Menlo Book Club: The Gap and the Gain

Life can be full of setbacks, and it’s easy to get discouraged. In The Gap and the Gain, authors Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan help readers learn to measure themselves against their previous selves (living in the GAIN) instead of against the ideal (living in the GAP).

Our team recently finished The Gap and the Gain and found the principles insightful and empowering. Here are a few of our greatest takeaways:

Changing Our Mindset

To live in the GAIN, we must first change our mindset about failure. At Menlo Group, we have an annual goal-planning session where we set lofty objectives for ourselves. When we miss those targets, we often get frustrated with our progress and focus on the GAP between where we are and where we think we should be.

Commercial real estate is a competitive industry, and it’s easy to compare ourselves to other brokerages. GAIN thinking empowers us to measure ourselves against only ourselves. In this mindset, we celebrate our growth and express gratitude for all our experiences, which can lead to greater success, confidence and happiness.

Creating a GAIN Culture

We want to create a culture of GAIN thinking at Menlo Group. That requires first recognizing and calling out when we are living in the GAP. Our team members can help us change our mindset.

We also utilize a tool called the Experience Transformer to reflect on each deal and project. This process helps us learn from our mistakes and discover how to replicate our successes. The author also advocates for writing down your three wins each night before you go to bed.

At Menlo Group, we strive to celebrate all our wins. Closed commercial real estate transactions are announced on a Slack channel, and a celebration song simultaneously plays throughout the office. We also start each meeting by sharing a personal and professional accomplishment from the previous week. We truly have a culture where we view each other’s wins as our own, and by focusing on our collective achievements, we better avoid the GAP.

We hope to continue to implement these concepts in our personal and professional lives, so we can always live in the GAIN.

Want to see what else we’ve been reading? Check out our other book club reviews and sign up for our Virtual Book Club to receive bimonthly emails with chapter summaries, discussion questions and insights from our team.