Redefining High-Level Success: Building a Life Beyond Sales with Garrett Maroon

Transcript

[Mattias]
Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I’m Mattias, an agent and investor.

[Erica]
And I’m Erica, a licensed therapist.

[Mattias]
Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing.

[Erica]
Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors.

[Mattias]
Ready to level up?

[Erica]
Let’s do it.

[Mattias]
Welcome back to the REI Agent. It’s your host, Mattias. You know, we have a really awesome guest today, Garrett Maroon.

Garrett has a very similar mindset that I do in kind of living a holistic life through real estate, thinking about more than, you know, the numbers and the stats of how many houses you sold, how much money you’ve made. That’s, you know, not really the whole picture of why we’re here, why we wanna be in real estate, why we work. And it kind of just made me think a little bit more about some of the books I used to read and some of the things I used to think about.

There’s a book called Authentic Happiness and another book called Learned Optimism. And these are all kind of taking a look at what, about positive psychology. So I studied psychology when I was in undergrad.

And psychology, I think, like, is mostly focused on kind of what problems there are, where the deficits are, and doesn’t really look at how do you get to the positives and how do you, like, okay, like, so yes, we got you away from the negative 20 affect where you’re feeling depressed, you’re feeling anxious, whatever, we got you up to zero. Doesn’t really look, hasn’t really looked much at, you know, how do we get you to plus five, plus 10? And so it was these books that kind of looked a little bit about those areas, like what brings about joy, what brings about happiness?

And, you know, if you’re thinking about your life and thinking about what, you know, don’t you want to be happy? Don’t you want an enjoyable life? And if you’re designing your life, which I talk about a lot, and living intentionally, shouldn’t you then also put these things into it that will help bring in happiness and all that?

You know, I think there’s a number of things that do that. One thing that sticks in my mind is, you know, deep work or the art of flow can really bring about a positive, long-lasting state of happiness. And I think that is something that can be easily lost in, you know, a very distracted business that we are in.

You know, we’re getting bombarded with texts, emails all the time, and we feel like we have to stay on top of those constantly. And we’re going from one thing, one appointment to the other in between appointments in the car, we’re like answering the emails and texts that we got while we were in that appointment, and then we’re, you know, going to the next thing. And it’s a very busy and, you know, again, highly distracted job.

And so it’s rare that we get time to do deep work and to do things that are gonna take a longer focus, longer concentration. Obviously, social media doesn’t, and a lot of us escape, myself included, to, you know, TikTok or whatever, and we’re going through reels, and it’s like, boom, dopamine, boom, dopamine, boom, dopamine. And it just, you know, makes our attention span shorter, and it gives us that quick hit, but doesn’t really give us that lasting thing you get from flow.

And what flow is, is when you are so engrossed in activity that you kind of lose track of time altogether. And for me, where that has really come in to play the most is when I am in music, when I am into a song, and I’m playing, I’m singing in a band, whatever, and I just kind of am totally into that song and in the feelings of it, into everything, and I lose track of time. I lose track of everything else, all other problems, all other worries, because I’m right there at that moment.

And, you know, that’s something that I have not had for a long time. I grew up in a family that music was important to, so I was in piano lessons and choirs and glockenspiel lessons, everything, from very early on. So it was kind of always part of my life.

And then once I became a teenager and wanted to be cool and I wanted to get girls and stuff, I picked up the guitar and started learning that. Then I got the girl and I started focusing on the work and stopped worrying about the guitar. And now, you know, maybe I’m going through a midlife crisis and I’m in a band now and I’m playing music again, but it’s just such a nice, nice thing.

And I wish that would have been something that I would have stuck with throughout all of my years. I didn’t totally give it up, but I wasn’t really focused on it. And it just is a source of joy for me.

I guess I kind of had that a little bit with photography. I got really into photography for a while as well. I think that creative process gets me into that flow state.

But I think that’s something that we all should consider. You know, hobbies or just what area do you get that deep work kind of in your life and how can you find that state of flow in your life? I think chess is another way.

Some people will get that. I don’t know if that would work for me, but you know, that could be an area. I know there’s big, I’ve actually never played bridge, but I think I’ve heard that’s another really like highly strategic game.

Games probably would take a lot of concentration and flow and you get really into that moment to really try to win and strategize. And that could be another way. But I think it’s just important to pick up those hobbies and to keep those things in mind as you go.

And when we get into this conversation, I’ll let the podcast here roll here shortly, but Garrett talks about all those things, what’s really important in your life. And I talk about having that five-year vision of what you want your life to look like and making sure that you’re doing things on a day-to-day basis to get yourself there. And I think at the end of the day, why I was drawn to positive psychology, A, is probably because I haven’t been dealing with like depression, anxiety very much in my life and plus on that front, but I do wanna be happy.

How do I be more happy? And so I think that’s why I was drawn to that. And I think if you know those things, you can kind of put those things into place that you can then have that satisfaction in your life as you go.

Also, that will make you probably happier and a more pleasant person to be around for business, for your family, for everything else that’s important to you. But this one’s a good one. This is gonna be a very, this podcast, it just is perfect for this show because it’s all about a holistic approach to life through real estate.

And at the end of the day, what’s the point of doing all this if you’re miserable, if you lose your family and all that kind of stuff. So definitely pay attention to this one. It’s a good one.

Without further ado, here’s Garrett Maroon. Welcome back to the REI Agent. We’re here with Garrett Maroon.

Garrett, thanks so much for joining us.

[Garrett Maroon]
Man, thanks for having me. We’ve been having fun pre-show, so I’m excited to dive into this too, brother.

[Mattias]
We had a whole episode, probably inside baseball, so maybe only other like podcasters and stuff would appreciate that. Because Garrett, you are in Virginia as well, which is awesome. You also have a podcast.

