The “Milwaukee Moment” That Pivoted Justin Heath’s Career Into Real Estate | Episode 92

I'm not gonna do what I did last year. Almost by design.

Yeah.

Exactly. I look at my goals, right? I kind of got them emojied out. I've got, you know, the people, the time, and the heart. Love it. The poop, the poop thing coming in. Yeah, right. Exactly. That's on bonus. Yeah, exactly. It's like stateside oranges. Yeah, right. The poop. Yeah, it's like, you know, you're you're looking at the people that you're around, the amount of time that you're spending in a day, right? And then are you loving what you do?

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Right here, guys. Reach out to John Stacks and his team at Property Management Redefine. We'll take good care of you. Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Bricks and Risk. I'm Tim Garrety. And I'm Vic Vaughn. How are you doing today, Vic? I'm doing good. Is Vic short for Victor? Victor. Okay, good. One to check. Well, today, Victor with a K. We have an awesome guest, local real estate superstar. We have Justin Heath, team leader at Selling Greater Philly Team. How are you doing today, Justin? Doing well. Thanks for having me. Welcome in. Thanks for coming in. So a little background on our boy Justin here. So through positivity, accountability, and real world strategies, Justin helps agents break through self-doubt, stay consistent, and create the careers they dream about. Whether it's through team meetings, one-on-one coaching, or everyday encouragement, his goal is simple. Help agents find their fire and keep it burning. Not only is he a successful realtor, but he's a husband and a dad, four kids, got two boys, 14-year-old and a 19-month-old, correct? That's right. And you have two girls, a 12-year-old and a four-year-old. And we'll just put the cherry on top and we'll throw two dogs into the mix as well. Two crazy dogs. Might as well. So you got your hands full. It's a full house. I love it. All right. So a big area of focus for you today is investing time in the right spaces. Talk to Sean and I about like what are the right spaces you're trying to like spend your time on.

Yeah, you know, the first thing I think of is like identifying the time management piece is huge. Uh it's been an Achilles heel of mine for such a long time. This last couple years has been like a refocus on that. Um I think identifying certain spaces, obviously, from a business perspective, like your client base is really, really important to you, ongoing. Yep. Making sure you're staying in touch from an agent perspective, a business relationship from agents. It's you know, trying to identify what's important to them and then really kind of drilling down on how they're gonna spend their time.

Yep. Yeah.

And I remember you and I were talking about this recently. So full disclaimer, we'll have Dill do the little 1995 scrolling style. Justin and I both work for Real Broker. Yes, we do. And at Real Broker, you know, you can be a solo agent, you could be a team, you could be an independent brokerage that comes into Real and says, Hey, I want to keep my independent brokerage brand, and I want you to be like the back office, the ops. And then also you can build a network. And what a network, the way I understand it, because I've only been there a little over a year, it's just people who want to collaborate and work together under the same roof. And like we did an episode recently on like the old school brokerage versus the new school brokerage, and the old school was like, we want you to compete. Like, want you to be number one in this office, the number one team, like number one in the region. And they post the stats every month. You're the third best mini team in all of greater Philadelphia. And as much as I knock it. As much as I knock it, I'm not totally knocking it. Like to each their own. Everyone does it differently. But with you and I being where we are and having it more of like a collaborative network approach, how does that make you look at spending your time? Are you spending your time like telling people about where we work or are you just focused on your clients or both? Like, where are you at?

It's a little bit of both, right? Like I'm loving the agent-to-agent relationship, right? Having a conversation about what other agents are doing in their business, you know, what they're thinking and feeling about their brokerage, how the market is affecting things. It's it's like you learn a lot in conversation. It's like networking. It's networking. It's it really is. Um, I am I was talking to somebody the other day and I was saying, you know, it's important to have those agent relationships because it will help you win business.

Yep.

Period. If you if you're helping a client find a home, sell home, like having that agent to agent relationship, you might win a deal just solely based off of you on your relationship.

Or they know you, they know your background, they know that you're gonna deliver and make sure that deal gets done. Right. And so there's some priority, you know, when it deals with you rather than someone else. Yeah, you get preference sometimes. You do.

And it's not to say it that way, but it does matter, right?

Well, put yourself in their shoes. So let's say you have a listing and you're representing the seller and the seller only, nine times out of ten, another agent's gonna bring the buyer. Might be it's normally an agent at another brokerage. That's the most common. So when you represent the seller, you're looking out for the seller's best interest. Maintain the leverage, the value, keep the time low, like don't give it away, don't overprice. Like, there's all these strategies we have with sellers in order to get them the most amount of money with the least amount of pain. And then let's say it's a hot listing and 50 people come through the house and you get five offers, and you look at the one, you're like, I know that guy or I know that girl, and they're awesome. When you go to talk to your seller client, you're gonna say, Look, we got five. I will tell you, this one might not be the highest price, but this one has a very high likelihood of being no BS, of understanding each other. We've worked together before, and that has value in itself because let's say you go under for the highest offer and you don't know that agent, and it falls through. Well, guess what? Now the seller just lost a whole lot of leverage because they're like, What's wrong with that house?

