In Chapter 8 of 14 in his 2012 interview, real estate development executive Brett Goldman answers "What Does it Mean to Be a Leader in What You Do?" Goldman shares it means to achieve excellence in real estate. He points to sustainability and how informed decision making and consistency shape results over long periods of time. Brett Goldman is a Real Estate Acquisitions Director at Triangle Equities in New York City. He holds a BA in General Studies from the University of Michigan and a Masters in Real Estate Development from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: What does it mean to be a leader in what you do?
Brett Goldman: The leaders in our business are successful, continue to be successful, make smart moves, keep a relatively low profile, lead by example, and they're generally sharp people that have made strings of good decisions for most of their career. So those are the people that lead in my business. The people that are most well-known are the people that are doing the most deals for the longest time, and that doesn't necessarily mean the guy who's coming in doing 10 deals in a year and then never does a deal again because he overpaid. There's been a lot of companies especially in '05, '06, '07 that overpaid and they looked great in those years, but they didn't survive and so the leaders in the business are the ones that can survive the ups and survive the downs and keep going.
Erik Michielsen: And as you’re crafting your own path of leadership, what specific takeaways are you pulling from those that have blazed that trail before you?
Brett Goldman: It's about making smart decisions, and that means reasoned. Like really doing a lot of research in order to make decisions. And doing them with a historical basis in your mind. Meaning you can't be fooled by just today's environment, you always kind of have to -- you have to know what the winds are blowing or how the winds are blowing, what they're bringing and what they've brought. And if you can kind of understand what the history of things are, it can -- I think that it can get you to a better place in understanding where you are in that history. Sometimes that makes us more conservative as investors and sometimes we lose out on deals because of that. But I think that it keeps you in for the long haul and that's how you lead.