GRIT: The Real Estate Growth Mindset

Joe Herrera comes from a long line of alcoholics and his family lived from paycheck to paycheck. With a lack of ideal role models in his family, Joe got terrible grades and he barely finished high school. After graduation, he went on a 2-year mission with their church and this experience changed him as a person. Coming home, he knew he wanted to break those generational chains and make something o...

Guy Gal has always been a problem solver. Growing up, he liked to solve complex problems especially when they affect people he cares about. He also liked to do it for those who deserve to be helped because they were exploited or mistreated. This had a great impact on how he made decisions in his life. Guy started his first company in college and what started as a little weekend project eventually...

When he was six, Rod Khleif and his family migrated from Holland and settled in Denver. They didn’t have much growing up. To put food on the table, his mother worked as a housemaid and did babysitting on the side. But his mom had an incredible work ethic and was a bit of an entrepreneur as well. With the money she earned from babysitting, she bought the house across the street from where they were...

Although Andrew Franklin’s father had a successful real estate business, he was against the idea that his children would follow in his footsteps. Somehow, he believed that the real estate agent will be eliminated in the future. So Andrew worked in investment banking for 6 years, primarily on mergers and acquisitions. But real estate runs in their family’s blood and Andrew didn’t just want to be hi...

Doug Gieck was managing ice cream shops when he got headhunted as a client care coordinator for a referral business under the REMAX Alliance brokerage.  He didn’t know anything about real estate then but he was able to learn his way around by making appointments for real estate agents. In 2009, the company Doug worked for started their own brokerage, 8z Real Estate.  Here, he started as the manage...

When Chris Craddock graduated college in 2000, he worked as a staff for a Christian ministry where he earned $20,000 a year.  After 3 years, his wife got pregnant and he knew he needed to earn more. This was when he looked into real estate investing and got the idea of talking to people who were in distress and offered to buy their houses. In the next four months, he ended up making 12 times as mu...

Tamir Poleg started in the real estate industry as a construction worker 16 years ago. This experience allowed him to learn homes and construction from a fundamental level.  After earning a degree in economics, he joined the tech world with a couple of start-up companies doing mainly sales positions in Europe. In 2006, Tamir started his own real estate company in Houston, Texas. When the market ta...

In 2005, Rivers Pearce started doing e-commerce and lead generation for an ad agency in Atlanta and then moved to Charleston and South Carolina.  Five years later, a real estate technology startup called BoomTown was looking for someone who can do search engine marketing and Rivers joined them as their 10th employee. For almost a decade, Rivers helped grow BoomTown’s client base from 70 to well ov...

Growing up, Steve de Laveaga loved playing basketball. As a high school senior, he attended basketball camps at Cal Lutheran. Due to his athletic talent, he was offered a full academic scholarship and decided to take up Communications. Through this course, he discovered that the key to creating great influence and wealth in any field is the ability to communicate your vision and passion to your ne...

Upon getting his real estate license in 2000, Michael LaFido worked as a part-time agent and full-time high school health and physical education teacher. But with a growing family, he felt he was spreading himself too thin.  So in 2010, he decided to go into real estate full time. Several years later, Michael did some real estate coaching and consulting where he developed a product called “The Ult...

Baseball has always been Robert Lucido’s dream and passion. At the age of 5, he dreamed of joining the big leagues. He played through high school, became an all-academic athlete in college, and played professionally for the Toronto Blue Jays and the Texas Rangers.   He was often the smallest guy on the team. But what he lacked in height, he made up for in hard work.  As an athlete, he always belie...

Brad Sugars has been in business since he was 15 years old. He has bought, sold, or started more than 50 companies. Throughout his 3-decade career as an entrepreneur, he has become a strong advocate for building a business that works without you. Today, Brad Sugars owns 9 companies and is the CEO & Founder of the largest business coaching company in the world, ActionCOACH.  He is also a bestsellin...