And they start doubting you.

Yes.

And then you need to avoid that at all costs. Yeah, it's a tough business, it really is. So that agent relationship is everything at the end of the day. So from a time perspective, like I'm talking to as many people in the business as I possibly can, you know. Um, I think when you're in this business, it's very easy to isolate yourself or feel isolated.

Totally.

So the last couple years of really since joining Real, man, it's been over two years uh since I've been with Real. Um I've really trying to put a a deep focus on connecting with people because at the end of the day, like that's what we are. We're connectors.

Yeah. Well, and again, you and I don't have that traditional office model. Like people, like you opened your own office, like Christine. Shout out to Christine Ertz as our Main Street office in Manioc. And you guys did that by choice. And you're like, hey, I I want a place, I want a headquarters, I want a space I can work in peace, client meetings, closings, you know, collaboration events, like whatever it is. So like a lot of people at our brokerage are mobile, they work out of their homes, they work out of coffee shops, they work out of wherever. And and that does isolate you. It isolates you to the point where if you are not making an effort to go out network with more agents, you know, not only to help your clients, like you're looking for an investment, maybe you're looking for your next home for your family, but building that rapport and having that reputation locally is huge. It's like that's a benefit to your clients.

It is, it really is. I mean, at at the end of the day, like it's it that's what business falls back on. Right? It's the relationship piece. It's no different for you and in your business too. Same thing. Same thing. Same thing for Victor. Victor goes by Vic.

Victor, sorry, Vic. So you talked about being with Real for two years and mentioning that either it was the culture or the what the operations were different at your prior um brokerage.

Yeah.

Can you talk a little bit about what you were doing prior and maybe like reasons why you had left or what you were looking for that was different than what you had during that time?

Yeah. So um, you know, I won't name names and keep it anonymous. Yeah, uh, you can find out where I was before if you really want to. You can look them up. Uh, but this is the third brokerage stop for me, and probably will be the last one unless something drastic changes, right? Uh previous brokerage, you're playing in their sandbox. Yep. They want you to do things stylistically.

We were just talking about this.

Their way. And it's their way or no way.

And what examples? Like, like it's hard for me to kind of like understand. You're stuck with, you know, color scheme, branding, yeah, bracketing, yep, black and white, business structures.

Business structures different. Um, I think agent to agent relationships are very different at that brokerage. Yeah. Uh you're you're measured on competition, your volume, number of transactions. Um, you know, it's like I've gone away to their retreats, and it's like, what'd you do last year? Yeah, I know. It's like, why are it's who gives us? We don't even know. By the way, my name is Justin. Yeah, we don't even we're not even first named yet. You know, so you know, being in an element, I mean it taught me a lot. Yeah, it was a good experience in the beginning of the street. Yeah, absolutely. You know, you're around higher end agents, let's just say, right? It's 10 million to walk through the door there to get in the door, and you're learning a little bit of a different business strategy, which is always a good thing.

Yeah, right?

It doesn't hurt. No. Um I just after year one, you you see where the path that you're heading down, and it's a different it's a different it's a different model, you know, it's a different ideology, it's a different structure.

And to a certain extent, it's not the path that you're choosing, but rather the the path that they're directing you down. Is that yeah.

That's probably a better way to put it. Like remember, again, old school, new school brokerages, some thrive more on the competition and leading with the brokerage's brand, and some thrive more more of the new school on leading through collaboration and the agent's brand. Let the agent, we think the agent should have a brand. We want to be the support system to the agent forward how they are looked at, how they operate. Whether you're one or a team of a hundred, you did two million last year, you did two hundred and fifty million last year. It doesn't matter, doesn't matter, but they're looking at it more. The agent leads the charge, and I think this is just where the residential real estate industry has gone.

I think so. I think you're starting to see in the last handful of years, a new wave of real estate is rearing its head for the better. You're starting to see it's the agent that really matters and not so much the brokerage.

Yeah. It's funny, uh, the overlay as we talk about real estate and the industry and the kind of the way that it's going, which it feels like there's more steam in that direction than the other direction. Than going backwards. Right. And uh insurance. Like I remember when I started my brokerage, people were like, you can't start an independent brokerage. Like nuts. You need a name, you need a brand to like sit on. Yeah. Because how are you gonna tell someone they should be insured with Mooney Insurance? Like, why would someone go to Victor Insurance?

Yeah, yeah, weird. I feel like the insurance business, and I mean you could lend your thoughts to this. I feel like you're scrutinized more heavily than we are in some instances. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, like the insurance tastes better and smell better at this big box shop versus Mooney Insurance Brokers and Ambler.

Yeah, and here's the reason why is if you have an insurance company that spends a billion dollars on advertising, Jake from State Farm. Right, right. See, we all know that. Um it's it's that recognizability, and so it's kind of built into the the framework that these people are so big that they're going to take care of you when there's a claim. Yeah. And it's actually in reverse. They spend the money to bring the people in to buy that credibility.

