Speaker 1: 0:00

all right guys. Welcome to episode 17 of it's personal and entrepreneurs podcast. We have some very cool guests here today.

Speaker 1: 0:17

Two of them we got, nathan and tj from the abbott martin group, our former team that we were on before we went out on our own Appreciate you guys being here, very excited to have you. Thanks for having us. So we like to really just start out kicking off the conversation, since it is it's Personal an entrepreneur's podcast, asking a little bit about your personal background. I guess a good place to start here is what led up to you getting into real estate. Where are you guys from growing up? What made you get into real estate? And then we can kind of talk about how you guys partnered up too.

Speaker 3: 0:48

I don't think I had a choice. Everyone in my family and extended family was real estate. There you go, born into a real estate family from my grandpa to my father, uncle, mom, everyone and that's what I watched growing up and so, being a native to the Emerald Coast, it was kind of my dream. As a child, I always liked sales my papa's garage sales and people didn't realize, or he didn't realize, that I was actually there to try to outsell him at his own garage sale. That was my competition at nine years old. But just been around it. I love the way that it can influence people and from there started in 2001 in real estate. Myself was in it for about 18 years. From there I went on to launch my own brokerage and, as we're all connected now through eXp, that was the final navigation piece that just allowed me to scale a little bit faster, connect with people like y'all and continue to grow partners in the real estate game and break bread and talk about opportunity today.

Speaker 1: 1:45

So I know you have a little bit of a unique history, particularly in this community, with your family and your dad and his brother, I believe, correct. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 3: 1:58

too Sure. My grandfather, I think, was potentially the first real estate agent in Destin, florida. It's crazy. Yeah, I retired there from militaryI and uh air force. I think our our whole area is birthed off of military. Yep. Um, my father uh went to do the Charlie Manson story in LA. I was a minor in journalism and I realized he was broke as hell for the about six months and my grandpa moved down here. My uncle was up in New Jersey and he said I think I found paradise and no one's here, and he convinced them both to move down here. They moved down here. My father practically hitchhiked from California to get down here and they found these beaches and were just blown away by it.

Speaker 3: 2:41

Father and uncle launched up our early services in around 72. Way uh, buy it. Father and uncle launched up realty services and around 72 uh, they did become the the largest employer in uh northwest florida outside of the military, had about 1200 employees, managed several thousand huge in real estate, yeah, management properties and especially in the 70s, yeah, and they and we didn't have technology, so they were kind of like their first uh two agents that were running a company. They were built the second commercial building in Destin Okay, them and Fudd Puckers were the two and no Mid Bay Bridge they were. They were a huge part of getting some of the things that you see today. Mid Bay Bridge was a big piece Henderson State Park but they sold in 98. I started in 2001 and here we are today. It's crazy.

Speaker 1: 3:23

23 years later, Back then even in PCB, because I wasn't here.

Speaker 2: 3:29

but people always tell me, like people thought that beach land was like trash land. Oh yeah, because you couldn't farm it. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 3:33

And it was like, no, we would build out there, but it just takes someone seeing it in a different light and like seeing the vision.

Speaker 2: 3:46

We really should see how they marketed their themselves was the beach is free and easy and, uh, they used to have some pretty awesome models and sailboats and I like it. It was like, it was like some I mean it was free and easy, yeah it was prestige worldwide.

Speaker 1: 3:56

Yeah, exactly yeah 1980s.

Speaker 3: 3:59

Uh, jamaica, joe's woggles with uh wet t-shirts. Uh, free and easy and easy. And what was wild is you go out on the beach. I remember as a kid and I was like free and easy, what does that mean? And he's like the beaches are free and easy. And I walked out to the beach and everyone on the beach had free and easy shirts and coolers.

Speaker 1: 4:18

You need to bring that back.

Speaker 3: 4:20

Yeah, we thought about it.

Speaker 2: 4:22

I will definitely rock. I mean I will say the world's a little bit of a different place now than it was back then Probably part of the reason why I could be brought back though.

Speaker 3: 4:34

I think free and easy existed a lot better without social media. Yeah, that's true. But they just believed. In the area. I got to see a lot of lives improved and um, something that I a legacy that I wanted to be a part of one day. And um, I, you know, with my partnership with tj and the things that we've worked on. Um, you know, just learning how to navigate our marketplace that we're proud of and um, yeah, it's a special spot yeah, yeah, 100.

Speaker 1: 5:02

It's really cool, not being from here originally, getting to talk to people who saw it before and see it now uh, because I can't see it. But hearing people tell me about it's kind of mind-blowing. Even even just pier park here yeah, like andrew's, like growing up that was a field I used to play in it, oh yeah what?

Speaker 4: 5:19

when we used to, when we were working on the restaurant obviously y'all knew about that venture I stood there with him and my now wife and was like anything you can see wasn't here 12 years ago.

Speaker 2: 5:30

Anything.

