Five for Friday turns the spotlight on John Brandhorst, a senior advisor at Sperry Van Ness/Bluestone & Hockley in Portland, OR.
1. What is your geographic market and product specialty?
My geographic market is the Portland MSA and my product specialty is office and industrial sales and leasing.
2. What’s your latest best practice tip that you can share?
I can’t emphasize enough the power of a team. Studying Mike Lipsey’s material and reading Rod Santomassimo’s book, “Brokers Who Dominate” recently, a common thread among highly successful brokers is that they were able to break through to the next level by building strong teams. I’ve teamed up with Steve Hagan in our office and we brought in Matt Simpson to help round out the team. Our skill sets complement each other well and we’re quickly realizing the efficiencies of working within a team environment. We’re excited about what we can do together in 2013! The best advice I found was to be patient and seek out team members who have differing but complimentary skill sets so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
3. What’s been the biggest change over on how you run your business in the past decade?
Things are so much different in this business than they were when I started just ten years ago and I’d say that the majority of those changes are directly related to the advent of new technologies – smart phones, iPads, new software programs and the like. They’ve allowed us to become so much more efficient than we used to be.
4. What business book do you like to recommend to your colleagues?
From above, “Brokers Who Dominate“ by Rod Santomassimo.
5. What’s a fun fact that not everyone knows about you?
When I was supposed to be a freshman in high school, I dropped out for a year to hang out in Thailand with my dad, who was on a Fulbright exchange as a professor at Mahidol University and I spent a year traveling and having fun in Southeast Asia. I had to make up the year of school but it was well worth it – it was an incredible opportunity and definitely helped develop my love of travel and exploring other cultures.
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