283 | Exposing the Lie that More Closings Mean More Absence: Realtor Systems to Sell More Homes and Protect Presence

Realtor systems are the difference between scaling your income and sacrificing your presence at home. In this episode, we expose the lie that more closings automatically mean more absence—and why that belief has quietly shaped thousands of real estate careers. For years, agents have accepted the false equation that more production equals less family time. But what if that’s not true? What if the real issue isn’t volume… but a lack of mature systems?

Garrett unpacks the dangerous mindset that says, “If I want to sell more homes, I have to miss more dinners.” That belief sounds logical on the surface. More deals equal more work. More work equals more time away. But Garrett points out that growth doesn’t demand your absence—chaos does. When your business grows faster than your structure, your family pays the price.

This conversation dives deep into what actually protects presence while increasing production. Predictable lead generation. Clear communication boundaries. Defined response windows. Protected calendar blocks. Strategic leverage. These aren’t luxuries—they are mature realtor systems.

Garrett shares a powerful story of a father trying to double his income without sacrificing time with his daughters. The breakthrough wasn’t about grinding harder. It was about structure. The truth is, you don’t need smaller goals—you need stronger realtor systems. When your business is built on clarity instead of chaos, you can gain momentum without losing alignment.

There’s also an honest reflection on ambition. Ambition isn’t the enemy. But unmanaged ambition will redline your life. Especially for the faith driven entrepreneur, success without boundaries can quietly erode what matters most. Selling more homes should not cost you your calling. The real win is building a business that allows you to gain leverage, work fewer hours, and create true work life balance without shrinking your income.

If you’ve ever felt physically present but mentally absent… if you’ve told yourself “it’s just a season”… if you’ve believed that doubling production means doubling stress… this episode will challenge that narrative. Because the problem isn’t growth. The problem is immature structure.

Going from 20 to 40 deals doesn’t require more chaos—it requires better realtor systems. From hiring a showing assistant to implementing a transaction coordinator, from setting office hours to defining client expectations, Garrett walks through practical shifts that create freedom. These are the same structural principles any seasoned money expert would tell you: maximize your highest and best use of time, delegate the rest, and build assets—not exhaustion.

The question isn’t, “Can I sell more homes?”
The question is, “Can I sell more homes the right way?”

If your production doubled tomorrow, would your peace collapse—or would your realtor systems support it?

This episode is for the high-producing Christian agent who refuses to choose between success and presence. You don’t need to shrink your ambition. You need to mature your str

