180 | Staying Motivated in an Unmotivating World: How Christian Real Estate Agents Replace the Motivation Myth With Lasting Discipline and Purpose

Waiting for motivation to show up before you make your calls, follow up with leads, or do the hard work of prospecting is a recipe for a failing real estate career. The best real estate coaching replaces the motivation myth with something far more reliable: discipline, systems, and the purpose that comes from calling. Garrett Maroon teaches you how to stay consistent when the market is slow, the rejections are stacking up, and every feeling says to quit.

Motivation is emotional. Discipline is structural. The agents who succeed long-term in any market don't rely on feeling inspired — they rely on real estate coaching frameworks that make the right behaviors automatic. This episode gives you those frameworks.

• Why motivation is unreliable and discipline is the real answer
• How to build habits that keep you in action regardless of your emotional state
• The role of faith and calling in sustaining long-term effort
• How to stay consistent without burning out or white-knuckling your way through

Stop waiting to feel motivated and start building the structures that keep you moving regardless. Listen now.

Need help winning at work without losing at life? I'm here for you!

📖 Get the FREE E-Book — The Faithful Agent ebook is my gift to you; it's full of biblical truths about your calling, reflection questions, and practical steps to win at work without losing at life. Download it here: https://www.garrettmaroon.com/faithfulagentebook

📱 Want to talk business? Shoot me an email: garrett@garrettmaroon.com

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Good time. The term motivation describes why a person does something. It is the driving force behind human actions. Motivation is the process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal -oriented behaviors. For instance, motivation is what helps you lose extra weight or pushes you to get that promotion at work. In short, motivation causes you to act in a way that gets you closer to your goals. Motivation includes the biological, emotional, social, cognitive, and spiritual forces, that activate human behavior. What's up, faithful agents? Welcome back to another episode of the Faithful Agent Podcast. Today we're talking about motivation and how to stay motivated in a difficult market. And all that came from a conversation I had with a group of agents in Richmond, Virginia not too long ago. And so we're gonna dive into that topic a little bit, but T, how you doing, buddy? I'm great. I'm sitting in a new scene, new setting. I'm a little bit uneasy right now. there's random people in your house. Guys, this is the first time I've ever Airbnb'd my personal residence. It is graduation weekend for UVA and hotels book up extremely quickly. People pay a huge premium and I've decided that I've been wrestling for years. Like, should we do this? People pay crazy amounts of money to stay in other people's houses for a short weekend. I'm like, I think I'm gonna try it. So people are staying in my house for the next three nights while... Nope. Nope. and the kids stay actually in my in -laws townhouse that's just down the street so convenient that we have that but like My palms are sweating. I'm a little distracted. I don't know what's going on in my own house and you know this story, right T, but our audience probably doesn't. So when Rachel and I, my wife and I decided to Airbnb our home out, probably pre COVID and we put it up and then we got two bookings and like the week before they were coming, I, this is terrible, but I canceled it because I'm like, I can't do it. It's way too weird. Like, It's just not worth it. I don't know. Well, so also, you know, I don't remember if I've told this story on the podcast, so maybe I won't now. That's rude. But, you know, we we were broken into two months after we were married and people in our house and stole our stuff and our cars. Right. So, I mean, I don't know if it's kind of like I just the last time someone was in my house without me knowing who they were, they were robbing me. So it's very possible I still have some, you know. Yes. not choose to have strangers in your house now moving. deal with that tragedy and that trauma right now live. So can you walk me through that? It was 12 years ago, yeah. on the other side of the street that you don't know. Yeah, scared man, like they're gonna come in and steal my car. Now we have a dog, so he'll just bark. And alarm system and guns, so we're way better prepared than we used to be. He would sniff them and perhaps pee on them because he was excited and you know, whatever it takes to hurt people. wait, did you know, this has nothing to do with anything, but we're real estate agents, did you know that... number one protection on your home is not a security system and actually is a dog. I forget how they did this survey, right? But it was like a higher percentage of people are afraid of a dog than are afraid of a security system, which I thought that was interesting. So yeah, you know, people have often described me as a small dog, right? Because they're so little, they yip all the time. Maybe that's just me describing me that way, but that's. self -awareness to know that you're a yipper. And so, That's pretty accurate, right? No, that's weird. We're not going to edit that out. But you know, here's what basically here's what's