And then you're almost forgotten about.

And then and then time of a claim, it's like they're big enough where they can just they can force you out or say, no, we're not gonna do anything there, you don't like it, leave.

Yeah. So what what I'm kind of having to do is the same. Put my brand forward. You know, when you're insured with our brokerage, you're insured with me.

Yeah.

Right?

It's your name.

Yeah. And so I'm the I'm the one that's gonna make sure that you're taken care of. If there is a problem, you're coming to me. So it's kind of very similar in the direction. And a lot of these other um big box insurance companies have actually changed their whole insurance um uh model. So, like nationwide insurance years ago was nationwide. You were a nationwide agent, you only sold nationwide, and that was it. And recently did a 180. Was like, okay, nationwide agents, you are an independent broker now. We'll allow you to sell our products, but you are no longer now. You have access to all that. And so they kind of started it, but that's you can sell it. Yep. Wow, yeah, interesting. Yep. And that's one of many that are now changing their direction.

So it's just funny that back when I started, everyone was like, Well, as a consumer, why wouldn't you want to go to somebody that has options?

Because you see the commercials and you buy into that. Yeah. And it's just there's so much spent that it's it's a funnel, right? And if you spend this much, then your funnel's this big and you're just gonna be able to get that many people. That's kind of the Yeah.

Well, I think what's interesting too, like, you know, when we grew up, so we're we're we're 80s kids, let's call it. And you're growing up in the 80s and you're watching your favorite Saturday morning cartoons or wrestling. Wrestling, or you're watching shows on Friday night when you're like eight years old with your siblings or your parents or whatever. E-Man's cotter. E-man was one of my favorites, um, Skeletor is a beast. And uh, you know, the the concept of sitting down and watching TV with siblings or family or friends or whatever was that everything you watch had commercials unless you went to Blockbuster Video, which doesn't exist anymore. Crazy to think that that's gone. And you could watch a movie without commercials. Yeah. Now my daughter is gonna be seven in a couple weeks, and she can watch whatever she wants without commercials, and as many episodes as we could binge the whole season of Give a Mouse a Cookie on Prime Video that's based on a book that somehow spawned five or six seasons.

Rachel's floating around in my mind right now. It's on a hamstring.

And the thing is, now the content creators are controlling the airwaves, whereas before it was the big, you know, television companies or media companies controlling what you consumed and what you saw, and then it was newspapers or magazines or whatever. So we're in an in an age now, and it doesn't shock me that you said that about insurance because they're still they're realizing slower than real estate, it's not about our big company and our awesome brand, it's about Sean. It's the relationship, it's about Vic.

Yeah, you want they want you, and it's a bet on yourself, right? So like I kind of had the mindset to be, you know, have that idea that I don't need that, right? I can do this on my own, I can build this the way that I want to build it. And and really it was tunnel vision for me because everybody said I was crazy. What are you doing? Don't do that. Had the opportunity because you're losing the safety net, right?

That's why. Yeah, it's like a suicide mission. And that's the same that that it's the betting on yourself. That's why I chose to leave the formal organization. Yeah, it's uh I couldn't build what I wanted to do really the way that I wanted to do it with the people I wanted around me. Yeah. Period. And that's really what it is. You know?

Yeah, and it's almost like I was listening to uh we just had Corey Jacobson on from Wealth Juice. Shout out to Corey. And um on one of their recent episodes I was listening to, they were talking about people that have a nine to five. And and for the majority of people in this country, even in this world, that works for them. It works to have a routine and a safe bet and a nine to five and job security and benefits and and family, you know, my weekends off and family vacations and and all that stuff. But when you're a hustler like the three of us are, and you're you're grinding on your own to build something on your own, you make time for those things. You actually have more flexibility if you're structured and you know how to run your days and your weeks and your months working for yourself. And the upside is way greater. It's tremendous. Yeah. There's really no limits to it. But it's but here's what I'll say it's much, much harder to get your mind wrapped around that if I just rely on myself, whether it's insurance or real estate or even whatever you're doing, you're selling widgets and you're you're saying, I think I can do this. Like, that's a hard thing to even convince yourself of, let alone the people who are telling Vic over here, yo, dude, you're absolutely out of your mind for trying to start your own insurance brokers. Like, how are you gonna do that? Here we are.

Well, it's funny too, because the way obey hats, the way that I I'm a little disappointed I didn't get uh you know a better color scheme. Right, right, yeah. That's not part of the course.

Next time, version two. Um it is uh it's just having that ability to think beyond is kind of where it takes you because what I it this is the funniest part of all is when I had it all mapped out before I left and like was gonna do this. You had a plan, and I planned, and that like literally day two, that blueprint was like blown up. You're like Raditz P. Where's that blueprint?

Exactly.

Like I was like, oh well, I just call a couple different insurance companies and I'll you know reach out and I'll sell their products. And everyone was like, get lost.

