It just snuck up on me around the campfire. That’s the only way I can describe it.
A truth I had carried for years caught me completely off guard. It’s a truth I knew intuitively long before I could articulate it, and it was validated and sharpened by years of conversations with Bill Leider. It happened as I was sitting next to the campfire in one of the most beautiful places on the planet, watching my two youngest sons play nearby, listening to Jim Walberg talk about post-close tactics.
Jim had invited me to Leavitt Meadows years earlier. This is an important part of this story. He had wanted me to come join his group of men and boys on a camping trip. He had communicated that desire consistently, over three years, in the way Jim communicates most things… with a kind of quiet persistence that never really feels like pressure. When I finally showed up in the summer of 2013, I brought my sons Isaiah and Zachariah because Jim had made it clear that they mattered to him, too.
So there we finally were, sitting face-to-face beside the campfire. The sun had just come up. Our conversation meandered the way good conversations do, moving from the beauty of the place, to its Native American history, to customer service, to values, to brand.
And then Jim shared one of his tactics with me. It is a tactic he uses after the close of a real estate transaction to endear himself and his business to his clients. It was a simple tactic involving sending flowers with a handwritten note to the client’s workplace on their birthday.
He told me he has shared this tactic with many agents over the years, often from the stage of a luxury real estate conference. It’s an easily reproducible act. Something anyone could install in their business tomorrow. By Jim’s own admission, very few do.
As he described it, I felt it. I felt that feeling you get when a truth you already know comes to light in a new way. Because I was listening to Jim while sitting around a campfire, the campfire he had been personally asking me to share with him for three years.
The Campfire Wasn’t Just The Setting. It Was The Evidence.
I wasn’t just hearing the tactic. I was experiencing the man who uses it. And the tactic, within the context of who Jim Walberg is and how he moves through this world, meant something entirely different than it would have if you were an agent hearing it from the stage.
From the stage, it would certainly have seemed practical. Perhaps even clever, combined with the logic behind it. You might write it down. Maybe try it once or twice.
But you’d be missing the point entirely.
Authentic caring, honesty, and kindness can’t be taught from a stage. The best practices of the most effective people in any relationship-driven business work only because they are built on a consistency of behavior that tends to get overlooked when the tactic gets all the attention. The tactic is easy to explain. The tactic is visible. However, the consistency of character that makes the tactic land is the real magic. And it’s invisible until it isn’t. With Jim, it became visible around the campfire.
Jim Walberg didn’t wow his clients after the close because of a great tactic. He wowed them because the tactic was just one more expression of who he already was. Strip the character away and install the tactic, and you’ve produced something hollow, shallow.
People can feel the difference. They can always feel it.
The agents who heard the tactic and didn’t follow suit weren’t lazy. They just knew, somewhere inside, that the act wouldn’t mean the same thing coming from them.
They were right.
This is an experiment. The audio below was generated in ElevenLabs. It is a clone of my voice. I uploaded the text of this post to ElevelLabs and added no cues for word emphasis. I simply pasted the entire document into the text-to-speech window, chose my voice, and generated it. This is the resulting audio file.
I wrote a note to myself about this moment in the summer of 2013. I just rediscovered it while going through my “writing ideas” folder. It was long past time to actually write about.
Edit: Jim saw the post this morning and sent me two images from this trip. These brought real joy.
Thank you, Jeff, for your reflections around our campfire 13 years ago. How life has unfolded for each of us since has been extraordinary in spite of some twists and turns. Those campfire moments have continued each July for 49 years. Our 50th one will be the week of July 21st. You and your boys/men are always welcome. Each one of them have been moments of transformation. Im so grateful for your friendship. Until next time…
So many really warm and fond memories of my time spent with the beautiful man that is Jim. Jeff, when you quote that ‘your values are your true brand’ my mind goes straight to Jim. I’ve observed over 15 years that every touch point I’ve had with the great man leaves an indelible impression on me. There is nothing contrived, practiced, strategised, or rehearsed about Jim Walberg. His consistency of delivering warm ongoing meaningful life lessons in humility and humanity have made me, and no doubt countless others, better people, and the world a better place. As the great man has taught me so well. ‘We’re all just walking each other home’
Thank you for sharing your fond recollections of Jim. A perfect lead into Easter.