Harvesting success: Thanksgiving reflections on team building

I have a lot of people ask about the success of The Jim Allen Group, and one of the things I love to share in response is this fact: we rely on each other. From the early days of my career, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it alone. I felt like I needed a community. And that reason is why I started my company. After years in business, I’ve seen time and time again that it takes a team to lift each other up.

Today, I’m proud to say I have a highly experienced team of individuals who collectively bring solutions that meet the needs of our customers and whose knowledge and insights make our team stronger every day. Here’s what I’m reflecting on this week, just as we begin the Thanksgiving holiday.

How The Jim Allen Group began was: I was working for an awful lot of builders and I was trying to make sure I was meeting all of their needs. I didn’t feel like I could do it alone. I felt like I needed to get a community with me to help because every time somebody asked, I wanted to make everybody a priority. And everything isn’t a house on fire. What I had to do was restructure for myself and say I’m going to set these apart. I’m going to enable other folks to help me help other people be successful. If I don’t do that, I don’t have a way to succeed in life.

Keep in mind that success can’t just be about your bottom line. While numbers tell a story, what’s every bit as telling is the happiness of your team and those around you. Give them flexibility and support; and trust them to do the work. When you empower and motivate your team, they’ll perform better, which results in happier customers, too.

It’s important to know that each day is a chance to be better. I believe if I’m not improving by one percent every single day, I haven’t achieved anything. Success to me is a moving thing. I’m judged by yesterday’s victory, and I’ve got to be better every day. When I look at the high level — trying to figure out how to make my team within The Jim Allen Group more successful — all I’ve got to do is tell people, “Each day when you wake up, I want you to be one percent more than you were yesterday.”

The important thing to remember is that this journey is a unique thing for every individual. You can’t be one percent more than me, and I can’t be one percent more than you. And then I tell them, “Let me know tomorrow what you did to improve yourself today.” When we’re all pushing ourselves to do better and be better, the result is a company culture that creates innovation, growth, and achievement.

We talk regularly about The Jim Allen Group Advantage from a home buying and selling standpoint. For our clients, the JAG Advantage means you’ve got the best team on your side as you navigate buying or selling a home in the Triangle area. We have a proven track record, and we’re proud of the accolades and incredible testimonials that we receive that tell us we have a team that is dedicated to our clients. But the JAG Advantage goes even deeper than our clients alone.

The JAG Advantage is so big that I have every member of my team giving us input. We’ll have a full sales meeting where I ask every team member, “You tell me what you believe the advantage is of working with JAG over any place else that you can work.” We need to know what our people get from being here. And beyond that, it can’t be about us. We’re servers. Our life goal is to serve the clients that sit in front of us and represent them. If our JAG advantage is one thing, it’s that we have a whole lot of people that care about our clients’ needs. That’s what makes us the best.

The Jim Allen Group has been around for many years. And through those years, it’s taken every person on the team to get to where we are today. Every single person who’s ever been affiliated with JAG — whether they’re here today or they’re not — every single builder, every single individual buyer, has helped us. And it’s not about helping us get perfect, because that’s not attainable. But these people have helped us improve daily.

I can tell you, there is nothing that doesn’t start at step one. It feels so good to get up and know that your goal in life is to help another person. When you really sprinkle it down, that’s what it’s all about. That’s what The Jim Allen Group is. And I’m grateful every day that there are so many people invested in me, my business, our clients, and their work.

As I mentioned above, your one percent isn’t the same as mine, and vice versa. But if you work toward ensuring your team and your customers have what they need to grow, success is inevitable regardless of your business model.

Jim Allen is a business leader and entrepreneur who has built one of the top-producing real estate groups in the Triangle. He is President of The Jim Allen Group, which is consistently named one of the top real estate teams in North Carolina and even North America.