Nope, nope, yeah, nope, nope. And I'm like, well, and that's where I go back to. It's gotta, it's more, it's probably more challenging in the insurance business than it is for Tim and I to pick up a phone and be like, hey, I'm a local real estate agent, I want to sell your house.

Yeah, it's like and in his his business, it's like the volume matters, yeah, because the volume of your premium is really what gives you your annual revenue. And for us, you know, it might just be a big deal here or a big deal there, could either make your year amazing or make your year like less than what you thought it would be. Yeah. And then you have those little wins in between, like the $300,000 deal or the tenant client that you're just trying to help out, make a couple grand off of that and and build another relationship. But let me shift into like so what you love most about what you do, you had said no two days are the same, and we have we have no idea what tomorrow is going to bring, but one thing is for sure, you're excited to find out. Like, why is that your why is that an outlook for you?

I've been in In the corporate world, the nine to five, a sales traveling role across the country for a long time as an adult, and it's monotonous. It's definitely challenging to f to see your worth from somebody else's perspective, right? You've got to report back into a boss who you might have closed a million dollar deal the day before, but today's a new day, and it's like it doesn't matter. What have you done for me lately? Exactly. And so my my uh my mind has always been from a young kid to keep pushing for more. Might not be the most talented or uh most athletic on the field, but I've always kind of just gone after and challenged myself to keep pushing. Um and real estate gives that to me. It it's it's been something that I should have started a long, long time ago, earlier than what I did, you know, about seven years in. Um but that mindset of you don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring, it's like it's exciting because tomorrow could come with some really awesome stuff. Yeah, or you could be handed a bag of shit. It's true, right? And trying to figure out how to navigate that.

All right, so let's let's go back to being a kid and being driven. What was it? Do you think you had like just like a natural personality to be driven? Were there certain things in your life that made you want to be driven?

I grew up with a lot of older people.

Okay.

Coming in and out of the house. Um family and friends. Yeah, family friends, you know. Um, and so I never really had like another kid my age that I could hang with.

You matured quickly.

Yeah. And so, you know, I had an older brother, six years older than me, and I was always chasing after him one way or another, whether it was shoveling snow and wanting to, you know, do it better or something along those lines. Yeah. It's just a competitive thing that I grew into quickly, and that's kind of stuck with me.

Interesting. I love that.

That's I see with my two boys is they're uh you know, three years apart, and the one is just like shadow, like well, like it's it's the funniest thing to watch. Everything's a competition in the house. I don't care if it's like making your bed or eating your cereal or doing your laundry, like literally every activity.

You probably love it too in the house. It it it starts some fights. Oh, definitely. Right? Yeah, it's it starts some fights.

Probably a little bit of that. Like I I I definitely can see these two for like years and years.

Like everything just becomes it's the same thing with my older two. Yeah, I'm in like this like weird phase right now where I have the 14 and a 12-year-old. The 12-year-old, she's the girl, she's competitive with the 14-year-old. Like, they want a foot race, yeah. You know, with each other. It's awesome. It's like that's a tough girl right there. That's a tough girl, but it's like she loses, she cries, or she gets pissed. Sure. Yeah, yeah. He loses, he's like, Right, right. It's funny how we're all wired. Yeah, so it's like I think it's just been ingrained in me. It's just my personality, and like I'm constantly, it's what I grew up. Yeah, and I think it's a great thing.

You know, but real estate definitely allows you to do that, it's like push beyond. It's like try to find new ways to do different things. Yeah. Right? Uh, you know, strategizing, okay. I did this much last year.

Like, what can I do to there's no one way to do it. Yeah, that's the thing. Right.

What were you doing? All right, so before you got into real estate, what were you doing in corporate America? Like, what was what was your strength, your line of work?

I was in sales. Um, for a while, I was negotiating like multi-million dollar contracts and managing pharmaceutical business for FedEx, um, traveling the country and sitting down with CFOs, CEOs of divisions of pharma companies. And I wasn't the only vendor that they were meeting with. So it was like line item meetings, like, hey, you're too high on this on this product here, you got to drop your cost. And so my role was to go in and negotiate those contracts to kind of get them to stick, but knowing that there were 12 other potential vendors sitting outside the door doing the same thing. Well, so it was B2B.

You were looking for to get the shipping business for big companies selling drugs, basically.

Basically, you know, um, as well as like their print, their marketing, like all of it wrapped into one.

Wow. So you were doing that, and was there, do you remember if there was like I don't want to say like a time or a moment where you're kind of like, I'm kind of sick of this? Like, I don't see the upside of you doing this. Milwaukee. Yeah, tell us about Milwaukee. The Milwaukee airport.

Milwaukee. Just being in Milwaukee in the dead of winter. You didn't get some fried cheese curds? Dude, it's brutal. What's it like minus 20? It sucks. Uh it's like desolate.

North of Chicago.

