A Bigger Vision for Your Business: Aligning Ambition with Faith & Impact

What does it mean to have a bigger vision for your business—one that goes beyond financial success and aligns with faith, obedience, and purpose?

In this episode of The Christian Agent Podcast, Garrett Maroon explores the balance between personal ambition and divine calling, particularly in the real estate industry. He reflects on the challenges agents face, the power of community and prayer, and the importance of simplicity in business operations.

Garrett unpacks the concept of the 'seventh level team,' the role of lead generation, and how faith-driven entrepreneurs can create lasting opportunities for themselves and others. Whether you're feeling stuck, navigating business growth, or striving to align your work with your faith, this conversation will inspire you to think bigger and redefine success.

Key Takeaways:

✅ We are called to grow our talents and steward them well.
✅ Ambition must align with obedience to God’s plan.
✅ Fear of ambition can prevent people from reaching their potential.
✅ The ‘seventh level team’ is a rare but achievable milestone in real estate.
✅ Simplicity in business leads to greater clarity and success.
✅ Real estate agents often feel stuck between career paths—clarity is key.
✅ Building a business without being in production is possible with the right model.
✅ Community support is crucial for overcoming business challenges.
✅ Lead generation excellence creates consistent success.
✅ Faith should guide business decisions, not just financial goals.
✅ Daily faithfulness and consistency are key to long-term success.
✅ Success in business provides opportunities to bless others.

Episode Chapters:

⏳ 00:00 – The Power of Prayer & Community in Business
⚖️ 01:54 – Ambition vs. Obedience: A Personal Reflection
📖 04:43 – Understanding Holy Ambition & Purpose-Driven Success
🏡 07:10 – Navigating the Real Estate Industry with Faith
🏆 10:30 – The Seventh Level Team: Myth or Reality?
🚀 12:25 – Redefining Success & Long-Term Business Growth
🔍 14:09 – Finding Simplicity in Business Operations
🤝 20:11 – Creating Opportunities for A-Players & Building Strong Teams
📈 26:12 – Building a Scalable Business Model
💰 28:36 – Creating a Foundation for Financial Freedom
🙌 31:31 – Overcoming Fear & Aligning Ambition with Faith
🙏 34:35 – The Role of Faith in Business Decisions
📊 40:52 – Mastering Lead Generation for Consistency
💡 46:15 – Empowering Others & Creating a Ripple Effect

Resources & Opportunities:

📅 Join The Faithful Agent Retreat – March 25-26, 2025, in Virginia Beach, VA
🔗 Register here: faithfulagent.com/conference

📞 Want to be in Business with Garrett and Christian agents around the globe? Schedule a call to learn about the 2:10 Collective @ eXp Realty
🔗 210collective.com/podcast

🙌 Join Garrett’s FREE online community for Christian agents who want to sell 3-4 homes/month:
🔗 https://www.skool.com/servingnotselling/about

📩 Send Garrett your Hampton Roads & Richmond, VA buyer/seller referrals:
🔗 faithfulagent.com/referral

📲 Follow Garrett on Instagram for more insights and encouragement!