cool though. While T and I record this, our wives and kids are hanging out together. And so that's a blessing, man. I'm glad that we get to be here and talk about stuff while they try to talk but can't because there's 12 or 12 kids. There's eight kids, six and under. Yeah, that is the definition of chaos, but they, I think they had a great time. They had a great time. how do they stay motivated? We should have them on to get that. That would be an interesting conversation. But that's not what today is about. Yeah. Yeah, it is. All right. Yeah. Yeah. OK. I mean, yeah. All right. We're we're bantering a little long, but here's what I'll say. I'm going to read this chat GPT story, a joke story. But as always, if this has been helpful to you, please rate it, subscribe, leave a five star review, share it with a friend. You will help us reach more people with the good news of the gospel, and that's a good thing. So, all right, ChatGPT. I asked ChatGPT a little bit different this time, T, because I feel like it just kept giving me the same thing. So I said, tell me a really funny story about Christians. So, yeah, I haven't read this. Let's see what it says. A church had a bell that needed ringing every Sunday, but the usual bell ringer was on vacation. The pastor put out a call for help and a man with no arms showed up. The pastor was puzzled and asked, how can you ring the bell without any arms? The man replied confidently, watch me. He ran at the bell with his head striking it perfectly. The bell rang loud and clear and pressed. The pastor gave him the job. On Sunday, as the man was ringing the bell, He lost his balance and fell out of the bell tower. What is this? The congregation rushed to help, but it was too late. A passerby asked, Does anyone know this man? The pastor replied, No, but his face rings a bell. Wow, you like that one. That's good. I like that. That was actually pretty funny. That's like. one. It's better than where, you know, all the other ones are like, it's just a normal joke and then they say, and he was holding a Bible, right? It's like, okay, that's not a Christian joke at all. At least that was actually pretty good. Next episode, let's do that again. Yeah, I like, I like, I like that. All right, let's talk about staying motivated. So really it came from a couple of days ago, I was at an office speaking to a team. They have, I think 10 to 12 agents, something like that. And they reached out to me, they had heard me speak somewhere I can't honestly remember, and they just said, hey, our agents are lacking motivation. And I think you would be able to help them. Will you come talk to us? And, you know, because I can't say no when someone says talk to me. I said, sure, I'd love to do that. But I showed up and it was, we had a great conversation. I'm going to share some of it with you all in the audience. And I want to hear your take too, T, but. What I came in and said, look, in my perspective, it's not about how do we regain or stay motivated, per se. I said, it's about removing the things that unmotivate us or demotivate us. You're from UVA. I don't know what the proper term is. But it's about removing those things. That was my approach, right? Real estate is difficult, and I want your take. But I essentially said, real estate is difficult as it is. And I'll share some more. But real estate is challenging, all of this stuff going on. I'm more interested in what are you purposefully allowing in that is going to challenge you, your motivation, right? So that was things like social media. I mean, one of the worst ways for you to, the quickest ways for you to lose motivation is to be struggling and go to your social media page and scroll. And the only thing you see is success, success, success, which just isn't true, but that's what people post. That's going to make you feel less motivated. Right? It's listening to the news. It's if you're an agent and reading everything about the NAR settlement and all the other lawsuits and blah, blah, blah that's going on, that's not going to make you feel motivated. Right? It's all of these things that can steal whatever motivation is still there that I think is the easiest thing to control as opposed to showing up every day fully motivated. Because if you're an entrepreneur, you naturally are motivated to some degree, right? You wouldn't do this job if you didn't have motivation. So I think it's already there. I think it's allowing all these other things to steal it from you. That was kind of my approach and I can go into more of that. But what do you think T? I mean, you were a baseball player, a professional athlete. You had to go out there and be motivated. You know, you were a pitcher. So not necessarily every day, but you had to have motivation even the days that you didn't. Why'd you make that face? I'm just, you know, for people that don't know about baseball, you pitch what? Every fifth day? I mean, that's a lot. I was literally not trying to put you to, I was just trying to be accurate. work every five days. You're only motivated one out of five days. Yeah. I know you were and you're not accurate. You're not accurate. been trying to make fun of you that time. I actually wasn't so Tell me Tell me wait. So what what do you mean? I thought it what you pitched every fifth day, right? that's starting pitchers every fifth day. What do you mean that things I'm only motivated 20 % of the time. I'm saying I admit unlike the people that play the field right the shortstop who plays every game You don't play every game Whatever just you know my point. It was literally not to give you a hard time I won't accept I won't accept that I hurt your feelings because I actually didn't try to So you need to forgive me in front of everyone. Can you forgive me in front of everyone? It does What was the? apologize? This is just... didn't mean to send, it doesn't count. No, that's not true at all. That's true. Hey, that's rude. it's all obviously not going to be me because they, I never win any of those. It's fine. It's okay. All right. So share. Yeah. How do you stay motivated? 