What’s the podcast’s name again?

[Garrett Maroon]
Yeah, so it’s called The Faithful Agent for Christians in the Real Estate Space.

[Mattias]
I love it. And you’re an author. You have a book coming out in November, right?

[Garrett Maroon]
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, so not, my wife reminds me, not yet. When I, you know, I’ll correct her on some grammar, she’ll correct me and I’ll say, babe, I’m an author.

She’s like, you aren’t yet. So yeah, that’s right. November 25th it officially comes out, so I’m super excited for that.

[Mattias]
I mean, come on, maybe not a published author yet, but you did write it.

[Garrett Maroon]
That’s true. I like that for something, yeah.

[Mattias]
But yeah, let’s get into how you got into being a real estate agent to begin with. What was your journey like? Did you have a career before that or did you just wake up as soon as you could remember that you wanted to be an agent from like five years old?

[Garrett Maroon]
Does that happen? You know, I feel like maybe it happens now because the younger generation growing up and seeing all the fun social media videos and all that stuff.

[Mattias]
Yeah, HGTV.

[Garrett Maroon]
Yeah, they’re like excited about it. But yeah, brother, so I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, moved to Newport News, Virginia to go to university, go to Christopher Newport University. I worked there as an assistant director of admission after I graduated.

My now wife was a student we were dating. And in 2014, I was like, I’m not making enough money, I gotta do something different. We didn’t have kids at the time and now we have five, but I knew that it wasn’t gonna be enough.

And so I went to my boss, the dean, and said, man, how do I earn more money? He said, you gotta go get a PhD. And that just wasn’t interesting to me.

Even that, he was earning maybe $100,000 a year, which is not nothing. But I knew that I felt like I needed more. So my wife said, I think you should get into real estate.

Well, my parents tried to talk me out of it. We’re not a family based on commission. And they said, look, I’ve never met anyone that sold more than seven homes.

I remember them telling me that. And I said, well, my intent is not to go be average. And so I went into it not knowing I was an entrepreneur, started on a team and had committed that if I didn’t sell a house in three months that I’d quit.

Well, three months came and went, and I hadn’t sold a house. And I remember that night actually going to my wife. We were having dinner, and I said, babe, I don’t know if I can figure it out.

I think I can. What do you think about another three months? And thankfully, she was working too, so we had some money coming in, right?

But we agreed that night, all right, another three months. And thankfully, at five and a half months, I sold my first house, ended up selling 27 homes that year, and then 50 the year after that, and have done that ever since. That was 11 years ago.

And so man, it’s been a crazy journey, a huge blessing, and man, I love this industry. It is the single greatest opportunity for an entrepreneur in the world, if you ask me. The best place to get started.

And so I love this industry. I wanna serve this industry just like you.

[Mattias]
So were you licensed in 2014, or did that actually come in around 2015?

[Garrett Maroon]
Yeah, so licensed in 2014. You too? Yeah, oh, nice, okay.

Yeah, so I was trying to figure something else out. Again, didn’t know I was an entrepreneur. And my passion now is trying to encourage agents, if you give yourself a long enough runway, you can succeed.

The challenge is, if you give yourself a three-month runway like I was going to, I would’ve quit, right? And I wouldn’t be here anymore. If you give yourself a three-month runway, and I know you talk about this in your upcoming book, but if you give yourself a three-month runway on working by referral, which is what my business has been, and it doesn’t work, and you’re like, all right, I guess I gotta go buy Zillow leads like everybody else, well, you just didn’t give yourself a long enough runway, right?

Any plane’s gonna take off, it’s just how long you’re willing to work at it. And so, man, I’ve just been passionate about that, helping agents figure out who are you and work to your strengths, which is, again, your heart, too, in your upcoming book. And, you know, man, I’m trying to get that word out to as many agents as I can.

[Mattias]
When you decided to get into this space, did you consider holding your job? Was it possible, with the hours you were working, to do both? Yeah, you obviously took the burn the fleet approach, where you just went all in.

And what do you think about people who are, how do you talk to people about that when they’re thinking about making that decision?

[Garrett Maroon]
Yeah, man, so great question. Again, and I was fortunate, was married, my wife was making $40,000 a year, so again, we weren’t gonna starve, and we didn’t have kids at the time, so I have so much respect for the person that isn’t in that scenario, right? That’s hard.

But I would tell anyone, and have told many, many people, it’s impossible to do this job part-time, because you don’t know how well you can actually do, right? You kinda get stuck on, I’ve got a buddy that does it, and he’s stuck on, he does his job, and then he does some sales, and yeah, it brings in a little bit of extra money, but he always will say, man, if I just knew I had those extra leads coming in, then I know that I would jump full-time. I’m like, bro, you’re not gonna know until you are full-time, and that’s really hard.

And so, like anybody, I think most people would say, give yourself a six-month runway. Do you have the capital in place to try that? And or, go start on a team, right, that can generate you deals or hand you deals right away, day one, that’s gonna help you get into, not only production, but into a financial return.

But man, this is a really hard job to do part-time. I don’t personally know, doesn’t mean it’s not possible, but I don’t personally know a part-time agent who has done this at a super high level. It’s just not that kind of career or job, right?

You gotta take it seriously, you gotta own the business and work it like that, so it’s difficult. It’s difficult for a full-time person, but I would say, man, if you wanna give it a shot and you wanna see if your plane can take off, you gotta go, you just gotta go.

[Mattias]
Yeah, and I mean, you do, I mean, I think it’s one of those things that you’re gonna get back what you put in, and I think I was a bit rare in my case where I didn’t start off as strong as you did, so there’s definitely that, but I was incredibly dedicated to building this business, and I was working a job until about 2.30, it was in a high school, so it was like an early kind of ending, and it was also summers off.