🔗 https://www.instagram.com/garrettmaroon/

Transcript

0:00

All right, let's pray, guys. Heavenly Father, thank you for this time. Once again, Lord, to bring us back, I thank you for just the opportunity to be together in community. I thank you for the unity that we have in Christ. I thank you for the reality that we come before you, Lord, to learn to think differently, to try to live out the calling that you've placed in our lives. Lord, none of us know. Maybe exactly what that is, Lord. We don't even know exactly what our potential is, Father, what You've given to us, God. But You have given us talents. And much like the parable of the talents, Lord, we're called to grow those, not just financially, Lord, but steward the gifts that we have and steward them well without fear, Lord, that we would honor You in that, that we would be, come to Your throne room at the end of our lives, and You'd say, Well done, good and faithful servant, Lord. That's our hope. And so just pray that today You would grant us a different understanding. about our business, Lord, maybe new ways to think about it, Father. And above all, I pray that anything that I say that is not of You, that would, they would not hear it. Lord, it would fall on deaf ears. But if it is of You, Lord, make it even better than any words I could possibly say. May it actually stick and apply to their hearts and their lives, Lord, and we could become a little bit better today to Your glory and Yours alone. So thank You for this time. That's it, and watch over us in Your name, So today, as we talk about, let me connect, as we talk about having a bigger vision, I actually was teaching this maybe a week or two ago and they just thought it was really impactful. So I thought, awesome, let's teach it here then. It's just to give us kind of a bigger, broader view of what could be in your business. So, but I'll start here because one of the things I've wrestled with a lot and for anybody that has known me for a little while is ambition, right? Ambition versus obedience, and that's been hard. So I'm just gonna give a quick comment on that and then we'll kind of talk about the bigger, broader vision. But in Church Sunday, one of the things our pastor was talking about, we were going through Romans, know, expositionally, and so, but he's talking about Paul and he just says, here's an example of Paul's holy ambition, right? His holy ambition that everything he's ambitious about is to make Christ known. And he made a comment that, personally, how do you know it's personal ambition, right, wealth or whatever it is, but a sinful personal ambition. And he said, If at the end of that ambition, ambition, everything ends with you. That's how you know it's a sinful personal ambition. And, know, for me, in transparency and confession, like, that hit me hard, because I felt like, man, that is totally true of me, is so much of my ambition. I feel like the challenge that we have as business owners, as believers, is our personal ambition lines up so closely to pursuing the world, that it's really hard to make sure we don't fall into that category, right, and just say, I'm just going to pursue what the world wants me to pursue, right? I'm going to go after more money. I'm going to go after more stuff, a bigger business, whatever it is. And I'm going to do it all in the name of the Lord, but ultimately it's for me. And how easy it is for me to just desire the things that the world has, right? Comfort, ease, all of that stuff. And I'm not saying those things in and of themselves are inherently sinful. They aren't. But the reality of seeking out, Lord, what is a holy ambition? And so I say that just as an encouragement, as a challenge. It's been that to me. I've been listening on repeat a song called, I think it's called One Pure, yeah, One Pure and Holy Passion. If anybody's heard that song, it starts by saying, Give me one pure and holy passion. Give me one magnificent obsession. Give me one glorious ambition for my life to know and follow hard after you. And I just, it just is an encouragement y'all like that. That's what this is about. It's made me rethink things. It's made me try to be more consistent and just talking to the Lord throughout the day. I heard on a podcast, a guy said prayerlessness is a declaration of independence from God, right? We don't pray cause we feel like we've got it figured out. And, and we don't want to live and operate that way. I don't, and I do too often. So as a confession and an encouragement to you, but I say that to say going into this, as we talk about how do we have a bigger vision for ourselves, an aspect of that has to always be Psalm 131, David saying, I do not desire things too great or too marvelous for me, but I've calmed and quieted my soul, right? An aspect of seeking out and understanding what is the bigger vision here. is saying, Lord, let me not get ahead of what you want for me, but let me be right where you want me to be. We tend to either go too far ahead of the Lord and say, Well, I'm going to build out this big, massive bajillion-dollar business, and it's going to be amazing, and all this stuff. And we just kind of tell the Lord, this is what we're going to do. And, know, don't ask Him. And then I think there's, these are obviously extremes. And I think the other side is, we show up and we're like, You know what, I don't want to work that hard. I don't want to try that hard, because Yeah, I don't want to just love money too much. And I don't want to be one of those people that just wears myself out and work and blah, blah. And truthfully, that's actually laziness, right? That's a lack of godly ambition to just be less than what He's called us to be. You know, none of us know, again, the parable of the talents, as I was praying, there's the 10 talents, the 5 talents, the 1 talent, right, and the 1 guy, he buries it in the ground. None of us know, and I know they're talking about money, but again, from a, from a skill set stewardship perspective, None of us know, are we a 10-talent guy? Are we a 5-talent guy? Are we a 1-talent guy? We don't know. But what did Jesus say, or, you know, in the parable, the, business owner, what did he say to the 5-talent and the 10-talent guy? They doubled it, right? The 5-talent guy made him less. He made him half. But what do say? Well done, good and faithful servant, right? He gave them something. They stewarded it well. We're not supposed to be the same, right? We're not supposed to all have the same opportunity, skill set, vision, whatever. But we are supposed to steward it well. And I, you know, there's just such a balance. This is why we need to live in community. There's such a balance of, do I biblically pursue and ambitiously, godly pursue the best possible business that I can have, to the glory of God? None of us are going to get that right. But anyways, as an encouragement. So I wanted to talk about that. Hopefully that's a topic that will be of service to all of us. And every, feel free to interrupt or pitch in or share whatever you want. And if you're a podcast listener, you know you might get on the podcast because I'm playing clips of these because I thought they were helpful. And so Andy, Tracy, Monica, Monica was just on the podcast that will come out in a couple weeks. Brian, Reshinda, Garrett's note taker who's on here. You can also get on the podcast as well. So let's talk about this. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna present it. And again, you all tell me which way you want to go, but I'm gonna present it in the perspective of what's possible in our business, OK? What I find is, if you're a 20- to 25-deal-a-year agent, you're 25 to 20, 20 to 25 deals per year, you're in probably the hardest spot in all of real estate, from my perspective. Why? Because I think you're still a solo agent. You're running the show. You are probably working a lot of hours. You don't have a lot of leverage on your time. Not a lot of leverage. You also don't have a ton of extra capital that you think you can expend to get leverage, right? To me, this agent is a very productive, very good agent. If you're fewer than 20 to 25 deals a year, that's a good goal to shoot for. Now, again, there's so many things wrapped into that. If that means you don't get to spend time with your family, like, forget the 20 deals. But there's ways to do this, right, at a high level. If you're 10 to 15, 20 to 25 is a great goal. You're one of the top 10 % of agents, maybe You might know better than me, Monica, but not a lot of agents doing that many deals. That's a really good business. The danger is we often get stuck here. And the danger is at 20 to 25 deals a year, most of the words and the language that's out in the real estate space is you've either got to go to 50 deals a year, you got to start investing in these lead sources, you got to start scaling, you got to do all this stuff, or you just stay there and you run out the clock, right? You kind of just stay right there. And I don't like that as the options, right? I'm a Keller Williams agent by trade, was there for 10 years, loved every minute of it, so grateful for so many things. And as many of you who are here on the call or maybe listening, the Millionaire Real Estate Agent book has been a game changer for a lot of agents. If you haven't read it, pick it up. But he talks about the seventh level team. So I'm going to assume you all don't know what that means. The seventh level team, right? Basically what that is, the way Gary Keller describes it is, It's a real estate team that has, you know, multiple admin, multiple agents. And the goal here is you are out of production, right? You have this relatively large business and you have a CEO who's running it. So now you essentially turn it into as passive as it can be. And you've got this big, massive machine, right? Makes sense. Like from the business side, makes sense. My question is for anybody on this call and I'll share my own experience, but my question is, does anybody know someone running a seventh level team? You do Andy? So they're completely out of production. Yeah, can you pop on and tell us? The team I started on, the Rains Group in Columbus, Ohio, and then another agent that I know of here. She's actually in MREA, is one of the people that was studied for that. But yeah, it's not very common, but I know a few. That's awesome. Very cool. Monica, you don't, Monica's a coach and coaches a bunch of people and you don't know anybody in that seventh level? Sorry about that. It is so rare. So rare. I do know a couple, but I'm not like close and tight with them. Yeah, yeah, you just know who they are. Yeah, it's rare. Yeah, so that's what was fascinating with me, right, is I think here's what happens in the industry. If you're, if you're 10 deals, if whatever it is, everyone says like, Here's the natural progression. Maybe you start on a team and then you become a solo agent and then you hire an admin and then you build a team and then you keep building a team and hopefully one day you get out or you move on to coaching or whatever it is like. Here's the pathway that you can have. And for me, that's what I was doing. I was kind of following that pathway, right? I was, I think I was 28 when I did my first year of selling 50 homes and I had an admin. I had one full-time admin at the time. And so what was told to me was, all right, now you got to go build a team. And so I said, okay, and I just started doing what everybody told me to do. I had three extra agents. had three full-time admin. I mean, I had almost 200 grand of salaries and looking back, like, what was I doing? I didn't know what I was doing. I was just. following what the path was supposed to be for me. Well, I started in 2018. I started what's called the Think Bigger Mastermind. So I was leading this group of agents in Virginia and North Carolina. It the top teams in all of the, in both of those states. We had 30 agents represented. It was $750 million a year. I mean, we were fortunate. Like I brought Gary Kellard. He zoomed in. I interviewed him for everybody. Mark King, who was the president of Keller Williams, this was Keller Williams only at the time, excuse me. We had some heavy hitters in the room, right? I was a pretty small one. I just wanted to be in the room, so I started the room or I wouldn't have gotten invited. So I started this group and it was an amazing group, amazing people. But here's what I started to realize is I was on the path. was behind everybody else pretty much in that room. But all of these super successful agents, none of them were at the seventh level. They're all trying for it. They're all trying to get out of production. None of them had done it. And then what I started to realize was, I'll give a very clear example. At the time, I only had 2 agents and I had 1 admin, so I had scaled down a little bit. I looked at my buddy, right, who was in the, who was in the Think Bigger Mastermind with me. Awesome dude. He was one of the, the top 5 teams in all of Virginia. Here's what they had, 30 agents and they had 10 admins. Here was the craziest part. I made more money than he did every year, right? The profitability of his team was much lower than the profitability of my team. His stress and his headache was much higher than my stress and headache. The complexity of his business was much more complex than the simplicity of my business. And so I started to look at these things and I said, it doesn't mean that my buddy over here is not going to get to that point. What it meant was, man, do I really want to go through all of those steps to actually get to that point where I'm out of production? Is that the kind of business that I want to have? And the answer for me was absolutely not. So my reaction to that was I had relegated myself, and this is where we get into a bigger vision for ourselves. I had relegated myself to say, you know what, I'm just going to stay at this like small, middle level team and I'll just run it forever. And it's good. Like I don't work that much. I don't have to deal with too many things. It's OK. I'll just, I'll just stay here forever. And I just won't get out of production. And that's OK. And I accepted that as fact, right? Because on the seven levels, I was on like the third level, whatever. don't honestly remember which ones they are. So I just kind of accepted, OK, I'll just stay right here, right? I'll just be this mid-level team, small team, whatever will be mostly productive, but it won't be too complex in X, Y Z. Well, then I started to realize, and many of you know my story, but then I realized I don't want to give away all my free time. I don't want to build a big team. I don't want to have all this time. I want to get out of production. Meaning for anybody listening, meaning I don't want to have to be the agent doing the actual sale, right? I want to find the people to do it. And no one had a model for me. Doesn't mean it's not out there. I just never found one. Where's the model for me to say, how do I build a business that allows me to step away, but still bring in really good income? Right? How do I do that? Is that possible or am I relegated to just sell homes for the rest of my life until I choose not to. Is that my only option? And that's what I thought it was. And so it set me on the path to say, I gotta figure out a way. I gotta get out of production. So I'm not telling all of you right here, I'm not saying your job is to get out of production. What I am going to show you is this is how you do it without selling a hundred homes a year. This is how you do it without generating 50 deals a year. This is how you do it without bringing in a bajillion leads off cold calls and buying leads and all the