Do You Have To Be Ruthless To Win?
Jonathan Keyser is the Founder and thought leader behind Keyser, which is the largest occupier services commercial real estate brokerage firm in Arizona. Through sheer determination and focus on selfless service, Jonathan is disrupting the commercial real estate industry. He’s a bestselling author, a media contributor and a strong supporter of the Conscious Capitalism movement. Jonathan is here to share his journey, mission and selfless service approach to business and his book, You Don’t Have to Be Ruthless to Win. His book isn’t about him, it’s about you. Jonathan will share how you can activate selflessness in your life and see how and why this counterintuitive strategy can create extraordinary long-term success in your own business.
I love this mindset of selflessness and You Don’t Have to Be Ruthless to Win. Can you take us back to your own story of origin? Jonathan, were you a young lad, was it high school, was it college, when did you start to notice that being successful is about helping others?
A number of years ago, a speaker at a conference gets up and starts talking about service and I’m looking at him and I’m thinking, “This guy is a successful guy. What the heck is he talking about?” He’s talking about how he’s created a successful enterprise by helping others succeed and I thought, “Huh.” I went up to him afterward and first I had to see if he was the real deal. I said, “Is that a shtick that you say, or is that real? Is that something that you practice?” He said, “No, I do.” I said, “How does it work?” He goes, “Think of it like you’re hunting. You grab your gun off the wall, you go out, you shoot a piece of whatever, you bring it back, skin it, eat it, and you’ve got to go do that all over again. What I’m describing is more like farming.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Imagine that you’re out serving and helping as many people as you can all day, and each one of those acts of service is planting a seed.” He likened it to a citrus tree, which in my backyard here in Arizona where I’m based, citrus trees grow everywhere here.
I have a huge one in my backyard that’s a lemon tree but when it was little I thought it was half dead, I didn’t even think it was ever going to yield fruit. It took me a lot of nurturing, watering and pruning and all of that activity led to a tree that I can’t give the fruit away, and that’s where he likened it to. He said, “Over time, as you help all these people and you nurture these relationships, they yield fruit and you don’t have to go out and sell all over again.” I said, “That’s amazing. How do I do that?” That started this process where I decided I was going to reinvent myself. I came back to Arizona through my old cut-throat business plan away that was sales-oriented and helping everybody that I could, asking people one question, “How can I help you?” People are like, “What do you mean how can you help me?” I’m like, “What do you need?” I was helping people get jobs. I was helping people’s kids get connected.
I was doing anything they needed. I was helping people find doctors. I became a free community concierge and everybody in my industry thought I had bumped my head. They thought I’d gone off the deep end, here I was national rookie of the year for Grubb and Ellis and all of a sudden I’m doing what appears to be nonprofit work for free. When I went up to that speaker and asked him, “If this is true, if this works, how come no one else is doing it if this is such a strategy for success?” He said, “Because it takes too long.” I said, “What does that mean?” He said, “It will take you about five years.” I thought, “Okay.” That’s what I experienced too when I was back here building it, this is the long game. I was helping, serving, giving, nothing was coming back and through that process, people were questioning my sanity.
After five years, all those acts of service that I have been putting out there started to come back. I went from laughingstock at the company to top producer and then it started to take off. In an epiphany moment in 2012. As I sat there frustrated with my inability to scale a culture of service within a traditional commercial state firm environment, I realized that I had the opportunity to start, this needed a life of its own. If I could create a company and teach other people in commercial real estate brokerage how they could succeed by helping others succeed. If I could show that’s possible, I could change the industry. I could change the world and show other people that were in ruthless industries as well, “You can do this too.”
I came back from that trip where I had an epiphany and started my own firm. We’re the largest firm of our kind in Arizona and one of the fastest-growing in the country per Inc. 5000. I’m speaking all over the country. My book hit number one and it’s a wild experience because I know what it was like when I started it, and I know how many people were skeptical and thought I was crazy. The world has shifted and more and more people are starting to realize that, “Maybe this service stuff works.” My bottom-line message to the world is, you truly don’t have to be ruthless to win and in fact, I would argue that the most sustainable way to create long-term success is by helping as many people as possible. That’s what we’re about at Keyser and that’s why we’re growing quickly.
There might be some people out there saying, “I love the concept, Jonathan, but I don’t have five years. Can I still not be ruthless and be successful in the near short-term?” How do you answer that?
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