Success…It’s A Team Sport

Eight years ago today, I crossed the finish line of my very first marathon.

It was the culmination of months — nearly a year — of training. Preparing to run 26.2 miles taught me so much about myself. If you’ve never done a marathon, I highly recommend it. The lessons go far beyond running.

Marathon training builds determination: getting up early for an hour-long run. Resilience: recovering and showing up again the next day. Perseverance: pushing through even when you want to quit. Stepping up to that starting line takes focus and hard work.

Looking back, I can see one of the biggest reasons I was able to accomplish it.

Community.

Finding a community of runners. Training for my first marathon with others who had already run them.

On those early 5 a.m. runs, I wasn’t by myself — I had a team.

Whether a group run on the weekend, early morning recovery run, 5k organized event, almost every time I went to run, I had someone there with me.

It kept me on track, kept me accountable, and kept me progressing to my goal.

There’s an old African proverb that says: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

100% applies to running —but it doesn’t stop there.

Any area of life, we get tired. We lose focus. We lose progress. It’s incredibly hard to take all the lumps that life gives us on our own.

Sure, you can move fast when you’re running the show solo. But it gets lonely in the trenches.

Especially when it feels like all the work you are doing is not making the progess you wanted.

When our willpower begins to fade, that’s where community comes in.

The group that encourages us to take one more step, to get back up and keep on keeping on.

In my industry, I see this all over the place. Real estate is a relationship business, and buying apartments is a team sport. I would never have gotten started without first building the relationships and the network I needed to actually close a deal.

You might not be training for a marathon this year — but if you are, go for it!

If your goal is to close an apartment deal in 2025, make sure you set yourself up for success.

Find your tribe. Get connected. Join a room full of people who share your goals and can support you along the way.