Consistency Over Occasional Greatness - with Mark Brower

We trade resolutions for commitments and show how consistency, coaching, and community turn big goals into practical steps in both ultrarunning and property management. Freedom becomes the target: build systems, delegate the draining work, and protect the time that matters.

• consistency over occasional greatness as the operating rule
• paying for coaching to create real accountability
• surrounding yourself with doers to normalize high standards
• designing entrepreneurship as a path to freedom
• building mileage and processes slowly, with intention
• technique and efficiency in running and operations
• public commitments to practice and publish daily
• the urgency of time driving better choices

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And don't forget to subscribe and leave a review so you never miss out on future insights and strategies and tactics

visit pmsuccess.com for more value packed property management related information or to hire Tony as your property management coach.

Transcript

Welcome And Theme: Freedom

Tony Cline 0:00

Welcome to the Property Management Success Podcast, where we interview leaders in the industry to uncover the secrets to profitability, efficiency, and achieving true freedom, whether it's your time, money, or lifestyle. I'm your host, Tony Klein, and I'm here to help you build a wildly successful property management business. Let's get to it. Welcome back to another episode of the Property Management Success podcast with the Property Management Aid Station with Mark Brouwer. Yeah. Mark, there's a couple of things I wanted to wrap up with. I know we're going to make this a little bit of a shorter episode, but we were talking previously about things that we're going to be working on. And I'm a I'm a true believer in not setting resolutions. And uh I'm happy to share that with you. But I am a believer in making commitments and doing things that are going to make us better over the long haul. And uh and so I know you have recently recommitted, not made a resolution. This isn't a New Year's resolution. This is a an actual commitment to re-engaging in something. And I want to give you an opportunity to share that with our audience. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm excited to know what you're talking about.

Resolutions vs Commitments

The Coach’s Rule: Consistency

Mark Brower 1:17

That's exactly what you're talking about. I have a text message that I can read. I uh on Thanksgiving, oh man, I'm going through something personally that's given me, let's say, an abundance of emotional energy at this point in my life. And so I on um on Thanksgiving, I texted my old uh my old running coach, and I said, Hey coach, I uh I think I want to run another ultra, but I haven't run for like two years and I'm at total ground zero. What should I do? And guess what coach said? He goes here, I found it. I'm reading, I'm gonna read it. Hey coach, I'm at total ground zero, but I think want to train for an ultra again. What should I do? Oh pretty good memory. He said, Consistency is better than occasional greatness. Thanks, coach. Thanks.

Tony Cline 2:18

So everything's relative, but what was his level of greatness that he was speaking about there? Because I know what consistency looks like in the lack of, but what was the flash of of greatness that he was speaking of?

Mark Brower 2:32

Well, I think he was speaking to the fact that I haven't run in two years and I suddenly want to train for an ultra, you know, like I want to go run a hundred miles and I got nothing under my belt, I got no base.

Tony Cline 2:43

But here's here's the point though. You did finish, you have finished an ultra before. So you've experienced right, so you've experienced that success. This is this is I'm gonna tie this back to to what I'm currently working on as well. But I want to point out just because you've made it to the mountaintop, if you don't do the things that it takes to stay there, those are the glory days, but you still got to work hard to get back to the mountaintop. Uh yeah.

Mark Brower 3:15

Your point?

Tony Cline 3:17

Well, you've made a commitment to do some things that are going to help you get back to the mountaintop.

Mark Brower 3:23

Yes. Yes, I did. And the day that I texted coach and he put me in my humble corner again and said, like, dude, um, you know, consistency is the is the thing. And I knew that was I already knew that was true. It's just coach being coach. Um, I also, before I called him, before I texted him, I I paid him a monthly coaching fee through Venmo. It's like um because I know that without accountability and without a certain level of commitment, that I will not complete some huge audacious goal that I have. I know that to get myself fully committed, um, I need some accountability. I need coaches, I need peers around me, I need support. And so that was um that was an important step for me. Did that answer your question?

