ethics. Click To Tweet

I'm going to run my market comp as it comes to real estate. I'm going to know what's sold and what hasn't sold. If it's about inspections and negotiating on that, I'm going to know the pricing around the things I'm negotiating. I'm going to try to figure out the desired outcome of the person I'm talking to because if I can speak to the desired outcome, that's going to get me closer to getting to the desired outcome for me and my clients. It's that pressure to win that helps me to prepare to have a better chance of “winning.”

Leverage all of the different resources that are available to you at your disposal because that's also what it takes in a moment of competition. It's that creative leveraging of resources that comes from attempting to win.

My goal in this “let's make it a win-win” is that my win is in all caps and the other side's win is in lower caps. I don't want them to feel bad but I want to win. I want to know that at the end of the day, we did a little bit better and I did a little bit better for my clients. That cap-out, meet in the middle, compromise. I'd rather meet a little bit closer to my side than the actual middle.

It's more of a win-learn. You win. They learn.

No matter what, one person is truly going to prevail. Let's look at some ways to have a winning mindset. If there's anything that you wanted to share that we've missed, let's throw it in here at this time as well. Let's have a fast-paced strategy for having a winning mindset.

Let's jump into the winning mindset. The number one thing for me in terms of a winning mindset is ruthless optimism. I talk about this all the time because I feel like this is my core value. My particular superpower is ruthless optimism. You know how much I love that quote from Michael Jordan, “I never lost a game. I only ran out of time.” To me, that is the manifestation of ruthless optimism. It means that you feel that no matter what, you would be able to creatively find a way to persevere in all circumstances. I do think that it starts with that faith and optimism to have a winning mindset.

I'll give you the first one from my list. Mine are all Mamba mentality and also that Jordan mentality, which is, “Play to win and not to win friends.” To your point and we have some overlapping thoughts here, it affects how you prepare, how you're performing and your ability to tweak, make changes and self-evaluate what you're doing. When you look at Kobe Bryants of the world and the Michael Jordans of the world who have led others to championships and victory, it's not a pretty process. It's not a process of making friends. On the other side of it, you have champions and no one is going to complain about wearing that championship ring, let alone wearing it six times in Michael Jordan's case. Give me another one.

The other piece of a winning mindset is self-belief. Connecting it back to my experience with these African women I've developed this sisterhood and bond with, the circumstances of their lives were extremely challenging. That inner feeling of self-belief was amazing. The biggest gift that they gave me was for me to be able to witness and watch the circumstances that they came from to come into a World Cup and believe that you can take over the world. Literally or metaphorically, you can take over the world from wherever you come from. That's why I love the World Cup and seeing all of these teams from all these different places. The passion that they play with is about self-belief.

You can't make this stuff up but mine overlaps with yours. I put some notes together. You put some notes together independently. I told you don't look at my notes even if I leave them out. I didn't look at your notes but it ties into that feeling of self-belief and my number two, which is dominating, don't play Kate. It's not about dominating even your opponent. It's about dominating your potential. That means realizing your potential and your opponent happens to be in the way. Sorry for you but this is my potential running your ass over. This is where we have to not make friends and lean into our full potential. Realize that every time we step on the field, we negotiate an opportunity to demonstrate our full potential and what we're capable of.

It's having that courage to be vulnerable.

Even in business, it's not even about yelling, being aggressive or angry. Sometimes it's about finesse but having finesse means you know the craft so well that you can maneuver and manipulate in ways that others can't.

It’s something we didn't mention, though. Another reason why winning is important and you made me think of this is because winning creates new opportunities and establishes your expertise. That connects to what you said. As you're speaking, I was thinking that way.

Even as children as they reach that competitive level, winning keeps them engaged in the game. In the sport, it makes them want to play more. I haven't seen kids who have lost consistently but it's great because they had good juice boxes at the end of the game. They want to keep playing. It's the winning that makes them want to keep playing. My last note on this was don't let the loss get lost. That means learning from it. You repurpose the hurt and pain into productive activities that will make the next time better. This is both for business and sports. It brings me back to my acronym for FAIL, which is Find All Important Lessons.