20 % of the time. Yeah. the time. Yeah. I think that to speak to a little bit to what you're talking about here, what you see on social media, what you see just in the world, like where you're going. One of the reasons why those are demotivating or distracting is that it makes you feel like, you're so far away from where you're trying to get to. When you're looking at the ultimate goal, when we are, you know, chewing on where we're trying to get to, if we just look at the end game or we compare ourselves to, you know, the highest level of worldly success, we certainly should be pursuing elite levels of success, being excellent in all things that we do, absolutely. But when we're maybe at step one and looking at... you know, people who are doing it better than anybody else in the world, we're going to be discouraged when we think, I'll never be able to do that. I mean, I could tell you the story. I remember the very first bullpen that I saw in professional baseball. So when you're a bullpen for people that don't know baseball, it's just like a practice pitching session where a pitcher steps on the mound, he's got a catcher and he, there's no batter. You're off on the side of the field and you are working on pitches. Like you, you know what you're trying to do. And it's just a matter of executing. You get zero. reaction from a reactionary feedback from a batter, but you get to work on your stuff. First bullpen in professional baseball that I watched at spring training, I walk up to the mountain, a guy named Jake Arietta, who was the opening day starter for the Baltimore Orioles in the major leagues that year in 2012. So I'd just gotten drafted. I'm 21 coming out of college, never thrown a professional pitch. And I'm watching this guy pitch and I'm like, I would never. be able to do what that guy just did. Like physically, I'm not made that way. And he's 6 '4", 230, jacked and crazy strong and just basically the opposite of you. Correct, yeah. And I'm just watching him and I'm in awe. I'm impressed. I mean, this is the physical talent that people pay money to watch, that he's entertaining and he's different than everybody else standing around him. But he's where I'm trying to get to, where everybody that's there watching the bullpen has the ultimate goal of getting to. And he goes out, I mean, I can still see it. Like I have those Polaroids in my mind of my emotions and seeing it actually happen. Opening day comes around a month later and the guy gives up seven runs in his first outing. I'm like, wow. So he's doing things that I could never possibly do. And he's not having success in the major leagues. Like... What am I even doing this for? Like, what's the point? You know, like same thing. What am I missing? If he's got all these things that I don't, why should I even try this? I remember asking that question. And we have to remember when we're mulling on those and we're comparing ourselves here to where we're trying to get to is to remember very, very clearly, like, what's the point of this? We don't know how it all ends up. We don't know where the ultimate outcome is. I didn't know in that moment that I was ever gonna play in the major leagues, let alone play professionally for 10 years, end up playing three years in South Korea, having my two first born children in a different country. I didn't know what the ultimate end game was in that. And it became a distraction for me to think that this is what the measure of success looks like, or this is what a major league pitcher looks like, quote unquote, and I'll never be that. For what? So if we're thinking from a real estate perspective, we're watching these agents slinging, you know, nine figures worth of real estate in California, like, man, I'll never be able to do that. My market average sale price is 250K. Like I'll never, you know, have the lifestyle that they do. Like, is that the point? Like, is that what you're motivated to be pursuing? Or even within your market, you see somebody that's transacting a couple hundred deals and, you know, they're... Their income is way higher than yours and you feel like, how will I ever grow my business that well? Well, maybe you're not seeing what's happening behind that. All the distractions that are there, the lack of contentment that they have, what their motivation is. To bring all of that together is to really stay motivated, is to have a crystal clear understanding of why you're doing what you're doing and what the real return on that level of investment is. If you're looking for the return of, from a baseball perspective, if I was looking on every day going into work thinking like, how am I going to get to the hall of fame? Or if I don't strike every single batter out, then that's not the right return. Or from a real estate perspective is every day if I go in, if I don't sell a house or I