I'm not north of Chicago, but it's gotta be cold. And it's not fun. And you're alone, and you're like, these people don't even want to meet with me. Right. They don't give a shit about me. Right. You're from where? You're from Philadelphia. Yeah. You like they ask you where you're from. You're from, oh, you're from Philadelphia? Oh. You threw snowballs at Santa Claus. Right. Threw batteries at the Phillies game. Right. You're like, yes, we did.

He deserved that problem with that.

Now, if you ask me the highlight and be like, okay, Miami sitting on, you know, Ocean Drive. Yeah, dead of summer, you know, having a having a cappuccino.

Right.

Exactly. I had my moment where it like hit me like a bolt of lightning. Like, I am like, I am done doing this. And I thought about it, thought about it, thought about it, and I was like, today, this is like the start, day one of what I'm going to be doing. That was your Milwaukee.

Yeah, that was my Milwaukee. I couldn't stand it. Like going into so it was basically a lot of hospital systems, a lot of pharma companies that I was going into. And it's just, it's drab. Like the psychos, the psyche of those individuals that are working there is just like they don't even want to talk. No. I'm a people person. I love people. I love conversations.

You're like selling stuff. You're like trying to save lives. And they're like, what are you doing here? Get out of here.

We don't have time. Like, oh, wait, uh, we gave you 15 minutes. I just traveled literally eight hours to get here. Wow.

Yeah. Hey everyone, this is Tim, your favorite bricks and risk co-host. But don't tell Sean. I hope you're enjoying this episode, and I'll get right back to it in a moment. Our audience grows through word of mouth. So if you would please take a moment of your time and give us a review on the platform you're on, that would be fantastic. Please also help spread the BR word by sharing your favorite episode with a friend. We greatly appreciate your time and trust. Now, back to the show. All right, so let's talk about that too. Was it uh was it a family decision? Were you more or less like, hey, this is what I want to do, and like kind of getting the family on board?

You know, I went through a huge life change. Got divorced, uh, two small kids at the time, and I needed that job to, you know, fulfill my obligations with taking care of those kids when they were with me, you know, my older two. And I hated that job from the start. I did. I took it because it was great money, six figure plus bonus, you know, benefits, the whole nine yards. Um I took it because I had to take it, knowing that I knew I wasn't gonna be in that role for a long time. There was 19 of me going across the country.

Wow.

Um, so you know, I've got parents that were in real estate. Like that's the that's all I've ever known, right?

Your mom, right?

Yeah, my mom, my dad, you know, my dad just retired this past year. Um so my mom's still in the business actively. But this is that's all I've ever known growing up is real estate. And uh never sold it before. So I was like, you know what, I need this job to get me to where I need to get to. So, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, how can I carousel myself into a new industry with zero experience? You know what I mean? So it's like it's Did you lean on them?

Uh like I imagine, like, all right, now I'm gonna do real estate. Was it like, all right, well, at least I have a resource, mom, dad, that I can go to with these scenarios or these questions, these problems, and more than likely they've been through it. Was it man?

So, like my dad is old school, like it was real estate before there was real estate, you know, like handwriting everything and carbon copy, you know, driving all across town, exactly people looking at people's books, like, oh, that's a good fit for my clients.

That's what you had to do back then.

When I was 23, I wanted to be an active realtor in South Jersey. That's where I grew up, South Jersey, Atlanta County, to be specific. And my dad was like, No way, not happening. You're gonna go. I I hated college, so I dropped out of college. I'm like, I don't need this degree, I'll scratch and claw my way up the corporate ladder.

Yeah.

Um, so he was like, You're gonna go get corporate experience, get real world experience. You don't want this life, it's day-to-day, it's paid commission check to commission check type of a thing. And we fought. We fought over it. And so I wound up listening to him going into corporate America, and it taught me well, you know what I mean? So um, it's one of those things where it's like I didn't really rely on them for anything because I didn't feel like they understood properly the conditions that we were in now. Yep. Um, and I knew he was against it. So I just kind of veered the other way.

I veered the other way.

Dad, there's DocuSign now. You don't gotta run that stuff all over town anymore. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So my mom, on the other hand, she was a little more excited for me. Um, you know, in Southwest sort of supportive. Not that he wasn't, it was just like, Why are you doing that? Was practical, your mom understood. Yeah, he was like, You have a great salary, you got great benefits, like you're giving all that up. You have a family. It's like, yeah, but I I need to do this for me. You know what I mean? So that's awesome.

Love that. All right, so let's shift to you have a new podcast that you just started that I will say I haven't listened to the first episode yet. I know it kind of just came out. I saw the clip, the clip was very good. It's you and your buddy Ryan Kavanaugh. Yep. Talk about the new podcast, like the name, why you're doing it.

I did listen. Just yeah.

My man. Just get it on the record. He's Victor. And why wouldn't he? Yeah, that's what Vic does. You know? Well, he wears weird hats and listens to everyone's podcast.

I mean, the reality is I, you know, I sent you a text yesterday. I'm like, you know, since meeting you and then Sean, you know, uh, it's you've inspired me to kind of change a lot of things in my business.

Appreciate that, man.