Don't let the loss get lost. Repurpose the hurt and the pain into productive activities that will make the next time better. Click To Tweet

The last one on the winning mindset is interesting. You need to have a little bit of a defensive sensibility to be a winner too, which means you have an awareness of your weaknesses and are looking to negotiate or address your weaknesses as you're pushing forward on your strengths.

I'll finish piggybacking on that, pushing those strengths even to the point of unfair advantage. I love when people unlock their full potential by leaning into their strengths, not necessarily looking to balance out all of their skills but pushing their strengths to the point of unfair advantage. With that, we're going to wrap up this episode.

If this was helpful for you, please tag it, follow it and subscribe to the show. I'm going to ask one last thing. I came here to win. If I beat Mimi in this episode and my points were better, I want you to comment on social media. Follow me or unfollow her. This is about dominance. You happen to be in the way. Thanks for joining us. Get back to your full mogul journey and we'll see you in the next episode. Thank you.

Important Links

• Dr. Mimi Nartey
• TEDx Talk - African Women’s Soccer and Empowerment: Memoirs of a Black Queen
• The Art of War

Read the original article here

Want to get valuable stories, tips, and advice on unlocking success in business and in life? you’re in the right place! This is the Full Mogul podcast with Kofi Nartey.  A leading authority on luxury real estate, Kofi is the go-to broker for celebrities, prominent sports figures, and affluent clientele around the globe. Today, he shares 5 tips for starting your full mogul journey. Stay tuned and be on your first step to becoming a full mogul!

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Full Mogul: An Introduction + 5 Tips For Starting Your Journey

What Is Full Mogul

Welcome to the Full Mogul Podcast, where I will share valuable stories, tips, and advice on unlocking success in business and life. This podcast is the answer to your relentless pursuit of the best version of yourself across all aspects of becoming a full mogul across all aspects of your life. First, let's define full mogul. Full mogul, as a verb, is the relentless pursuit of the best version of yourself across all aspects of your life. Full mogul, as a noun, is one who pursues the best version of themselves across all aspects of your life.

Let's talk a little bit about the origins of this and how I came up with full mogul as a phrase or as a term. It was about the pursuit of not just the best business version of Kofi, of not just the best physical version of Kofi, not just the best dad version of Kofi, but how I find the best pursuit and the best version of myself across all of those aspects of my life.

I'll give you an example. I've met people who are great business leaders, and they're terrible parents. I've met people who are great parents, but they let their health and their fitness go, or they're sacrificing their jobs or work. How do we go full, not just becoming a mogul, but a full mogul where all aspects of your life are exceeding, pursuing, approaching that highest and best potential that you have for those aspects of your life? That's what this show is about.

This is my first entrée into podcasting, so I'm jumping right in. I was supposed to start this a few weeks back, but I was trying to find my podcast feet. Forgive me. Podcast 1 versus podcasts 10, 15, and 20 are probably going to be totally different, totally better. It's going to grow over time. It's going to get much better as we go, but I had to get started. Maybe that's lesson number one for all of us is you’ve got to get started. Whatever it is you're pursuing, you’ve got to jump right in. It's never going to be perfect. It's never going to be teed up as perfect, but if you don't get started, you're never going to get to the place where you want to be and where you deserve to be.

Who Is Kofi Nartey?

My name is Kofi Nartey. I'm going to be your guide on this Full Mogul journey, but I'm not going to be the only guide. I'm also going to interview highly successful people in business, sports, entertainment and more, who are also on their full mogul journeys. Lastly, you're also a guide. Your feedback, ideas, and interaction with our Full Mogul community will round out our collective sharing.

Today is just about an introduction to the podcast, and then I'm going to give you five tips for starting your Full Mogul journey. First, a little background about myself. I'm the Founder and CEO of Global Real Estate and Development, known as Globl RED. We're a private real estate firm based here in Beverly Hills that does luxury real estate in Southern California, as well as commercial real estate development projects throughout the Americas, and also sports and entertainment real estate across the country and sometimes around the globe.

Prior to this, I launched and ran the National Sports and Entertainment Division for Compass, which was a huge passion project for me at the time, as well as management stints at the agency, boutique real estate firm, and Keller Williams before that. I'm also a not-so-silent partner in a marketing and branding agency. I've always said if I didn't do real estate, I would be focused on creative marketing and branding as I've got an extra creative bone in my body that always needs to get exercised.