don't have a house under contract and like, what's the point of me doing this? Then you're missing, you're never going to be motivated because then what happens? That happens, you move on to the next thing. You got to find a new reason to get motivated. You got to find a new... fuel source to move on to the next thing. And it is, that's unsustainable and it's a finite fuel source. And so, I mean, I think that the summary of that little bit of that image is that having an understanding of why you're trying to get somewhere rather than really the ultimate end game anyways, is what's gonna help you stay motivated every single day. I think that's really good. I mean, definitely. And I love that story. You said you saw Polaroids in your mind. You probably should get that checked out at a doctor. That seems dangerous. And did I think about that for the last five minutes while you were talking? Absolutely, I did. But I needed to share that with you. You're welcome, audience. No, no, I mean, I really do appreciate that because I think that's kind of where my head was going to, right, is the purpose behind it. One of my elders always says when we talk about business building or whatever it's going to be is why did you set out to build this business? Was it solely because you were trying to make more money and that was literally the only, now every business should set out to make money, right? Or what's the point? But were you only doing it to make money? Was that legitimately your reasoning or was it because out of response to the Lord's kindness to us, you were actually trying to solve a problem for somebody. Right. You're actually trying to serve a specific group of people because that doesn't that motivation and that purpose doesn't go away. Right. No matter if you've earned right like you there's a famous thing and now I'm struggling to remember. Gary V. Gary Vaynerchuk or whatever his last name is talks about his goal is something like he wants to buy the Jets, I think. And then he says, what like the the saddest day of my life is the day I'll have bought the jets, right? Something like that. You know what I'm talking about. And you think about that and you say, well, that's the sad reality of if you allow a goal to motivate you, right? Because like, all right, sweet, I just I got whatever I wanted. I got it. Now I have everything I want as opposed to what if the motivation was for me, it's become clear through TFA, honestly, the faithful agent. It's become clear that my purpose is to serve Christian agents. Right. We talk about this to become more excellent in their work. more excellent in their home and passionate disciple makers of Christ. That's my purpose. That's not something that I'm going to fully accomplish ever or look and say, I'm done and I've done it. Right. That hopefully is something as you and I talk about T, I hope the faithful agent is going on well beyond the time that I'm dead. Right. Or certainly past the time where I can't, you know, I can bring no more value, but someone else steps up and says, I also want to help Christians to X, Y, and Z. Right. It's something that is greater. than us, it's not even necessarily something that we can just achieve and be over with, right? You share powerfully, I think, the time when you're finally on the big stage pitching against, I think it was against the Yankees, and you realize like, man, is this it? You know, like I made it. I actually achieved the goal I set out to achieve, which is awesome. Don't get me wrong. That's an amazing thing if you set to achieve a goal, but you get there and like, if this is all there is, man, then this is nothing. Like right in light of eternal, this is nothing. And so, Yeah. think exactly what we said, it's twofold. We look at what other agents are doing and we say, well, man, I'm having a hard season, but look at them, they keep selling houses all day. Well, maybe they do, maybe they don't, maybe they're just showing only the good parts, which is what we typically do. And then number two, and even if they are, hey, that's great, good for them. But even if they are, what is the greater purpose that you're trying to do? Because we also then assume that my purpose should be, Potentially what that agents purposes right? I'm thinking actually an agent and near our market and she's crushing which is awesome And I'm genuinely excited for her. She's selling so many homes, right? But I know personally because I know her personally She's not a believer that what she's giving up to achieve it is something I would never want to do right and so But I look at what she's doing and I'm thinking why should go achieve that too as opposed to taking and we talked about the scoreboard right but as opposed to taking the broader picture and say, okay, maybe I'm not crushing it, quote unquote, in the real estate world compared to what the industry would determine as crushing it. But look in the Lord's faithfulness that this means now I've had more time to be with my kids or more time to be with my spouse or whatever. And, and I want to be present and show up well for them too. So we take this total picture as opposed to this teeny teeny snapshot of someone's life, right? Who cares if they're selling a bunch of homes if they don't have a family that they know or like or care about, right? Like, I don't care. That doesn't matter how many deals you're doing, right? So we just look at this teeny tiny snapshot and say, you know, just like