Accountability And Paying For Coaching

Tony Cline 4:15

Yeah. Yeah. And you you had mentioned the accountability piece with the coach and getting the program and having somebody that has been there and understands what you're trying to accomplish and is going to help you accomplish that. You've also committed to a level of accountability with him. There's a little bit of sting in the fact that you're paying him to help you. And if you don't follow through, then that's money wasted. Plus, you've given him the authority to sort of reprimand you in a way if you don't follow through. But you mentioned something else that I think is really important. And I had I I said this the other day uh when we were talking. It's surrounding yourself with the people that have done or are currently doing what you want to do. And I I don't remember how it came up, but you remember when when you were younger and your your mom would say, Well, if you if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump off a bridge too? And you know, my answer was, Well, yeah, of course. Like that's what we do. Like the the crowd of people that you're around normalizes the things that that crowd of people does. And so if you want to be somebody that is accomplishing something at a higher level or even different than what you're doing now, you have to surround yourself with the people that that have those same beliefs, those same morals, the same practice patterns. You know, you've got to be around the people. It's so hard to become who you want to be in a vacuum.

Mark Brower 5:43

Yeah, 100%. Sometimes you have to pay those people. Sometimes they'll do it for free.

Tony Cline 5:50

Sometimes so I'm sure that your coach has other people that that they coach. And I'm sure that they have run clubs, and I'm sure that you guys can get together for practice runs or for training runs. It's the same thing in property management or it's the same thing in whatever you're trying to do. Find your people and don't try to what was I think you said something the other day. Don't try to I'm not looking for real.

Find Your People, Change Your Norms

Mark Brower 6:16

I'm not looking for relationships. I'm not looking to work on relationships. I'm working, I'm looking for relationships that work. No, that was that was the wrong one. Anyway, what were you saying?

Tony Cline 6:24

Well, that was that was pretty good too. Can I get a coffee mug that says that?

Mark Brower 6:27

Yes.

Tony Cline 6:28

Uh no, it was uh it was something like don't try to change to fit in. Fit in to change. I don't know. I'll I'll put it in the show notes. Somebody call in. We got a live live caller. Live caller. Call in and let me know what the heck that quote is.

Mark Brower 6:46

Read Tony's mind. Live caller, please.

Tony Cline 6:48

Yeah. Anyway, it's not about trying to change yourself to fit into a crowd, it's finding the right crowd that lets you fit in and be who you are.

Mark Brower 6:58

Audaciously authentic and bold in your approach to life. I'm making this up as I go. And people will either fall in or fall out of your life. And until you're living with sort of a disregard for whoever's gonna fall in or fall out, you're just pandering and trying to get and trying to be trying to meet everybody's needs. And guess what? It's loathsome, it's unattractive, and it's ineffective. Like, figure out what you like and don't like, and then walk around and actually think like, hey, you know what? If I'm not really driving with somebody, it's cool. You know, I'll be cordial with them, but I'm only working looking for relationships that really feed me and that I'm really excited about. And now suddenly we've shifted out of this energy where you just wanted to meet everybody's needs and want everybody to like you, which is so unattractive. And guess what? People have a radar that picks that crap up. Don't be that person. That's what you wanted to hear? Excuse me? Is that what you wanted to hear? I'm just checking. I'm just checking because I want you to like me.

Authentic Relationships Over Approval

Tony Cline 8:07

You fit in here, Mark. You fit in here. Uh so I just recently found out within the last couple of days, I have a family member that was diagnosed with uh with an illness that's that's pretty serious. And and uh so we're we're kind of thinking about some life issues. And um when you it's funny, when we wake up, if we're not thinking about how much time we have left, it's really easy to waste that time. But when something puts that back into perspective of the amount of time you have left and how valuable that time is, you can't get that time back. The moment we just spent, we don't get that back. We can always make more money, but we can't make more time. And it really puts things in perspective for me that there are things that I want to accomplish still, there are things that I want to experience, and there is somebody that I still want to become. And I think it's okay to give ourselves permission to do that and not have to worry about the hustle and the grind, and you know, especially again, bringing this back to business owners. We we sometimes become trapped in the business that we created, and we feel like we are the linchpin that holds it all together. And if you don't change that, you will come to the end of your life and realize I worked hard, I'm proud of what I did for work, but at the same time, that's all I have to show for it.

