Hard Truth Podcast: Power Of Sales with Chris A. Garrett

Welcome to The Hard Truth Podcast.

This is Jeremy Fouts, and today’s episode is actually a little bit more special than normal.

I’ve got a good friend of mine that I’ve actually known for over 20 years on the podcast with us today, and Chris Garrett is from Nashville, Tennessee.

I cannot wait to ask him some questions for you as an audience to get to know him better.

He’s actually had over $200 million in lifetime production in his real estate business.

And I promise you, this is going to be a podcast today that you’re going to want to listen to and share with your friends and family.

We’re not just going to talk about real estate today.

We’re going to talk about life, and we’re going to give you the hard truth facts of what it takes in order to be successful at whatever endeavor that you are trying to pursue on a daily basis.

Chris, thank you so much for being on The Hard Truth Podcast, man.

I’ll tell you, number one, it’s good to see you today.

You and Kerry have got a phenomenal family.

We’ve actually known each other for a lot of years.

And we’ve actually was business partners together quite a few years back, about 20 years ago.

And watching you now just take this real estate business and have total success, it’s been incredible.

But more importantly, watching how you and Kerry has been great examples for marriage, great examples for father and mother, raising two awesome kids.

I say kids, they’re not kids anymore.

You got one that’s a business owner himself and working, and then you got another one just now went to college.

But Chris, it’s a pleasure to have you on.

I know I’m gonna have a lot of questions for you that the audience would wanna ask you if they had that ability to do that.

But I wanna get a little bit of background for the audience, a little bit more about your story, you and Kerry, the kids, and what you do right now for a living, have for the last 18 years, and a little bit about your success.

And feel free to talk about everything.

I know you and I are big kayak fishermen as well, and your daughter’s into archery, and we definitely have a light in common, but thank you for being on.

Give us a little bit of background for the audience about you and Kerry.

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

This is awesome.

I actually love the podcast.

I’ve been listening and learning, so it’s just an honor to be on the podcast with you.

Like you said, we’ve known each other for probably 20 years.

So I remember before your kids were even born.

So it’s just an honor to be back and talking to you and talking to an old friend.

But I started, I was a paint salesman back in 2005, and I decided I wanted to flip houses.

So this lady had come into the paint store and of course I’m selling her paint.

I’m figuring out what she needs.

And along the way, I figured out she’s in real estate.

So I was like, you know, I sure love to flip houses.

So she starts dragging me around looking at foreclosure houses.

And I remember the first house I saw was 206 Richardson.

I’ll never forget that house because once I got my license, I never bought it, but it was the first house I sold once I got my license.

But, you know, she’s dragging us around.

So she sells our house.

And eventually she goes, you know, you should be in real estate.

I was like, that sounds great and all, but I don’t, I’m not working the weekends.

So I don’t have to work the weekends.

I got the stock options, you know.

She finally convinced me to get my license.

So in 05, I got my license in September.

My son turned two in October.

My daughter was born in November and I quit my job in January.

So I don’t waste any time.

Yeah, you probably didn’t do it the right way, but you did it.

That’s what I meant.

I didn’t have any money.

We had no savings.

We had nothing.

But you know, one thing you and I were talking earlier is I sat down with Kerry and I said, hey, will you support me no matter what?

If you’re behind me, I can do this.

And I say, it’s going to get tough probably, but if I know you’re in my corner, we got this.

And I went on and sold 29 houses my first year and I doubled my income from the prior year.

So just sometimes we get comfortable because almost the salary is like the handcuffs, isn’t it?

Oh, you got the salary, you got the benefits, and you don’t realize what you can have once you step out and take a chance and become uncomfortable.

But that led into, well, if you remember what 05 was, it was the peak at that time of the real estate industry.

2006, 2007, 2008, I wrote that thing right into the bottom.

So I can remember, I always tell the story because sometimes people see, I recruit agents now and they’re like, yeah, it must be nice because you’re in a place that you don’t have to worry about the things we worry about.

And I said, well, I can remember in 09, I can remember, held this open house, didn’t have, I held it every weekend for probably three months.

It didn’t have a guest almost every time.

I never had a guest.

Nobody was buying houses.

And I was driving home and I had no gas.

And I remember stopping at the gas station.

I had to, it was before you could check the app.

I had to check my phone.

I had to call, you had to call in.

And I had $40 in our checking account.

And I remember putting $10 in gas in that car and driving home to figure out how I was gonna, you know, make the rest of the week.

And as that moment, I was thinking, man, I’m gonna get the job, driving a forklift or something else or, and then I thought, you know what, if I can spend four or five hours at night driving a forklift, I need to spend four or five hours working on my business.

Cause all I gotta do is sell one house and that’s a lot of forklift nights.

And I made a decision to really change the way I looked at going to work every day and stop pitying myself and stop, you know, you just get stuck in your rut, right?

They say a rut’s just a grave with both ends kicked out, you know?

And so everything went up from there.

And I wrote it in 2013 and started to shift.

Started to pick up builder business, started to work with developers.

And then in 2017, I got a chance to come over and broker an office.

And in 2019, I turned that into ownership and partnered with our company.

And now we hired a broker and I’m working on, you know, overall growing the company and then running my real estate team.

I still do that because I have a passion.

I can’t sit around.

I gotta go kill it and drag it home.

Man, it’s funny, Chris.

It doesn’t matter what business it is.

You’re always gonna have what I call peaks and valleys.

And I watch so many people when they get in that valley, like what you was in.

And you know my story.

I owned a construction company at the time during that valley of 2008.

And you know, it’s so easy for people just to throw in the towel, man.

And again, too, it’s amazing how many people, they look at where you are now and they don’t hear about those valleys.

They don’t understand that you went through, I mean, I’m a firm believer, the most successful people are not the ones that did not go through a valley.

They’re the ones that went through the most valleys.

And that’s the key.

So over 200 million in sales and lifetime production, that’s pretty remarkable, Chris.

And I cannot wait to ask you a few questions.

We’re gonna start off by asking the first question, why is it difficult for people to master sales?

And one of the things that really bothers me as well is people think, oh, I’m just not good at sales.

I’ve heard that all of my life.

I’m not good at sales.

And so what are some of the things that maybe some people listening today, maybe they’re not where they wanna be in life.

They know that they need to learn a new skill.

What are some skills?

What are some things to help people master sales?

And how important is sales in today’s world?

I mean, is that where the money’s made?

And you and I both agree that that is.

Well, I work with a lot of builders and they’re great at building houses, but unless we sell them, it didn’t make them any money.

They can be the best builder.

They can build the best house.

And until we take that product and go put it on the market in a way that attracts buyers to come and buy it, then they could build every house that they’d ever wanna build and it wouldn’t matter to them.

They wouldn’t make a dime.

So I think sales is really the lifeblood of everything that we do.

It’s funny because I often look at sales and I think a lot of people think sales is, I’ve gotta convince you to buy something that you may not have been thinking about or even need.

And being a good salesperson is convincing you to do something that you didn’t wanna do.

And I think that’s further, it can be further from the truth, especially in our situation is, I’m gonna convince someone to buy a house that doesn’t wanna buy a house, right?

So what they do, a lot of times they’ll come to me or we seek out people and become referral partners.

And then, for me, it’s building relationships.

I do less of going out and code calling just to get a deal as I go and just build relationships with people.

Because you realize the more relationships you build, the more likely that you’re gonna be the person they come to when they need the product or service that you’re selling.

So for me, people don’t have a sales problem.

It’s not the ability to convince somebody.

They have a get in front of people problem.

They don’t get in front of enough people.

And I see it every day, we hire agents.

And I’ll see an agent, if they don’t show up for work, or if they don’t show up or they don’t go and do the things that we ask them to do, I know they’re not gonna have success because there’s a recipe and you just gotta work the recipe.

Now, if you have a, you and I have similar personality, we’ll talk to the wall.

I can talk to anybody about anything.

And I enjoy it.

And I think that has a lot to do with it.

People can see when you’re fake.

They can see when you’re not really interested in what they do.

So, if we talk about kayak fishing, or if you talk about hunting, you perk up, right?

Like immediately, we’re gonna talk about hunting.

And I think building rapport with someone, I remember we were flipping a house one time, it burned out and we were gonna flip the house.