I also sit on several advisory boards. I've given talks and training on topics including marketing, branding, leadership, real estate, business strategy, effective goal setting, and more. Prior to getting my MBA and these business pursuits, I was also an actor for ten years. I never made it big. I never made it to a household name, but I worked a lot. I met a lot of amazing people, and I'm going to be sharing some of those stories as well.

Before acting, I completed my undergraduate degree at Berkeley Cal, where I also played football as a wide receiver, and that culminated in a shot with the Oakland Raiders. Now, they are the Las Vegas Raiders. I’m dating myself a little bit, but with dating myself comes experience, so it's all good. Let's jump right in. Injuries cut my sports career short, as it has for many, but the connections that I made and the lessons that I've learned from that serve me to this very day. You're going to get a lot of sports and entertainment stories, and we're going to get a lot of tools and tips from my sports and entertainment experience, things that have worked for me that hopefully will work for you.

I'm going to pause for a second because I think it's important to give you guys my very first Kofi-ism. Kofi-isms are things that I've learned. I'm like a 10% philosopher. As any entrepreneur who reads a lot, studies a lot, and listens to a lot of podcasts, you start to have your own philosophies that derive from all the information that you've gleaned.

The first one that I have is to listen with selfish ears. This is relevant to the podcasting world. If you're listening to a podcast, some of the information is going to be great, some of it is going to be entertaining, some of it seems like it has nothing to do with your life. If you listen with selfish ears, you listen for the things that resonate with you, your business, your life, your parenting, whatever it is you're pursuing, and can convert those things into action items right away, then you're winning. That's what listening with selfish ears is all about.

I've had a long stint of going to conferences of hearing people speak. I can attend a three-day conference now, and there might be one thing that one person says in one minute of a speech that changed my business. I'm hoping to do the same for you with the podcast that I'm sharing. It might be that one tool or even hearing something in a different way that changes your life.

At the end of the day, for me, I've won, I've lost, I've succeeded, I've failed, but I've converted failing into an acronym, FAIL, Fina All Important Lessons. Like Michael Jordan once said, “I never lost a game. I just ran out of time.” I've got some good Jordan stories for you too. Life and business are really like a game. It's a game that requires strategy, perseverance, consistency, excellence, and commitment. As long as we stay committed, as long as we stay in the game, we will ultimately win.

Life and business are like a game that requires strategy, perseverance, consistency, excellence, and commitment. As long as we stay committed and stay in the game, we will ultimately win. Click To Tweet

One of my best clients had a great conversation with UFC fighter Chuck Liddell. Chuck told him, “If I have enough energy to tap out, I have enough energy to find a way out.” That is so important, especially as we struggle through life and some of the challenges, and some of these challenges beat us down. Some of these moments beat us down. Some of these seasons beat us down. If you have enough energy to tap out, to check out, to form your mouth to say the words, “I quit,” you also have enough energy to get back in the game, to figure out a way out to say, “I won't quit.” That's part of what the journey is about.

Achieving success across multiple aspects of your life is a difficult undertaking. I'm also a husband, a father, I've got two amazing kids. Sometimes you may think you're not living up to your potential. It can feel frustrating with the slow pace of reaching your goals or setbacks. This negative mindset can bring you underlying disappointment and shame that can hold you back from what you're truly capable of.

Let's discover how to unlock your inner gifts, share them with the world, and find success on your terms. Being a full mogul is really about that. It's about unlocking and unleashing your full potential. Listen with selfish years, glean those things that resonate with you and your personality because there's so much noise out there, there's so much content that you have to listen with selfish ears. Like I said, if you do that one thing, that one nuance, that one tool, that one tip that changes your life, your business, and the future for your generations.

Your Full Mogul Journey

The bottom line is you won't be the same after today. You can't be the same after today. How will you be different? Let's find out. Let's jump right into the five tips for starting your Full Mogul journey. I'd love to tell you that you made the right decision to go full mogul. It's not even a decision. It's more of an obligation to yourself. It was just a matter of time until you found this path, this community, and double down on the best version of yourself. As I stated, I have these Kofi-isms. I'm going to give you one more, and then I'm going to give you five tips. You have a responsibility during your lifetime to realize all of your God-given gifts and share them to the world.