Speaker 4: 5:31

The condo buildings, the Walmart. No matter what you're looking at, it wasn't here 12 years ago.

Speaker 3: 5:35

Well, Grayton Beach was like the hood. That means you were really doing shitty.

Speaker 2: 5:43

One of the most expensive real estate in the country.

Speaker 1: 5:44

Yeah literally, that's so crazy to think about. Yeah, well it's the power of the power of real estate and development, though you know well it is changing.

Speaker 2: 5:51

Oh yeah, and the vision like he's. The power of vision, like the power of seeing something like when because I've obviously been very blessed to be around the abbott family with nathan and understanding some of their stories and having the belief in something so heavily that you put everything in it to build it when everybody looking at you is telling you, what are you doing? Yeah, yeah, there is nothing there. There will never be anything there. This is not the right piece that you should be playing with. What are you doing?

Speaker 1: 6:19

and they're like it's just wait. It's like that. That exact sentiment is what we end up talking to people about on every episode of this that we do. That's what separates extremely successful entrepreneurs from others. It's like burning your bridge at the shore, not caring what people think and just knowing you're correct.

Speaker 3: 6:35

Exactly, to give you a crazy idea. So they predominantly were on Okloosa Island first and then Dustin, miramar Beach, but they wanted to break into the 30A market. There was nothing out, nothing out here. So they're going to start their first management project here. They come out excited, they close on this little opportunity, come out to see the property and there is a pig's head on a stake out in front of the property basically saying that you're not welcome in these parks. I mean straight deliverance from the woods.

Speaker 1: 7:03

And they woke up the horse's head in. There I mean straight deliverance from the woods and they woke up with a horse's head in their bed.

Speaker 3: 7:07

Yeah, yeah, Exactly. But they said you know what? They got some security kind of detail and went out and ventured into the wild west of doing a management project in 30A.

Speaker 1: 7:15

So there was nothing there. That is crazy. So, tj, you're from Pensacola originally, right, yep?

Speaker 2: 7:22

Yep. Born and raised Pensacola. Grew up my dad was a builder, so I was on job sites all the time. He didn't teach me much except how to clean job sites, but he did teach me how to sell them.

Speaker 4: 7:33

Good at sweeping, though probably aren't you, Was that? You're probably pretty good at sweeping the blower.

Speaker 2: 7:38

I mean, I live with a blower in my truck. It just makes me feel good.

Speaker 4: 7:42

We can connect on that level.

Speaker 2: 7:45

But no, I grew up in Pensacola, really enjoyed the building side of things A lot of the land acquisition side of things Left and went to Orlando, went to college in Orlando, at UCF, and then never really wanted to come back to the Emerald Coast, to be honest with you, because I wanted more of a city feel. I wanted sports and everything else as a young cat. But somehow it always reeled me back in and started working for developers, worked for DR Horton right out of college, left them, went to Holiday Builders and that's kind of where me and him met is. Every time he'd come in and every time I saw him pull up he pulls up in his Lexus with a top hat on. I'm like who is this guy? And every single time we batted a hundred for a hundred. We closed the deal. There wasn't one time he came into my model home that we didn't write a contract. It was crazy and so fast forward.

Speaker 2: 8:35

I was in onsite sales for seven years and I just got so burnt out that I said I'm leaving. I booked a one-way flight to Thailand and I didn't come back for a year. I traveled Southeast Asia, australia, new Zealand and a couple other places and came back and went and worked for Berkshire and just wasn't me. Man, I go like this is like I have nothing but love for Berkshire, hathaway and all the brokerages. Don't get me wrong, I'm just a very odd character. I just am very face value Ball cap, under Armour, shirt, shorts, sandals, and that's where I go to meetings. Very authentic. I just saw Nate doing his thing. I saw his character, I saw how he worked with his heart and was just authentic. He never changed who he was, especially coming from some of the background that he came from. Seeing that was intriguing to me. Well, let's be real.

Speaker 3: 9:26

When you first came to meet with me, you were like hell to the no yeah because you were like boiler room in there.

Speaker 2: 9:30

He had an office in the, the uh, the resort quest office in destin. He was like come meet me at my office. I'm like, all right, I walk in and it's a room this size with eight cubicles and everybody just banging out calls and it's like loud I lost it so loud in there. And I walk in and he's like come on in.

Speaker 3: 9:49

And I'm like no, what's going on what is happening in here and I'm, like man, so good to see you, dude, but I just don't think this is the right thing well, I think I think people thought because resort quest was the company that aborility sold to, that I had this like walk in the park I got my face beat in there. They were like, oh, this is the, the boss's kid you have 50 million production with a 50 50 split.

Speaker 2: 10:10

I'm the.

Speaker 3: 10:10

I'm the I'm the youngest guy there and my first office at resort quest is I had a broken down desk in the hallway and my wife came on and she got it worse than I did. They're like she she would get, uh, you know, yelled at us. She stole a, a paperclip.

