Anand Patel

By Anand Patel

Earlier this year I gave a presentation locally that I entitled “The Pipsqueak Principles” — three lessons my now 2 ½-year-old daughter inadvertently taught me during her first year. You see, before her birth (as those of you who are new parents may attest to) I lived in my own bubble and didn’t pay much attention to anything that didn’t affect me personally. But during the first twelve months after my daughter was born, I began to see things around me in a very different perspective. Three principles in particular that I learned from my little “pipsqueak” (in addition to changing dirty diapers!) were to 1.) Love unconditionally, 2.) Give back to the community, and 3.) Connect with others.

The other day as I was reflecting on that speech I realized these same three principles of loving, giving and connecting can also be applied to real estate:

Love what you do. To truly be successful in real estate — not just financially, but for it to be personally fulfilling, you really need to love your profession. If you don’t love being a REALTOR®, you inevitably will be unhappy, no matter how much money you make doing it.

Give back to your community and profession. As a real estate professional in the field, you see firsthand the amount of change that needs to take place in our communities. We all want safer neighborhoods, affordable housing for the poor, better transportation options …well WE need to get involved and do something about it.  The same holds true for the professional associations we belong to — by giving back and getting involved, everyone benefits.

Connect with your peers. By networking and connecting with fellow professionals not only from our region, our state, but all over the country (even the world for that matter) helps make us stronger, competent and well-rounded REALTORS®. Don’t forget it also helps build a great referral network! There is a lot we can learn from each other and that can only take place by continually networking and engaging with our peers.

Come to think of it, can’t we accomplish all three of these principles as a part of YPN? As a member of the Young Professional’s Network we are afforded the ability to express, nurture and develop our love for our profession, give back to our associations and communities, and connect with fellow, like-minded YPNers.

Using these three Pipsqueak Principles of Real Estate as a guide, wouldn’t you agree that we’ll not only enrich our own lives, but that of the real estate profession as a whole? These are just three of many principles my daughter continually teaches me (patience being on the top of that list!). In addition to loving, giving and connecting — what other “pipsqueak principles” have you learned in your personal lives that we can all benefit from?

Anand Patel is state broker for Florida and Georgia with Elite REO Services and Elite Premier Properties. You can connect with Anand on Twitter: @anand_tampa; Facebook: www.facebook.com/livingelite; LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/anandpatel1 or on the Web at www.anandsblog.com.