And there was an old man that lived behind the house.

And I go over there one day and I’m overseeing, we’re getting everything torn down, so we start the new house.

Well, I see him on his lawnmower, so I go over there and wait for him to get off of it.

He comes over and talks to me, and I go to shake his hand, and he’s real hesitant to shake my hand.

He’s just looking at me.

He’s like, so what are y’all doing with this place?

Because they’d been there since the 60s, you know?

And I said, well, we plan to build a really nice house here, and hopefully a family’s gonna move in here that’s gonna add value to your neighborhood.

And I said, you know, I actually grew up one street over, and I was born on the street.

It was one street over, and I asked him if he knew my grandfather, and he’s like, he didn’t know him.

Then I go, well, do you know my dad?

I said, his name is Jimmy Garrett, and this guy’s face completely changed.

He goes, you’re Jimmy Garrett’s boy.

And I was like, yes, sir.

And he reaches his hand back out and wants to shake my hand again.

I went from this developer to Jimmy Garrett’s boy.

And man, he was like, hey, I’ll watch this place.

I’ll make sure nobody’s on here, ain’t supposed to be.

And it was amazing how, you know, I didn’t do anything false.

I just found out what we had in common.

And once I did, man, it just immediately, that broke down that barrier.

And that’s a lot of what sales is.

It’s just having the ability to figure out what people want and make them feel comfortable and give them the right knowledge, and then a transaction can happen.

Absolutely.

Chris, you know, I’ve been at sales for 25 years as well.

And, you know, I think with sales, what a lot of people struggle with is they’re trying to make a sale to make money.

And I could tell you so many different awesome relationships that I never made the sale, but I’ve built a relationship and it come back to me tenfold just for doing something, expecting nothing in return.

And I think that’s a lot of problems that people have with sales.

They’re thinking, oh, I didn’t get the sale.

So that was a failure.

That was not a success.

No, if you built a relationship with good intentions, then something good is going to come out of that relationship.

Yeah, I think you have too.

So a lot of times people look at things, return on investment.

Oh, I invested this, nothing happened.

It failed.

And I think we don’t look at, there’s something called return on objective.

And sometimes being known, becoming known in your sphere, building your relationships, that’s your objective.

It may not be a monetary value immediately, but that’s part of filling that pipeline.

And I think that’s where salespeople fail to succeed, is they’re so busy trying to get that first deal that they forget to start filling the pipeline.

Because if you fill a pipeline right, man, it just, it flows.

And once it starts coming out the other end, you gotta keep filling the pipeline.

So what happens is just like people have the struggle, you know, introducing themselves into sales, is once they get a little bit of success, they start to focus on the success and they interrupt the pipeline.

So then they turn around, you’re talking about peaks and valleys, they turn around and it’s like, oh, pipeline is empty again, I gotta go prospect again.

So it’s just learning the system to continue to build those relationships and fill that pipeline.

Absolutely.

I know you and I, we’ve been big believers in personal development for the last 20 something years.

And as far as people now where you are, you’re not just out there yourself selling houses, you’re also building a team, you know, owning a real estate company.

You know, what would you say to the audience today that’s listening?

How would you let them know the importance of personal development?

What role did that have in order for you to have success?

Not only were you, when you were starting, but continuing that success.

What does personal development have to do with that?

Well, you know, I think energy is not really created.

It’s hard, if you’ve ever just been by yourself and then you need to do something, but it’s just hard to motivate yourself to do something.

But you can get around somebody else, or I can get around you, and I’ll be like, man, I’m ready to go sell some stuff.

You know, energy is transferred between people.

So I think me reading or listening to your podcast, and it’s, you know, a lot of times, you know, it’s rare that someone has just come up with something that no one’s heard of, right?

We constantly take pieces and parts from other people and package, you know, people package it in a new way, right?

But knowing something and doing something is two wildly different things.

So I think a lot of times, most people know what to do.

Really, if you deep down, most people know what they probably should be eating.

They know when they should probably get up in the morning.

They know they shouldn’t stay up all night watching Netflix.

They probably know that, but then having the discipline to do that is the hard thing.

So for me, it’s a mindset.

I’ve got to be in a mindset all the time, and I’m probably not gonna create that mindset by myself.

There’s some days that I’ll get up and I’m ready to kill it on my own, but most of the time, it’s gonna be, I’m gonna be in a book, I’m gonna be in a podcast, just because I’m transferring that energy and the knowledge.

So a lot of times when I say something, it’s not something I create, I’m not that smart.

I learned it from somewhere else, you know?

I didn’t go to college.

So I’m constantly reading to increase my knowledge and learn how other people are being successful and adapting that to my work.

Yep.

Yeah, I mean, my analogy that I always share is we know if you go to McDonald’s and eat 30 days of McDonald’s, what you’re gonna look like.

That’s not a question, because we know what we put in our body, you know, we become.

But it’s the same way with our mindset.

You know, when I’m working with a college athlete or a young athlete or even a 45 year old dad, I always ask them, how are we allocating our time through the day?

Tell me what your day looks like.

And no question that if they are not feeding the mind, they’re not going to be successful.

I mean, it doesn’t matter if you’re an athlete playing basketball and you shoot 500 times a day, but you’re not developing that mind when it comes down to making that game shot or being a good leader on the court, you’re not going to be there.

I mean, that’s just that’s 100% of it.

So I 100% agree with you.

The next thing I want to ask you is when you see someone successful like yourself or what Candice and I have built, a lot of people think, well, they’ve never dealt with failure.

They’ve never tried anything that did not work.

They just automatically assume, I’ve actually had my family members make this comment.

Anything that Jeremy touches turns to gold.

Well, I could tell you, and this is not for my story, but I could tell you so many things.

I look back and say, what was I thinking?

There was no way in the world that was going to work, but I learned a lot.

So share with us, if I said today, I’m like, Chris, everything you and Carrie’s always done has turned to gold.

You’ve never had to deal with failure.

I mean, correct me on that and share with me a little bit of your failures that maybe you’ve went through.

Yeah, man, before I tell that story, you made me think of something else on the last point that we had is if you ever go into a law office, what if you walked into the law office and there were no law books on the shelves, the guy had no material?

I’d be worried, right?

But it’s amazing in our industry, people won’t read books on negotiating, on how to talk to people, how to build relationships.

Like there’s so much material out there, but unless we go in and you have to be, I consider myself an expert negotiator because that’s what I get paid to do is negotiate.

So if I’m on a deal with another agent from the word hello, I’m negotiating every word.

I’m listening to every word they say.

I’m thinking about every word I’m saying.

I’m thinking about how I’m answering the question, not to give up a position for my client.

So that’s the way I think in every business, we should really be focused on how to grow ourselves and be the very best at what we are.

But you just made me think of that.

That’s why personal development is so important.

Before my paint, so I was in the paint business, so I was a sales rep for Duron Paints when I got into real estate.

Well, prior to being a sales rep for Duron Paints, I got a job.

So I’m a manager, I’m just a kid, I’m wearing khakis and a denim shirt that says mailboxes, et cetera, on it.

And I managed a mailbox, et cetera.

Now they’re UPS stores.

So this guy come in, and every day he would come in, he drove up in a Lexus, and he had a hairdo that was kind of like a televangelist, and he had this nice suit.

He had a Mont Blanc pin, and his shoes were always perfectly shined.

And he’d always come in having some really important conversation, like, oh, we’re gonna do the deal, and let’s get our people together.

Every time he’d come in, and I’m like, I wanna be him.

That’s who I wanna be.

So one day he comes in, I was like, hey, how do I do what you do?

He goes, well, I’ll get you an interview with my, I’m a, you know, he was, I forgot even how he said, I’m a market maker for a radio station here.

What turned out to be Southern Gospel Radio Station.

So you’re talking about hard selling ads.

I mean, I grew up listening to Southern Gospel, but that was a tough media, right?

So I get, so the owner of this station was a Harvard graduate, and he had, I’d never known anybody to commercialize Southern Gospel.

And it had always been donations, like really poor talent on, Mom, Paul Kettle, like, hey, we’re gonna listen to the Chuck Wagon.

You know, it was always that.

So he’s like, I’m gonna take this media, and I’m gonna make it professional and sell ads.