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Transcript

 If I want to sell more homes, I'm going to have to miss more family time. That belief has quietly shaped thousands of real estate careers more closings, more income, and naturally, more absence. But what if that equation is wrong? We've quietly accepted a false equation in real estate that more production equals less presence than more closings equals more missed dinners. But what if it's not volume stealing your time, but a lack of structure? In this episode, I unpack why selling more homes doesn't have to mean missing more family, and how mature systems protect both growth and presence. Do you want to grow your business and still be everything God has called you to be, but feel stuck in that constant work mode with no real balance? If so, you're in the right place. Hi, I'm Garrett, husband, data five and high producing Christian agent. I learned how to build a thriving real estate business without sacrificing my faith, my family or myself. And now I'm here to share what actually works. So if you're ready for proven systems, smarter strategies, and a God honoring way forward, refill that coffee, dust off that Bible and let's go. If you are producing agent or team leader and your business is growing, but you feel like you're running from showing to showing, juggling kids and clients and hoping nothing slips through the cracks, this call is for you. Or maybe things are going really well, but you're starting to wonder do I have to sell homes forever? Or is there a real exit strategy? My team and I would love to talk with you on our 30 minute breakthrough call will help you identify one structural shift. That one shift will make your business more steady, more predictable, and less dependent on you all while giving you more margin at home without shrinking your income. If that sounds like you, go to Faithful Agent and grab one of the spots today, that's faithful Agent Comm, and we look forward to talking to you soon. I had a conversation just yesterday with a gentleman who's trying to grow his business, but he's the primary caregiver to his three daughters. His wife has a full time job. And so he told me that, Garrett, I'm trying to get from 100,000 a year to 200,000 a year. And then he said this, but I just don't have the time to do it. And so I asked him, well, what are you concerned about going from 100,000 to 200,000? What do you mean you don't have the time? And he said, Garrett, I've got about six hours a day, and I'm unwilling to spend less time with my girls and with my wife. And so I told him, first of all, good for you. That's amazing. That's where your priority should be. But it's not true that more sales has to take more time. He asked me, help me understand what that means. And that's exactly what this episode is about. We're going to dive into that right now. All right. Now, before we jump into this episode, let me give you this week's joke of the week. A Sunday school teacher was teaching the Ten Commandments to her five and six year olds. After explaining the commandment to honor thy father and thy mother, she asked her kids, is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters? One of the little boys shouted, thou shalt not kill! Hahaha! So true! All right. Let's dive in to this week's episode as we expose the lie that more closings means more absence. Because here's this false formula. And I was traveling around teaching in 2019, pre-COVID. And I remember I would always say this, that the industry has told us you have two choices. You can sell 20 homes a year if you only want to work 40 hours a week. But if you want to sell 50 homes, you got to work 80 hours a week. And it's as if this is the only formula that exists in our industry that more production equals less presence at home, and the industry reinforces it. They say it's just a season, or you can rest later or this is what it takes to succeed or do it for your family. We've normalized absence as the cost of ambition, and that's where the lie hides. Production doesn't demand your absence. Chaos does. The real problem is not more production. The real problem is that more production exposes what's actually going on underneath the surface. So if your systems are bad, if your structures are bad, or let's be honest, they don't even exist in the first place, then more production just amplifies the chaos that is already brewing under the surface. Good systems and structure. If those exist and you're built on a strong foundation when you increase your production, it doesn't pull you away from what really matters. It just enhances the systems and structures that you already have built. I think here's the real problem. The real problem that you need to ask yourself is, do you have predictable lead flow? Do you have clear client communication expectations? Do you have defined response windows? Do you have protected calendar blocks? Do you have leverage in place? If not again, then the growth doesn't multiply income. It multiplies disorder. Because when your business grows faster than your structure, your family is the one that absorbs that gap. Let me say that again. When your business grows faster than your structure, your family is the one left absorbing the gap. More homes don't steal your evenings. Poor systems do. So do you have predictable lead flow? What happens often in our industry is talking to someone yesterday and they said, here's what happens. And it's such a common thing that I hear quite honestly all the time. Here's what happens. I get busy doing my deals. I stopped doing my lead generation and my deal's closed, and then I'm stuck in a lull. So I start lead generating again. I get more deals and then my leads. Uh, I work those deals, and then my leads dry up, and it's just this vicious cycle, right? There's no predictability in the lead flow because there's no predictability in the lead generation, actual activity. And so do you have predictable lead flow. The real question is are you taking predictable actions to generate leads? I don't care if you have deals or not. I mean, I do care, but you know, whether you have deals or not. Are you doing the work? Do you have structure? Do you have systems in place or are you just showing up? I was talking to another agent after I was speaking to this event and was talking to the southern agent, and they said, look, here's the reality for me. Here's what my Legion strategy looks like when I'm in the car. If I feel like that. Oh, I haven't talked to that person in a while. I'll pick up the phone and I give him a call. Right. And that's not a structure. That's not a system that's not duplicated. That's not repeatable. That's not structure, that's not system. And so this agent's concern was, well, if I start schools, then how do I not spend a lot more time doing it? We've got to have first and foremost really clear, simple lead generation strategies that don't require a lot of time. I spend about two hours a week on lead generation. It