you were looking at Jake Arietta, right? Look at him. He's an opening day starter. Well, if you actually knew him, right, or you get to know him, he's just an example. And you realize, you know, his wife can't stand him and his kids don't talk to him. I don't know if that's true about this guy at all, but if you actually look deeper and see all those things, you're like, Nevermind, that's not even worth it, but we never go that deep. Right? It is surface level only we compare ourselves to that too. What are you laughing about? It's like, I did nothing, nowhere in my story, just to be clear, if Jake Ariadne ever listens to this podcast, that there was nothing that led me to, to imply that he had, was a bad father, her husband. So, and I know, and just because you're successful in the world does not mean that you're a bad father and husband. So, but the, yeah. nice. Nice. Okay. No lies on this podcast. Yes. right. Yeah, the what I mean to something to what you just said there, I think the pithy nature of that is we should be motivated by purpose, not by goals. Right. So like you're you're to be motivated by the end game again is unsustainable that ends you got to push reset. And that's that's part of that story that you were just mentioning. I remember the day that I got there, having reached that goal of being in the big leagues and being like, now what like now you don't just you can't just arbitrarily then decide. If you've been working for something so passionately for a long time and you get it, you can't just randomly say, well, I want to go do that now. No, you don't have conviction. If you don't have conviction, passion and clarity on what you're working for, then you're going to labor in vain and you're not, you're not going to really be invested into it. Like because what, just to work, just to work. No, that's not joyful at all. Nobody like inherently just wants to work hard for no reason. Right. And that's not, that's not honoring, honestly, just working just to work. Like you need to have purpose behind that. So I think. the pithy nature of be motivated by purpose rather than being motivated by a goal is a great lesson to take there. And so then begs the question, which we talk about at our conferences a lot of time, and we always try to discern some wisdom from is what is your purpose? Like, I mean, scripture teaches us that you're an image bearer of God and, you know, primarily you have gender specific roles, whether it be as to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And then... honor your brides, honor your husbands, shepherd your kids, be invested in the church community. I mean, those are purposes that you can count on and pursue day in and day out. And so to bring it to the image of the scoreboard that you always teach about and that you've crafted that I think is so good is your goals that you use in your personal scoreboard and that you speak to in your talks are aligned with your purpose. They're not goals that you have, you're not scoreboard. your scoreboard is not aligned necessarily with tangible goals. I mean, there's some measurables in terms of time spent with family or blocking off work hours or date nights. Absolutely, there's measurables to have when you're looking at your scoreboard, but the scoreboard is not goal -driven with the absence of a purpose. It is a scoreboard that is goals that are. purpose oriented rather than the opposite. Like we don't don't let your goals become your purpose. Your purpose should be driving your goals. And so I think that that is yeah, that was just my thought there. No, no, that I, sorry, I was just saying, yeah, that's good. Cause it is good. I think that's spot on is the reality of, for me recently, honestly, as a tactical encouragement to agents, it's been through prayer of Lord, who do you want me to serve? Like that's just been the question that I've been asking. Who do you want me to serve? Who do you want me to serve? Who do you want me to serve? And of course the answer is my wife and my kids, right? to your point, that's written down in Scripture. He doesn't have to, the Spirit doesn't have to discern that for us. He already told us flat out that's true. For me, it's been in my work. Who do you want me to serve? And for me, it became crystal clear. Christian agents. That's really where my heart is. So then, okay, how do you want me to serve them? Right? And it is these purposes. It is just such a reality. that in our industry, in our world in general, but especially this industry, it is so driven by an external view of what success is slash looks like slash the measurables, all those things, right? Why is there, I don't, is selling Sunset a real estate show? I think it is. You know, where it's they're selling these crazy awesome homes and driving these amazing cars. Like, why do people watch? Because we envy that. We think that's the life we should all have. We blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And again, in reality, I don't know these people. I imagine some of them have terrible home lives, right? Maybe not all of them. I have no idea. You know, yes, I know I just keep making broad generalizations. I'm saying I bet whatever you guys understand what I'm trying to say here. The point is this, the things that it would take for us to achieve some of these crazy audacious goals that we've set for ourselves, which is good. It's good to ask the Lord for those things. Some of those things might require