So we were, at the time, we were kind of paying off all the student loans, that was kind of our primary objective, so just jumping out didn’t make sense for that main goal. The whole reason for getting a real estate license was to earn extra income to help pay off the loans. But anyway, it did take me a few years to really feel like the momentum was building, and you have to realize it just does take time.

Like, I mean, even if you’re doing it full time, like, you’re not gonna, yeah, it’s not gonna be, the phone’s not gonna be ringing off the hook the first month, and we both started, 2014 was slow. I mean, I don’t know how Newport News is, it’s much bigger, there’s much more houses moving there than there are here, but there’s also more agents. But we, you know, it was a totally different market than it is now, people who started, I almost feel worse for people who started in, like, 2021, where, like, maybe the phone was just ringing off the hook from day one, and it just seemed easy, because, like, you probably didn’t have to really learn the ropes and how to, you know, call people, or how to follow up, or how to, you know, make sure you had this long-term relationship you’re building with your sphere.

Yeah.

[Garrett Maroon]
Yeah, I mean, so my lead agent started with me in 2020, and it wasn’t until last year that he had to learn how to do a price reduction, right? Like, that was not in his vocabulary. He called me one day, you’ll appreciate this, he called me one day last year, and he was like, Garrett, man, this house has been sitting for three weeks, like, what do I need to do to sell this house?

I’m like, bro, this is pretty normal, like, even three weeks is really short, right? But it is, you know, you get into bad habits when things become easy. We’re definitely in a skill-based market.

We’re definitely in a position where you have to play to your strengths, because it’s not the only person that, you know, picks up the phone the fastest, or, you know, just has a face in a business card. That’s not how this works. The people moving aren’t excited about it.

They’re doing it because they have to, right? And so if they have to, they’re going to be pickier about it, right? They’re going to be more challenging, quite honestly.

You’re going to have to learn how to navigate through their emotions. You’re going to have to learn how to navigate into the rational part of how this works, and how we talked to them about rates, and the trade-offs, and all the things. We have to be skilled to do this, and we have to be disciplined in our growth.

You know, one of the things I talk about is what I call the three L’s. So learning, lead gen, and launch. So especially when I was getting started, I knew, I mean, I didn’t sell anything for five and a half months, right?

But I was doing the activity. I knew that if I could outlearn people, that eventually, not day one, but eventually someone who started the same day as me, I would outpace them, because the compounding effect of the learning. So I’d read for one hour in the morning.

The next hour, I would lead generate, and I was just talking to my sphere, or going on coffee, or whatever. And the next 15 minutes, I would launch my day. I would just sit there and say, okay, now where do I want my day to go?

And I was trying to be as intentional as possible. But I knew that even if my day went crazy, right, because it can happen, that I had pushed my mind and my business forward, that’s better than like 99% of agents every single day. And so it’s not complex, per se.

It is challenging to be disciplined enough to do it. It’s still hard for me, and I’m 11 years in, right? So are you.

It’s challenging to be that disciplined. It’s challenging to be disciplined enough to say and choose the things that are distractions, not tractions, right? Meaning this is gonna help me get where I wanna go, as opposed to all my friends are doing X, Y, and Z for Legion, so I should too.

That’s not how this works. You gotta pick a path and stick to it, so you become a master. And I think that the 2021 COVID years were amazing, but they taught a lot of bad habits, or you just never developed a habit.

You just got in and sold some homes and made some money. So yeah, it’s a totally different market. It’s pretty interesting.

[Mattias]
Yeah. It’s definitely, if anybody’s listening to this, that did start around then, and they’re having some learning pains. I mean, that’s normal.

I would just stick with it and know that this is gonna be a time of growth and learning It’s not always easy. And yeah, the pace of things is very different. I mean, man, 2014, extensions and all that, listing extensions and all that stuff was just very common.

Yeah, it was. And you had to, it’s just the buyer’s market’s different.

[Garrett Maroon]
Let me jump in real quick. So I heard, if you don’t mind, I heard a really well-known trainer, and I honestly can’t remember who it was. This was last year.

But he said, look, guys, this is not gonna be a season to thrive. It’s gonna be a season to survive. And it reminded me of a conversation with, his name is Aaron Amocha Stege.

He runs Real Estate Rockstars. I’ve been on his show a couple times. And anyways, he was telling me afterwards, pre-show or post-show one time, that he has made, he’s been in for like 25 years.

He can look and say pretty much most of his money was made five of those years. Everything else, he essentially broke even, right? His job was just to keep going.

And he had some really rockstar years, and most every other year was just okay, or he survived it. And so I do think there’s this misnomer, misbelief that in real estate, we have to just constantly crush it. We have to constantly be making a ton of money.

We have to do all this stuff, right? Like, if you wanna keep selling as many homes, which that could be good, and maybe that is what you’re supposed to do, you better be on the phone 80 hours a week, even though I know that you built your business by relationship, whatever it is. Or we say, yeah, I wanna do really well, but I’m not really willing to trade the things that matter to me most.

It’s probably with my family. And my job right now is to do the right thing over and over and over again, survive this season, so that I’m ready for the bounce back. And that was really helpful to remember that, right?

It’s not that we don’t always wanna thrive, but it’s not true that we can crush every single season. My mom passed away October 2022. Man, I shut it down for like three months.

I wasn’t gonna crush it. I was in the grief stage, right? And people, hopefully not everyone on this has dealt with something like that.

Maybe it’s something a lot harder. But the reality is, we judge our year off of what’s possible when we should be thinking about what’s probable, right? Anything is possible, but we assume everything’s gonna go right, and it’s not going to.