So I got a job there, and I’m in my 20s, man.

And I have no idea what I’m doing.

I’ve been in inside sales all my life.

But you know, it’s funny, I lasted six months, and they called me in to fire me, but I already knew I was gonna get fired, so I’d already gotten a job.

So I could say, you can’t fire me, I quit.

But some of the things that I learned while I was there is Jim Cumbie was his name, and Jim told me, he goes, hey, if you walk into an appointment with nothing in your hand, you’ll walk out with nothing in your hand.

So he always taught me to carry something into an appointment.

And I’ve often met with people, you ever meet with somebody, or somebody says they wanna meet with you, and you sit down to talk with them, and they don’t have a pad or a pencil or a pen, and you’re like, you wanted to meet with me, but you didn’t show up prepared, like you’re not gonna remember anything we talk about.

So to me, it’s like you didn’t take, you didn’t really take it seriously.

And so he told me, he goes, I don’t care if it’s empty, you carry a briefcase into your appointment, because you need to look professional.

And, but it was little things like that.

And I tell you, it was funny because I was like you, everybody, you could sell ice to an Eskimo, you could do all that, you could sell anything.

And then when I failed, man, I took that so personally.

I actually didn’t talk about it for years.

I wouldn’t tell anybody that I’d ever gotten fired.

And one day I ran into my old general manager, and I had been doing real estate, and I had started finding success in real estate.

And he said something that changed the way I looked at it.

He goes, you know what?

He goes, that was the best thing that could have happened to you.

He goes, because we released you to go do what you were meant to do.

And I thought, man, that was a great way to look at it.

And I never looked at it as a failure as much as a learning experience after that.

Yeah, that’s so good, man.

And then, you know, talking about not being prepared for the situation, you know, Jim Rohn always said, don’t trust your fortune with your memory.

You know, and that’s something, I mean, I could pull journals, hundreds of journals that I’ve got full.

It’s first thing I do every morning is journal.

You know, I listen, I learn, I write it down.

Listen, learn and write it down.

And to this day, I did trainings for 20 years.

And I still have every one of them.

I mean, my secretary don’t like it because she’s always trying to have to follow trainings and different things like that.

But being prepared and never ever trust your fortune with your memory.

Always put it down and continue to learn.

So I know leadership, you and I, we understand the importance of leadership.

And how important would you say leadership is in developing a team and continuing to grow your team?

You know, because you and I know if you’re not growing, you’re dying.

But leadership is so key.

And that’s a word that’s used a lot, but a lot of people really don’t understand what true servant leadership is.

And that’s something that I’ve had the ability, I’m not perfect, but I’ve had the ability to really master servant leadership.

And so what role would you say leadership has in having long-term success?

You know, I think to start, you have to respect leadership in the way of being led.

You got to really understand how to be led before I think you can lead.

Because you ever see, especially you’ll see a lot in factories that somebody gets a position, and all of a sudden, man, they are tough to deal with.

I’m the boss.

They’re coming every day.

And I’ve always said, if I’ve ever got to come in here and say, I’m the boss, I’ve messed up somewhere.

Because I shouldn’t have to tell people my role.

It shouldn’t even matter, right?

And I think servant leadership is really not asking anybody to do something that you’re not willing to do or haven’t done.

And when you start a business, you’re basically all the positions, right?

You’re the CEO, the CFO, you’re the COO, you’re the maintenance man.

You’re everything.

And then eventually, you’re able to grow and you start to take positions out of your repertoire and give it to somebody else.

And there’s a difference between managing and leading, because I’ve seen managers that weren’t great leaders.

They could manage, they could tell you what to do and expect you to do it, and there’s repercussions if you don’t do it.

But then it’s different when you work for somebody that you want to do things for, that you’re proud to be there.

And I think it comes down to appreciating the people that work for you and not feeling like they owe you something.

And I always think of myself as like, if I walk in the door, I don’t ask the agents, hey, this is what y’all need to do for me.

I always say, hey, what can I do for you?

And then I expect our staff to go, they should come in every day thinking, hey, what can we do for all the agents?

How can I serve them?

And then the agents, if it was a perfect world, they would say, hey, what can we do to help grow the company?

What’s the company’s goal?

So we’d like to know that.

So we know where we fit in, you know, because sometimes as a company, you’re afraid to tell the your employees what your goals are.

But then you realize is when they can buy in and be a part of that, that gives them a whole other level of excitement and being part of something, you know, they say, hey, we all came together and made this goal that we realized together, you know.

So I think, you know, with leadership, man, anybody says they do it perfect, I think they’re lying because there’s no way it’s like being a parent, you know, you’re not always doing it exactly right.

But I think to me, it’s a heart thing.

It’s not a head thing.

It’s a heart thing.

Being, you know, being a manager, you can learn that in your head.

But being a leader, I think it’s got to come from your heart.

And it’s how you care about people and what your motivations are.

Yep.

Yeah.

There’s two things I’d add to that.

And one of them goes back to kind of the personal development we already talked about, Chris, but you know, I heard this or actually read it in a book about 20 years ago and it said that your sales will never outgrow your leadership, number one.

And you know, I think a lot of people, what you just said, once they get a little bit of success, it goes to their head.

There’s no humility.

And then all of a sudden they think, oh, well, I’ve arrived, therefore, I don’t have to keep working on myself to get better.

And they’re going to be headed for a downtime, I mean, a hundred percent.

Another thing I’d add to it talking about leadership is for me, leadership has always coincided with responsibility, you know, and you have a responsibility to continue to grow, to continue to be the best you can be, not for you to make more millions, but for you to equip your team with the ability to have that success.

And I was reading an article the other day talking about kids that grew up on a farm, they have a larger percentage of having success because they understand at a young age responsibility that horses got to eat, I’ve got to feed it, that cows got to eat, I’ve got to feed it.

And I think leadership is kind of that word where people always want to say, well, I’m a leader, but they think they’re a leader, but they don’t want the responsibility.

I mean, do you agree with me on that?

I mean, it’s a responsibility.

There’s some days that I don’t want to go to the gym.

I don’t want to study, you know, I don’t want to do the things, but I have a responsibility.

I have a corporate team that works for me still.

I’ve got people that’s counting on me.

And I think leadership will always help me become grounded is understanding the responsibility that I have for others.

Yeah, it’s 100% because I think you get to a point as you grow a team and you grow a company.

At first, it’s like, hey, I just need to pay my bills, right?

That’s everybody’s like, I just need to survive.

And then when you go past that threshold, giving yourself permission to go past that right and start to thrive.

And then as you add people, I get up every day and think, hey, I owe it to my assistant, I owe it to my buyer’s agent, I owe it to my partners to continue to do this every day.

Because man, it’s crazy and it may sound crazy, but I can be lazy.

I can sit around and I can be lazy if I don’t watch myself.

So it’s like, I get up every day and I fill my calendar up on purpose.

And that’s the problem a lot of times in entrepreneurship, there’s no one filling your account.

No one says you got to get up at this time of day, you got to go to bed at this time.

It’s up to you.

And so you got to build like hard edges around that.

But for me, it’s like, you got to have that discipline every day to do it.

Yeah, I mean, something I’ve done for 20 years and I do it to this day is every Sunday afternoon, I evaluate my calendar and I figure out my schedule for that week.

Now, some of it again is already planned out several weeks in advance, some month in advance, my boy’s schedule and all that different thing.

But you have to learn how to employ yourself.

And a lot of people struggle with that.

You’ve got to look and say, okay, you know, I have got to employ myself.

This is the things I need to do in order to be successful.

I’ve got to make sure that I’m taking my personal development serious, my personal fitness serious.

I’ve got to take care of those things.

Now, I’ve got to make sure I’ve got this appointment scheduled, this appointment scheduled.

But I 100% agree with you, man, being able to employ yourself and understand the responsibility and leadership in order for it’s not just about us for continued success.

It’s about putting ourselves in a position to help others.

I’ve got to…

I want to finish one thing on that thought.

You made me think of something.

I heard somebody say, I get up in the morning, I don’t consult my feelings to see what I’m going to do that day.

I thought, man, that’s never a true statement because if I get up and go, I don’t really feel like going for a run this morning.