Time Scarcity And What Really Matters

Mark Brower 9:33

Well, it kind of defeats the per. Well, everything can be for our gain, right? If we have the right mindset. You know, the the Lord can change us through every experience we have. So the the there can't we can live, we should be living lives where nothing, none of our experience and none of our efforts is wasted. However, if we're intentional, and I I'm trying to be intentional with the building that I'm doing, I'm in the pursuit of freedom. And we've talked about this before. Like it's not freedom if I've entrapped myself in a miserable job, you know, draining my batteries, doing work I wasn't born to do. That's not that's not the path of entrepreneurship for me. The path of entrepreneurship should be, now here I am getting opinionated, like it's all these absolutes from Mark's brain, the path of entrepreneurship should be a path toward freedom, you know, uh releasing me from the activities that drain me that I'm still competent enough to do, but are draining me that I'm not in purpose, I'm not in flow, so that I can focus on my unique ability. Dan Sullivan talks about unique ability, so that I can um deliver maximum value through my the use of my gifts and talents to people around me and simultaneously experience maximum joy in the doing of it. So I love thinking, I love writing, I love podcasting, I love doing this with you, I love going to conferences, I love building a leadership team, I love coming up with audacious visions and like I love all that stuff. I love walking around my office and high-fiving people and telling them I love them. But if you ask me to sit in a room for four hours and like fine-tune or rebuild a lead simple process, like no, I'm not doing that. No, that's not the freedom I'm looking for.

Entrepreneurship As A Path To Freedom

Tony Cline 11:23

All right, I want to bring this back to something you said because I uh I know we're gonna try to keep this one a little bit shorter, but I want to tie together a few concepts. You had said that your coach said that consistency is greater than flashes of brilliance or flashes of something. Um you're better at remembering cat names. Yeah. Uh Mr. Jinx. Um the consistency matters, like doing the thing every day. And and so you mentioned something you you're going to work on getting back to finishing another ultra. So what is it going to take for you to be able to do that?

Mark Brower 12:05

Okay, so he said consistency is better than occasional greatness. The first um on Thanksgiving I ran 4.5 miles. It was really tough. The next day I ran 4.5 miles, it was overdoing it. And then I went down for a few days, couldn't run. The next week, the coach gave me a total of 15 miles for the entire week, which is really low volume for you and me, you know. So that's basically where I was at. The next week, 17 miles. This week it's gonna be 23 miles. And then probably next week it'll be 27 or 26 miles. It's like I'm slowly by the end of the year, maybe gonna get back up to 30 miles, and then and then into January, probably stay around the 30s, you know, all of January. It's just a lot, it's tens of thousands of individual footfalls, is what it is. And running is basically tipping your body forward and preventing your your body from falling on the ground. That's what it is, with a little hop in between. That's all running is tens of thousands of footfalls between me and an ultra and a lot of self-reflection. And you know what? I noticed today my body is in a constant state of depletion and rebuilding because what we want to do when we're building is we want to put ourselves in the optimal. We don't want to overtrain, but we don't want to undertrain. What does that mean? That means every day I'm living in a state where my body uh the the the the tearing down that I've done of my body is is exactly how much my body can replenish by the next time I run. And so that's the state I've chosen to live in between now and June when you and I possibly go run Bighorn 100 in Wyoming, my first hundred mile race with my buddy Tony Klein. Which, if I'm 80 years old and I've never run an ultra with Tony Klein, I'm never forgiving myself. Okay.

Rebuilding With Slow Mileage Progression

Tony Cline 14:03

All right, so I want to tie this back to two things. First one is you mentioned thousands of footfalls, foot strikes. Um running, like success in most things, is very simple. It's not easy, but it's simple. For us, it consists of two steps. And it's actually you can start anywhere in the process you want. You can start with a right foot, or you can start with a left foot. But you take a step with the right foot and you repeat it with the left foot, and then you just continue to repeat those two steps over and over and over until you create some level of success. It's the same thing with most things in business. It's the things that are flashy and exciting, those are usually the distractions. The things that lead us to success is once we figured out the the pattern, it's that boring repetition of doing the same thing over and over that has gotten you success and continuing to do that over and over and over and over.

Mark Brower 15:04

It's a refiner's fire.

Tony Cline 15:06

Until what?

Mark Brower 15:07

It's a refiner's fire.

Tony Cline 15:09

Yes.

Mark Brower 15:09

It's a meditation.

Tony Cline 15:12

So okay. I also want to give a little bit of context to what you talked about of where you were and where you're going with your training. Back in October on the 15th, I finished the Moab 240. So I ran 240 miles on October 15th. I finished that race. I had some chest cold afterwards. I had a head cold, then I got the flu, then I had a root canal, and then I had to go back in and get a crown.

Mark Brower 15:44

They keep you a root canal during the race. That is the worst possible ultra experience ever.

Tony Cline 15:50

Not during the race. I didn't have like a dentist running beside me with his drill. This happened afterwards. But my point is, I was at the top of my game, and then here we are in uh December, a couple months later. Yeah, what have you done lately? I had to start back over. You know what I ran yesterday? I ran 30 minutes on the treadmill. You know what I ran today? I ran five miles on the treadmill.

