Real Estate Florida - May/June 2009

Youth Movement

Critics of Generations X and Y, names assigned to groups born since the mid-1960s, were pretty harsh in their assessment that they could never be as industrious as their

“boomer” parents or Depression-era grandparents. Well, the critics aren’t always right, are they?

A review of the nominees for our “40

Under 40” feature in this issue shows that those two generations are getting things done despite being in one of the worst markets for commercial real estate that anyone can recall. It’s also a good learning experience for those professionals who will still be working in decades to come.

Ingenuity may play a big part in their current success, along with having solid mentors who taught them all of the necessary how-tos and turned them loose in the marketplace. If you think about it, this is a golden opportunity to learn, since this is also likely to be the first major downturn experienced by many of these under-40 folks.

Besides possessing an entrepreneurial spirit that makes younger workers seem less beholden to their employers, the younger generations are taking advantages of unprecedented opportunities to use social media in ways that anyone old enough to remember what a pension was could ever imagine. It’s an interesting reversal that older workers are able to learn the best methods of harnessing online power from their younger counterparts.

And what of the next group of commercial professionals that will follow those highlighted here? A real estate professor at the University of Tampa recently shared the thoughts of one of her students who is coming to grips with a profession he is entering at possibly the least-opportune occasion:

“Brokers are going to have to be willing to get their hands dirty and the former glamour once linked to this industry may be gone for quite some time,” the student wrote in a class report. “We need to stop treating this as if we are children. The naive approach will result in failure.”

So there is still a lot to be learned from the younger set, and I’m certain you’ll be as impressed by our “40 Under 40” as I have been in reading their profiles. It will be interesting to see what the ones coming up behind them accomplish, too.

Rock on, kiddies!

Carl Cronan, Editor carl.cronan@incisivemedia.com

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