I don’t feel like going to the gym.

But for me, I’ve really been honing in what time I get up.

Sometimes it’s four.

Now I know I’m getting up at five o’clock.

I’m going to be in the gym at six o’clock.

And that allows me if I have a little bit of a late night that I’m still getting enough sleep because I’ve learned older, I get how important sleep is and getting really good sleep.

Because a lot of times we’ll do certain things right, but then we mess the other things up.

But then it’s just got to be a habit that I just, you know, there’s a, you ever heard of 75 hard?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

So it’s a challenge.

So I did it.

But you know, the funny thing about that is, is most people do it.

They’ll absolutely crush it.

And on day 76, what do they do?

Oh, man, I’m gonna go, they’re right back into the and really all it was was to develop habits that you keep.

Right.

It was that’s why it’s the days that it is because it takes, they say, 60 to 70 days.

Actually, it used to be they thought it was 30, 20 or 30.

Now it’s like 60 or 70 to actually develop a habit.

And it was to develop a discipline.

And I think most people miss that.

They think I’m gonna do this challenge and then I’m off of it and I’m back to what I do.

And then they they don’t change, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did the 75 hard.

It’s definitely a great challenge for someone to get the right mindset.

And but you’re right.

I’ve watched different people, you know, they’ll do the 75 day hard.

And in 76, they’re out drinking and eating cake.

And I’m like, why in the world would you use 75 days of discipline to go back?

What got you where you didn’t want to be in life?

I’m like, that is that is the most ridiculous thing in the world.

But again, that goes back to just not a clear mindset of what you’re trying to accomplish.

I mean, you know, I mean, you do a 75 day hard, you should have a plan coming out of that.

What am I going to do to continue my personal fitness?

What am I going to do to continue my personal mindset?

Because once you get in the zone like that, you should be like, man, I have beat all the things that has been keeping me down.

I want so many people, I counsel so many middle aged men, you know, that deal with alcohol, that deal with sugar, that deal with, you know, talking about motivation too.

I mean, I tell every one of my clients that I work with, like motivation is a feeling.

Do not count on your feelings because they will let you down.

I’m a big believer.

Motivation comes after you accomplish beating those feelings, doing it when you don’t want to do it.

That’s when motivation kicks in.

You know, I tell people I’m working with on personal fitness that it takes a week for you to feel a difference.

It takes a couple weeks for you to start seeing a difference, and it takes about four weeks for other people to see a difference.

That usually is when motivation starts kicking in.

But I agree with you.

If you’re relying on motivation to get you out of bed in the morning, then that’s feelings, and that’s going to let you down every time.

You never eat a bowl of ice cream and it’s so good, and then immediately after, you don’t even get a chance to relish in the fact that you enjoyed that.

It’s like, oh, what did I just do, man?

I feel horrible.

And I’ve heard it.

It’s like a moment of pain, a lifetime of pleasure, right?

Or that moment of pleasure, that cake, that whatever that is.

Man, believe me, I struggle.

And it’s a lifetime of pain, and people trade a whole life of discomfort and not enjoying their life for these moments of a sugar high or whatever.

I didn’t really want to get in food, but it’s something we deal with.

I deal with it.

I mean, I constantly battled that.

But then you learn, it’s like I can have this amazing life.

My dad, before he passed away, he got gout in his feet, and he was not eating.

He still would eat meat.

He would still eat all the things that would make that worse.

And then the more his feet hurt, the less he walked.

The less he walked, the bigger he got, the bigger he got, the less he walked.

And it was this, and had he got on a diet and had, you know, get that weight off, he could have had an enjoyable life, but it was just, it was a vicious circle, and it ended up taking his life, you know?

And I think, and that’s the motivation for me to say, I don’t want to, a piece of pie is not good enough for me.

And I’m not saying you can’t cheat and have a piece of pie, but if it’s your life, if it’s every day, that’s what you’re consuming, man.

You’re not going to have an enjoyable life.

At some point, it’s going to catch up.

We were talking about that earlier before we started.

Always choose delayed gratification not instant gratification.

That’s what’s wrong with society.

They’re wanting to go to happy hour, eat that pie.

What are those?

Because they’re looking for that instant gratification.

True success and long-term fulfillment comes from delayed gratification.

Just the flip-flop of eating the ice cream, there’s been minutes, you just talked about the minute you eat that ice cream, you feel horrible and you question yourself.

But just the flip-flop analogy of that, of me, days I did not want to go to a gym, and I pushed myself to do the workout, you know how many times I come back from that workout and say I wish I wouldn’t have did that?

Never.

Not one day.

Never.

I mean, every time I come back, my endorphins are going crazy, my dopamine levels are high, I feel like a million bucks, I drink my protein shake, and I think, man, what was I thinking?

I didn’t know if I wanted to go to the gym or not.

I mean, it just, this feels amazing.

I know you said you had a supportive wife, and I’ve read a lot of millionaire books, the facts about millionaires, and one of the things that is continuing and continues to be on the top one or two things of all the millionaires, what they have in common is a supportive spouse.

So share with me how supportive has Carrie been in this process?

And I know you already touched on it once, but what part of your success has been because of having a supportive spouse?

And, you know, a lot of billionaires really don’t have very good marriage lives.

So I think there’s a level to where, you know, it really does affect the marriage.

I’ve studied people at success levels and see where does that change, you know?

And for me, it’s, you know, whether someone is successful in business or not is respecting the counsel of your wife, because, man, there’s things that she thinks about that I don’t think about.

I don’t know about you.

I don’t have a comfort zone.

Like, there’s not a level that really makes me worried, because I’m going to go sell something.

I’ll go sell another house.

I’m going to go.

So taking a lot of risk doesn’t bother me at all.

But you know who it does bother?

It bothers my wife a lot, you know?

And I’ve had to realize, and it’s taken, and honestly, I haven’t always done it right.

I mean, but, you know, I think we’ve made some, you know, we’ve made moves and taken risks, and they’ve been successful risks.

I think looking back, she can, you know, she’s happy we did that.

But I probably caused a lot of strife in our marriage by not understanding what made her really happy, you know, and so, you know, I hear people, you know, there’s certain people that you’ll listen to and they’re like, all the money needs to come in, all the money needs to go out, get it all out there, work and get it all out there.

Well, for some, you know, for my wife, that’s not comfortable for her.

She wants to have a nest egg set in there.

She wants a cushion.

She wants to know where, you know, what’s going on next month.

And, you know, and being in sales, you know, a lot of times you’re two to, you know, maybe less than two months.

In fact, I do a lot of new construction so I can build a further out pipeline.

But for most real estate agents, they don’t know what they’re doing two months from now.

They don’t have a closing after that.

So you’re constantly short term building this thing.

So really creating an environment where your spouse is on board and happy.

That’s a hard thing to do.

I think it’s easy to say it.

But really to have, you know, I thought about this.

We do a business plan every year.

I’m sure you guys do a business plan.

I do a business plan.

We look at it every quarter with our agents because a lot of times people do a business plan.

They put it in a drawer and they pull it out in November and go, Oh, I missed the business plan.

Right.

So we pull it out every quarter to see, are they on track or are they not?

But how many people actually do a plan with their spouse and say, Hey, when the kids are in college, what do you want to do after that?

Where do you want to where do you want to live?

We have a home in Florida that we just put on the market because I had a really long conversation with my wife.

And my goal was kind of we would have this as a retirement home.

We would we would short term rent it until we got to the point where the more I talked to her, the more I realized she didn’t really want to spend a whole lot of time down there.

Well, so by really figuring out what was going to make now, I could probably force, you know, force the issue and get her down there.

She’s really not going to be happy.

So for me, it was like, okay, let’s take that and put it somewhere else where we can have something that we’re going to do together that we really enjoy.

And I think, you know, to me, I don’t know, I’m not really complicated when it comes to stuff like that, but I think just listening to what they want and then, you know, and I think here’s the thing, too.

Everybody says it’s a hundred, you know, fifty fifty or whatever.

I think it’s if you are always interested in making sure they’re taking care of and their needs and what they want and they’re interested in you the same way, you’re always going to work.

It’s just going to work.