You know, personally, I love the podcast. I've always wanted to do a podcast, so I listened to your podcast, and it's given me a lot of great ideas. And there's this thing out there, rip off and repeat. Right.

And it's a great monkey see, monkey do is how I a lot of the structure of our show, you know.

We took some of that from multiple shows that we saw and we liked. We're like, we like that, we like that.

Yeah, and that's I think that's a great thing when you have other people that are doing it successfully, and you can kind of take what they've molded and make it your own.

Yep.

Right. Um, so my ideology has come from, I feel like in our industry specifically, and it's probably this way for you too, there's a lot of oldness in the industry, and there's a lot of things that are not spoken about.

Yep. It is kind of like an unspoken industry a little bit.

It's like baseball's unwritten rules. Yep. Right. And so um, I wanted to kind of peel back the curtain on real estate from the consumer's perspective, from the agent relationship perspective, whether you're buying or selling, or whether you have a relationship with a home inspector, I wanted to give people um a different look as to what happens day to day in our world behind the scenes to make things happen.

Here's what I'll say is there's a lot of assumptions on the consumer side about what a real estate agent does and the rules. And the rules we talk about the rules all the time.

All the time.

There's these assumptions out there, and I think it's a great lane to be in to kind of explain and show people what the reality is. And I think that that's gonna be a you guys are gonna have a great way to lean into this and and and give that audience um some behind the scenes ideas and and and operational how things work and how they go. Yeah. Um I think it's a really good idea.

Thank you. I appreciate it. You know, what's the name of it again? It's called Behind the Sign. Nice. We uh we came up with that idea um simply just to peel back that curtain, right? It's not just for for consumers out there, it's other for also for other agents. There's some motivational aspects that are really important to me personally that we'll talk about in that podcast, like how to stay motivated day in and day out in a lonely business. It's hard, you know.

So um, you know, finding motivation, a different motivation day by day, it's uh it can be challenging.

Yeah. It can be, and it is challenging. And we I think we all go through like the ups and downs of of business, being an entrepreneur or a business owner at 1099, it's it's difficult. And so for me personally, I like talking about those things out in the open because I feel like they're not talked about enough.

Yeah.

You know what it is? It's almost like I used to say when we started Bricks and Risk, because that was right when the partnership from my old brokerage, Copper Hill Real Estate, was ending, it was very therapeutic because I was like talking about not any no regret. Yeah, if anything, I looked at it as like that was such a good learning lesson for my next step in the residential real estate industry. And we would like talk about it on the show, and like, you know, it would just naturally come up like the people I hired or the mistakes I made or partnerships or marketing errors, or like I thought this was gonna happen, but it didn't happen, and why didn't it happen? And I think podcast for me as a listener, I started listening probably right around like quarantine, so it's probably been about five years or so. I've been listening, and um that alone has given me such a different perspective into residential real estate, and I was already doing it for like 10 years, and I had a brokerage and I had a team and I had employees and I had success and money and all that stuff. You know, I had all that, and I'm like, I started listening to the first one I ever started listening to. I'm gonna give a shout out to my boys right here, Matt Vi, Matt Vi and Dr. Ben from the Brokerpreneur podcast out of Tampa, and they were the only podcast I could find anywhere that was talking about recruiting agents, not in a traditional sense. This is how you get people to come join you. No. How do you talk to people that don't work at the same brokerage as you that may want to work alongside you for whatever reason? Collaborating. Yeah, collaborating, investing, they want to be on your team, they just want to learn, they want to share leads, they want open houses, they want to do buyers, you want to do sellers, whatever. So they were literally just like giving me this huge education on like a topic that you couldn't even find books on. Right. So I think what you're doing with your show is really good because you're being that you've been listening for five years yourself, you're like, I want to do a show about this. Yeah. Because I feel like I'm not hearing that enough. And maybe Ryan and I got something to add.

Yeah. And I I just don't think it's talked about, right? You it's so common in our businesses that we're like, well, I've been in the business for 50 years, and it's like I've never done things that way before. Right. It's like, well, things have changed, right? There's new processes, there's new agents, there's Zoom calls, you know, Zoom calls, right, right. Like, what we don't have to sit down in person, you know. Exactly. Yeah, the rotary phone is gone. You know, so it's just it it came to fruition with that idea in mind where you just want to kind of open things up for people to see it for what it really is at the end of the day. Yep. So it's awesome.

Well, and then demystify, right? Like is like set the record straight, is because there are those assumptions out there. There are. So it's like, let's just put them aside, let's bring you in.

There's so much going on right now. There's so much chatter. Yeah. I mean, there's lawsuits happening, there's bat, there's public battles happening, yeah, between you know, you vindication rise and the the Zillows of the world and compass. It's just crazy. It's like, when does that ball one-day pissing match? Yeah, it is. That's all it is. And it's now it's like, well, is Compass going to lose their market share because Compass is suing for antitrust? Like, it's like, give me a fucking break. Who cares? Right. Just go out and start head down and do what you're doing. Just go out, make new relationships, sell some homes, make some happy clients, and carry on. Yeah, you know. All right.