Speaker 4: 10:26

Yeah and um, I've got to sell deals to get that paperclip. That's right, it's just a different morale.

Speaker 3: 10:30

It's like you know, and my father always taught me to go in there and clean the damn tools If you have to like earn your spot. There was no favors in that up and they finally gave me the corner office, which was again like the boiler room, and TJ walked in there and he's like, hey man. He's like yeah, I think I'm going to go to Berkshire, and so I lost TJ to Berkshire.

Speaker 1: 10:57

I would have walked in there and loved it. I love a phone room.

Speaker 2: 11:01

It was pretty odd Ben.

Speaker 3: 11:03

It was too many people trying to work real estate.

Speaker 2: 11:06

There were so many files stacked everywhere.

Speaker 1: 11:09

It was exactly how you would imagine. So it was the second floor of Bernie Madoff's operation. Yes, correct, that's correct and no technology.

Speaker 3: 11:14

So we had folders and stuff on the walls.

Speaker 2: 11:17

Yeah, I mean that was eight, nine years ago, but yeah, so ended up circling back to Nate. I told him I said, listen, like I like the general real estate stuff, but I want to create a new construction division. I also want to open an office in Pensacola, cause I was born and raised there. I'm not going to let sphere just dwindle all the way, you know. And so fast forward now.

Speaker 2: 11:39

You know, we did start a new construction division. We've got about 1200 units in the pipeline, um, and about uh 200 of them out of coming out of the ground right now. Um got on site teams, really, really good building partners, Um. And then we have the general real estate side, which we've been very blessed to build to uh 62 agents, 63 agents, uh, with that office of Ben's coal office in Miramar, um. And here we are now.

Speaker 2: 12:05

Man, we've just been extremely blessed and just worked with our hearts. We created relationships over transactions and the transactions are what have really been built off of things like our relationship. You guys came to us and you said, hey, I want to move bigger, faster, stronger, but I need kind of a playbook and I'm going to try to use your playbook, and then we're going to leave and we're going to do the same thing and we're going to, you know, kick ass together and it was like, okay, let's absolutely do that. We just got a lot of people in the world that live in a scarcity mindset, man, and they don't, they don't want to build for other people, they want to build for themselves. But when you build for other people, those people want to too and it just compounds. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 12:42

And that's where we've just been really blessed to have the right people on our side, the right counterparts from a standpoint of builders, staff, other agents in the marketplace and other brokerages that are just dear friends of ours, that we have great relationships with, that we close deals with seamlessly because there is no posturing, it's nothing but love. You know what I mean. And so that's what's been really cool growing with Nate and kind of growing the business. From when I got there, there was what? Seven agents and our goal was 60 million, and now we have 65 agents and our goal is 400 million.

Speaker 3: 13:13

Yeah Well, I think with real estate it's very individualized business, as you know, and I think sometimes we can just be chasing more, more, more, more more, and you end up chasing the worst version of yourself.

Speaker 3: 13:26

And so when you pause a little bit and realize how real estate allows you to truly change people's lives not just the consumers that you're working with, but the counterparts that you're working with and growing a business I mean, we had, um, uh, you know, our some people on our operational staff, to say thank you so much for this opportunity and you know this has changed my life and, like when you get to be in that space, that's the part that gets you so much more excited than the dollar ever has especially if you can show people.

Speaker 1: 14:01

I don't want to call it easy, because that's the wrong thing. If you can show people how, like through disciplined, focused action, how successful they can be doing something they never thought they could be, and you can share that with someone else, you can take like all those years of trying to figure it out yourself and just say, hey, just do this and show them, and then you see them like reap the rewards of that, and I've done it for people that don't even work with us just new agents and things like that, and that's a really cool thing to see.

Speaker 1: 14:27

And then, on the other part of it, if you actually are very educated full time and like care about really being a professional in real estate and you see how that can impact a homeowner we do a lot of for sale by owners and turning them to listings and when you see how thankful they are at the end and how much they didn't believe that you could do what you said, but you do it, that's what I wake up for, man, because then you're like this person got what they wanted, they got it fast, I delivered on my word and that's a check mark in the positive for real estate professionals Absolutely, which is something I'm out there trying to do every day because there's so many people out there that are doing an X, not a check and watching people that are in your corner truly grow and when they tell you they created these plans and these grandiose ideas and they execute.

Speaker 2: 15:11

Like you two, I love watching what y'all have created or continuing to create, like watching you and your element on job sites Like I knew that's what you wanted. You had this whole vision in your mind and now it's just clicking because you were persistent. I love that.

Speaker 4: 15:26

Well, and it all I guess to me, to your point and your point being able to present it. And then being able to present it in a manner where it's actually attainable Right when it's that where as a person you feel like you could actually do it. Who doesn't have necessarily all the experience? And I was in real estate, I've been in real estate since 2018. But to present it in a manner where you say and you've got 1,200 units in the process, that's awesome, that's huge, that's incredible. But to present that in a manner where you can do it too, manner where you can do it too, yeah, and this is how, and it's not hard and it's attainable.

