The Night I Learned to Stop Chasing Butterflies

People occasionally ask me where the phrase,

“Don’t chase butterflies. Plant more flowers.”

came from.

It didn’t come from a business book.

It didn’t come from a marketing seminar.

It came from a dinner table in Brazil.

Years ago, before I ever sold real estate, I owned an English school in Brazil.

Like most language schools at the time, we started with textbooks, workbooks, CDs, and carefully planned lessons.

Students would begin with Book 1.

Then Book 2.

Then Book 3.

That’s how everyone did it.

But after a while, we noticed something.

Our students weren’t frustrated because they lacked grammar.

They were frustrated because they couldn’t actually speak English.

Many of them had studied for years.

They could conjugate verbs.

Complete exercises.

Pass written tests.

Yet they froze the moment someone tried to have a real conversation.

We also noticed something else.

Students constantly forgot their books.

Sometimes they already knew the lesson because they’d studied it somewhere else.

Other times, the next chapter was simply too advanced—but because it was “the next page,” we felt obligated to teach it anyway.

It became obvious that the book was driving the learning instead of the student.

That didn’t make sense to us.

So we started researching different approaches and eventually discovered Total Physical Response (TPR), developed by psychologist James Asher.

Instead of teaching primarily through books, we began teaching through communication, interaction, movement, and real experiences.

Eventually we made what felt like a crazy decision.

We got rid of the textbooks.

Students loved it.

Their confidence grew.

Their speaking improved.

The classroom came alive.

Not everyone liked the change.

Other schools criticized us.

Some teachers questioned whether we were even a “real” language school because we didn’t have a traditional textbook.

I still remember one of our teachers attending an event.

Someone asked where he taught.

When he answered, the response was something like,

“Oh… you’re from that school that doesn’t use books.”

As if the absence of a textbook somehow made us less legitimate.

But something interesting happened.

The students who believed in what we were building absolutely loved it.

They weren’t looking for another book.

They were looking for results.

Eventually one of our students, a businessman named Evandro, became so convinced by what we were doing that he wanted to open a school of his own in another city.

Every week I’d drive two or three hours to help train his teachers and work on marketing with his team.

One evening we were sitting around the dinner table.

The school was brand new.

No students yet.

The teachers were nervous.

Someone brought up the competition.

What if another school opened nearby?

What if students chose someone else?

What if we couldn’t compete?

Evandro smiled.

He looked around the table and said something I’ll never forget.

“Competition? I’m not worried about the competition.”

He paused.

Then he said,

“All we have to do is plant flowers in our own garden. When we plant enough flowers, the butterflies will come. We don’t need to steal butterflies from anyone else’s garden. We just need to take care of ours.”

I’ve carried that lesson with me ever since.

Years later, I see real estate the same way.

It’s easy to spend your life chasing leads.

Chasing appointments.

Chasing transactions.

Chasing algorithms.

Chasing attention.

But I’ve become convinced there’s a better way.

Build something genuinely helpful.

Teach.

Serve.

Create.

Plant flowers.

Some flowers become articles.

Some become webinars.

Some become neighborhood guides.

Some become relationships.

Some grow into fruit trees that continue serving people for years.

Over time, the butterflies come.

Not because you chased them.

Because they found a garden worth visiting.

That simple conversation around a dinner table in Brazil shaped how I think about business, marketing, leadership, and life.

And in many ways…

Tampa Signal is simply another garden.

A Note of Gratitude

Looking back, I don’t know if Evandro realized how much that simple conversation would shape the way I think about business.

At the time, it was just a relaxed dinner after a long day of training teachers and talking about a brand-new school that hadn’t even opened its doors yet.

He probably never imagined that years later I’d still be repeating those words.

But I am.

That idea has influenced how I think about education, entrepreneurship, marketing, relationships, leadership, and now real estate.

It’s helped me stop obsessing over what everyone else is doing and focus instead on creating something genuinely valuable.

So, wherever life has taken you, Evandro…

Thank you.

Thank you for reminding a young entrepreneur that the goal isn’t to steal butterflies from someone else’s garden.

The goal is to build a garden so full of life that the butterflies come because they want to.

That lesson has stayed with me for decades.

And today, it’s becoming one of the foundational ideas behind Tampa Signal.