So for biggest struggle, you had said learning when to back away and let go of other people's problems. Why has that been a struggle for you?

Oh man, I'm a fixer.

I'm a fixer. I gotta say, I'm like that too.

I want to feel like everyone's I want to help, I want to fix. Yes, I want to feel like somebody's interesting. It's so it's it's like my crypt tonight in life. I want to fix everything for everyone and make them happy. Yep.

People pleaser.

It's it's just my human nature. You know, I'm a convincer. Like I've got friends that are struggling right now, like mentally, and I'm like, I want to fix you by having how can I help you? Yeah, and it's like, well, you can't.

Yeah. Unless you got some extra pills. Exactly. Like, I don't. I'm not a pharmacist. Right.

That's funny. You know somebody. But I got a guy. Introduce you. I got a guy. In her office recently. We'll edit, we'll edit that down. Right, right. Um, uh, I had Trudy. I said, listen, conversations on the phone, like, keep them short, like, you know. And she got one day and it was, how's your day going? And it was like someone just was like, Oh, let me tell you how much. Well, you asked Trude, and I'm like, I told you.

This is such a tough question to ask. It's like playing with fire.

So, so again, wanting let's just call it wanting to help people, yeah, that who you think might need some help, or maybe they've told you they need some help. Why has that been kind of a struggle? Like, what about that has been hard for you?

Because there's people out there that are waving their hands for help, there's no doubt, right? And then you see other people that need the help and they're not asking for the help. Right.

Okay.

Um, so for me, naturally, it's like those are the people I want to help. I want to keep them from failing.

You're being like intuitive, like you can see it unfolding. You're like, just if you would just write your email like this, if you would just market yourself like that. Do it like this, it'll work. Yeah. You know, oh, I've been there. It's tough. That's interesting. It is tough. Because they don't necessarily want the help. Right. It is actually um it's kind of like podcasting where you know, what we've learned, one of the things we do is again, we wanted to help people get a little bit better at business. It's really become kind of like an educational, tactical, like thought-driven show for small business owners. Yeah. Like, you know, real estate, again, insurance. But it's also like, let's say you're running like a hoagie shop, and you're like, I, you know, I bake my own bread, like I hand slice every hoagie. I could do the onions and the lettuce and the tomato like real thin. So every bite is awesome. And like that's what they're trying to do. I want them to listen to our show because what we're talking about applies to anyone in business, even in corporate America, like selling yourself, as you have put it. Like you may be going to hospitals in Milwaukee in negative 20 degree weather, but guess what? You're selling yourself to that hospital. You're trying to build trust with them so that they will listen to what you have to say, building rapport. Okay, Justin, now you can tell me why it's going to be cheaper to ship with you than Billy down the road who likes cheese curds like I do, and you like cheese steaks. Yeah. Like those.

It's difficult, man. It's it's it's a very difficult dynamic, and to understand the lane that you have to stay in helping somebody, it's challenging, right? You it's common to overstep your boundaries.

Very common. Well, it's funny you said uh I am like everyone, uh I will tell this to everyone. Like, it's probably the worst thing to come to me and tell me that you're thinking of starting a business.

It is.

Last half empty moony.

No, no, that's what we call 'em.

No. Why would you do that? No. In the arena's so positive. Who is this guy? I don't know. In the arena of business starting, I am like a million percent let let me let me be your biggest cheerleader. You can do it. Oh, you'll do it. You'll kill it. Yeah. And I've done this for like five people who I'm like, stop doing that. Get started over here. Yeah. And then I I think like, oh man. And most they have all panned out. Uh I literally had like thank God. Yeah. Dinner with one recently where he was like, oh, I decided to go into business for myself. I'm like, all right, let's get dinner. Like let's get dinner like next week. When are you available?

What can I tell you about the hell of my day? That'll make your day that much better.

No, I am just like, let's let me try to like help you figure out how to just trying to help help him or her out. I know, but I always think of that one time where I'm like the cheerleader and then it's like all just like falls apart and they left their corporate job.

I'm like you know what it is too? It's like trying to get in the mind of other people. Can't. And you can. You think you can. Yeah. And I'm like trying to take what I'm thinking and insert it in your brain.

Three married guys with lots of history and relationships. There's no way we can get in our wives' minds. It's never going to happen. I wish it's crazy.

I just know but it you're there's a thought that if you can just get them to think and see how I think and see. Just flip the switch a little bit. And it's never quite that.

It's never quite that. And that's where I feel like you know peeling back my time and learning to step away a little bit I feel there's a lot of people they don't want to fail but they have to fail. They need to experience the failure to know what it feels like. And I think that's what also keeps me coming back to real estate over and over and over again is because with every failure there's a lesson learned. Yeah. And so personally or professionally yeah I mean I've had a lot of them and it's you know we all have but it's exciting to me to kind of like oh shit I really botched that one. Right. I can do it better this way. You know it.

