This is a question I am asked frequently, especially from my team members who are relatively early in their career. And in part, this question was inspiration for creating The Grind, so I could try to distill my decades of business learning into clear actions that any of our readers could implement.

If you’ve been following along for any time at all, you’ve likely picked up on the fact that I consider my team members to be true partners with me in the work my company does. I trust them to work as hard and push as far as I do, and because of it we’ve reached goals that were only dreams years—or even months ago.

But I want to switch gears and talk about a different kind of team member or partner today: specifically, business partners.

I might have gotten caught up in the spirit of the Super Bowl with my last letter, but I haven’t taken my eye off of my mission this year: to maximize the potential of every single team member on our payroll.

A lot of my early heroes were people I saw on TV, hitting home runs and making touchdowns—except, when I was growing up, we only had three channels to choose from.

In my last letter, I talked about why now, more than ever, potential is what I’m about. I feel strongly about ensuring that every single person on my team feels like they are growing farther and faster than they ever thought possible.

But you might be wondering, what does that really look like?

Last week, our staff of 130 came together—in person and over Zoom—for what we call an “All Hands” meeting. Led by my two sons Chris and Brett, our CFO Jessica Stooksbury, and myself, we went over our final numbers of the year, our goals for 2022, and other company updates. We so rarely get to see our many team members all together like that, spread out as we are across so many cities and states, that these times are always special to me.

Happy New Year, readers! I hope this holiday season has provided you the rest you need to get better and go bigger in 2022.

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to go.

As we get further and further into the holiday season, I want to take this opportunity to share more about how our company became the family owned and operated business it is today.

Today, I want to talk about finding opportunity, particularly the opportunity to develop talent.

If this drama with Zillow has taught us anything, it’s that an algorithm is never going to make the same kind of decisions as a person.