I will start with an all-too-common scenario:

I’m really smart, and I work hard in high school.  I bust my butt and get straight A’s.  I mean it is high school after all.

This gets me into a top college.  So, I go to that college but I have to work even harder now since my competition – the other kids – also crushed it in high school.  By simple math, my competition is a lot harder, i.e. the best of the best from high school.  But I am the Energizer Bunny, so I keep on going.  I get straight A’s again.

What happens next?  I get into a top law school.  Now, the competition is really tough, isn’t it?  I am with the best of the best of the best, and I have to push even harder, and I do it!  I pull it off.  I graduate cum laude, magna cum laude, or even summa cum laude.  The world is clearly my oyster.

What do I do now?  Well since I crushed it at a top law school, I am in great demand and I get a job at one of the top law firms in the world in the biggest and coolest city in the world, which at least in my view is New York City.  Now, the fun starts.  I am launching my career and I am at the bottom of the profession as I am one just starting out.  But my goal is to make partner.  And who is my competition?  It is now the best of the best of the best of the best.  These are the most talented – and talented – human beings anywhere, at least as far as lawyering is concerned, and we are all jockeying for that partnership gold ring.  I am the Energizer Bunny, but maybe I’m getting a little bit tired.

It is pretty rough to do this for ten-ish years, but finally I pull it off.  I am now a partner in a major law firm in NYC.  The world is not only my oyster, but now I would think that may I (finally) get to eat some of those oysters.  Not so fast, because now, I am competing with the talented partners at the other law firms for a finite pool of legal business.  My adversaries are the best of the best of the best of the best of the best...

Full stop!!!!

This is effing stupid.  And I can say that since it is exactly what I did, at least for most of it, although full disclosure I was never able to make partner at a major law firm.  

Like a little rat on a treadmill, programmed in the foregoing manner, I climbed over every one of these hurdles – including hitting Harvard Law school – but instead of making partner, I was fired and on the street struggling for a new job.  

Yes, things turned out fine for me in the end – largely with some lucky breaks – but when I think back, I do wonder what in heck I was thinking, riding along on this endless brutally competitive treadmill.  

I wrote the foregoing from the perspective of how the legal profession works, but it is not that different in investment banking and other areas where people create careers.  As you read this – and I hope that as you read you are thinking what to advise your kids about career choices – you might be wondering, “What this has to do about real estate?”  And the answer is: Everything!

Before getting to real estate, I do acknowledge that résumé building is a good and solid predicate to starting a career, whether in real estate or pretty much anything.  A good résumé really does help you.  So, for the first of the treadmill outlined above, it does make some sense to at least do well enough to at least land your first job at a top player in a major city, as that does make next career steps easier.

But when you get past a nice résumé, and you are at the point in your career where you are about to use that résumé, and you have the skill set to provide value to clients and customers, it does make sense to ask yourself how much further does it make sense to run on that endless treadmill competing against the best of the best of the best…

In real estate, like it or not, at some point you have to make this exact same decision.  Now that you have a solid résumé and training - from the big city and the big time real estate company - do you want to continue to play in the big leagues, and try to be Frank Sinatra…

If I Can Make It There, I Can Make it Anywhere?

This is exciting to be sure, but it leaves you to compete with the industry titans you read about every day in The Real Deal and The Observer.  

Or, do you want to go Boringsville, which is in the middle of Tarnation, where you won’t necessarily have such formidable armed adversaries and competitors.

Digging deeper, the more established you are in the big city where you started your career, the harder it is to transition out.  This is because, as we all know, real estate is a local business and one of your advantages in the big city is your market knowledge and your contacts there.  When you leave, you lose a lot – and maybe all of that.  

But not at least thinking about this issue is in and of itself a decision, i.e. non-acting is a decision not to act.  In this vein, you may have heard that phrase:

Life is what happens when you’re making plans.

Every year you don’t leave the big city for wherever you might go to, you increase the risk you take when you do leave, since, by simple math, you have more sunk costs to walk away from.

So, there is a magic moment in your career to decide whether and if to leave the big (competitive) place for the smaller (less competitive) place, and my urging here is not to let life just happen but really think it through.

Of course, your answer is your own to make and there are imponderables and variables to consider, including of course the incessant (and at this point annoying) drumbeat of how AI will change things, but my point is you don’t necessarily have to take that next step on the treadmill and stay at the big job in the big city.  You might do a ton better in another place.  

Bruce Stachenfeld aka The Real Estate Philosopher™