But when one person gets selfish, I think the selfishness I’m going to have, whatever it is, no matter what, and then that becomes, you know, there was a time I loved to ride motorcycles, but I forgo and I forwent whatever that word is, motorcycles, you know, because I know I had to raise family and we should probably, you know, instead we bought a little camper and went camping with the kids and I got to spend family time rather than, you know, something that may have just made me happy.

So, I think, you know, maybe it’s not earth shattering, but to me, it’s just how you have a relationship and think about each other.

Yeah, I talk to people, you know, couples all the time, Chris, and usually when you have a wife in this direction and a husband in this direction, it’s because they’re not on the same page, you know, I mean, that’s something we’ve always did is make 90 day goals, you know, personal goals, you know, personal physical goals, personal development goals, financial goals, family goals, all those different things and getting on the same page because if the if the husband and we’re going to talk about this here in a second, so I’m getting ahead of myself is working a lot more than the wife thinks that he should be working.

But she now knows why he’s working that hard because of their goals.

And then she understands her role and what she’s working on personally.

Then if you get on the same page, you can build something special together.

And that’s something I’m big on, you know, no marriage is perfect, but I’ve been married 28 years and Candice and I, you know, we’re building something together.

And there’s I see so many guys that have a lot of success, but then they don’t have the wife that loves them or respects them.

They don’t have the kids that love and respect them.

And they have this money, but that’s not going to mean anything to you.

So getting on the same page with your spouse is something that I really, really encourage everyone listening to do, you know.

And a lot of people, Chris, that you talk about that business plan that you do with your agents, they don’t ever do they the wife has no idea how much debt they’re in.

You know, the husband may not even know how much debt they’re in.

They have no idea what they’re bringing in, what they’re projected to do.

Getting on the same page is what’s going to bring strength into marriage.

Now, it might scare you at first, but getting on the same page.

The next question I’ll ask you, and this is something that I’m curious to see how you’re going to answer it, because I know you’ve built an extremely large business and had a lot of success.

And I’ve had people judge me in all of my success in asking this question.

Maybe they don’t have, you know, for lack of better words, the balls to ask me this, but they want to ask me this.

Is they say, you know, how did you create life balance when you were starting your business?

You know, I heard this saying, and I love it.

It says if your spouse is happy with the amount of time you’re spending at home, you’re probably not working enough.

So there’s something to it.

You know, I’ve studied work-life balance all my life because at some point I thought, man, I’ve got to, you know, I’ve got to spend 2.5 hours with the kids.

I’ve got to spend 8 hours at work, and I’ve got to spend 1.3 hours, you know, with my wife.

And it’s got to be quality time.

And, you know, and it’s just every day is different.

There’s a new problem.

There’s something that pops up.

There’s, you know, and what I realized is I think you have seasons in your life that, you know, when you’re growing a new business, you’re really going to have to take the time.

People don’t want to be, they don’t want to be out of their, you know, like I’ll have people come in and they’re like, well, I just got this new job.

It’s in real estate, but I’m going on vacation next week.

I’m like, why are you going on vacation?

You don’t have the money to go on vacation.

So they don’t want to upset their life, right?

In order to build something that’s going to work.

And every time I see something that doesn’t put the emphasis on growing that, it’ll fail.

It’ll fail because it’s just not strong enough.

Now you grow to a point, and I didn’t take, man, I’ll tell you, that’s another thing.

I didn’t take a lot of vacations.

We didn’t have enough money.

We were growing.

We had these babies and I had to feed them.

So that came later.

So it’s kind of like, you know, Dave Ramsey always said, live like no one else.

And later you can live like no one else.

So I do believe, you know, sometimes people confuse quantity with quality because there’s people that are around their kids for a long time.

But guess what?

They’re all on their phones.

I’m guilty too.

So I’m saying this.

We’re on our phones.

Somebody’s playing a game over here.

This person is watching something over here, but it’s not quality time.

You know, sometimes I hate, I hate to say it, but I hate board games.

I hate playing games because, you know, I feel like when I work, all I do is think and problem solve.

And the last thing I’m going to do is go home and like think and problem solve again.

And I realize my family loves board games.

And I remember Mason one time wanted to play Monopoly and I said, all right, we’re going to play Monopoly.

But you’re sitting here to the bitter end.

And if you if you bankrupt, you’ve got to sit here till the games over.

You can’t leave because they do bankrupt.

They leave and then we’re sitting there for four or five hours playing this crazy game.

And after that, he never asked me to play Monopoly again.

But but, you know, sitting and playing or doing something where you’re actually having a car because it’s funny.

Carrie did something yesterday.

We was at church and she asked a question.

She’s like, what’s your favorite vacation that you ever had?

And it’s funny, it’s the most it’s probably the most we talked in months as a whole family.

Like, well, you remember that time we did this and we did that.

And then Reagan’s talking about this and it led into all these other things.

And you realize your kids are having thoughts and your wife are having thoughts.

And if you’re not talking to them and growing that, you know, it’s it’s there.

You’re just not asking.

I think the balance didn’t come because we don’t really want to know.

Right.

It’s easy not to know.

So we don’t spend the time to grow that.

But I don’t know if that’s a perfect answer.

And I don’t know that anybody has a perfect answer to this question.

But I think what you focus on will grow.

And I think, you know, to me, it’s your spiritual life, your physical, your your relationships and your family and in your business.

And to me, those things, you know, you notice if you start doing something, you know, I heard somebody say, man, you so spiritually minded this, you know, earthly good, you know.

So I think you can go off and spend too much time in every direction.

Right.

So how do you balance that?

So that’s a hard question.

That’s kind of what I’ve chosen to do.

And again, it’s discipline, too.

It’s discipline.

It’s going to church.

You know, for me, it’s just not missing church to go show a house.

So I had that.

It’s something that’s important to me.

So I’ll go, you know.

Right.

No, I mean, this is a question that comes into my podcast.

And I answered it the other day about life balance.

And you answered it the best way that I would expect you to answer it.

Anybody that’s successful, we all go through seasons in life.

And you know, my dad was a farmer.

And, you know, one of the analogies that I said is during springtime, during planting season, you don’t ask a farmer to go bowling or golfing.

I mean, he’s got to get the seeds in the ground.

You know, when I was in my thirties building a business to make millions and millions of dollars.

I mean, Candace and I didn’t take a vacation for four years.

I mean, it was that my season for that four years was planning.

We’d lost a lot of money when the economy crashed in 2008 with our construction business.

And I said, you know what?

Never again am I going to put myself in this situation again.

I had a year and a half old son, another son on the way.

I found a new opportunity.

And for four years, Chris, my wife and I, we built that business, but I was able to get ourselves to a point financially after that four years that my family never had to worry about money again.

And it’s all about this people.

I tell my boys, you’re going to be judged regardless.

If you’re sitting at home and you’re broke, people’s going to judge you and say that lazy son of a buck.

You know, if you’re wealthy, then they’re going to say that person got lucky.

You know, if you got big muscles, they’re going to say you’re using steroids.

I mean, just that’s just the way life is.

So don’t worry about what others are thinking.

Find you an opportunity.

Figure out what season that is and go to work.

Put your head down and go to work.

Yes, you got to keep your faith in line, your main priorities, your family, your relationships.

But don’t let the guy at Happy Hour tell you you’re working too much.

When they don’t have a happy marriage, they don’t have no money in the bank account.

They don’t have a stability in their faith.

It’s all about finding your season and not worrying about what other people think about your life balance.

Take care of your priorities.

And like I said on the podcast the other day, and you mentioned it, it’s not all going to be perfect.

You’re going to make some mistakes.

I’ve always said make adjustments, frequent adjustments.

I always knew when my son, excuse me, when I was traveling too much, when he would hang onto that leg a little bit too much, when I would need to go to another speaking engagement, I would look at my wife and say, hey, this weekend, I got to spend time with Pearson.

I mean, it was just something that you always got to make those adjustments and know where you are and what you need to put your attention into.

You know, and I think too, is knowing who to ask for advice.

Because there’s people that think they’re helping you.

Like if your parents say, I’m going to ask my mom about me going out and taking a step of faith and growing a business.

Well, if your mom has never grown a business or she’s being a stay-at-home mom, she has something called fear that she’s going to base her reaction.

It’s going to be to protect you, right?