produces 50 deals a year. And we've talked about simplicity. Go back through and listen to some of the episodes. We'll do some more here in the future. But simplicity in your lead generation, so you know what you need to show up and do. Why does that matter? What matters in terms of of pipeline, right. It matters in terms of generating the numbers and the business that you need to take care of your family. But it really matters, because how else do you know if you won the day? One of the problems in our industry is if I asked you, did you win the day? What would you say? How do you know? What does even winning look like? Most of us don't have clear expectations of. This is what a win looks like in real estate today. And so when I go home and I'm supposed to be present with my family, we're going to talk about this in a minute. When I'm supposed to be present with my family, my mind is circling back over and over and over again because I don't know, did I do what I was supposed to do? Did I push my business forward? Did I do the things that I committed to? What's going on? We've got to have the predictable lead generation strategy, then clear client communication expectations. You all have heard me say, but when I would meet with clients, I would sit down and say, here's my hours. I'm available from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday. Wednesday night is date night, so you're not going to get me past 5 p.m. and then Saturday is by appointment only, and I don't work Sundays unless we're actively negotiating a deal. I'm not going to let that fall apart because I'm not working. But unless you're actively negotiating a deal, you're not going to get a hold of me on Sunday. And so I had very clear client expectations. These are my hours. This is when you can get Ahold of me. And then do you have to find response windows? I would tell everyone. So I check my text and my emails from 9 to 10, and then I check again from 3 to 4. Now, of course, if there's something urgent, I'm going to be paying attention. If we're actively looking for homes, of course I'm going to be checking a little bit more often, but I don't want you to expect a response from me right away. 9 to 10. 3 to 4. Right. Do they have understandings of. This is how I work. And this is the expectations which leads into a protected calendar block. Do you know what what you're supposed to spend your time on? Or are you just doing stuff, hoping that it works? And then do you have leverage in place? Right. One of the the misunderstandings in our industry is that if you want to go from 20 deals to 40 deals, that it's going to double the time away. Well, that's true without structure. That's true without leverage. You don't always need to go hire a full time admin. Maybe you go hire a showing assistant and that's showing assistant. Their job is to go to all the showings, go to all the walkthroughs, go to all the the home inspections, and you pay them 30 bucks an hour. And if you're doing 20 deals and let's say ten of those are buyers, and the average buyer takes ten hours of you driving around doing inspections, all the things, and you pay them 30 bucks an hour on ten buyers with ten hours, you just bought back 100 hours. You bought back 100 hours for $3,000. That is absolutely worth it. Maybe you need a T.C. in place, a variable, T.C.. What I mean is not a fixed cost where you're paying someone a salary, but you're paying someone per deal as long as it closes. Maybe it's 400 bucks. Maybe you're paying a 400 bucks and it takes. You know, it normally take you three, four hours to do the transaction work during that process. And you're thinking, well, why don't I just do that myself? Because it's about having the leverage in place for you to focus on what actually matters and whether you're at 20 deals or ten deals, and then you want to go to 40. If you understand how to get leverage at 20, you're going to understand how to get leverage at 40. So if you're a 20 transactions and you say, well, if I just do all the transaction coordinating myself and it takes me four hours per transaction, that's 80 hours for the year, right? What is your time worth? What if you spend 40 of those 80 hours loving on your family, and you spent the other 40 hours generating more business because your highest and best use of your time, the most dollar productive use of your time, is actually going out and generating more business. And we're going to talk about leverage in the future. The problem the problem is not the growth. The problem is when you grow, it just multiplies the disorder that already exists. Presence without guilt is a structural issue, not a volume issue. What do I mean? How are we able to be present with our family without feeling the guilt of I should be working, I should be doing something? It's not a problem of you. You've got an issue where you're trying to be ambitious and you need to take care of your family and all those things. Those are good things. Those are godly things. The problem is the structure. Do you know that you won the day? Do you know that you did the lead generation you were supposed to do? Do you know that you've got protected windows in your time? And so from 430 to 530. For me, when my literally turn my phone off, that it's protected, that I know I get to show up for my family and literally no one can interrupt me for just an hour. Do you have leverage in place that you know you've got someone good who's showing the houses or is doing the paperwork for you? It's a structural issue, my friends. And when you understand structures and systems and you can get those in place, you can grow in scale and sell as many homes as you want to without trading time. And then you get to show up better for your family because you know the work is getting taken care of. You know, it's easy for me to say this now. I've been in the industry for 12 years, and I spent a long time learning and getting coached and understanding how to do this at a high level. But there's plenty of times I've felt torn, and I'll share a story with you that I believe I maybe have shared before. But I'm working and I'm busting my butt and I'm growing and my my team is doing well. We're selling 100, 120 homes a year by referral. And I'm and I'm pushing and I'm trying to hit my goals as fast as I can. While I remember being at home one night and I don't know why, this question had never popped in my head, but it finally does. And I pause and I say to my wife, Rachel, I say, hey babe, I have a question. If it takes me longer. I was thinking it was going to take me two years, right? Two years to achieve the goals I had set out. If it takes me longer to achieve the goals that we agreed on. But I get to be home and more present. Is that what you want? And she looked at me and said, yeah, absolutely, that's what I want. And I thought, why have I never asked that question? Here I am thinking, I've got to go. I've got to push. This is what my wife wants. This is what my kids