True view: Gold-Medal Agents Aren’t Made in Spring
Every four years, the world becomes captivated by the Olympics. We watch moments that look almost superhuman — a race decided in seconds, a routine executed with breathtaking precision, a podium ceremony that feels like the culmination of something extraordinary. But what always strikes me most isn’t the performance itself. It’s the awareness that what we’re seeing is simply the visible tip of years of invisible preparation — early mornings, repetition, refinement, setbacks, recalibration, and relentless commitment to getting incrementally better long before anyone was watching.
I’m often reminded how closely that mirrors the rhythm of our work. Because in our world, too, the performance moments are what everyone sees — the signed listing, the accepted offer, the record sale, the headline, the ranking, the recognition. From the outside, success can look like it happens in a season. But those of us who have spent years in this industry know that the professionals who consistently step onto the spring market podium are almost never the ones who just started running in March. They’re the ones who were already in motion months earlier, long before the market’s energy became visible to everyone else.
For me, February has always felt less like a market month and more like a training phase. It’s the quiet build before velocity returns, the strengthening period before the sprint of spring, the time when professionals who take their craft seriously lean into preparation rather than waiting for momentum to arrive. One of the greatest truths in both sport and sales is that you rarely rise to the occasion — you default to your level of preparation. Spring market doesn’t create leaders in New York real estate. It reveals them.
When I think about what Olympic-level training actually looks like in our industry, it’s rarely dramatic. There are no stadium lights or podium ceremonies attached to it. It’s the less visible work: re-engaging your database before anyone has raised their hand, previewing inventory before it reaches the portals, refining how you articulate your value in a shifting market, strengthening pricing fluency and advisory clarity, reconnecting with past clients and referral partners, practicing the conversations you know will matter once competition intensifies, and elevating the presentation and negotiation approach that defines how you show up. None of this feels urgent in February — but it becomes decisive in April.
What I’ve observed over many market cycles is that preparation changes not just outcomes, but presence. Agents who have done the work enter the market differently. There’s a calm confidence in their advisory tone, conviction in pricing discussions, patience in negotiations, and a steadiness in decision-making that clients feel immediately. Buyers and sellers in New York are exceptionally perceptive to competence signals. They can sense whether an advisor is reacting to conditions or anticipating them, whether guidance is rooted in preparation or improvisation. And in complex or uncertain markets, people instinctively gravitate toward professionals who feel ready. Preparation, quite simply, reads as trust.
This matters even more today, because clients aren’t just choosing agents — they’re choosing guidance under pressure. Buying or selling in New York has always carried emotional and financial weight, but in recent years it has also become more strategic and reputational. Consumers are seeking advisors who demonstrate mastery, foresight, and composure — professionals who feel capable of navigating nuance and volatility with precision. In many ways, what clients want now is the real estate equivalent of Olympic readiness: someone who has trained deeply enough that execution appears effortless.
Another parallel I often come back to is momentum. In both athletics and sales, there’s a persistent myth that success creates momentum. But the reality, over and over again, is that momentum is what creates success. Olympic athletes build rhythm long before competition; their bodies and minds already know the pace. The same dynamic exists in real estate. Agents who are active now — connecting, learning, positioning, preparing — enter spring already moving, and motion compounds. Conversations lead to opportunities, opportunities to listings, listings to visibility, and visibility back to more conversations. From the outside, it can look like sudden acceleration. But insiders know it began months earlier.
Every year in New York, there are professionals who seem to dominate the spring market — more listings, stronger pricing outcomes, faster transactions, greater visibility, measurable growth. It can appear as though they simply “won” the season. But much like Olympians, they didn’t win in the moment. They qualified for it quietly and consistently, long before the audience arrived. Their February looked different. Their preparation was already in place.
Which is why this time of year always prompts a question I return to myself as well: if spring is the performance season, what am I training right now? Relationships, knowledge, conversations, positioning, systems, confidence — all of the foundational elements that determine how we show up once the market accelerates. Because in a matter of weeks, it will. And when it does, there won’t be time to train — only to perform.
Champions aren’t made in the spotlight. They’re revealed there.
February in New York real estate is never truly quiet. It’s simply unseen. And the professionals who treat it like an Olympic training cycle rather than a waiting period are the ones who step into spring with clarity, confidence, and command — not because the market created momentum for them, but because they built it long before it arrived.
Train now. So when the market starts, you already have.