Full Mogul: You have a responsibility to realize all of your God-given gifts and share them with the world.

Let's jump into the Full Mogul journey. Tip number one for starting your Full Mogul journey, set a vision for what the full mogul version of your life looks like. Set a vision for what you want it to be. At a certain stage of life, you have a good sense of what your gifts, talents, and passions are. They may grow and evolve over time, but you have a strong idea, a decent sense of self.

Then the question to ask yourself is, “If I realized all of my potential based on these gifts, talents, and passions, what would my life look like? How would I enjoy the fruits of my labor? How would it change my life, my family's life, and generations to come?” The answer to this becomes your why. It's the anchoring reminder of what you are working towards. When times get hard and tough, you can come right back to that anchor and remind yourself, “This is why I'm doing it.” Things will start to bounce off of you. Those challenges, those negative people start to bounce off of you.

Number two, identify your Full Mogul buckets. It's important to remember that you can't just go full mogul in one area of your life at the total expense of the other areas. What are the key areas that you're working to realize your full potential in? Is it health, fitness, career, relationships, your marriages, your dating partners, your faith? We look at what those buckets are. Something that's very important to remember, and you're going to hear this a lot, we are working not to find balance because you hear that nonsense or that BS about work-life balance. I'm going to call BS on that. There's no such thing as work-life balance. There's no such thing. Things are never balanced across the board.

What you should be working towards is work-life peace. Let that sit in for a moment. Things are going to be chaotic and imbalanced, but if you're at peace with where each bucket is, that's when you're winning. To give you a perfect example, for myself, I might have long work days where I work until 6:00, 7:00 at night, or sometimes I have to work on the weekend sporadically.

The peace comes in knowing that I'm still going to be at my kids' soccer games. I might have to make a couple calls at halftime, but I'm still there. I'm at peace with what's going on. I may not have an hour workout, but I've got a 45-minute workout, I've got time to get that in, and I get that done. It's called my BTN workouts, Better Than Nothing. I'm at peace because I still check that box for that day. What are the buckets? Identify your buckets, and we're going to talk about achieving work-life peace with those buckets.

Number three, determine your long-term goals and short-term milestones. This is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. Even with that, you want to attack your journey with small measurable steps. One of my personal mantras is focus and finish. It is to focus on the small steps that lead to your big goals. At the end, you have to commit to the journey, and not the outcome. The beauty is in the overall journey, but the wins along the way are also important, to notice, acknowledge, give gratitude for, and sometimes even celebrate because that's part of the journey as well.

Number four, write it out. If it's not on a list, it doesn't exist. Let's put it a little differently. If it's not on a list, it shouldn't exist. For us entrepreneurs out there, for those of us who suffer from Shiny Object syndrome, I'm guilty of it. I'll make my focus and finish list each day, I write it all out, I open my computer, and then I start doing something that's not on the list. Half of it is about writing it out, but more importantly, staying focused on that list. It will keep you on track on what you're supposed to do on a regular basis.

Even more so, it triggers your RAS or your Reticular Activating System. That way, when you know what you're focused on, not just on your daily list, but in life, you have certain things that will be attracted to you. When you think of buying a new car and let's call it the new Hummer EV, now I start to notice them when they're on the road. That's your Reticular Activating System, things that you notice because something has triggered that within you.

When you write out things, when you have a vision board, those will trigger things that now are important to you. It will also help you recognize things that aren't important, that things that shouldn't be on the list. Again, if it's not on the list, it doesn't exist. More importantly, if it's not on the list, it shouldn't exist. Always write it out.

Number five, last but probably most important, get started. You can't wait for everything to be perfect because it never will be. Full disclosure, I came in this podcast room to record this podcast a week ago. I was trying to find my words. I didn't have all my notes organized. I've got some notes, but I never write out speeches. It just didn't go that well. I'm back in here today giving myself grace and giving myself the opportunity to move forward. Stumbling and talking too long, whatever it is, we're getting started. We're starting this journey together. This is where you guys come into play as part of the Full Mogul community. We are going to grow and learn and build together. Half of that is getting started.