It's always it's it's getting better.

Yeah. You know after every failure it's a drive you know it it's really what it is. It's a drive to succeed drive to do more drive to be different change adapt whatever it might be.

All right so your tip for the B and R listeners and watchers was don't wait for motivation to show up build it through action. Success comes from doing the small hard things even when you don't feel like it's start moving planning speaking it and the motivation will catch up with you.

Why that tip I love that tip it's it resonates with me personally. Right? Inaction is one of the worst things that you can do. Have an idea just tease out that idea a little bit and then go run with it. If it falls on its face pick it back up and try again a different way you know um I didn't think you know what we're doing with the show was going to come to fruition. It's been like an idea of mine for over a year and I was just like you know screw it we're going to do it. And if it doesn't work it doesn't work. We'll try it again a different way. Yeah same thing with real estate. My only thing with real go ahead.

I mean what's the worst that can come of it right lose a little bit of time a little bit of money. But but you're not because it's true you're investing it if you do it let's just say uh just nothing else like literally you have zero downloads you have zero watchers you're just by way of trying to do it get out there I mean there's going to be something I I it'll never be zero you're always there's always no one's always intrigued right and so let's just say it's social media material that you're able to put out from the podcast. I mean there's always going to be there's something something yeah in it. So it's never a waste of time to try something new. Try to do something.

Remember when we uh the first month just over a year ago we released Bricks and Risk and we had a lot of uh content in our backlog so we dropped like 15 episodes in like a month the first month we started and it was just like everywhere and people are what is this like who are these guys why is he dressed the way he's dressed why does Tim seems seem so much more normal than Victor and remember in the beginning we were like posting stuff to like YouTube and we get like five views we're like yo yo dude yo yesterday at five people like eight we're talking about feeding fish versus teaching the fish still to this day one of my favorite episodes has like 10 views in over a year. I'm like oh I love that one I was like well guess what only 10 other people thought the same way and then we got other ones you know the thousand views and we had a short the other day it was a 4,000 views. We're like whoa yeah like how does that happen do you know how that happens we were committed to doing it yeah we stay consistent and we're not giving up and now we're like over a year in and we're talking to people the guest who just had on before you as we said he's been doing it for five years or we had another guest on that we were talking about earlier than that and he's been doing it for seven years. And it's like all these people have been doing it after the five years or the seven years or even the two years they're like one of the greatest things I ever did for my career. Yeah. Because it allows you to be yourself you know build a personal brand yeah you get smarter through the process.

It's and you get to see different things right like when I got into real estate I was all systems go 100 hours 100 miles per hour and trying to do as many transactions as I possibly could cram into the year. And it's like you think that that's the way and then you meet people it's like oh I did 10 last year but I'm also doing this where I have this and I'm doing this and it's like oh shit okay well hang on a second let me reanalyze what I'm doing yeah because am I really passionate about going 100 miles per hour and missing time with family and friends and activities and vacations and stuff like that? Not really.

Well it it it it stems from when we talked about it previously is that are you doing it because you want to do that and that is your goal or are you doing it and working those hours and trying to cram in everything you possibly can because this brokerage has designed a a cattle chute to to ensure that you're doing it the way they want to do it. And I think that you know we talk about in reference that Garrett Maroon episode and if anybody out there hasn't seen the Garrett Maroon episode do more do more sales build a bigger team you know more and more and more and and then he came across it one day on a whiteboard and he's like erase it all and he and he literally had his goal tracking and how many calls how much volume calls and he like literally erased it all and put up his top three goals that for him personally were what were what was going to drive his business that day forward it changed his whole entire thinking about the way he was going to do real estate uh and and transformed his business to a whole different level going forward.

Yeah I I think it's a smart thing you know I think that's at that that approach that thought process doesn't live in the life cycle of a realtor no every single day it doesn't you know so I've this year has been different for me. I'm not going to do what I did last year almost by design. Yeah exactly you know um I look at my goals right I kind of got them emojied out I've got you know the people the time and the heart love it the poop the poop didn't come in that's on bonus yeah exactly over here it's got stateside oranges yeah right the poop yeah it's like you know you're you're looking at the people that you're around the amount of time that you're spending in the day right and then are you loving what you do?

Totally man right that's like at the top of my at the top of my board yeah right now awesome awesome episode man so before we shut this one down why don't you tell our listeners and watchers where they can find you and everything you got going on.

Awesome. Well you can find us on Instagram I'm at real Justin Heath on Instagram at selling greaterphilly on Instagram selling greaterphilly.com and then behind the sign pod on Instagram. And we'll link it all up yeah we'll link it all up a lot of links in there.

Yeah all right that's all we have for this one folks thank you for tuning in again to another episode of Bricks and Risk see you next week thank you for joining us on another episode of Bricks and Risk. Our goal is that you walk away with one or two valuable nuggets and we greatly appreciate you sharing your time with us today. You can find all BR episodes on Spotify Apple Music YouTube and anywhere else you get your podcast content. Until next time keep learning and keep growing