And so we need to think more in probability, right? So if my, I wanna make whatever, $100,000 this year, if you’re an agent, I wanna make $100,000 this year. Fantastic.

If you build a plan that gets you to 100K, assuming everything’s gonna go right, that’s a terrible plan and not a mean way, right? Like you need to sit there and say, you’re not gonna know what’s gonna happen, but you gotta make it so easy to execute and say, this is the simplest thing I can do over and over and over again, that it’s gonna earn me 100K. That way I know if something rocks my world, I can keep doing it, right?

Because it’s the compounding effect of the effort since 2014, me and you, right? It’s that compounding effect. And so we’ve got to think in a deeper way, not in a hyper, man, I’m living in this one year or this one month or I can’t wait till rates drop, which I’m excited about too if they do, but it’s, man, what can I do?

What’s the simplest thing I can do to make sure that for me, man, the blessing has been for 10 years in a row, I’ve literally never missed a month of the lead generation I knew I needed to do, even when my mom passed away. Because I know what the simple things were that were the leverage points to push my relationships and business forward, so I was able to still accomplish that. Didn’t have some three hours a day on the phone, which doesn’t mean that’s wrong, right?

But there was a system in place that meant if I couldn’t show up the way that I always did, my business was going to be okay. And I think a lot of agents came into COVID and it was, oh my gosh, there’s so much chaos. I know my lead agent did.

There’s so much chaos. I don’t even have time to stop and think. Like I’ll deal with that when that happens.

And now it’s, uh-oh, I’m behind. How do I do it, right? And my last encouragement for those agents, just like you said, just hang on.

Charles Kettering, one of my favorite quotes ever, the only time you can’t afford to fail is the last time you try. So just keep going, right? You have an infinite runway if you’re unwilling to give up.

And we should be those kinds of people. Just be unwilling to give up and go figure it out. And you will figure it out.

It’s just hard, and that’s okay.

[Mattias]
Yeah, going back quickly to the thing you said about learning for an hour a day or whatever, I think oftentimes people, when they get into the business, they think about cold calling, door knocking, going to an open house every single day, hosting an open house every single day if you can, that kind of stuff to build in the possible business. But I think that learning piece is huge as well. And I think one thing that people may not think about as much is see if you can go to other people’s home inspections, like sit in on the home inspections and start learning from very common things and what happens a lot in the home inspection process because that will help you, A, seem more knowledgeable when you’re in the showing, and then B, also be able to prepare for how to handle that.

Because the first time you get some big problem, like when the home inspection, when you’re new, it’s like, oh my gosh, what happened?

[Garrett Maroon]
We’re more freaked out than the buyer, yeah.

[Mattias]
And so yeah, if you have a little bit more experience there, I think that’s gonna be very, very helpful. And it can also be really strategic because I’ve won deals before where, so for a townhouse, for example, I’m like, okay, all the townhouses around us, they’re either having their roof replaced or it looks like they very much need it. This one has not been replaced.

I guarantee you this is gonna be, they’re all built at the same time, this is around 25 to 30 years old or whatever. This roof is gonna need to be replaced. In a multiple offer scenario, I know that roof also is only gonna cost like 3,500 bucks to replace this small townhouse.

Factor that in to your offer. Say that it’s either as is or we’re taking the roof as is. And then we actually beat, the next best offer went seven grand above what we were.

It went above us. And so we budgeted in $3,500 but we actually made another 35 by not going up as high. So if you know that kind of stuff, it can really help give you a competitive edge in that process.

[Garrett Maroon]
Education is the only competitive edge in my opinion. You even think of, you’re near JMU, they’re all of a sudden a good football team. I’m a huge football fan.

Well, these guys that play football, they don’t just run around all day and lift weights. They sit there, I mean, they do that, but they sit there and they study the playbook. They’re watching film of what everybody else is doing and how they can adjust accordingly.

They’re spending time learning. And it’s not about being the busiest agent, in my opinion. It’s about being the most productive and most learned agent.

Because a year from now, if you start reading, even if you don’t do it every day, if you do it twice a week and you read two hours a day, so that’s 100 hours over 50 weeks. If you read for 100 hours and then you do it again next year and then you do it again next year, the compounding effect of intentional learning or going to inspections like you’re talking about, the compounding effect of you having 300 extra hours of developing and growing your brain and your skillset, you may not sell as many homes as agent X in your office this year or next year, but I guarantee you will year three and year four. And you’ll do it more efficiently.

You’ll do it in a more effective, profitable way. And so it is about that. That’s what I love about being an entrepreneur.

At the end of the day, it’s my brain versus your brain. And am I willing to out-learn you? Because if I can out-think somebody, then I don’t have to out-work them.

If I out-think them and out-work them, then that’s a really good recipe for success. So we just, I think as an industry, we need to remember that we have to stay learning-based. And if we aren’t learning-based, then we need to listen to podcasts like this.

If we’re not learning-based, then yes, we’ll still learn because we’ll go through experiences or X, Y, Z, whatever. But we could go through experiences and compound that with new thoughts from other people, new ideas, whatever. And man, we’re gonna look so much different.

My business can’t grow beyond where I’ve grown. So if I want my business to get better, I better look at myself and say, if I wanna go make a million bucks, well, am I the guy who earns a million dollars a year? Well, not yet.

So who do I need to become first? And I think it was Gary Keller who said, it’s be, do, have, not have, do, be. Meaning, most people think I’m gonna have those things and I get to do what the wealthy people do and then I’ll be like them.

No, it’s you gotta become like them, then do what they do, and then you get to have what they have, right? And so we gotta get the order right and it all starts with what are you learning about? What’s going on between the years and how are you growing?