I remember when I went to business school, I did my MBA at Pepperdine. It was a two-year program called the PKE Program at Pepperdine, the Presidential and Key Executive Program. It was an executive program like I mentioned, but an amazing program. We did all the traditional things, marketing, econ, finance. We had an international trip. It was amazing. The first four days of the program, we did things like mindful awareness, meditation, and yoga. The reason was this program was geared towards business owners or C-suite executives. They told us, “You're never going to have perfect information at best for your company. You're going to have 80% to 85% of the information that you need to make a decision. That last 15%, sometimes even 20%, is being able to sit still, trust your gut, and make a decision.”

Full Mogul: Sit still, trust your gut, and make a decision.

Keep that in mind. Be ready to work from partial information, good information, more information, then no information, but be ready to start. A quick recap. Number one, set a vision for what your full mogul version of yourself looks like. What are those buckets that you're looking to fill? Number two, identify your buckets. Number three, determine your long-term goals and short-term milestones. Make sure you're celebrating those along the way, also learning from them along the way. Number four, write it out. If it's not on a list, it doesn't exist. Remember what I said, if it's not on the list, it shouldn't exist. Number five, get started. The fact that you're reading this now means you have started.

That wraps it up for our first episode. There are going to be many more to come. We're going to have some great guests coming up. We're going to have some great conversations. I'm going to be sharing along the journey as well. I'm going to be sharing some of the real-time stuff on Instagram and Facebook. Follow me there. Let's get connected there and comment. If this is helpful to you, if this is something that you want to hear more of, if you are saying, “Yes, sign me up for the Full Mogul community and journey,” hit me up on social media and on my website. You can go to FullMogul.com. You can also follow me on Instagram, @Kofi_Sellebrity. This is it, guys. Thanks for joining us. Let's keep going. Let's keep growing. Let's build a Full Mogul style.

Important Links

• Globl RED
• National Sports and Entertainment Division for Compass
• Facebook – Kofi's Sellebrity Real Estate
• @Kofi_Sellebrity on Instagram
• FullMogul.com

Read the original article here

With 20 years in the industry, California Listings expert Kofi Nartey is a well-established and highly sought after leader in residential real estate. But when Kofi decided to rebrand Society Brokers into Globl Red in 2021, he had international development dreams in mind.

Globl Red didn’t just mark a name change—it was a change in philosophy. Kofi and his team have become the go-to brokers for affluent clientele and celebrities, as well as a global business leaders, looking to expand their real estate holdings with investment properties both domestic and international. Now, we’re talking all things development with Kofi to learn the ins and outs of real estate development.

You’re already a rockstar in residential real estate sales, so what inspired this pivot to a broader portfolio with Globl Red?
Kofi: Our industry has been underdeveloped for years. Agents help with the largest transactions of most people’s lives and then disappear. I want our industry to transition from sales agents to real estate advisors. Our firm is focused on servicing the full real estate portfolios of our clients. Our core competency is still residential real estate, but we have professionals to help with new construction, multi-family investing, commercial real estate and international development.

What investment opportunities are you offering from Globl Red?
Kofi: In our first year, we focused on single-family flips. We have now built out our investment offering infrastructure, and have expanded to multi-family units and mixed use developments nationally and globally.

Who is your target investor and why?
Kofi: One target is the newer investor who wants to get into real estate investing, but may not have the experience or capital to take on a full project by themselves. We have also exposed real estate investing to hundreds of our professional athletes and entertainment clients. Also, we are starting to work with larger family offices and institutional level investors as our reach and deal size continue to grow.

What has success looked like in year one at Globl Red?
Kofi: Within the first year of launching our investment arm, we purchased over $25M million of investment properties with over 30 investors. Globl Red was also brought on to oversee real estate development and sales for a $1 billion mixed-use project in Belize.

Aside from having a stack of cash ready, how do we get started?
Kofi: It’s easy to get started as an accredited investor. You can reach out to me or our Chief Investment Officer, Daron Campbell. We can share current and upcoming opportunities that we have. Our initial opportunities started with a $50,000 minimum investment, but we also have $1 million-plus opportunities that some of our clients have opted into.