Kevin Flaherty has been in the real estate business for 33 years.  He was a solo agent for a very long time and used to build custom web pages for homes in the ’90s.  When MLS listings went online, he was already ahead of the curve.  He thought of ways to further improve web pages by adding plans and videos with narration. He then ran a team under iPro Realty Ltd. Brokerage for the past 11 years w...

Spring Bengtzen started in real estate while she was only 22. A developer refused to hire her at that time because they thought she was too young. However, she was determined to prove herself, so she agreed to work for free for the first couple of months. After learning the trade, she was able to sell her first house just by transacting over the phone. This impressed the developer, and they decide...

Before coming into the real estate world, Brindley Tucker worked in the financial sector and sold country club memberships.  She realized then that the best way to learn things is to become an assistant to someone doing it.  So when she wanted to go into real estate in 2011, she decided to apply as a real estate assistant and ended up working as a KW Marketplace Director of Agent Services. This wa...

Hedda Parashos has been a real estate agent since 2006. Eight years ago, she started Palisades Realty with 14 agents. For the longest time, Hedda didn't want to grow her business mainly because she was afraid of growth.  Eventually, a third of her staff left the company and in her mind, she felt stagnant. That’s when she decided to change and do an overhaul of not just her mindset but of the entir...

After going through a massive business failure almost 10 years ago, Chris decided to give real estate a try. He’s always been attracted to this industry because of the many different things one gets to learn from it and how there are no limits on personal growth. Chris started doing really well as an agent.  But eventually, he found that the work that needed to be done was taking too much of his t...

Matt Mick started his own real estate team with 5 to 6 agents. However, year after year, they noticed that their sales slowed down, with only minor growth. In order to go to the next phase of their business, they knew they needed a better way to manage things in their team.  That’s when they decided to jump on with Sisu. Today, Matt is the Team Lead at Lincoln Select Real Estate Group - Nebraska R...

Michelle Seiler Tucker is the CEO and Founder of Seiler Tucker Incorporated. Michelle has sold over 500 enterprises and currently owns and operates a number of profitable companies. Michelle Seiler Tucker is a professional with the following distinctions and certifications: M&AMI (Master Intermediary in Mergers and Acquisitions), CSBA (Certified Senior Business Analyst), Best-Selling Author, and M...

Twin brothers, Clint and Shane Neal jumped into the real estate business right after they graduated from Texas A&M University in 2008.  After spending 4 years as solo agents, they realized that although they are successful, handling everything independently has become difficult and they needed some leverage in order to take some time back to themselves. That’s when they decided to build a team. In...

Brian Icenhower has been in the real estate industry for nearly 3 decades. His father was a real estate broker which got him exposed to this business at a young age. He went into law school and practiced for a couple of years until he realized it wasn’t for him.  That’s when he decided to start a high producing real estate team in California and run a small boutique brokerage that later grew to a...

Jeff Quintin started his career in real estate in 1992. He established the Quintin Group in Southern New Jersey and since then it has expanded into Cherry Hill, NJ, and Philadelphia, PA, Jupiter, FL, and Outer Banks, NC. Jeff is considered one of the most successful real estate agents in the country and was recognized by The Wall Street Journal as #44 out of 1.2 million real estate agents for sell...

Todd Crockett has been in the real estate business since 1995. He is an instructor who trains fellow realtors across the United States. He's also a much sought after speaker for conventions and business seminars. Todd uses his education and experience to incorporate innovative concepts that give sellers a major marketing advantage in selling their home.  Today, Todd is a partner for The Crockett T...

David Anderson was born into a family of entrepreneurs. He first worked for their family-owned online travel business but after 13 years, he felt that he needed to do something different. That’s when he decided to start his own company.  He went to an INMAN event which sparked his interest in the real estate industry.  Then he went to different brokerages to see how they managed the business and f...

Terrence Murphy started from very humble beginnings and worked his way up to where he is now.  He first became an entrepreneur mowing lawns for residential and commercial places when he was 12. He then tried different jobs to help his family - which also taught him the value of hardwork. Eventually, he had a very successful football career and was even drafted by the Green Bay Packers in the NFL d...