[Mattias]
And a very simple, practical example of what you’re talking about is the client I help with that, they trust me now. I was right, the roof needed to be replaced. I was right, the seller was worried about that and they were willing to take a discount on it.

So they’ve got the house for the amount that I expected it to be. And they want out because of it. And so they’re already calling me again.

We’re already talking about buying another house and I wouldn’t probably even have to be, I am connected with this person and nurturing my sphere as I go, but probably wouldn’t even have to. They probably would just come back to me because this is a big decision. This is a big process and it’s nerve wracking.

And if you trust that person, they have your best intentions in mind and they know what they’re doing, that you’re gonna go back to that person for sure instead of taking a risk on some random Zillow ad. Absolutely, absolutely. But yeah, that’s amazing.

I think studying the people that are in your office that are killing it is a good way to be, right? What are they doing? What are they doing that makes them successful compared to others?

And you’re exactly right. I mean, you have to be that person before it all comes to you.

[Garrett Maroon]
Yeah, and I would say, yeah, a big part of my book is about redefining the win, right? So it’s funny because I use this word too. We say, oh, well, look at the successful people.

Well, it’s as if ingrained in us, we have an immediate idea of what that means. They’re selling a bunch of homes, they’re making a bunch of money. Well, I know plenty of people like that who lost their marriage or don’t talk to their kids or actually weren’t profitable.

Whatever, they define it their own way. That’s not what success looks like to me. And so I actually saw a video.

It’s funny you said that. I saw a video of a top trainer and she’s on her boat and it’s literally, hey, if you wanna do what the successful people do, or if you wanna be like successful people, you gotta do the things they do. Like you gotta work every weekend, you gotta do this, you gotta answer the phone, even with your friends, when you’re around your friends, all these things.

And I was thinking, first of all, it’s as if we just naturally assume that we all agree on the same definition of success. I totally don’t. That’s not success to me.

Success to me is I’m gonna crush it as much as I can, right? Do my best in the hours I allot for work, but man, when I’m done, I’m shutting off, I’m gonna try to be present with my kids. I just got home an hour ago, taking my kids to the trampoline park, the oldest four.

And that is success to me, right? It’s the freedom to do that. Okay, someone else is on the phone crushing it, they picked up an appointment.

That’s great, like it genuinely is. But they can have their own definition, I’m gonna have my own definition. The only one that constantly wins if we just continue to give up the people that we love just to sell more homes is the industry, right?

It’s the broker that just keeps making money. They don’t care if we throw our lives away. They care about us, we’re the dairy cows, right?

If we stay there, we keep producing milk for them, that’s good. The reality is, right, so to your point, I agree, find the person that’s successful, do what they do. But I would say first, define what success looks like, find that person, right, and then do what that person does.

And be really intentional with who we pay attention to. If not, we accidentally become somebody we weren’t trying to be.

[Mattias]
No, that’s a very good point. And I just interviewed somebody who year one, they immediately started with a hire, a partner, they went in together as partners. They had a full-time position from day one that they had hired out, which who does that?

And then the second year, so the first year, they did work weekends and past nine to five. The second year, they didn’t work anymore past five, they didn’t do anything on the weekends. And I was like, where have you heard that?

Where do you hear that? And it’s possible, you can choose to work in a way that is conducive to your family, but you have to prioritize it, you have to prioritize what is most important to you. And we all see, to go even further than what you’re talking about too, and I preach this a lot, is investing in real estate, doing syndications if they’re good, that kind of stuff as well is also important to do along the way because you also don’t wanna be the 90-year-old agent in the office that has to be there because they have not planned.

So there’s a lot of things there, like you don’t wanna rent the Porsche, you don’t wanna lease the Porsche, you’re year one to look successful so you can be, your life size is always higher than what your income is and you’re always chasing that. So being financially practical, keeping that in mind, keeping your family in mind, there’s a lot of elements to keep in mind, but it’s all possible and surrounding yourself with people that are on the same journey as you have the same kind of priorities with you is huge to get there.

[Garrett Maroon]
100%. Man, I’m sure you’re the exact same way. I have so many people that I can thank along the way that acted as guardrails essentially to, man, this is not who you are, don’t do that.

Oh, okay, you’re right. Or when I had a larger team, there was four agents, I had three full-time admin, and we were doing really well, but I realized, man, that’s not even what I want. I was just doing what I thought the next step was when for me, what I wanted was simplicity.

So I cut down to one agent in a part-time TC and now I’ve been out of production because he effectively operates that business and I have so much time freedom. I didn’t even know that was possible because no one talked about it. It was about building this big, massive seventh-level team.

I’m not saying that’s bad, you can totally go do that, but maybe you don’t want to. And my gut says most agents never wanna do that. They’re like, I just don’t wanna have to do this forever.

You get to that point where you’re early on in your career and you’re like, man, how do I get to 100K? Awesome, I’ll hustle, I’ll do all that stuff. Then you get to 100K and you start doing that pretty consistently and then you realize, man, how do I just not have to work all the time?

How do I not be available all the time? And then you start asking different questions. And so I think that’s the hardest place for agents to be, quite honestly, is they’re kind of stuck in that 10 to 20 and it’s like, I don’t know how to get the leverage that I need, I don’t know how to stop working all the time, and there’s no consistency, there’s no support, there’s no real help, what do I do?

And I have a real heart for those people because I think that they would love to find their way out of always having to be the guy, the girl that’s in front of everyone, but it’s a really hard decision, it’s a really hard transition to know how to get the right pieces in place. But again, at the end of the day, what I’ve had to learn, many, many times I’ve failed at this, man, but what I’ve had to learn is when I created my own scoreboard, so the industry would say, how many deals, what’s your GCI, what’s your volume, and did you get an award at Realtor Prom? It’s totally Realtor Prom, right?