So it’s based out of a good heart.

But you know, I don’t ask mom about that because moms don’t give me good advice.

And if your parents aren’t successful with money, you ain’t asking mom about money because they’ve never managed money.

So to me, that’s almost as important as anything, is knowing who to find in your life that you can ask those questions and they help guide you to the answers because people will, you know, and I think it’s human nature too, man, your friends and family.

We have a saying in real estate that says your clients will become friends quicker than your friends will become clients because a lot of times your friends really don’t want to see you have a large amount of success because it forces them to have to take stock in what they’re doing with their life, and they’ve got to make some decisions and get better.

They’d much rather keep you down there where they’re at, you know.

It’s like the old crab trap.

Do you remember the crabs?

They want to pull them down.

They’ll pull them down.

They won’t let them out, you know.

Yeah, that’s a really good point.

Don’t take advice from someone that are not where you want to be in life.

Simple.

Or if you’re in a company and you look around and you’re like, I don’t want my boss’ job.

I don’t want his boss’ job.

Well, you shouldn’t be at that company.

You should go where you really want to emulate and be.

Because if you look around and you’re the best thing in that company, you’re probably in the wrong space.

And that’s a lot of times people have the right tools in the wrong space.

And they’ll grow for years, and it’ll stagnate them because they’re not in the right space.

So just having that ability to move out of that space and get somewhere where you can grow with the tools that you have.

Yep, absolutely.

All right, I got another question for you.

You definitely have a strong passion for teaching and coaching in real estate agents.

What are some of the key pieces of advice you find yourself repeating over and over to new agents?

For me, I just immediately said you have to get up every day and go do something productive, every day.

And if you can’t, you know, I remember being in, I used to do CrossFit a lot.

And one day I was like, you know what?

I’ve been doing this CrossFit for a while, and I really haven’t seen my six pack.

I don’t know what’s going on.

And they were like, oh, it’s no problem.

Hey, I want you to start writing a food journal.

You just tell me what you eat tomorrow and the next day.

They knew, right?

They knew immediately where my problem was, right?

And I think to me, it’s like, it’s the accountability.

If a new agent doesn’t want accountability, they’re not going to be successful, because the accountability is not for me.

It’s for them, right?

Because me having, it’s like you having a trainer, right?

It’s why did Michael Jordan have a trainer?

He was the best that, you know, arguably, that ever played, right?

Why did he have a trainer?

Because he knew there was just some things that he couldn’t motivate himself to do.

And I think that’s, you know, my advice to a new agent is you got to get somewhere they’re willing to train you right off the bat.

Because when you go into, say, you go into a listing appointment, you brought, you know, I’ve switched.

I don’t talk about how many sales I have, how long I’ve done it.

But they know my, they know what I’m capable of doing by how I position them and answer their questions, right?

Hey, if this situation comes up, this is how we’re going to handle it.

This is how we’re going to position you for multiple offers.

Hey, if we, you know, we’re going to communicate with you weekly and we’re going to continue repositioning the market, and this is where we’re going to advertise.

Well, if I didn’t know what I was doing, I wouldn’t have that tool belt, right?

So for new agents, I’m like, let us train you to say these same things.

Because if you say what I’m saying, they’re going to take you as an experienced agent.

They’re not going to ask you, hey, have you sold a house like mine?

Have you sold in my neighborhood?

Because you’re going to say things that they’re going to resonate with.

And I think, you know, on times, salespeople put me, me, me, look what I’ve done.

I had this gold star.

I have these trophies and real estate, especially where I’m trophy driven.

But instead of just saying, hey, what’s important?

And I’ll talk to you.

I’ll be like, Jeremy, you’re looking to move.

What’s the most important thing about this move for you?

How long do you have to make the transition?

Do you have to buy something?

Can you buy something without selling your home?

If not, are you going to have a sale home contingency?

So I’m really trying to figure out where, what, because there’s things that you’re worried about.

And mostly it’s not, it’s just confusion, right?

It’s like, man, there’s a lot of things.

There’s a lot of moving parts.

So the more I can take confusion and make it clear, turn it into clarity, then somebody will move forward.

And I think that’s probably sales in a nutshell, isn’t it?

Make confusion around anything.

And when you can take confusion and make it clear for them, then they’ll say yes.

If they’re not saying yes, you haven’t clarified enough for them to make them, you know, to help them move forward.

So I don’t think it’s, you know, to me, I’m not the smartest guy in the room.

I didn’t go to college.

You know, there’s people way smarter than me.

And I think to me, the smarter that you are, the harder it is for you sometimes because you overthink.

They call it paralysis by analysis.

People, I’ve got to get it just perfect.

Just go do it.

Turn the phone on and do the video, right?

But no, I got to have the studio.

I’ve got to get, when they’ll be planning, and I’m over here just throwing stuff at the wall, and I’ve gotten two things to stick, I might have thrown seven things, two things stuck, and I’m all, you know, with success.

And they’re over there still in the planning stage.

So don’t overthink it.

Go and do it.

Go get in front of somebody, nose to nose, toes to toes.

You got to get in front of somebody every day.

And if you don’t do that, then you won’t be successful.

It doesn’t matter how good you are, how much you know, if you don’t get in front of the people that need your services, you’re never going to be successful.

So for me, it’s like, if I’m never going to do something in order to grow my business, but if I’m going to do something, I’m going to, I’m going to reap that benefit.

If I’m going to go to church, everybody at church is going to know I sell real estate.

If I go to the gym, everybody at the gym is going to know I do real estate.

If I go to jujitsu, so I was a reserve deputy for four years.

Guess what?

I sell those guys.

I’ve hired several of them to become agents of, you know, you just go and plant yourself somewhere.

Don’t do something just to grow your business.

Do things that are fun and enjoyable.

And then people will see you succeed in those areas.

Go volunteer, be on boards, do things.

But most people do it in name only, right?

They go, I’m on four boards and they don’t show up.

They’re not passionate.

People see that they don’t show up, so they would never use them because they’ve drawn a conclusion about their character, about their lack of participation on those boards.

So do something that you already love and know.

And then, you know, I never paid a CrossFit membership ever because I got so much business, referral business out of there, that it was like a marketing thing for me, right?

So I think that’s, you know, in a nutshell, man, just don’t overcomplicate it.

Just go get in front of the right people.

And if you, there’s two problems.

Either you don’t get in front of the right people or once you get in front of them, you don’t have the right personality to take it to the next level.

So those two things are key in sales to me.

Yeah, I think the two biggest things I’ve found in sales is number one, you know, we talked about it already is true service to others.

You know, how can I truly serve others?

You know, but number two is just massive action.

You know, I was taught that in my late 20s, early 30s that made me millions of dollars.

You know, I was reading a book and it talked about, in a professor, college professor, he gave, split the class in half.

He said, OK, half of this class, I want you to make the best pot that you can make with pottery.

And that’s all you need to do all semester, is make the best pot that you can make out of pottery.

You know, which is basically clay and water and dirt, right?

I mean, you know, that’s what they, that’s the only thing they had to do all semester.

The other half of the class said, I want you to make as many pots as you can make, clay pots.

So at the end of the semester, Chris, guess who had the best pot?

It wasn’t the ones that focused on making the best clay pot.

It was the ones that did the most they could do.

So not only did they make more pots, because that was the objective, but by creating the most that they could do, they perfected it to make it better.

And that’s something that a lot of people don’t understand, and it don’t matter if it’s real estate, it don’t matter if it’s nutrition, it doesn’t matter what it is.

Mortgages, it’s all about what I call massive action.

If someone wants their life to change, they got to be teachable, they got to figure out how to serve others, and expect nothing in return, and they’ve got to know how to take massive action, 100%.

I think most people quit too early.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book, he said 10,000 hours.

And it’s funny, I look back at my production each year now, and had I stopped 10 years in, where would that have left me?

So once you have that 10,000 hours, now it becomes easier.

It’s just scalability.

And people miss that because they’re looking so much for the quick fix.

I always say this business is a crockpot business, and everybody’s looking for a microwave.

If you have a roast that’s made in a crockpot, try to make one in a microwave and see how it tastes.

It might be quicker, but it don’t taste the same.

When it’s been in there with potatoes and all that stuff for a whole day, it tastes way different.