things. This is how you do it to give you a bigger, broader vision, to know that your end goal doesn't just mean that you're going to sell 20 homes for the rest of your life or 50 homes or 10 or whatever. That's not your only option. Your only option is not to grow a big, massive team or stay right there in the middle and just live it out every single day until you stop. That's not your only option. In fact, there's a much better way. And I'm going to show you that. So for me, I had to say, OK, how do I get out of production? I've been 100 % referral from day one. How do I get out of production in that mindset? Because everyone had told me, they told me first, it wasn't possible to sell that many homes by referral. And thankfully in the Lord's kindness, I proved them wrong. And then they said, there's no way to build a team working only by referral. And thankfully I was able to prove them wrong. And so here's what happened for me. I said, you know what? And this is the mindset again, we're gonna get to this bigger vision for you, for yourself in this business. What I think the challenge is a lot of agents say, I see these top team leaders, right? They're working their butt off. They're super smart. They've invested. They've done all this stuff. They're spending a ton of money. That's not me. I guess this is just who I'm going to be. I'm going to be down here. It's not true, right? It's just not true. So I looked at myself and said, Garrett, what do you like? And I said, I like simplicity. I hate complexity. And most of it is I'm just not smart enough to operate in a complex system, being totally honest. That's not even self-deprecating, though I am. That's just true. I can't operate in a complex system. So what do I like? I love simplicity. OK, what does simplicity look like to me? You got to ask yourself this question. What does simplicity look like for me? For me, that meant I only want to have one agent and I want to have a TC. That was it. And so I said, that's simplicity. Can I get out of production at that? Right? Because no one said that I could. In fact, everyone said that wasn't possible. So I just said, how do I do that? Because simplicity to me is let basically this becomes like the operator of the business eventually. And the TC was paid per deal, so they became a variable expense, not a fixed expense, meaning in January, if we don't have a closing, I don't pay them anything, right? How do I do this? How do I make this simple? And so I started to think about that and realized, OK, I want to get out of production. I don't want to have to keep running. I don't want to be stuck between this mid-level team and a big team and whatever. None of it was going to get me there anyways. And so then I said, what's the problem? Why, whoops, why have I never seen anybody do that? And here was the problem. everyone was trying to find this A to A-plus player who was this agent, and no one could get them. They didn't exist, right, in the world of a team leader. They're like, Where's this elusive A to A-plus talent agent who will join my team? That doesn't make sense. And so I started coaching these teams, and I started coaching these other businesses. And I said, Well, help me understand what you're doing. And they ran into this problem. Again, I'm going to show you how you do this. And it's really simple. They ran into this problem. They had two problems. The first problem was the team leader, the TL, stayed in production. and and stayed. the big dog, meaning all of the deals, all of the recognition, all of the awards, all of those things were them. It was just about them, right? And A to an A plus talent says, if I'm going to crush it for you, I'd also like some of the accolades too, right? I'm a high, that kind of personality is a high driver. They want to crush, they want to sell a lot of homes, and you need that kind of personality. So the problem was the team leader was saying in production, team leader was saying, I need you A plus talent, but I'm going to keep most of my own deals. I'm just going to teach you how to go get a bunch of deals. And by the way, it's my name and it's going to be my team. And even if they're humble, it's still about that individual, the team leader. And so they kept wondering, how am I not getting these A to A plus players? I'm getting a bunch of C to C plus players a lot of times, or I'm getting an A player, but they leave me really quickly. One of the problems was they were still in production. It was still about them. The other problem was, their business, in my opinion, was poorly run. And I don't mean that in a mean way. What I mean is they misunderstood the numbers. Okay. So when I started to think about this, I thought, okay, how in the world I have a problem. How do I get an A plus player? How do I get an A plus player who wants to stay with me long enough where it's not, you know, every team has a problem of major turnover. Right? How do I get an A-plus player that wants to stay? That's really the problem. How do I solve that problem? And then it allows me to get out of production. Here's what every single one of you on this call has the capability of doing. Okay? It is the easiest thing in the world. It is genuinely the easiest thing. A big part of my passion is helping agents who think they're stuck figure out a way how to get out of production if that's what they want to do. And meaning, by out of production, I mean you get to choose more of how you spend your time. That's what I mean. Right? You might go and say, you know what, I'm going to go turn in and I'm going to generate more deals. Right? That's how I'm going to spend my time. You might say that, you know what, it's been on my heart to launch a nonprofit or to do mission work. Great. I'm going to go do that. You might say it's time for me to spend more time with my kids. Great. I'm going to go do that. And we often say that's our heart in real estate, but my business is in the way. Let's take that off the table. Let me show you this better way. So here's all I did. Number one, and here's why, as a Christian agent, hear me, you have a unique advantage here. You have a very unique advantage here because of Christ and who He is and what He has done for us and the work of the Holy Spirit in our heart. We actually have the capability, not always do we do it well, but we have the capability of the humility required to get out of the way to solve this problem. Okay, you have that capability and You have the capability of finding this A plus player who also loves Jesus, who has the humility to say, cool, doesn't have to be my name on everything. And if it's your name, some and my name, some cool. I'm good with that. Right. This is a good mutual benefit thing. So here's what happened. So all I said was, OK, I'm going to try this right. Like my philosophy has always been I want to go first. And if it works, I'm going to teach it to somebody else. If it doesn't, which that's happened a lot, I'm just not going to say anything about it. Right. So I said, okay, I got to go first. Let me see how this works. All it was, was a math problem. Okay. And no matter where you are, I'm going to show you how to get there. But all I had was a math problem. That's what everyone else was running into. How do I attract an A plus player? Well, you're only handing them five deals a year and you're taking a 50 50 split and you're expecting them to generate all their own business, taking a 50 50 split. Like they probably don't want to come play with you. And if they do, once they reach an A, they're probably going to leave, right? The opportunity is it there. for somebody of that caliber. So I said, here's my math problem. I'm going to hand out, let's make it easy. I'm going to hand out 30 deals a year to somebody. All I have to figure out is how do I hand out 30 deals? What is that going to cost me? Okay, so for easy numbers, let's say that costs me 100K. Okay, and stop me at any point if it doesn't make sense. Let's say by me giving those deals, and obviously I'm paying a split to that agent, these are 30 generated referrals. I'm handing them to this agent, right? You work the deal. You handle the calls and the showings and all the things. And I'm gonna pay you a split and you're gonna make 100K a year. The math problem was really simple at that point. Then I need them to be able to generate enough deals that the split they pay me is gonna pay me back 100K. That was literally all I had to figure out, right? So now if I'm gonna hand out 30 deals, I needed an agent who could generate. me a hundred K based on their deals. Karen. Yeah. You said the 30 deals you're handing out, your a player works those. Sorry, say that again, buddy. said those 30 deals that you're handing out. What you mean by handing those out is your A player will be working those deals. Correct. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I am handing to my agent. When I say handing, it's not, you know, I'm not cold calls. mean, these are referrals. These are slam dunks, right? They're getting 30 transactions to make the numbers easy. They're getting 30 transactions a year. So if handing them those 30 transactions, Let's say in simple math, let's say I could have worked these 30 deals myself and brought in 300k. Right? So if I And you guys probably get this. So sorry if this is too simple, but let's say scenario one, I do the 30 deals, right? And I make 300K. Well, reality is, know, time wise, that's probably 40 hours a week. I have no idea. Right? Or scenario two, I give 30 deals out. I make 200k. Oops. And then the time it takes me is 10 hours a week, right? Because I'm not on the phone. I'm not out showing. I'm not doing appointments. I'm not doing any of that, right? These are kind of the two scenarios that I have. I offended my note taker. He just left. That's hilarious. I don't even know how that shows up, but it's there. Who knows what kind of notes. Okay, anyways. So scenario two, is now I just give all the deals away. Now I'm making 200K instead of 300K. This is the solution. or this is the problem that most team leaders don't know how to solve, right? Because they don't want to give away their deals. And they're like, I don't know how you found someone to make up the gap of 100K. And the answer is, because, bro, you're not giving a good enough opportunity for someone to want to come and actually produce that much money for you and stay, right? So here's what I mean. I like scenario two, right? I just saved myself 30 hours a week. That's a ton of time. And I can go do whatever with that. Right? Again, now, does that, I hopefully I'm answering your question, Brian. Yeah. Thumbs up. Yeah. Cool. Okay. So now all I had to do is how do I find an agent who I say, Hey agent, I'm handing you a hundred K a year. Right? They like that stability. I mean, how many of you on the call, if I said, you're going to get a guaranteed a hundred K a year selling real estate, you'd be like, uh, I mean, when I started on a team, I would have 1000 % done. Right? That wasn't an option to me. But I say, hey, I'm going to hand you $100,000 a year. And they say, OK, that's amazing. And I'm going to say, then I'm going to teach you. How to generate your own business. so that you make me 100K a year. It's gonna be a really nice symbiotic relationship, right? And they say, okay, I like hustling. I like the work of real estate. I don't wanna have to deal with systems and managing people or, know, paying dues or whatever. I just wanna show up and I wanna sell, right? And I need someone to help me figure that out. Cool, I can do that. Now you say, I'm gonna give you 100K. You give me 100K. based on how many deals. And guess what? What did I just do? I made the exact same amount of and a fourth of the time. And it was the, once I understood that, I was like, this is the easiest math equation in all of real estate. The problem is ego, right? The problem is ego. And the second problem is you have to get your own business to the point where you're generating enough consistently. Okay. That's the second problem we're going to talk about here. Okay. I'm going to pause here because I'm going to show you how to do it no matter where you are. Not saying you're getting out of production. I'm going to talk about that here in a second. Does this theoretically make sense so far? Thumbs up if it does, if not, unmute and say no. Yep, good. Yep, okay. All right. So here's what you got to do. Here's what I love about this, right? And from my perspective, the way that we succeed in real estate, the opportunity that the Lord has placed in front of us, right, is I have no idea how big the Lord wants my real estate business to be. I don't know that, right? Again, don't, nobody is, the Lord doesn't say, here's your potential, Garrett. You need to go double that, right? Or you need to go, we don't know. None of us know. What I do know is, most of the time, what does excellence look like in my business? I can focus on, here's what I'm going to control. What do I do? How do I think? What actions am I taking? What plans do I have? I have no idea what the outcome is. That's not for me to decide. I control the input. The Lord determines the output. So here's what I get to figure out in business. This is what success looks like to me. I have no idea if your real estate business is 50K a year or 100K or a million. I almost said a million K, a million dollars a year, right? I don't know what that looks like for you, but here's what I do know. When we start talking about a bigger vision for ourselves, for our business, the opportunity that we have, here's what this looks like from my perspective. That looks like step one. I build out this small, powerful partnership team, whatever you want to call it, right? And I'll have created for myself a foundation of income. did the work. I brought in the agent who wants the opportunity. Now let's say for numbers, I created a hundred K. This is the foundation for me every year. I'm going to generate a hundred K. Right. And instead of it taking me 40 hours a week to do it, I figured out a way how to do it in 15 hours, 20 hours, say. Right. So what did I do here? I make the same amount of money, but I just bought back 20 hours a week. Now. I get to decide, and discern is the better biblical word, right, what the Lord wants me to do with that, and say, Where should these 20 hours a week go? Maybe you say, Man, you know what, with those 20 hours, I'm going to do Step 2. And whatever that is, maybe it's another business, maybe it's a, whatever. I don't care what it is, right? That's for you and the Lord to figure out. Maybe you say, I'm going to take those 20 hours, and I'm going to create another stream of income, and it's going to be another 100K. So now I just took my baseline income from 100K to 200K just by buying back my time. Right? I figured out the math problem, step one. I figured this out. I don't have to be the guy running around, the girl running around all day anymore. I still make what I was making. Now I've got the freedom in my schedule. I'm going to go figure out how do I layer on top of that? I had a foundation of 100K. I created that. Now what do I layer on top? Maybe I layer on top another 50K, 100K. Maybe I layer on top. You know, Andy, you're doing ministry. Maybe you just lay on top of say, now I've got 100K and it doesn't have to stress me out working 60 hours a week trying to do ministry and real estate. Now I can say, here's how much I make in real estate every year. I know it's not that simple, but here's how much I make every year. Let me layer on top of the time that I want to spend in ministry. Praise God for that. Right now. What does that mean? You're not pulling the extra 20 hours