And that’s what they judged, right? And that’s okay, that’s the industry, I’m not mad at them. But everything I was doing was geared towards that and that alone, because that’s all I was measuring too.

When I changed the way I kept score to yeah, I have a profit goal, but now I have a wife goal and now I have a family goal, so my wife goal is two dates a month, my family goal is take every seventh week off, now I have a different way to keep score and to measure whether I’m succeeding or not, right? So if I get, you know, I got an offer recently to go speak at this cool event, hit my profit goal, yeah, would I still be able to have two dates that month? Absolutely, it was right smack dab in a month, or it was a week that I was off.

Hey man, I appreciate it, I can’t do it. You know, I gotta figure out, and everybody gets this side for themselves, you gotta figure out what scoring looks like for you and once you figure out what that looks like, then you have the right question to figure out what kind of business you need, right? So if it’s, you know, let’s say it’s, I wanna make 100K, profit goal, my spouse goal is two dates a month and my family goal, every seventh week off, whatever, we’ll just essentially use the same thing.

Now you get to ask the right question. The question is, what kind of business allows me to take every seventh week off, have two dates a month with my spouse, and it makes 100K? Now you’ve asked the right question and you get to go solve that problem.

The challenge is, most of us don’t ask the right question. If you don’t ask the right question, you don’t get the right answer. And so we’re just kinda doing what everybody tells us to do and the industry says, good job, you get to be up on stage, I know that you don’t talk to your kids anymore, but hey, congratulations, you were the number one agent.

I’m not saying being number one agent is synonymous with that, don’t hear me say that, but those people still get celebrated. Man, I don’t care if the industry cheers for me, I care if my kids think that daddy is present and loves them, right? So what does, and I would venture to say that’s the vast majority of agents.

We just get caught up in the industry speed, the industry talk, the industry celebration, and that’s okay sometimes, but make sure that the people you care about are the ones celebrating you, right? And if they celebrate you too, fantastic, that’s a bonus. But it’s about the people that you love and care about, right?

[Mattias]
Yeah, well, so I think I would venture to guess that you would be a dreamer like myself, like where you have a vision of the future and you wanna go after that and you wanna chase it. And I think that’s something that some people are more naturally able to do than others, but I think rather you’re not, whether you are or not that, you can always sit down and do a vivid vision, like think through what you want, what do you want your life to look like in five years? Do you wanna be divorced?

Do you wanna have your parents and kids like you, but you have tons of money? Is that what you want? You’re probably not gonna design that.

If you’re gonna design a happy marriage with kids that adore you and success, whatever that defines, whatever that is, and then you start backtracking, then you start looking at what does that mean that I have to do in three years? What does that mean I have to do in one year? What does that mean I have to do each quarter?

What does that mean I have to do each week? And so just like you’re saying, you can come up with these scorecards, these metrics, these KPIs to figure out exactly what will get you to that place that you wanna be. And then you’re living life intentionally instead of just having life handed to you.

And most of us just wake up and answer the emails we have to answer and like you said, get stuck in the machine. And it’s not necessarily the life that you want because you haven’t designed it. You haven’t gone out and figured out exactly what you want and how to get there.

[Garrett Maroon]
That’s all true. And I think, man, at the end of the day, it’s not that to be morbid, spot on, the reality is we’re all gonna die one day, right? I hope that’s not news to anybody.

On your headstone, right? This is what I’ve been challenging myself and people around me. On your headstone, are they gonna write real estate agent, right?

And is that what you would want them to write? I would say for most of us, they’re not gonna write real estate agent. I hope they don’t write that for me.

[Mattias]
And I would imagine- They’re deals a year.

[Garrett Maroon]
Right, right, exactly. It’s like, woohoo, that guy is awesome. That’s not what they’re gonna comment on, right?

It’s gonna be hopefully for me, devoted follower of Jesus, great husband, loving dad, right? Great grandfather, if I, you know, Lord really lived that long to see grandkids. Whatever it is, like poured into people.

What, I don’t know what it would say, but it’s not gonna talk about real estate, right? Oh, you own 50 houses. That’s not what our legacy is going to be.

And so if that’s true, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pursue excellence because we should. We’re in this industry. So if we’re gonna do this, let’s do it well.

However, it does mean pursue what actually matters. What is going to matter at the end of your life? It’s not that I sold a bunch of homes.

My kids aren’t gonna care. Now, they love it because I can buy them things. We can go on vacation, whatever.

That’s good. You should go provide for your family. Be excellent at it.

But what they won’t care about at the end of the day is, oh, dad, you know, if I was on my deathbed, again, not trying to be morbid, but if I’m on my deathbed, they’re like, dad, you know what we love most about you is you sold so many houses every year. That’s not gonna be it at all. It’ll be, I’m so glad you didn’t miss my games, right?

I’m so glad you picked me up from school. It’s my wife who says, honey, we got to spend so much good quality time together. And that’s convicting to me because I’m not great at those things either, and I’m trying, right?

Now, we all should be striving for that, but the reality is we work like the only thing that’s gonna matter at the end of our lives is how much stuff we had and what our rank is. It won’t matter, right? It won’t matter.

And so we’ve got to intentionally use the word, which I agree, intentionally choose what matters and then intentionally pursue a business that serves what matters, right? It could be 100 homes a year. It could be 10.

It could be whatever. And I would love, man, one day for the industry to have the person on stage who sold 200 homes next to the stay-at-home mom who homeschooled her kids and did 10 because that’s what she could do, but she kept her feet where she wanted to. Man, that’s, both of those are success if that’s what success is for them, and they were still able to provide for the family.

So I just hope there’s a revolution in terms of the way we view who won and who didn’t. It’s not clean cut. And man, you get to choose, audience, you get to choose what matters to you and then go pursue that.