But I think we’re in a society that everybody wants something immediately.

And in our younger generation now, they’re changing jobs.

It’s amazing to me.

I always thought you had to stay somewhere a year no matter what.

And now that’s not even a part of the vernacular for these younger folks.

The moment things aren’t settled, they’re just off to the next thing.

For me, you don’t spend enough time to truly master it.

You have a lot of Instagram mastery.

People are trying to tell you what to do.

They’ve never been through the fire, right?

But folks like you and I, we’ve been through the fire.

We can literally get on Instagram, and this is how you can build a business that will be here for a long time.

Yeah, that’s one of my pet peeves, man.

People often send me books, and they say, read my book, read this, read that.

The first thing I want to know is what have you accomplished?

I mean, anybody can write a book about personal fitness, but if I look at their body, you and I was talking about this a few minutes ago.

A fat guy with tattoos don’t look good.

I mean, but the tattoos on a fit body looks good, but like you mentioned, they need to spend that money not on the tattoos.

If they’re fat, they need to spend the time on getting into the gym and eating correctly and things like that.

But I 100% agree with you, man.

There’s a lot of people.

Social media, the internet has been so easy for people to look like they’ve had success, but never take advice from someone unless they’ve built something, 100%.

And, you know, be on purpose.

And I know, you know, not to be superficial, but, you know, if you’re struggling in sales, look at yourself.

If your teeth are jacked up, fix your teeth.

You know, I got braces after I was in my 40s.

We couldn’t afford it when we were kids, you know, but I looked at all my kids.

I’m like, hey, man, your teeth look great.

I was like, I’m going to get braces.

And that’s like, I’m going to walk around as a 40-year-old dude with braces on.

But I’m glad I did it because, you know, if you look at yourself and say, I’m going to fix everything I can fix about me.

I want to show up.

I’m going to be consistent.

I’m going to have a brand, you know, and people just, I think they don’t think about, like everything needs to be on purpose.

Like I noticed you got your hat on.

You should be always promoting your brand, always promoting your brand.

And hey, if it’s the Savannah Bananas, you heard of them, the baseball team?

I was watching the dude the other day, and he’s in a yellow suit, man.

He’s like yellow out, but that’s his brand because he’s promoting Savannah Bananas.

So he’s not going to be in a black shirt, he’s all yellowed out.

So I think, man, sell out, because at the end of the day, you’ve got to put yourself as a role player in a game, right?

People take themselves way too seriously, and they’re, I ain’t changing.

I’m not going to, you know.

But if your look is hindering you from having success, what’s more important?

Because at some point, like you said earlier, I wear a T-shirt every day, and it don’t matter because I have created a brand that lets me do that.

But I think that’s something that I think a lot of people have lost because everybody’s like, you couldn’t tell me what to do.

I’m going to dress the way I want to dress.

That’s fine, but you may not have the success.

So just be happy with that, right?

I mean, you know I’ve made my millions in, you know, sales and nutrition and teaching people how to be able to be successful in sales and nutrition.

And, you know, people would often come up to me and say, man, I don’t know why I’m not having success.

And I would always have to be honest with them, Chris.

And a lot of people didn’t want to hear it, but I’m like, because you are not an attractive person.

You know, if you’re 200 pounds overweight selling nutrition, it’s probably not going to work too good.

You know, if you don’t know how to speak correctly to people and handle the right situation, then they’re going to look at that and say, man, that’s not the person I want to become.

You know, so it’s all about becoming the most attractive person you can become, 100%.

Yeah.

Okay, I got one more question for you.

I always ask a controversial question, you know, on every one of my podcasts, and that’s why it’s called The Hard Truth.

We talk about the truth of everything, but I want your input on this.

Some argue that real estate agents are becoming less relevant with advances in technology and direct buyer to seller platforms.

How do you respond to this perspective?

You know, at one point, we owned all the technology.

If you wanted to buy a house, you had to come to the real estate profession to get the access.

They were in MLS books.

It was a book, and we had all the listings, and the book would come out, and all the agents had the book, right?

So you had to go find the agent, get the book.

Well, Internet came along.

So the same question probably was coming up during the Internet.

Hey, you guys have lost the information, right?

The information is now out on the Internet, so you guys don’t control the information anymore.

So yet you look, and the percentages of people that used a realtor, you know, professional to help them buy a house didn’t go down.

It stayed up.

And what we realize is there are certain things, if you’re going to go buy toothpaste tomorrow, you’re just going to go buy Target, Walmart, I don’t know what you have down where you’re at, but in our area of Walmart or Target, I ain’t got to think about it.

I might go think, is it Crest or Colgate?

Which one’s else?

I don’t know.

Just get one, right?

Right.

I don’t have an emotional feeling about it.

I don’t get anxiety about it.

But when somebody goes to buy a house, there’s a lot of confusion around buying a house.

You’ve got inspections.

You’ve got appraisals.

You got, you know, you’re negotiating at many steps along the way.

And another thing you have is you have emotions.

I’ve sold my own house before.

And even as a professional, I had emotions.

So when somebody, you know, talked about how they didn’t like the color, and I’m like, well, I painted that color, man.

So, you know, we really become the person in between to help negotiate.

You know, I had a list of house the other day, and we haven’t been in a multiple offer market.

So that has not been the standard.

Well, I listed home.

It was priced right.

It was in a great neighborhood.

And we had four offers on the table.

So, you know, I sat down with the sellers and I was able to guide them through.

Hey, we’ve got this house.

This offers $5,000 more, but they have a sale of home contingency.

This one, they’re willing to put their money where their mouth is, and they’re willing to waive the appraisal.

So we were able to guide them through and take the best offer, not just the most, you know, the highest offer, because it may not have been the best offer.

So I think there’s so many nuances.

You know, we use, I use the ChatGPT.

I have the professional version.

I use it now.

I don’t just blindly use it.

I’ll use it a lot of times to give me ideas because it has, there’s such a vast database that it pulls from.

It would take me hours to find the information that this can go and find.

You know, I think everybody’s nervous because the new iOS phones going to come out with more, you know, AI technology.

And I think Elon Musk said he’s going to walk them all in like a magnetic vault where, you know, so if, you know, it’s no one really knows what to do with it.

I think it has its place.

I think at the end of the day, and I think, you know, you know, AI can’t go and sponsor Little League Baseball team in Moversboro, Tennessee and sit there and help mentor a four year old when, you know, when I’d never played a day of organized sports in my life.

But, you know, I figured out that the really most important thing to them was did we bring juice boxes and did we have snacks?

We kept the snacks in the juice boxes, man.

And, you know, I figured out it was that.

It was then, you know, putting my sponsorship on the back of that.

But not only that, it was coaching these kids’ teams in heaven when those kids call you when they were 18 and they were going to become an athlete.

But it wasn’t a T-ball.

It was basketball.

But, you know, but it was like Coach Chris.

I never saw myself as Coach Chris.

I mean, I was just a dad.

And they were like, hey, if you’re going to if your kid’s going to play, you got to coach because we don’t have a coach.

So I was like, I’ll do it, man.

Whatever.

But it’s like that’s the things I think that are lost in a lot of this.

The technology is man, the human interaction.

I think we have more connection than we’ve ever had in the history of mankind.

And we’re the least connected people that we’ve ever been.

We’re the most divided people.

We have worse relationships than we’ve ever had.

I mean, back in the old days, man, the family would get around and you’d cook out and just, you know, I heard that James Gregory was a comedian.

He said, you know, when we did away with front porches and put decks on the back of our house, that changed the way we communicated with our neighbors.

You know, he’s to everybody’s on the front porch.

They talked to each other and everybody’s in the deck and they’re hiding from each other.

You know, I don’t think it will ever take the place of what we do.

We just have to use it as a tool.

Yeah, Chris, I’ll take it even a step further.

I mean, I feel like and I agree with you.

I moved from a farm and ranch to the first time to the city, and they had the back alleyways in this place that we lived in community and people would come in the back alleyway, pull their car in the garage and shut it.

You never saw anybody.

You didn’t know who was where, what you never saw anyone.

You know, and like you mentioned, a hundred years ago, all we really had was a community, you know, and I’ll take this a step further and say with all of our technology, with all the AI, with all everything that’s happening, you can write this down.