Speaker 4: 16:00

It's going to take discipline and hard work, but do these things consistently start pulling together resources, start make these relationships and you know, uh, that's a huge part because in all of our episodes ultimately it all boils down to it seems like everyone had that vision. Everyone sees that vision within themselves and with what they want. It's just that they fight themselves long enough within their W2 job to where something eventually happens in their life, where they finally take the leap. And then, a few years after the leap happens, they never want to look back again. So it's just eventually just do it.

Speaker 2: 16:32

It's a scary thing to bet on. It's a scary thing, but when you have the people around you that you know love you and care about you, not because you're going to make them a nickel, but because they just want you to succeed and we believe in you for what you can be, and grow into Running a company that's revenue is dependent on 100% commission sales is more scary, tell me about it

Speaker 1: 17:02

are scary. Tell me about it. And and then like running a overhead heavy business development on top of that. That has long timelines is and a lot of work in between those timelines coming to fruition is is also stressful. So, as much as the, the, the rewards are huge and I wouldn't want to be doing anything else. Um takes a lot of fortitude to do that, to be able to provide those things to people too, where you become a you're.

Speaker 3: 17:23

If you have a passion for this business and real estate, you become a lot more. I don't ever want people to think of me as a salesperson. I want them to think of me as a connector, someone that could provide some good advice. And you learn a lot of advice from ways that you failed and being transparent about that, and I tried it this way. It didn't work. I learned how to do it this way and reputation over time creates growth and not all those deals happen right, but you learn from it and I think in real estate, everyone tries to posture about how everything is great and easy. Let's be real. Real estate is extremely difficult business to manage. It doesn't take a lot of effort to become a real estate agent.

Speaker 1: 18:05

It takes a ton of effort to become a successful one and to become a professional real estate company is extremely difficult. It's a lot of work and things that never are going to pay you back, that you have to work on and build out.

Speaker 2: 18:15

Exactly, that's exactly right. You do a boatload of work in hopes to get paid. Yeah, like you're especially in like the development world and things like that too. Like you start a project and you are just sinking money into that project for years until you can reap the reward yeah, on the backside, because the reward comes on the backside and you don't know. I mean, projects take anywhere from year to three to four to 10. And it's like you have to bank on the fact that you're going to be able to figure it out, no matter which way the market turns.

Speaker 1: 18:47

And you've got to be educated enough to understand how to mitigate those risks. And how many projects do you assess and spend hours assessing that you never end up doing anything with at all? I mean I assess more projects and homes or properties and things than I do projects on, and that's hours of analytical research and talking and meetings with people and it never turns into anything. And that's the truth is, you got to go through 10 of those to get to one good one.

Speaker 3: 19:09

Sometimes when you can't chase commissions over the relationship or changing someone for the better. I mean you think about the things that we have to work through. You're practically a therapist and you have to. You have to have a love for people because you're helping, sometimes people with a nasty divorce to an inheritance, a death in the family there's some emotion tied to some part of it, right?

Speaker 2: 19:30

almost almost every transaction, yeah, whether it's their first home purchase and they're freaked out.

Speaker 4: 19:35

They inherited it from their grandma.

Speaker 3: 19:37

They lived there 20 years yeah whatever, and you don't realize that everyone, like I've taught tj and I've talked about a lot. It's very difficult but it is a necessity to become the calmest one in the room and acknowledge with your customers that, hey, you're okay to be stressed, it's a stressful time. You're dealing with mortgage, you're dealing with move, family, all these different things. It's my job to be, uh, essentially a solutionist to this, to navigate this journey, for you to say, to calm the customers down and say there's a way that we can probably work through this, and then to see that come to the finish line and say, man, I don't know how I could have done this without you. It's the experience that you learn from doing a lot of deals, because when I Because when I do my own deals, my stress level is on the same level as the customer. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:22

My sister used to run a lot of my specs that I did over in Pensacola and Milton and Gulf Rees. She's like you are the worst seller that I've ever had. Yeah, I'm like I know.

Speaker 1: 20:40

When I sold my property on the beach two years ago, I paid had I paid andrew a commission to list my house? Yeah, uh, because I I tried dealing with it for a couple months and like I was being so off-putting, right right, the buyers exactly, and I was like dude, I can't do this.

Speaker 2: 20:48

but at the end of the day, man, like it all comes down to collaboration and counterparts yeah, you know what I mean. Like the way to stay the calmest person in the room. Like you get this crazy inspection report back and next thing you know that buyer's looking at it and going I don't want this house. I don't want this house at all and I'm like this is a breeze man, I can knock this out in two days. Don't worry about this. And let me tell you why. When you can do those things and you can take people from going from chaotic to okay, this makes sense that?

Speaker 4: 21:14

hey, this makes sense.