away from your family. You're not giving up your health and your sleep because you're like, I got to try to do everything. It's just a math problem that we have to solve and we have to understand. Right. And maybe you say, and again, I don't know. Maybe you say, step one is I build out this foundation. Step two is now I'm trying to figure out how do I earn more? These, these are excellent things for us. Right. The challenge is, as Christians and myself included, is because I'm so fearful, this is a totally honest moment, because I'm so fearful of my own sinful ambition. I tend to be less than excellent at things, right? I'm terrified that if I grow and seek these things out, that somewhere along the way, the Lord's gonna allow me to have whatever, and I'm gonna fall in love with it so much, I'm gonna forget the glory of the eternal kingdom. Like, I'm literally scared of that, right? Like, I'm scared of my podcast blowing up, because I'm like, Lord, I don't trust my own heart. And now I know that the people around me and the Lord in His own kindness and the spirit within me would help me figure that out, right, and keep me on the track. But we get scared of that. So then we say, you know what, I'm just not even going to come close. I'm just going to be less than because I'll just accept less than what is possible. And the Lord says to us and Brian, I see that, buddy, I'll be there just a sec. So the Lord says to us, hey, what if you Christian haven't figured this out? for whatever reason, because we just don't stop to think or whatever. What we don't know, we don't think we're capable of it. We don't have a big enough vision for what could be. And the Lord's thinking, right, or, you know, that's not theological, but, you know, we're looking and saying, Hey, your potential is 500 grand a year. And that means you could be giving a hundred K to your church. Or think about that brother in Christ who's sitting in church with you, who has one job. I have a friend in church. Excuse me. He's a firefighter. He's got four kids. He doesn't make a ton of money. His wife stays home to home school. Praise God for all those things. But if his money runs out, which it does very often, and he needs a new car, how is he going to go buy that new car? What if, and it's not our responsibility. What I'm saying is, what if my excellence and my willingness and my understanding of what my opportunity is, and doing that to the best of my ability, what if that means I say, bro, man, I'm blessed to be a blessing. I'm to write you a check. Here it is. to the glory of the Father. What if those opportunities exist and they do everywhere, but we are being less than excellent? We've got to create a bigger vision. Before I go on, go ahead, Brian. Yeah, I was just going to say, you know, I used to be in that world where I was afraid of failure for worldly reasons, but I'm now in a world and a church setting where I've moved on from, I'm like, yes, the Lord wants me as a Christian to be successful as possible. We see examples of that throughout. My big fear is, it's all the same anyway. mean, the solution is the same, but my big fear is, or my big struggle is giving my, like, I'm not, you know, I'm, I'm just me. I'm not allowed to think I can be this successful. you know I'm saying? Like, like, like it's not so much like, what if I'm successful? It'll become worldly. Like I, I have, like, I have, I have answers for that. My thought is like, I'm just, I'm just. you know, not somebody that does that. I'm not someone that can be this successful. And so that's the big thing that I try to overcome. But either way, I really appreciate your model here and your example and your passion. Yeah, no doubt. Monica, did you unmute this? Did you want to say something? No, I didn't unmute, but yeah, I'd like to speak to that. You know, I can talk Garrett. I take a drink of water. it. What I would say to that, Brian, is it goes back to scripture, right? It's not about what we can do. It's about what he can do through us. Right. So what if we just allowed him and that's this little guy, this is a gremlin. I've got different names for him. You know, he's cute and fuzzy and he just sits there until he does this stuff and rears its ugly head and stands there like a brick wall. Right. I call it the IBSC, but I'm going to, it's called the itty bitty. I'm going to say poopy committee. Thank you for that. Yeah. It gets in the way, right? It totally gets in the way. And the fear limiting beliefs, fear of success, like Garrett said, you know, what if, right? Well, what if we started staying connected to him throughout the entire day? And what if we remembered it's not about us? And that resonated with me, what Garrett said. And I was just talking to one of my clients today and she's doing so well. I call them pokes when you reach out, right? And poke people, the old Facebook poke, right? What happened when someone poked you with the Facebook poke? You thought of them. That's your job. And my next question that I ask people is, How do you handle it when they don't return your call, don't take your call, don't respond to your texts? Well, the truth is it's not about you. All right, the first time someone said that to me, was like, What do you mean it's not about me? I was all offended. But the truth is if we keep our eyes on him, brother, right, and make it about him, you know, are we entrusting him that we are enough, he'll give us enough, right, of what we need to do the thing as opposed to the imposter syndrome, right? Do we pray without, without ceasing? That was in the devotion I read to my team today, right? So that little voice in our head, Ryan, that says, yeah. You not that's not for you, buddy. All right, that is a bunch of fluff. It's a lie from the enemy All right, and my recommendation is when you hear something that's other than Something God would say to you. Good job. My my good and faithful servant. You're awesome. He's already put it in you So when we say we're not enough are we really saying he's not? All right, and do we trust him and what he's put in us? And what the path is carving out like we trust the chair when I set my big button this chair this morning. I didn't go. Are you going to hold me? All right, no, I just trusted not simple, not easy, right? I'm guilty. This is simple, not easy. Yeah, but I really go back to that. Write down the belief that you just heard in your head. Cross it out and write down what God would say. Yeah, that's good. I really appreciate that. And the thing that I'm really I'm really enjoying learning right now in my life is the daily faithfulness, think is part of it. Like I'm trying to, learning how to implement Garrett's system and that requires daily faithfulness, daily plotting. And if I can focus in zooming in on that and remember I'm a co-heir of Christ and so it's good, it's good stuff, thanks. Yeah, I would, I absolutely Monica, I'm glad you're here to share that. There's a song, I want you to listen to Brian, I'll text you, called Build a Boat by Colton Dixon. It's a song that I came on. I was, we're going through family worship. We just finished talking about Noah and the reality of here's Noah. He's just a dude, right? Here's Noah and the Lord, now it doesn't work this way anymore, but the Lord actually tells him you're going to build a boat, right? But he's in the, he's literally in a desert. It takes years. This thing is massive. He's in the desert and he's like, I haven't seen rain, but the Lord told me to build this boat. So if that's true, I need to do whatever the heck I've got to do to make that boat happen. We don't live in a space where the Lord will verbally tell you, Brian, you're going to build a big team, right? You're going to do that. We don't have that. What we do have, though, is a rational brain, a heart that is ambitious. Again, we've got to be cautious