And don’t let anybody tell you it’s wrong or don’t let anybody tell you you gotta do something else. You choose how to do it.

[Mattias]
If you’re building, again, your life and your career and all that stuff in a way that you’re not ahead of what you’re earning, you’re behind, and you’re building up your passive, you’re building up your wealth, et cetera, those decisions become a little bit easier. Like if you are, it ups your eyeballs in debt and you can only, you have to keep going. It’s a very different conversation.

But if you have the blessing of having that kind of life where you were kind of delaying the gratification, you were not getting the new car right away because you knew you wanted to get a rental first or whatever, however you want to play it, you’re gonna be in a position where if there are clients that have a problem with these boundaries that you set for yourself, you’re gonna be like, I don’t care.

Do you wanna work with a person that’s like, doesn’t respect that you wanna have a relationship with your wife or your kids? You don’t want that business. And you can make those decisions.

And it’s probably hard to hear when you’re first starting out and you just want anything. And there is a grind phase, I’m not gonna be wrong. I think I’ve took on listings and I’ve worked with people more than I should have.

Because yeah, I just needed to, I wanted to have business. And I’m in a position now that if I have somebody coming in that is stressing me out too much and has too high of expectations of what I should be doing or just very rude, don’t understand my life, I don’t need to work with them. I don’t need to work with them.

I’d rather be happy.

[Garrett Maroon]
And I totally agree. I’ve had plenty of those. And you’re right, there was a grind out season for me too at the beginning.

And it’s why it matters to try to do the right thing as often as you can so that you eventually get out of the grind. And you can build that. But I agree with you.

What is freedom in our industry? It’s the freedom to choose who you work with. That to me is freedom of, I had a client who called me and they wanted to offer, this was a couple years ago, they wanted to offer $70,000 off.

The house had just hit the market. And I’m actually in a training, I forget where I was, but I wasn’t in the area. And they called me and they said, we want to offer 70K off.

I said, look, that’s not going to happen. There’s no way the seller’s going to do that. And she literally said, I thought you said you were a really good negotiator.

I’m like, I don’t remember telling you that. I think I am. But you’re asking me to do something that’s not possible.

And quite honestly, it’s going to offend everybody. I’m not willing to do that. And so they just kept giving me junk and crap and whatever.

So we didn’t even submit the offer. I remember when I got home, I reached out and said, hey, you know what? I respect what you guys are trying to do.

I’m not the person for you, right? Because this is not the way I want to be treated. This is not the way I want to run my business.

And so I let them go. And man, what a relief, right? Like I was spending 90% of my time on 10% of my problem.

Like everything else I was doing was working fine. Then let’s let go of those things that just don’t matter, right, the anchors that hold us back. Again, to your point, the caveat of if you’re new, if you’re young in this business, you’re trying to figure it out.

You know what? You got to go through that junk to get to the other side. Just make sure once you get to the other side, you don’t keep grinding it out like you did at the beginning to try to get traction.

Start doing the right thing. Start having the conversation with your spouse. Hey, what does winning look like for you?

Do you want me to go sell a bunch of more homes? Or like, do you want me just to figure out how to come home more often? And just make sure that after you go through that season of striving, you know, how many times we’re like, it’s just a season of striving or just a season of grinding it out.

And then we get to the end of that and guess what we keep doing? We just keep grinding it out because we built that habit. Make sure when you get to the end of that, that you actually pause and reflect and ask the people that matter to you.

All right, that was a season. What do we want the next season to look like, right? And I think we just got to be willing to have this conversation.

[Mattias]
The season part is very true. Very true in this industry too. Even like, you know, you’re talking about like that in a bigger scale, but I mean, it’s also just, you know, seasonal.

Like, I mean, we’re gonna be a lot busier in the summer. That’s just kind of how it is too. And like, there is the ebbs and flows of the business that like, if you are, you know, in it, you know, day to day that you might just have to explain to your kids and family that it’s just gonna be a little bit busier right now.

And, you know, and try to make up for it later. Not that you have to completely ignore your family for six months of the year, but you’re gonna maybe, you know, be able to take longer trips. You know, I have a really good friend in the business and he’s a really good example of prioritizing what is important to him.

And they have taken month long trips and often that happens in the winter. So they’ll like, they’ll go to like, you know, the Cancun area for a month, or they’ve gone to like, Italy for a month. And like, you know, they, it’s just important to them and they have a kid now, they take the kid to these awesome adventures.

And, you know, there’s a lot of people that would not do that or think that’s crazy because, you know, all the momentum you’re gonna lose if you’re not in the business day to day. And what’s the next month gonna look like? Because you haven’t had to put anything under contract in the meantime.

But they’ve figured it out. They’ve made it a priority and it’s great. So good, man.

[Garrett Maroon]
And I think agents, anytime we make any money, right? Like at the end of the day, just ask, what was the point of making money? Right?

If it’s not to spend it on the people you love, then what was the point? Is it just to keep score compared to your neighbor? Like, okay, that’s fine.

But you’re either putting it in your ego account or your bank account, right? Like, I don’t want it in my ego account. Though I struggle with pride too.

Like I want it to be in my bank account and it’s gonna honor the people that I love. I’d rather go spend it on my family. I need to put money away like we all do, but I’d rather spend it on my family.

Like, what’s the point? What’s the point of working hard if you’re not gonna do it on the people that you like? It just doesn’t make sense.

And yet we operate that way all the time. And so, man, I love that your friend does that. I think that’s absolutely right.

Great. He worked hard so he could stop for a month and be present with the people that he wanted to be present with. That’s awesome.

[Mattias]
It’s almost like looking at it like, all right, I got a quota. I need to sell this much this year. I don’t know.