Speaker 2: 21:15

That's the goal, but if you don't have the right people in place, to where you feel comfortable saying that to them? That's where I challenge a lot of real estate agents to not only just look for the deals but to look for the people that are going to help you get the deals to the finish line, because a quick, educated answer with the right resources keeps a deal together more than, like any fancy sales tactic, a quick, off the top, educated, hey, it's not a big deal.

Speaker 4: 21:40

There's a lot of things in construction to the inspection point that, uh, a person who doesn't know construction as well as most like we do, uh, you can freaked out. Yeah, oh, my god, the hot water heater is 20 years old. Well, yeah, but it costs 700 bucks. Right, let's move past this, yeah and it goes back to repetition.

Speaker 3: 21:57

Right, calmness comes from reputation. Yeah, it's true. And because as an agent, especially if you're doing high volume, you're going to deal with so much reputation beyond what the customer typically is ever going to deal with, and things that might've freaked you out in the beginning as you navigate this path of real estate you, that's where the solution comes from. I'll never forget a good good friends of mine. They got a WDO report and it's, uh, they called me and said we're canceling it. It has termites, it's, it's loaded with termites. We're out.

Speaker 3: 22:23

My, my mother-in-law had termites, it's. You know she had that, she had this fear and I said, well, um, if you allow me to kind of work through this with you first, and then no, no, no, we're canceling. And so I, her husband, said pause for a second, let's hear him out. He's obviously seen this before. I said there's three things on the wdo report. There's one that says we have active termites and a manifestation. There's one that says there was previous termites but no signs of active termites. And then there's a box that says wood rot no evidence of any termites. I said that's the box that was checked, that's the one that she was just moisture right, yeah it was some trim work around the garage and a back door frame.

Speaker 3: 23:02

It was about a to fix it all. Uh, about an 800 fix with labor, with labor, uh she came back, uh, uh, down the road and she said I just have to tell you thank you so much for talking me off the ledge. She's like we love our home. It's gone up 150,000 in value. I'm raising our child here Like if it wasn't for you having that calmness for me, we would have lost this opportunity and it's been one of the best things of our life.

Speaker 4: 23:31

Yeah, that's how much longer it would have taken.

Speaker 1: 23:33

And there's just so many little stories like that of just actually being educated and knowing the product you sell and the nuances that come with it and what's important and what's not.

Speaker 2: 23:45

And then that gives you the credibility as you move forward. Yeah, because they'll move forward with you as a client, because you created that experience for them. And now you have the credibility where that conversation. Now you don't have to have the husband say, hey, calm down, let's hear him out. They're just going to believe and understand that you've got it handled and you know they're a live long client in a referral part yeah exactly the rest of your time.

Speaker 3: 24:06

Yeah, you never remember the commission.

Speaker 3: 24:07

You remember the fact that that comment that comment to me yeah, was the biggest win of any commissions I've had, and you hear that throughout your career and it's like, let's be real, the only legacy that you have is never the material thing. It's by you positively impacting someone's life and I got to see that as a child with my father and the stories that I just heard of like man, they just like this was my family and the people that worked with him and then the people that they served and their mindset was always like let's do everything we can to have that customer walk away. That has a different experience than maybe one of the experience before.

Speaker 2: 24:46

I mean, just like they said, they treated the janitor like the CEO. Yeah, you know what I mean, like it's everybody's in the same component, trying to get to the same goal. Yeah, and if you treat people differently in that regard, it just gives you a sense of arrogance versus a sense of love. And when people who work with you feel love, they work differently for you. Yes, I agree, and you can always be an asshole, but at the end of the day, when you treat people with the utmost respect, you hear them out, you listen and you be interested in them, not interesting. They care about that. And when they care about you, they do a lot more than what they normally would do if they had the dickhead boss.

Speaker 4: 25:29

You know what I mean, especially in today's world, where everyone needs a little bit of self-gratification.

Speaker 2: 25:34

Right, a hundred percent. And attaboy goes a long way A hundred percent. And there's so many people in the world that don't ever get that that fully deserve it. Yeah, fully deserve it. And it's heartbreaking sometimes because some people who would have been exceptional they quit too soon because they never had somebody go. That was great. You did a great job.

Speaker 1: 25:52

Yeah, and I think I agree with that 100%, and I think that too often people are just going after talking to people in a way of don't do that, instead of being encouraging to people. For sure, I think encouragement gets people to doing what they're supposed to doing a lot quicker than telling people not to do something.

Speaker 2: 26:11

And encouraging them, even when they fail Right. That's where we, as leaders I love seeing an agent fail forward. You know what I mean. I love when they make a mistake. They see it, they understand it, and that's how you grow. I love when they make a mistake. They see it, they understand it and that's how you grow. That's where you got to understand, especially when you're running a big company with agents who are novice and agents who are $100 million producers. You've got to understand that happy medium and understand how to encourage people to put themselves in the uncomfortable situation. You have to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. The only way you get through that is repetition and failing sometimes, and that's okay. And when people know that they can do those things, they get themselves into the mix a lot more and it's crazy how much more they succeed than they fail.