Mark Brower 16:16

No way. And it's still better safe than you are. That's hard to believe.

Simple Repetition Beats Flashy Hacks

Tony Cline 16:20

It's building back up. It's it's if you don't continue to to practice, your comfort zone shrinks. Now, I did go out uh on Saturday or something and run like 14 and a half miles. That was the hardest trail that we have around here. But the point is, if you don't continue to to work on the things that that got you where you are, it very quickly fades. And that's not just in running, that is in business and life. It's you cannot let off the accelerator. It just has to become you don't don't wish for things to be easier, wish for you to be better.

Mark Brower 16:57

That's exactly right. And also one foot at a time. Earlier, when you were talking about how we build back up, I was reminded of um in my church, uh, we don't have paid clergy, so we all just kind of volunteer and help out. So on Sunday, this last week, I was asked to give a talk from the pulpit for 15 minutes. Do you think I mentioned running at all?

Tony Cline 17:22

I'm pretty sure if you stood if you stood up, if you had an audience, we we can't help it.

Practice Running: Efficiency And Form

Mark Brower 17:28

Yeah, we can't help it. Two running references. But one of the things I I shared was a scripture uh in my in my uh theology that's uh references line upon line, precept upon precept. That's how things and by small and simple things are great things brought to pass. And that's what it is, man. It is the small, it is the small things. The small things done well. I remember one time I read in a uh heard on a podcast or read in a running book or something like that. The guy's like, You gotta practice running. And I'm like, practice running? No, I'm just running. He's like, No, no, no. Like a juggler spends thousands of hours fine-tuning their muscles to like juggle perfectly, so too a runner, as they intentionally run, refines their run. I mean, the goal of running is to move your body with the least energy expended, period. That is the calculus of running. And so the fact that that you can have a different mindset and approach running in a non-sloppy way with intention and get more efficient with your movement. I mean, it happens naturally over time. I mean, you you and I can be running, and we can see a non-runner running near us. He's he's laughing. Tony's laughing. He knows exactly what I'm talking about. You can a runner, and not trying to be arrogant here, but a runner can size up a non-runner and you can tell, like you know, uh based on the the the movement, the account economy of movement for sure.

Tony Cline 19:04

One of my favorite things, yeah. One of my favorite things is if my wife is driving and we're driving down the street, and I will see a runner, it doesn't matter, male, female, whatever, I can see it, and I will just watch them as we pass, and she'll she'll turn to me and say, What? And I'll say, Well, he's giving too much kick for the amount of uh he's kicking too hard and he's not progressing forward enough, so he's really not utilizing the the force that he's using. Yeah, or that one's bringing his knees up too high. Oh my gosh. Or this one has their swing. Yeah, they're swinging their arms back and forth. But it's just what happens when you when you start getting better and better and better. You recognize all the things that you used to do before you figured it out. That's it.

Mark Brower 19:48

Okay, we got to get him out of here. Tony, send him out of here.

Tony Cline 19:51

One last thing.

Mark Brower 19:52

Okay.

Public Commitment To Daily Content

Tony Cline 19:53

I want to make this uh commitment here because this is one of the things that I'm working on. Obviously, I'm working on getting back in shape. I got Bigfoot. 200 coming up in August. We have the the bighorn in June. Let's go. But uh just like you've been working on your writing and getting really good on uh writing, I have made a commitment um and I'm I'm halfway, not halfway, but I'm I'm into it, where I am recording 20 minutes of content every single day for a 30-day stretch. Some of it will be published, some of it will be just trying to work on my skills. But it's just the reason I put that out there is I want to encourage people who, if you're not good at something, but you want to get good at it, just put the time into it and see where it takes you.

Mark Brower 20:38

Just put the time in. No fear. No, no fear. Put the time in. It's all gonna work out.

Tony Cline 20:42

Okay, get them out of here. Okay. You all, you've been we've been taking it pretty easy on you. It's time to get out of this aid station. You sat here too long, you filled your bellies, you filled your brains. Get on out. We'll see you at the next one.

Mark Brower 20:57

We'll see you at the next one. Great job.

Closing And Listener CTA

Tony Cline 21:02

Thanks for tuning in to the Property Management Success Podcast. We'll be back with another value packed episode to help you level up your property management game. If you've got something valuable out of today's episode, please share it with a friend or colleague. And don't forget to subscribe and leave a review so you never miss out on future insights and strategies and tactics. Until next time, here's the Your Success.