There will come a time, in my opinion, within the next two to three years, that if you know how to build good skills, build relationships with people, you know how to communicate well, you know how to provide service to others, then there is no technology that’s ever going to be able to replace that.

And you’re going to succeed so much further past anybody else.

I don’t know if you agree with that, but I feel like 100% the people that mastered the skills of building relationships, providing service, they’re going to pass everyone in the future.

Oh, and I’m going to tell you, there’s a real surgence in these trades, the trades, these guys that are learning trades right now are making a killing.

If you’re a HVAC contractor, a plumber, electrician, I can’t come and fix your pipes.

You’ve got to have somebody that’s doing that and there’s a segment of the population, you know, it’s not attractive work all the time.

These guys are, you know, and girls are making great money at doing the trades, you know, framing contractors, trim contract, you know, there’s just certain things that a machine just can’t do.

It’s just, it’s just going to take a person to do it.

But I agree with you, the relationships are key.

I don’t ever really watch Fox News.

I had somebody send this to me the other day, Chris, and this is talking about during job interviews, employees say recent college graduates have this problem.

And it’s the 50.

It was like gives them a percentage struggle with eye contact.

Fifty three percent struggle with eye contact.

You know, that’s why I’ve always taught my boys look a man in the eyes, shake his hand.

And I know that might be seem weird for the audience listening, but work on that skill.

The next one was they asked for unreasonable compensation.

Fifty percent because they want to get out of college and they want to be making what mom and dad’s making.

They don’t want to go through the fire that what we talked about, you know, number 47 percent dressed inappropriately.

You know, you was talking before you knew being a real estate agent, you was expected to wear a suit and a tie every day to work.

That’s what you did.

You know, I mean, that’s that’s something that was expected of you.

Used inappropriate language, 27 percent, you know, refused to turn a camera on during a virtual interview, 21 percent.

They don’t want that connection, you know, brought apparent to their interview, 19 percent.

You know, so that means they’ve been coddled all their life.

They don’t want to go out into reality.

They don’t have that security and that confidence in self.

And I feel like that’s what AI and all the different technology is doing is basically it’s it’s building a generation that has been not only become weak minded, but weak skills wise.

And, you know, if you’re listening to this audience and you’re young and you say, Jeremy, Chris, I want to be a millionaire like what you guys are.

I want to be successful in life.

What are some things that have helped me respect manners, eye contact, communication skills?

And I don’t know if you have anything to add to that, but if you can work on those skills, you will beat everyone that you’re competing against.

You know, number one thing teachable, be teachable.

You know, if I went to work for you today, I would show up and be like, hey, man, I’m everything I know.

It’s out the window.

How do you want me to do it?

And I think that’s the hardest thing for somebody to do is how do you wipe the slate clean and go tell me how to do it?

Because I know, man, if you told me, hey, you can’t sell another house, you’re out of the industry, you got to go work at Taco Bell tomorrow, I would be the best taco maker.

I love Taco Bell, and I can’t eat it that much, but when I have my cheat days.

But man, I’d be the best taco maker.

You’d have the best meals out of Taco Bell that you could ever have, you know, because that’s just the way.

Because what I want to do is I’m going to make it to assistant manager, and then I’m going to be the manager of the store.

And then I want them to look and say, hey, we need a general manager.

Look at what he did with that store.

So, you know, I thought it would be a great reality TV shows to just start at the bottom somewhere and see how quickly you can raise through the ranks.

And I think most people don’t see it.

They say, I ain’t getting paid enough.

I hate this job, and I’m just doing enough to get by.

And they realize there’s people walking in every day.

So if you’re listening to this and you’re in a job at a fast food restaurant or you’re in a job and you feel like you’re being underpaid, think of this as your, this is your resume.

Every day, especially if you’re in a public facing job, there are business owners and there are people that are very successful walking into your business.

And if you treat them in a certain way, I promise I’m always looking for talent.

If I get a waiter or a waitress and they just give me great service, I’m like, hey, have you ever thought about selling real estate?

I think you’d be great at it.

So people are always looking, but man, people will kill themselves because they won’t look, they want the fire.

You got to get the wood before you get the fire.

So people aren’t willing to go get the wood to get the fire.

They want the fire first, you know.

Oh, yeah.

Well, it goes back to what I learned in my 20s, early 30s, Chris, and you’ve heard this before.

I think I wrote something similar to this, you know, in the journal I gave you 20 years ago.

I gave you a journal and wrote some stuff in it, but I know you shared that with me a few years back.

Yeah, it meant a lot to me, but you’re basically paid for what value you bring to the marketplace.

And whether you’re a real estate agent not making a lot of money, you know what that tells me?

You haven’t become an attractive person, and you are not bringing enough value to the marketplace.

Whether it be nutrition sales, whether it be a contractor, whatever it is, it’s the more value you bring to the marketplace, the more you’ll be compensated.

You know, the real estate industry is taking a big hit in the media right now, and it’s like, you know, some agents are going to get out of the business.

If you don’t know your value, you won’t be able to go forward and be successful.

And you know, what we do immediately is like, what’s our value?

Reinforce our value.

How do we better?

How do we go to the market and take market share?

Because anytime there’s a fallout in a business, there are people that leave, there are people that lose, and there are people that gain market share.

And you want to be positioned always to gain market share.

So if you’re an A competitor, I always call it A, B, and C.

If you’re an A, you’re going to gain market share in troubled times because people are going to want somebody they can depend on and trust and know the value.

So it’s important.

I mean, you talk about that.

I’ll never forget when I was in high school, I loved two a days because the guys that would quit, I’m like, that’s just one more I don’t have to beat.

That’s okay.

You know, I mean, and that carries on, and that’s why I love athletics, right?

It carries on into the business world.

You know, I mean, there’s going to be people that quit because they get too tough.

That’s okay.

That’s just one less you don’t have to worry about.

And just, I love competing and everything I’ve always done, and that’s just going to happen.

So, well, Chris, I’ll tell you, today has been a pleasure for having you on.

Share with us, give us, how would I, if I’m listening to the audience and I want to follow you on Instagram or email or whatever, what would be a good way to contact you?

Yeah, Chris A.

Garrett, instagram.com/chris A.

Garrett, facebook.com/chris A.

Garrett.

That’s the two platforms I’m on the most.

movetomurphersboro.com is my website, so you can contact me through movetomurphersboro.com, but certainly love to connect with people on Instagram and Facebook, and I follow you.

I have a great respect for you and Candice and your family.

You were like a mentor to me early on, and I just remember us riding around talking to people, putting people in a room, and just the passion you had.

I think when you have the it, you’ll find the spot that you’re supposed to be in, and sometimes you don’t really know.

People listening today are like, I don’t know what I want to do 10 years from now.

I don’t know that I know where I’m going to be 10 years from now, but I know if you just keep doing the right thing, the doors will open up, and if you’re in a position, the success will happen.

It just has to.

If you’re doing the right thing over and over and over and over again, it’s just got to happen.

I appreciate your friendship, man.

Man, I appreciate your friendship, Chris.

It’s been a joy to have you on.

You and I was talking.

I’ll never forget, you know, Kerry and you bringing Mason home from the hospital, me sitting there holding him, and now listening to that he’s, he’s what 21 years or 20, 20 years old.

And I’m like, man, you know, that’s another thing.

It’s for another podcast that you and I can maybe do.

But, you know, the parents, the time flies.

So make as many memories as you can.

I mean, I was talking with another dad the other day.

I’ve spent a lot of money on things that I regret.

I’ve never once spent money on a memory that I regret, you know, with your kids, with your family.

And that’s another reason why I wanted you to have on, you know, producing over 200 million in sales.

That’s remarkable.

That’s a great accomplishment.

But who you are is a man.

Your wife, Carrie, and watching the way you raise two awesome men and a young lady.

That’s what I really respect about you the most.

So thank you for being on, Chris.

Guys, if you enjoyed the podcast today, and I know you did if you listened to the Hard Truth Podcast, share it with a friend or family member.

Also, please leave us a review with algorithms.

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So thank you for joining us, Chris, Garrett.

Tell Carrie and the kids to say hi.

Thank you so much.

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Until next time, thank you guys.