Speaker 1: 26:54

Yeah, I agree with that 100%.

Speaker 4: 26:55

Well, I'm comfortable that, even when I fail, I'm still going to have the support of my team around me.

Speaker 3: 27:00

Even after failure Exactly Hell yeah, let know, when our team grew and our retention became so much stronger is just letting your guard down. And real estate's a very difficult thing because it has highs and lows, and one of the things my father always taught me is like don't ever get on the high and the low, because you'll be the best and the worst version of yourself. Figure out a way to be in the middle. Even you'll be the best and the worst version of yourself. Figure out a way to be in the middle and just realize that you're going to feel this at times when the like this year has been a very hard, difficult year to navigate, with all the different laws and election years and all that.

Speaker 3: 27:33

But, um, we get beat up too as entrepreneurs probably more so than people that are not heavy entrepreneurs and sometimes you just have to like I recognize it more and say, man, like, when your mind is in the wrong spot, you start kicking the can down the street. I'm not worthy. You start comparing yourself to other people and you just got to snap out of that crap and say you know what? New day, fresh start, I'm going to get after it, and real estate can change so quickly, so quick.

Speaker 1: 27:58

We'll be beating ourselves up about, like our trajectory, like okay, we got these fixed expenses last month, we crushed it this. And then, like you get a text while you're having that conversation that somebody wants to show property, and then that afternoon it's under contract For sure, and it happens so often where you're just like you, you're allowed to have those days where you're down in the dumps, you know.

Speaker 2: 28:17

but it happens so often where you get that random text that you're like, dude, I hate today. And then you're like, dude, I hate today. And then you're like let's go, let's go. You know what I mean and that's what I love about real estate. You can have and that's, it's a drug, honestly, because you can have the worst six months of your life in this game and pop off one deal that you've been working on for a year, two years, three years and it changes everything.

Speaker 2: 28:42

And that's where what I love is watching certain people where they utilize some of the counterparts that we failed forward with and then, boom, they hit it like we had one. We have one girl on our team. She was literally called him and said I'm going ahead and getting a new job, I'm out, I'm just gonna go ahead and leave, blah, blah, blah. And so we? We were like, please, you're talented, you're gonna be really good at this, give it another month, just stick with it. Next thing, you know, $5.5 million lead from our boontown, from our boontown, from our lead program.

Speaker 2: 29:11

And then they referred another deal for north of $2 million. Now she's on pace to do $15 million this year. Does she still want to get another job? No, she's good now. But watching her get into the space as a newer agent and then navigate it so well, and we knew she had it in her, and it was like you're exceptional at this. Do you see that now? And she's so hungry now she can't even see straight. You said I believe in you, exactly.

Speaker 3: 29:35

We had a school teacher I mean we're talking about on the drive up here. It's a shame in our country, with all the money going out, all these different countries, that school teachers are getting paid $35,000, $40,000 for work they did. And we find a lot of times teachers in real estate teachers, military background, their service mindset. She comes in you know $35,000, $40,000 a year and within her first year did $18 million in sales. It's crazy.

Speaker 3: 30:00

It was a crazy thing to see navigated, but it's like there's only one thing that I think is more intense than dealing with people's financials and real estate is their people's children, so like if a teacher can manage people's children right. Then they know how to do real estate clients trust me they're like this is no, like, oh man, I'm not dealing with their kids. It's a whole different level of psycho with people's kids.

Speaker 1: 30:22

So, going back to something else we've mentioned several times which is, like you know, this year has been interesting in real estate. The market's been kind of tough and you hit on it a little bit earlier. You said you know being honest with people and one thing that you know about where the market's at not posturing and saying, oh, everything's great, it's a great time to buy, and you know all this stuff that we fall a lot of people fall into a habit of and I think what we found recently, especially with like for sale by owners, expireds and things of that sort, what's been working for us has just been leveling with people hitting them like between the eyes over the bow with the truth but having data to justify it. And it may not be that day, but we get a lot of calls back from those people and I think it's really important for people in real estate right now to keep in mind that being honest is more important than posturing.

Speaker 2: 31:09

Well, and it's an emotional time for people. The world is just an emotional place right now and I agree with you there that sometimes you've got to take the emotion out of it and use the data analytics for them to truly understand when I get a lot of deals done with some bigger players, smaller players, whoever it may be, is really breaking it down into a into a very easy way to understand, where, like he's been dealing with it too where people are still in this covet cloud, where they're like it's worth this much, it's worth this much, and you're like, listen, it it's not worth this much

Speaker 1: 31:41

but let me explain to you what you've done over the last three years, you're still in a winning situation.

