Gregg Lorberbaum - Becoming Who You Want to Be

This book is intended as a reference volume only. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher and author are not engaged in rendering any professional services. The information given here is designed to help you make informed decisions. If you suspect that you have a problem that might require professional treatment or advice, you should seek competent help.

Published by Greenleaf Book Group Press

Austin, Texas

www.gbgpress.com

Copyright 2019 Gregg Lorberbaum

All rights reserved.

Thank you for purchasing an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright law. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright holder.

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Design and composition by Greenleaf Book Group and Sheila Parr

Cover design by Greenleaf Book Group and Sheila Parr

All paintings copyright Evan Gray Lorberbaum. All rights reserved. The works may not be reproduced or distributed, in whole or in part, without the prior written permission of the artist.

Authors photo and photo of journals on inside cover by @vpvisuals.

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

Print ISBN: 978-1-62634-611-6

eBook ISBN: 978-1-62634-612-3

Part of the Tree Neutral program, which offsets the number of trees consumed in the production and printing of this book by taking proactive steps, such as planting trees in direct proportion to the number of trees used: www.treeneutral.com

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper

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First Edition

This book is dedicated to the memory of my parents, Leah and Donald Lorberbaum, and to Jill, Evan, Lindsay, and Lucie.

And to those people Ive coached. You have given me the opportunity to be of service, and I hope you have learned from the insights Ive shared here.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

I THOUGHT I WAS SMART, BUT THE SCHOOL THOUGHT I WASNT

E xcuse me, but you put me with the dumb kids by mistake.

Those were the wordsspoken by an eight-year-old me to my teacherthat landed me in the principals office the following day. I was sitting at the table with my alarmed mother, my second-grade teacher, Mrs. White, and my school principal, Mr. Miller. Augmenting this show of force was the school psychologist, whose name I didnt catch. This assemblage of school brass was all to address the fact that I thought I was smart, but the school thought I wasnt.

Please repeat what you said yesterday...

Wavery Park, my elementary school, was advanced for its time. It was 1967, and in the early sixties, tracking had become all the rage. Educators came up with the theory that grouping children by ability would benefit all the kids along the learning spectrum. As I remember it, one day my teacher divided our class into three sectionsthe smart kids, the moderately smart kids, and the not-so-smart kids. When she told me to go sit in the third section, my heart sank. What if Jill, the girl I had a crush on, saw me in the third group?

I grudgingly repeated my complaint to the group sitting at the table: I didnt belong with the dumb kids. The teacher shook her head sadly when my mother asked, How do you know my sons not right for the group he was in?

The discussion that followed about my reading and arithmetic problems made me even more miserable. And it led to me being subjected to a battery of tests whose results revealed that I did indeed have a cluster of learning disabilities. Most significantly, I was diagnosed with acute dyslexia, which caused me to constantly reverse numbers and letters, and to even switch the ends of sentences with the beginnings. No wonder those second-grade spelling bees were such a shame fest.

But sometimes in life, something that you think is bad turns out to be good, and what looks like an insurmountable obstaclelike a mountain with a steep, twisting pathleads to a wonderful place once you make it to the other side. Thats what my dyslexia turned out to be for me. Thats what your most difficult and discouraging challenges can be for you.

AUTHORS NOTE

I was thirty-six years old when Roger Staubach tapped me and two great partners to join him in building the New York City office of the national real estate company that bore his name. After ten years of hard work, we had grown the office from three to sixty people, and Roger, who was an icon in our industry, had built one of the most respected national real estate brokerage organizations.

In 2005, my business partners and I received a call from corporate telling us that Roger was ready to focus more of his time on charitable work: It was time for us to roll up the individually owned offices into one corporate entityand sell. We were all on board. We knew that selling at that time was the right thing to do.

I was forty-six, and I found myself standing at a fork in the road. I knew it was time for me to leave what we had built together for years. Like a long-distance runner who decides to veer off course, I made a sharp turn away from the route. But this was no random act; I had known for a while that it was time for what I call a Role-Based Lifestyle to kick in.

My father was ill at the time, and my family needed more of me. It was time for me to alter my priorities and switch my primary role from one of office leasing broker and provider to one of son and father. Along with the reprioritization, I decided to make use of the tools I had developed along the way to create my next act. So, armed with one of those tools, the power of positive thought, I opened Centric REA, a boutique real estate brokerage firm. Having my own firm would allow me to modify my schedule to meet my new set of commitments.

I knew that it would be no easy task to compete against much larger global competitors to keep my past clients, so I assembled a great team to do just that. But I knew I needed something more, to think outside the box. I enlisted another principlebeing generous in spiritand decided to write a book. I poured a careers worth of my own proprietary processes and know-how into