about that, too. But we can say, Lord, I don't know. What I've, what I've done, I started a business a couple years ago, and it totally flopped. But that's OK. But I remember we were in one of our early meetings, and one of my business partners, we have this meeting, and at the very end of the meeting, he goes, You know what, guys? In the year from now, everyone's either going to think you guys were brilliant, or you guys were stupid to think that was ever going to work. But no matter what happens, guys, we believe the Lord wants us to try this, so we're going to give it our best effort. And I remember thinking, Man, what a good mindset, right? Not that I have that every day. But the reality is, because we don't know what the Lord wants us to do, we tend to do less than what we're capable of, right, because of the fear, because of whatever, because we're like, well, what if it doesn't work? Well, what if the Lord said to you, Brian, I need you to build whatever. I need you to build a massive boat and sail through the city of Raleigh, North Carolina and go to Garrett's house in Virginia? You'd be like, that doesn't make any sense. But if the Lord had verbally told you, you'd like, okay, I guess I'm going to do it, right? We don't have that. But what we do have is, You are gifted. You are skilled. The Lord has given you talents. Be the one that the Lord says, well done, good and faithful servant. I turn my five into 10. I turn my 10 into 20, whatever it is. And what that means is we have to look and say, OK, Lord, I'm going to do it to the best of my ability. And everything we look at, myself very much included, we have to say, am I being excellent? If I'm not being excellent, I'm either doing too many things because I can't do the things I committed to excellently, or I just need to level up my game, dude. Right? Especially you as a husband, Andy as a husband, and a dad. Like, we just got to level up our game, man. We're the leaders of these families. We got to show up, man. We got to pour ourselves in. And I'm speaking to myself, too. So, man, that's my encouragement. Right? So thank you for sharing that, Brian, and you too, Monica. But thanks for your honesty. So here's what this looks like. Right? Again, I just marinate on it. I don't know what you're supposed to do. I'm not the Lord. But here's what I think is my hope for us as Christian agents. is we can see, you know what, there's a pathway here where the rest of my life doesn't have to be about selling real estate, where my identity doesn't have to be in being a real estate agent, right? That doesn't need to be what I live and breathe. Now, maybe that's a good, you know, our identity is in Christ, but maybe it's good thing if you want to be in real estate for the rest of your life. I've personally never met someone that's like, I want to sell real estate for the rest of my life. I've never met someone who's like, when I'm 80, I hope I'm at the kitchen table, right? I hope I'm talking to that seller. I've never met anybody like that. What I have met is the person that's like, resigned themselves to this is how it works. Resigned themselves that for the next 20 years, even when they're having dinner with their family, when the phone rings, they got to answer. Or every Saturday, they've got to choose between, I show up at my kid's soccer game or do I have to go to showings? That's, in my opinion, unacceptable. And it's because we have been allowing ourselves to be less than excellent. Here's one of the solutions. It's not the only way. Nobody has to do everything I've done. That is not true. Here's one of the solutions. If you want to solve this problem, it is literally this simple. I genuinely think it's this simple. Become excellent in lead generation. That's step one. And we talk about that a lot on these calls, right? But are you excellent? What do I mean by that? Can you get to, you know, 15 to 20 deals a year consistently. That's all we're talking about. I don't need you to be the rock star of rock stars. I don't need you to be the top 1 % of 1%. I don't need you to do any of that. Can you become excellent in lead generation so you can produce 15 to 20 deals a year? That's it. No. 2, can you understand your lead generation well enough to show one other person. Do you know what you're doing? So you bring that person in. Here's the problem that every agent has, if you ask me. This is why teams exist. They don't know what to do, number one. And number two, when they know what to do, they don't do it often enough. That is literally the problem. That's why an agent joins a team. Show me what to do, and then make sure I actually do it. Right? That's the, that's why I hired a health coach. I know what to do. I'm just still eating donuts. Not anymore. Been a while, unfortunately. One day. One day, Tracy. I'm going to get distracted thinking about donuts, Understand lead generation. Just show one other person how to do it. And then number three, have the humility. Get out of the way. In my opinion, that is literally the plan. And it's that simple. When it comes to that, you're generating 15, 20 deals a year. And whenever the time is, if there's a time, maybe it's not. And you say, You know what, Lord, I'm spending, whatever, 40 hours a week on this. There's like, you know, I remember talking to a gentleman in Canada, and he's been selling real estate for a long time. has a big team. And he says he had lost his wife. I think he's in his late 70s, early 80s. He lost his wife 4 years ago. And he's telling us, and we're just asking, What are the things you hope to accomplish? Right. And he says, I really believe the Lord wants me to write a book on grief. Right. And I'm like, it's amazing, bro. I hope you will. And then my, my business partner on the call said, Why haven't you? And he said, his literal answer was, I've been too busy selling real estate. And I was like, Bro, can I just help you not do that anymore? Right. What is the Lord calling you to do that maybe we've not gotten to? Now, The Lord has called you to be excellent as a real estate agent. How do I know that? Because you're here. You're in this industry. OK? Just like when I was in school, I wish I had this mind. When I was in college, I didn't think that, bro, you're called to be excellent in your class because you're at school. I was just like, this is annoying. How do I have more free time to play video games? I that was literally my experience in college, right? How do I know you're supposed to be excellent in real estate? Because you're in it right now. But maybe, maybe there's other things the Lord has put on your heart. And the only reason we haven't gotten to them is because we just don't have a good enough understanding of just how to get out of the way. Right? And it's this simple. Become excellent. Generate 15 to 20 deals a year. Find an agent. And this is stuff we can talk to you and I will help you with. Find an agent. You're like, Look, I want to help you figure out how to do, and I'll give you guys all my splits and every possible resource you could possibly want and say, Look, I'm going to hand you these 20 deals a year. I'm just going to hand them to you. I need you to bring in 10 to 15, whatever the number is, so that we just both break even. But I'm going to give you a guaranteed income, and you're going to help me make sure I break even so I have more free time. Because I'd like to go write a book. I'd like to go whatever, right? I'm missing too much of family time. I need to go on more vacations. I miss hanging out with my husband. Whatever it is, we can do that. In the Lord's kindness, we're in an industry that we can do that. We just have to say, here's the path when I'm going to go pursue that. And in your pursuit of that, it's the constant asking of the Lord, Is this what you want from me? And if it is, help me to do it well. And