Speaker 2: 31:44

Exactly. You were supposed to only accrue 8% interest as an average over the last couple of years. You're at 80. You know what I mean. So if you take this deal and let's say we drop your price 200 grand, sorry, you still made 60% on your money in 24 months or 36 months or whatever it may be. And then sometimes I even break it down monthly and then I put myself in, put them into the same shoes, where I'm like listen, if I brought you here three years ago and I said in three years you're going to have to sell this house, but I guarantee you you're going to make 300 grand in three years, would you have done that deal? Heck, yeah, I'm like, well, yeah, and I'm like so why are you telling me you're not doing it right now? Yeah, yeah. And then it's like aha moments where you have to put them in those circumstances and just level with them and be real about it for them to truly understand what is actually.

Speaker 3: 32:34

Let's not make a win or loss just because of this cloud of things. Somebody else did. Well, I think comparison is the thief of joy, right? Comparison? When you're trying to compare yourself to other people in your career path? You're, you're, you. You just get in this mental space and it's never enough like, oh, I got here and now what's next? What's next? And I think that's with customers, right? Uh, I, I've been in the market long enough, from 01 to now. I saw the rise of 2000 to 5, to I mean, crazy market, and navigate to 2010. Then we had the bp oil spill and then all these different layers, which is a thing of the past in this area.

Speaker 4: 33:05

Right, I haven't thought about that anymore, which is crazy because it was a massive impact.

Speaker 3: 33:09

And today, what happens is sellers. The difference between then and now is that the people that bought had way better holding power. And they say, when you go to that listing appointment, well, I don't need to sell, just to let you know. And the question is well, I don't need to sell, just let you know. And the question is well, how long do you want to hold it? Because we had great growth. There's still huge wins to be had, so let's talk more detail about why you're even wanting to sell. What's the next plan after the sale? Why would you delay that time? Because the one thing that we cannot buy more of is time, and you never lose if you're always winning. If you make a profit, sometimes that profit is less than other times. Yeah, if you want to nail the peak of the market or the downfall of the market, you're usually never going to find it. It is a luck of the draw because it can change very quickly, as you saw.

Speaker 1: 33:58

Yeah, yeah sounds really stupid, but something I I tell people all the time is you'll never lose money taking a profit. Yeah, never lose money making a profit?

Speaker 2: 34:06

No, it doesn't, because I always say ain't nobody went broke making a profit? You know what I mean? Yeah, if you can walk away and you didn't lose, especially in the game of real estate. Not many people can say that it's an ebb and flow market.

Speaker 4: 34:22

You know what I mean. And there had a phone call you said you know, take the last, take 2010 to 2020 and the growth that they had annually on a property, and then 2020 to 2024 and the exponential growth that happened in those four years, and then say all right, let's get back to reality a little bit, because this has never happened. You've never experienced this before. I've never experienced this before.

Speaker 2: 34:46

And everybody kept calling, saying the word recession and saying all these things. It was a normalizing market. If you look at interest rates over the course of real estate's entire existence, we're still in some of the lowest interest rates we've had ever.

Speaker 1: 34:58

I was watching a video on Fox News actually last week and it was the founder and CEO of Remax and he was talking about how, back in the day, a normal market was six months of inventory and everyone's freaking out because we're almost at 60 days of inventory when you average it nationwide and it's like we're still at only a third of normalized market and everyone's acting like Armageddon Right.

Speaker 2: 35:17

There's a massive deficit, which is why the people who are running scared right now and are putting lots in the ground, getting ready to build more houses, they're going to win. It's going to happen and at the end of the day, we deal with multiple economists, people who have pegged multiple crashes throughout the last 30 years, and they're like keep the pedal to the metal. I know it's a little scary right now, but if you're going to have lots coming out of the ground that are buildable and you are ready to move, you are going to be light years ahead of everybody else.

Speaker 3: 35:44

I agree, Because when you look at history, I mean the time period, the 10 years before this there was the least amount of homes built over the past 30, 40 years yeah, like decades and Florida still being the place that more people are moving to than anywhere else. But I had to try to control people's expectations because during COVID, florida was the only place open in the entire world.

Speaker 4: 36:07

Yeah I mean like when did that?

Speaker 2: 36:09

happen in your lifetime, not not mine or my father's it was a world, a global funnel, yeah literally, and it's which is nuts, you know, and I and, and I also think that's why a little bit of the, the scaredness in our rental market and why people are like, oh my god, rentals areals are down 30%, 40%, whatever it may be, they're normalizing. They're normalizing because I mean, dude, you couldn't go anywhere but here for two years. Basically, of course, it was inflated Right.

Speaker 2: 36:31

You couldn't fly Exactly, so they're going to go do their Europe trip, they're going to go do their Bahamas trip, they're going to go do those things.

Speaker 2: 36:37

And then they're going to realize they just want to throw them back into the Tahoe, take their seven-hour drive from Atlanta, nashville, kentucky, texas, wherever it may be, and come straight back to the Emerald Coast. Because I mean, I've traveled all around the world and I can still say, pound for pound, we've got some of the sexiest beaches in anywhere in the entire world. Yeah, I believe that I agree.

