Episode 66:

Business Mentors and the Value of Learning

What You Will Learn:

What lessons Gregg learned through the growth of his business, and why working with the right business mentors was an important ingredient of his success
What painful challenges Gregg faced and important business lessons he learned over the course of 15 years of company growth
How Gregg and his three business partners at JWB Real Estate Companies navigated the challenges of making decisions together and reaching consensus
How Gregg and his business partners spend one full day together each week away from the office to focus on key business decisions and opportunities
How Gregg connected with his mentor by taking a chance and reaching out, and what benefits he received from learning the lessons his mentor taught him
Why Gregg feels the cost of working with business mentors is more than justified by the skills you can learn to help you grow your business
How Gregg and his partners realized the importance of adding to the team with talented people, and what standards they set in their hiring processes
How the JWB team has maintained its focus on strong working relationships and doing charitable work even as their team size has grown
How Gregg and his partners involved the whole team in defining JWB’s Core Values over a period of months, and why they teach, train, coach, and hire to those Values

Business Mentors and the Value of Learning

Business mentors can be powerful allies for helping you scale your business, and the cost of studying with a great mentor is more than made up for by the value of the information they have to share. In this episode of the Elite Entrepreneurs podcast, JWB Real Estate Companies founding partner Gregg Cohen shares the impact the right mentor made on his business, helping Gregg and his partners scale JWB to over 1,200 clients and more than $450 million in total assets under management. He talks about the important role the company’s Core Values have played in its success, and he explains why he and his three business partners spend one full day of each week working on the long-term planning of the business.

Why Business Mentors are Worth the Cost

When you are trying to grow and scale your business beyond the seven-figure plateau, you have to learn many new skills and implement new processes to replace the ones that got you where you are. Good business mentors have already been where you want to go, and they can help teach you to navigate the new challenges you face on your growth journey. Early on in Gregg’s career in real estate, he took a chance and approached an experienced business leader to ask if he would be willing to mentor Gregg, and even though his friends and family questioned the wisdom of spending money to study under a mentor when Gregg still hadn’t done his first deal, Gregg says the money he spent on the mentoring made a tremendous impact on his business and its success, helping him grow the business faster than he would have otherwise and helping him avoid costly mistakes and pitfalls. A great mentor can help you chart a path to where you want your business to go because they know the right path to travel.

A Four-Way Partnership and a Focus on Values

Gregg Cohen started JWB with three other partners, and all four are active in leading the business. One of the challenges of having multiple, equal partners is finding consensus on how you want to build the company and what you want the results to look like. Gregg and his partners leave the office for one full day each week and make themselves unavailable to the team so that they can focus on planning and on the long-term direction they want to take the business. This helps them set shared goals and agree on key decisions. Additionally, Gregg’s entire team was involved in setting the Core Values of the organization, giving everyone a personal connection to those Values and ensuring that the entire team has a shared Vision for the business. That alignment to a shared Vision has been a major key to JWB’s success.

About Gregg Cohen

As a founding partner of JWB Real Estate Companies, Gregg Cohen has seen the company grow from humble beginnings to serving over 1,200 clients worldwide with total assets under management of over $450 million. JWB helps clients diversify out of the stock market by building a fully managed rental property portfolio for the client. Cohen and his team have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Inc. Magazine, The Jacksonville Business Journal, and The Florida Times-Union multiple times.