us to forego what we know we are biblically called to, right? If achieving whatever goal you've set, if, let me say it this way, if you look at your coworker and you say, man, I think you should use slinging, T, if they're slinging a thousand homes a year, and you look at them and say, man, that sounds awesome, I should be doing that. And then you look and say, but the only way I could do that, and this is a very extreme example, But if you look and say, the only way I could sling a thousand ounces is if I gave up seeing my kids for an entire year. Okay, biblically, nope, that should not be your goal, nor should that be your motivation, right? That is wrong, that is not accurate. That is certainly not what the Lord is calling you to, that's counter to what the Lord is calling you to. But again, I think here's the challenge when motivation is a challenge for me too. It's look, we look at what somebody else is doing in this snapshot in time, an Instagram video, right? We look at a snapshot in time of what's going on in their life. And without looking at a whole picture, we just assume I need to be doing that too. Right. And then it could even creep in where it's like, man, my family's in the way, right? Man, now my, now my wife is in the way. They need too much for me. Like I need to get out there and sell some homes. Like why does it bother you so much that have to be on the phone? Well, because they miss you. Right. That that's why. So like, To your point, T, I agree with you and I'll let you take this out, but I like that thought of it is the purpose that should determine the goals, not the other way around, because the purpose is that you can only get to purpose if you ask the Lord what that's supposed to be, right? If you first look at what he says in scripture and then you ask him, give me clarity on what do you desire for me to do in my work again? Who do you want me to serve? And then from there, all right, how do I go about serving those people? And I think we should lead that way, right? So how do we stay motivated? We stay motivated by asking the Lord, who do you want me to serve? And just continue to do that, right? And continue to work in that direction and continue to honor him and remove those things that demotivate us. because we're just playing a comparison game when the Lord didn't give me and you the same life, nor did he give anybody else the same life, right? So even just playing the comparison game doesn't even make sense. everyone is different and everyone was made for a different purpose, but take us out to you. What do you think, man? Yeah, yeah, that's good, dude. I think that the one thing to take away here or one more thing to take away here is whatever goals you set, you know, when you're in actually setting goals, which is a good thing to do not don't hear us say we're undermining any of those things. Goals come at a cost, right? We are coaches and leaders and people had have gone before us. They set these big lofty audacious goals and run after them. And if you fall short, you still accomplish a ton on the way. Like that's, you know, that's a cinematic line that people can fall in love with to pursue. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, go for it. But anytime you dedicate your mental space or attention to something specific, it does have a cost. If you say, to use baseball analogy for an example, like I want to be a Hall of Fame baseball player. I can, there's so many high school kids that say that, that are, you know, high prospects or whatever, and they have absolutely no idea the cost. that it takes to accomplish that, the sacrifices that get there. If you're willing to verbalize and commit to this is the goal I'm going to pursue, it has a cost. If you're saying, I want to sell a hundred houses this year, that has a time cost. That has a distraction cost. There's not a lot of other things that you can be doing other than selling real estate physically because you just don't have enough hours in the day to do anything else. So what cost is coming at that? If it is the cost of losing time with... what a higher calling of time with your family, time in the church, time in the community, time to be giving to others rather than taking, then it might not be worth it, right? Where if you're saying my goal and my purpose is to honor my bride, to spend time with the Lord more to shepherd my kids, and that cost means I don't get to sell as many houses this year, you can lay your head down at night with that. So there's certainly a balance of both, right? Like, and that's what we're all trying to figure out. Life is never going to be perfectly in balance. You're always growing because you grow and you're sanctified when you're being challenged and refined, right? It's not going to be just one foot in front of the other constantly. You're always going to be in and out of balance and that's where the Lord shows up and you lean into Him and you learn. But we should never be compromising when we're setting our goals. The cost should never come at the prioritization of what the Lord calls us into first. So... To all the agents out there, listen, we hope that you're motivated by your purpose and not by the ultimate goals in all of this. We pray that you pursue the Lord first and foremost, that that would be because that is your purpose and that that's your ultimate goal in everything. So hope that today was helpful and we will look forward to seeing you guys next time.