want. I gotta push, I gotta go, I gotta push, I gotta go because I have to achieve these goals. And truthfully, it was on a time timeline that I set so I could have just changed the timeline, right? I didn't need smaller goals. I just needed to change the timeline. So it freed me up to feel like I don't have to do it all in a week. I don't know about you all, but when I come up with the idea, I want it done within a day. And if it's not going, if it's going to take more than a day, I'm annoyed. I need it to happen now. And that's a problem that we have and it causes us to be physically there, but mentally absent. It causes us to say, I'm doing this for them, but they're not actually showing up. So what's the point? I didn't need smaller goals. I needed stronger structure. So here's what I did. I pushed back my timeline a little bit and I said, okay, if it takes me five years, but I get to be home more, that's okay, right? If I don't get those into, that's okay, because I don't want to lose my family along the way. What's the point of that? And as I started to calm myself down and say, don't have to sprint to the finish line, it gave me long enough to stop and look around and say, well, wait a minute. The way I'm doing it is not even the best way to do this anyways. Maybe I need better structure. So I went out and I found leverage in place via transaction coordinator, via showing assistant via admin. And guess what happened? I actually hit my goals and even less time than I was originally going to hit my goals, and I ended up getting to spend even more time at home because all of a sudden I had structure, I had system. Ambition can be redeemable. We just can't mismanage it if we allow our ambition to redline us right in a car, to redline us when we're all the way at max all the time, which you might feel like all the time if you allow yourself to be redline and constantly because you're ambitious and you're trying to hit your goals and you know you're trying to get there as fast as you possibly can, which which I understand and I respect to a degree. You can do it, but don't do it before you've got the structure and systems in place. Don't build your house on the sand. Build it on the rock. Because the truth is, if success makes you unavailable to the people God entrusted to you first. Something is not in alignment. Sometimes it's not even sin that chokes us. It's success without boundaries, right? Luke eight Is Jesus talking about the the good soil? And yet the seed that you know gets, gets thrown on and taken away, but then the seed that grows up alongside the thorn and Jesus says, and the cares and the riches and the pleasures of this world choke it out. Sometimes it's not even that sin. It's just this success without boundaries. It is dangerous, my friends, for you to go and say, I'm going to go crush it this year. I'm going to sell 50 homes, and I'm going to just run around and do whatever I have to do to do it. And my family's going to be so proud. And maybe they are to some degree, but that is a dangerous thing for you to do if you have no structure, no systems, no discipline, that is dangerous because you'll get there. You'll get there because you will be so blinded by this definition of what winning is going to look like for you, that you'll do whatever it takes and sacrifice whoever you have to sacrifice just to get there. In the whole time, you'll be promising yourself and your family, I'm doing this for you. And they're like, yeah, dad, but I'd rather you just be here. It's dangerous for you to be shot out of a cannon without anything to catch you. Systems and structure. That's what matters. Ultimately, at the end of the day, if you want to grow and you want to sell more homes and and you don't want to take more time to do it, I absolutely applaud you. And I love that that's what I'm all about. Let's sell more homes. Let's make more money. Let's do it in less time. I want you to have that time where you are sitting there face to face with your spouse, face to face with your kids, face to face with your loved ones. And you feel zero guilt because nothing. Nothing in your business is lacking structure or systems. You know where everything is. You know where you've put it, you know who's taking care of it, and you get to show up and just be there. You gotta have predictable lead generation rhythms. You've got to architect your calendar so it protects the most important work. You got to define the communication policy with your clients. It's okay to tell them I'm not answering at 10:00 at night, because even if I could, I used to say this all the time. Even if I could do something about it, the seller is not awake anyways. So let's talk in the morning. It's okay to have clear off times that you're actually off. Going from 20 to 40 deals a year. It doesn't require more chaos. It requires more clarity, and it requires a better foundation. So my question is, have you accepted absence as the price of growth? Or maybe you've just outgrown your current structure? If your production doubled? Would your piece collapse? Look, you don't need to shrink your ambition. You need to mature your structure. If you're producing at a high level but you want to scale without sacrificing presence, that's a conversation I'd love to have with you. Just go to faithful. Com grab a timeless talk. My friends, I love you and I care deeply about our industry. And I care deeply about you. The Christian agent. Who's maybe stuck in that false idea. That false equation that if I do more sales, it means I must be gone more often. It's just not true. Structure over hustle presents without guilt. That's what matters. And I'm here to support you. And I hope that these episodes do help you in some small way. But if you want to talk faithfully, grab a time and nothing would honor me more than share this with a friend. Help more people hear what we're trying to talk about, because at the end of the day, I'm trying to flip the script on an industry that says, if you want to succeed, it's going to cost you your life. At the end of the day, I'm trying to restore the real estate agents family that kids would grow up everywhere with more present moms and dads. Not because they sacrifice their ambition, but because they built the right way. So I'd love for you to join me in that movement. I love you, faithful agents. I will see you next week. Hey Christian, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If it resonated, would you take 30s and share it with another agent who's also trying to grow their business without losing their faith, family, or peace? That's how this message spreads. And if you haven't yet, hit that subscribe button so you don't miss future episodes. I release new ones each Thursday to help you build success that actually lasts. It genuinely fires me up knowing this podcast is helping you pursue excellence to the glory of God, both at work and at home. I'll meet you back here next week for another episode of The Faithful Agent