if it's not, change my path. I don't know what you're supposed to do. But I will tell you this super quick, and then I'll stop for any questions or thoughts, whatever. Me and my buddy Dave are merging our teams together. Many of you know that already. We're in the process of merging our teams. I started on his team 11 years ago. He's been in business for 20-plus years, an amazing man. We're merging our teams together, which is super awesome. Well, on Sunday, the pastor's talking about a holy ambition versus personal ambition, right. And I just, I'm in the service, and I start feeling the conviction, whatever it was, I think it was the Spirit convicting me, but feeling the conviction of, we're, we're offering out a 50-50 split. And that's normal. That's very common, right? That's a normal thing in a team. But I just, it felt like I was doing that ultimately, because I was looking at how do I make sure I'm not wasting time and I'm generating the income I need to. Though I will tell you it's to serve the agent and this is the best way to do it. How do we not do it like the world? What do we think the Lord actually wants for us, right? What does it look like to have a holy ambition that maybe at the end of the day, we, people don't look at us and say, man, you guys crushed it on the team, but they look around and see a bunch of other people that solve this problem that aren't with us anymore, but they're spending more time with the kids. And they're like, we learned that from those guys. What if that's what we're called to? And so we had an amazing meeting on Monday morning. We decided, you know we're going to do a tiered system. They can keep going. And here's the process, 50-50 to 60-40 to 70-32. Here's your off-ramp. I don't know a lot of teams that have an off-ramp. We're going to actually show you, here's your off-ramp, because you shouldn't stay here forever, because you need to go get leverage so you can walk in whatever the Lord wants for you. We're not gonna do this perfectly. We are sinful people, right? But by the Lord's kindness, we have the ability not to sin sometimes. And so we want to do that. What is that ambition that can serve the Christian agent community? It's this, I'm gonna teach you this so you leave me and go do it on your own. So you grow and you go. That's what I want for you. When we understand these things, the impact we can have on people around us is huge. The best thing I've ever done in my business in 11 years is not sell 50 homes, is not make a ton of money. It's figure out this model. I brought in Jesse, who was brand new, making 40K a year. And he was about to have his first kid. And I said, bro, you're working 60 hours a week. I want to help you have a better way. I want you to earn more money. want you to spend more time with your family." He came in like a rocket, man. I mean, I didn't give him all the deals right away, ready to approve it, but came in like a rocket, working crazy amounts of time, whatever. And over the course of two years, as he was generating more deals and was getting all my deals, the best thing that's ever happened to me in this industry is about a month ago, he sends me a text. He's been with me for about four years. Maybe it's almost five years. He sends me a text and he goes, Garrett, because they just had their second kid. He goes, Garrett, I'm buying a new van for my wife, all cash today, and I'm taking the rest of the day off. Thank you for bringing me into this industry and showing me the right way. That's the best thing I've ever done. Right? And I just want to do that for more people. And you can do that for more people. It starts here, and this is how we change people's lives. Don't be discouraged. you're, if you're not close to this, that's fine. Just figure this out. You're smart enough. Anybody can figure that out. Figure that out. That's step one. All right. Sorry, I didn't mean to talk that much today, but thoughts, questions, comments, anything, anything I need to go back over, whatever I can do to be helpful, whatever. I think it was just such great information. Oops, sorry, Andy, go ahead. No, I was just going say you're super helpful. Thank you. Yeah, buddy. Yeah. And what you said about becoming a super lead generator, doing that through community connection, having an impact is huge. And if you become that expert lead generator, you could, if you like planning events, you can do free community events. There's so much you can do. So much you can do through giving, having an impact on your community, being in the way for good things to happen. Yeah. Authentically. Yeah, huge. Yeah. The fun thing for me is, and this is, this has just been like so fun, and I just want other people to have the opportunity is, so you guys know, like I started a podcast, I started the Faithful Agent, I wrote a book. We actually just got a book offer last night. So pray for that. I have no idea what I'm doing or if I should do it. But it's exciting. And all of that is just because I figured this part out, right? I figured out I wasn't going to do more time at work because I wanted to hang out with my family. I figured out how to do this and it freed me up to do all kinds of new things. And it's been so fun and life giving and hopefully a blessing to other people that if I hadn't figured out, would have never happened. I would have no capacity to do this kind of stuff. I'm not saying everybody needs to do what I'm doing. They don't. What I'm saying is you're more than just an agent. So what are the other things that we could also be doing? And to your point, Monica, now I'm gonna spend my time, actually tomorrow I'm building out a system how I go into my community, my church community and the churches around me and teach people how to make an extra 500 to $1,000 a month, right? Because I know people are hurting and that's a passion that I have and I wanna teach that and help people do that. Because I've done it on a small scale, I wanna do it on a big scale. What's the best part of that? I'm serving people in the church and the byproduct of that is maybe if they wanna buy a house, they come to us. That's awesome. Now I get to do the thing I love to do. It's going to serve my team because it's going to generate more business. But the best part is it's something that I actually love to do. Right. And I didn't have the freedom to do that before unless I was going to work 60 hours a week and I wasn't going to. That's what I want for you guys. So it's time to wrap. Let me pray. And I appreciate it. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I'm just grateful for your kindness. Again, Lord, whatever it is that is of you, I pray that You would prick their hearts, Holy Spirit, that You would grant them discernment in whatever it is that You want for us. Lord, this is not my business. It's not their business. Lord, we are stewards of whatever business You want for us. God, for myself as well, I pray that we would pursue excellence to the glory of the Father alone. Lord, that You would grant us whatever influence and whatever level of business we're supposed to have, and we would keep our eyes fixed on You. None of these things, Lord, save us. It is only by Your Son and His death on a cross and His life, His new life, that we also are entered into because of what you've done. That's the salvation that we have. Lord, along the way, we want to honor You with what You've given us to steward. Let us do that well. Father, I thank You for everybody on this call. pray that You would guide us and lead us in whatever it is that You are calling us to and what You have for us. God, that we would do it with excellence and honor of You, Father. Thank You for Your kindness to us. We love You, Your Sozame. pray. Come in. All right. Love you guys. Have an awesome day. Thank you. See you guys. Tracy, come back next time. Good to see you.