Speaker 3: 37:00

Well, you know you're in a good spot when you go on vacation and you're driving either over the bridge, over 79 or mid Bay bridge, through 31.

Speaker 3: 37:13

And you're like man I just left vacation and I'm coming back to another vacation, which is your home and, um, and there's just a level of, I think, laid back peace and, in a lot of ways, freedom in our marketplace. That, um, that's my favorite customer when they see the area the first time, you know, and they and they just like man, I didn't know a beach existed it's almost like yeah, and there's no locals, there's no locals right because I remember working in restaurants and beach service when I was younger and it's like wait, people live here yeah, oh, we're foreign dude like yeah, it's like well, it's like no shit.

Speaker 4: 37:38

How did you eat dinner?

Speaker 2: 37:39

last night. Anytime I'm at a restaurant or at a bar or whatever hanging out and somebody's like where you from and I'm like here, they're like, like a mile.

Speaker 4: 37:45

They're like wait, you live here. Yeah, I live here. It's like no, I drive three. I drive three hours one way just to come to my night restaurant, john yeah, you're right.

Speaker 3: 37:53

My buddy said the best thing about living here is you get to stay when everybody else has to go home. Yeah, it's the truth.

Speaker 1: 37:58

It really is the truth. So there's one final question that we like to ask everybody that comes on the podcast, which is, whether it be personal or professional, we kind of call out of our legacy question what is this one piece of advice that you would want to leave with our listeners, your friends, family, that, from birth to now, has been something that you think is the most impactful thing to leave behind?

Speaker 3: 38:23

To me, and I mentioned earlier, is comparison. I think so often we get stuck in this thing of always wanting more and if someone's getting more, you think that they don't have problems. Right? We all I've learned everyone has a lot of pain, everyone has a lot of wins, no matter where you think someone is financially or where that growth is. A lot of times and that's the world that we're in with social media everyone doing the highlight reel is that you never have the transparent conversation of like you know what's really going on with your life, and I think that's where the magic happens. And when you compare yourself to other people, you lose your own pace of what's important to you.

Speaker 3: 39:03

And where you're at right, then Right and the gratitude of how you should feel, of where you're at right, then yeah, and like you go see someone that's doing something right and then if you run home and try to implement how it works for them, you're a different person. You're just adopting someone else to try to become yourself, and I feel that when you that's when you kind of get lost in yourself you get lost and it's like you're always chasing this more and more and more.

Speaker 3: 39:25

And it's like I deal with customers like oh, I made you know 50 million, I got to make a hundred million, I got a hundred million, I got to make. And like Steve jobs said it best right, he was one of the richest man in the world and the one thing that he wishes that he incorporated were relationships, experiences and legacy, because money doesn't do that. Money allows you to have more opportunity, but when you're comparing yourself based off a financial gain of someone else, you usually don't understand the underlying things that they also have to navigate through. So when you stop comparing yourself to other people, you start focusing on how you can be the best version of yourself, you start really getting a lot of great traction, because it's about how you can help improve what you're doing and other people, versus trying to pay too much attention to comparing it.

Speaker 3: 40:09

What else is doing.

Speaker 2: 40:11

Um, mine would be focused on relationships, and the only reason why I'm sitting here talking to you guys, the only reason why I'm in the position that I'm in, is not because I'm the smartest man in the room in any facet. It's because I have relationships with people that turn them into caring about me, and then they poured into me their knowledge, their education, their ways that they moved forward, and that's from friends to clients, to staff, to family, all of that combined. When you truly care about people and you truly care about having a relationship with them, they reciprocate that to you and give you so much more of them, where you get so much more nuggets of knowledge that you would have never gotten if you didn't truly care about them.

Speaker 1: 40:50

I absolutely agree. Those are two great ones. I really, really appreciate you guys taking the time to come down here and come on the show. It's cool to finally be able to put this together, yeah man and likewise dude.

Speaker 2: 41:01

this is awesome. This, this is awesome. Like I remember coming into this office, like what, two years ago, three years ago, and there wasn't nothing like this going on. You know what I mean, and it's just been the feelings mutual, seeing you guys kind of build and grow and create y'all's own line of sight and your own path. That is different than most, which is great. That's the coolest part about it is, you know, people thought we were crazy with some of the stuff we were doing and I loved it that they thought that way. You know what I mean and so I can tell you there was a couple of houses that I walked in that y'all were going to flip. That I'm like they're crazy.

Speaker 3: 41:30

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 41:37

And they sold and you flipped them and it was done and I'm like that's fricking awesome, yeah, so y'all keep doing y'all too.

Speaker 3: 41:42

That's the cool part that, as you grow, we want to see people graduating in their own space. We want people to be on our team forever if they want to be. But we have a different layer too, that if they want to go, do their own thing and to be a part of that, be a part of some of your growth. It's a win-win.

Speaker 4: 41:56

It's fun, I agree no-transcript.