But I’m gonna get there. Faster I get there. Seriously, though.

[Garrett Maroon]
Right, and you totally could. And I have people that I know or I’ve coached and it’s like, hey, it’s September. You did what you need to do.

So do you wanna keep going or do you actually wanna just hang out? And most of the time they’re like, man, I totally wanna hang out. And that’s awesome, man.

You know, good for you. You know, do a little bit here and there maybe. Don’t let everything fall apart.

That’s fine.

[Mattias]
Keep up with your spear.

[Garrett Maroon]
Yeah, you’re right. But like, it’s a choice. And you made mention of something earlier.

John Acuff wrote a book called Soundtracks, which I love this book. And he says, every morning you wake up, you either chance it or you choose it. And he was talking about what’s your mindset, right?

And most of us, myself included, often wake up and we just chance it. It’s like, oh man, the day’s starting and now what do I do? Let’s be the kind of people that choose it more often.

And that’s gonna help us be intentional in where we wanna go.

[Mattias]
Yeah. We’ve got like probably four more hours so we could talk about this. But I do need to shift it into some of those questions.

So do you have a golden nugget you could share with our audience?

[Garrett Maroon]
Yeah, I mean, everything so far has been golden. No, I’m totally kidding. So man, there’s so many thoughts I have.

I would say based on our conversation and based on your book too, right, is what the industry tries to tell you. I was selling 50 homes a year and I hired a coach and I’d done it all by referral. Never cold called.

I’ve never done an open house. I’ve never done any of those things. I hire a coach and I say, look, here’s the stated reason we’re here.

I wanna keep selling 50 homes. I just wanna do it in less time. I wanna go home.

And she said, Garrett, here’s your homework for the first week. You need to cold call 300 people. You need to door knock a hundred doors.

And I was like, I told you, I’ve literally never done that. I don’t intend to do that, right? I’m selling 50 homes.

It was in the top 1%. I felt good. And she said, then Garrett, you’re not gonna succeed.

I literally remember her saying that. And so we hang up. Yeah, we hang up the next week, I get on the phone.

And this had a big brokerage, right? Like this was their coaching company. And she says, did you do your homework?

I said, no. But she said, Garrett, you’re not gonna succeed. This is what success looks like.

And man, that was the start for me to be like, no, it doesn’t. This can’t be it, right? So my point in saying that is, as a golden nugget is, no matter where you are in your journey, especially if you’re newer or you’re trying to go to that next level, you’re gonna hear a lot of people say, this is what it looks like.

This is how you do it. You gotta cold call three hours. You gotta be on social media.

You gotta door knock. You gotta open house. You gotta do all of these things.

And none of that’s true, right? You were made very specifically. You are wired very uniquely from everyone else.

So your job is not to go do what everybody else does. Your job is to figure out who you are and go be excellent at that. If you love people, go be an amazing referral agent.

If you love social media and creating content, go be amazing at that, right? If you love being on the phone, go be amazing at that. But your job is not to be amazing at everything.

It’s not possible. Your job is to be amazing at what you were made for. And man, that’s my encouragement is to build and live authentically.

Not only is that the best way for you to succeed, but it’s also the way you’re gonna be most consistent. And consistency wins every single time, right? So man, that’d be my big encouragement to everybody.

[Mattias]
That’s awesome. So well said. You’ve mentioned a couple books, but do you have one that you think is like a fundamental read everybody should read or maybe just one that you currently are loving?

[Garrett Maroon]
Well, so I would say read mine first and then get yours. How’s that for a pitch? Yeah, man.

No, so there are so many great books out there. And I do have a book coming out in November, which I am obviously super, super excited about that is the intent is to reset the way we look at success as we’ve been talking about, and then gives them really practical plan to go then achieve it in a way that makes sense inside of their new definition, what I call the PDA formula. So how do you build a predictable, profitable business that aligns with who you are?

And then the last part is what you’ve been talking about too is how do we go intentionally achieve that, right? The people in our lives, the things we choose to do, the decisions we make, that kind of stuff. So man, I hope that this makes a difference in the real estate industry, just like I’m sure you do too.

This is why I wrote it. It wasn’t for fun, because it wasn’t that fun. I mean, sometimes it is, but you get it.

It’s just a labor of love, man. And so my heart is that this will bless a lot of people called The Balance Breakthrough, winning at work without losing at life. And man, so I would love for anybody to go read that, and I hope that it makes a difference for them.

[Mattias]
I love it. Where would people be able to follow you? This book isn’t out yet, so I’m assuming it’s gonna be on Amazon and stuff like that, but is there social media?

Where could they follow you to make sure they can get it?

[Garrett Maroon]
Yeah, man, so right now I would encourage go to TheBalancedBreakthrough.com. It’ll take you to a free download of The PDA Formula that will help you start thinking in how do I use my personality, my unique strengths to build a more predictable, profitable business. I would love for you to go grab that, and then it’s gonna put you on a list so that when the book comes out, you’ll get notified.

It’ll be Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, Amazon, those places. But for now, I don’t want people to have to wait. I want you to start winning now.

So go to TheBalancedBreakthrough.com, grab that free download. I think it’ll be, hopefully, a blessing to you and your business.

[Mattias]
Awesome. Well, Garrett, thanks so much for being on. It’s a great conversation.

Like I said, I’m sure we could keep going for another two hours at least.

[Garrett Maroon]
Next time, when we’re both, you know, Joe Rogan and making millions of dollars podcasting. No, man, a blessing to be here, buddy. I appreciate it.

[Erica]
Thanks for listening to the REI Agent.

[Mattias]
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week.

[Erica]
Visit REIAgent.com for more content.

[Mattias]
Until next time, keep building the life you want.

[Erica]
All content in this show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.