to talk about the journey from selling nearly 4,000 homes to leading one of the fastest-growing brokerages in the industry. Leo shares how he started in real estate at 19, thinking he would be an investor, and became one of the country's top agents.
Leo dives into how market cycles shaped his career, from making over $300,000 as a college student to nearly going bankrupt during the 2008 financial crisis. He explains how those experiences taught him to adapt and build resilience. "I thought I was that good. I wasn’t. I was just in a bubble," he admits. He also shares how these lessons now influence his leadership at eXp, where he focuses on staying ahead of industry shifts.
The conversation explores what it takes to scale in real estate. Leo discusses how he built one of the first teams to do over $100 million in sales and why understanding unit economics and market timing made the difference. He explains how the best agents and teams today focus on efficiency, lead generation, and knowing their numbers.
As CEO, Leo is now leading eXp 2.0, a new phase of the company focused on making everything faster, smoother, and more agent-centric. He breaks down how eXp is investing in better technology, faster payments, and deeper agent support to stay ahead. "My goal is to deliver so much value that it’s silly not to be with us," he says.
Leo also gets personal, sharing how he prioritizes family and work-life balance despite a demanding role. He tracks time with his kids, blocks out non-negotiable time for them, and keeps his schedule tight. "90 percent of the time you’ll spend with your kids is before they turn 18. Make it count," he shares.
Top Takeaways:
(1:53) Leo's real estate and tech journey
(6:22) Entering tech at the worst possible time
(8:32) The first big real estate win
(10:19) The two ways to scale in real estate
(11:27) Why should agents not copy top producers?
(13:38) The importance of relationships
(19:15) Why eXp changed everything
(20:49) Why franchises are dying
(21:53) What makes eXp 2.0 different?
(24:54) Real estate market growth predictions
(27:43) What agents should focus on now
(29:42) Adapting to change in business
(31:08) Controlling your own success
Don’t miss this episode if you want insight into scaling a business, navigating market cycles, and building a real estate career that lasts. Tune in to hear Leo’s perspective on the future of the industry and how the right mindset can make all the difference.
About Leo Pareja
Leo Pareja started his real estate career at 19 and became the #1 Keller Williams Agent worldwide by 28. Over 15 years, he sold around 4,000 homes before co-founding Washington Capital Partners in 2012, which grew into one of the largest private lending firms on the East Coast. In 2016, he co-founded Remine, a real estate tech platform that reached 80% market share and over 1.1 million users.
After exiting both companies, he joined eXp Realty’s leadership team and now serves as CEO. He has been featured in the Swanepoel Power 200 and co-founded the Pareja Family Foundation, providing scholarships for women and minorities to enter the tech industry.
Connect with Leo:
Episode Transcript:
Brian Charlesworth 00:34
All right. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the grit Podcast. I'm Brian Charlesworth. I'm the founder of Sisu, and I'm your host of the show. And today is a day I've been looking forward to for a while. Tracking Leo down with his schedule is not an easy thing to do, but today we have Leo Pareja with us, and Leo is the CEO of eXp now, as you all know, so obviously, he's running one of the biggest, fastest growing companies in the real estate industry. And I've gotten to know Leo quite a bit over the last six months, as Sisu started working with exp about six months ago, and exp announced a relationship with us, and it's been great to be able to see how Leo shows up, shows up for his agent, shows up for his company. And I think where I got to see Leo really in action is with this whole lawsuit that was going through, and Leo was out training everybody on what they needed to do to, you know, be compliant, and how to get through that. And that was a that was a frustrating time for the industry, and I think the industry has really gotten through that now unscathed. Leo, a lot. Thanks to you. So on that note, would love to just turn it over to you, maybe let you give a little bit of intro and maybe share a little bit more about your background. Appreciate,
Leo Pareja 01:53
Brian, thanks for having me first of all. And you know, I think as the CEO of a real estate company of our size and scale, I'm pretty unique in the sense that I'm actually one of the agents, right? I still hold a broker's license. I got licensed in 19 I went on to sell close to 4000 homes in the my, you know, 1415, year career, actively transacting real estate. I started as an agent. I became a team leader. I bought into a franchise. So I am very much a creature of our industry. I then, you know, opportunistically, saw a shift in the financial markets and the rules that came out post financial crisis, and started a hard money debt fund, scaled that that took me on a tech building experience. And I'm not technical I don't have a technical background, and I wanted a loan origination system for myself, because there wasn't one on the market. I think most companies start with an entrepreneur itch that you're trying to scratch for yourself, or, you know, a spouse in your in your experience. Brian and as I started building Tech, I wanted more integrations, and found that I was missing a key element in data, which eventually took me on a full tech journey. And I ended up founding and starting and scaling and then selling a large tech enterprise called remind that ended up with like 85% market share of every US agent through access 200,000 monthly active users in certain markets. I think we still power the majority of the tech stack, from listing input to search to even writing contracts. And most recently, after those two transactions happened, I was in South Florida, mostly spirit fishing, when a mutual friend of Glenn Sanford and I put us in touch. He asked me to be the CTO of EXP, which I had zero interest in doing. He I politely turned it down. He asked me to come spend a day with him. We got to know each other, and he made me a pretty hard offer to refuse, which was, Come hang out for a while. You'll probably go start another company, because you're an entrepreneur. Come help me fix stuff. Right? I have a little company that became a big company, and it was very, kind of non committal, like, hey, just help me fix some stuff, and when you're ready, I'll high five you. And I'd love to invest in your company, which, by the way, was probably the best script you could have ever used on me by after getting to know me, and six months later, I was named the chief officer, and 18 months later I was named the CEO, and I'm not going anywhere, so kudos on his salesmanship. And it's interesting, because sometimes, like, I think I get introduced or someone who reads my resume, it's like, oh, this is, like, this perfect sequential experience that got me from one event to the next. And that's not at all how it happens. It's kind of like this, and it's lots of lots of failure. And luckily, I think I've succeeded slightly more than I failed, so we're up if we're keeping but you know, it's, it's just the journey of life and entrepreneurship, where if you don't stay in the uncomfortable, you don't grow.
Brian Charlesworth 04:33
It's fun to see your story. I think everyone's cheering you on, not just at exp, but everyone from the industry, because they know you come from that real estate background, and I think everybody's just kind of in awe of, how does someone go from from being in real estate for 15 years to being in the position you're in? So I want to go back in time a little bit. Leo, and you started in real estate at 19. Let's talk about before that. Like, where did you grow up? How. You grow up, and how is it at 19, you started selling homes, because that wasn't normal, especially back then. Today, it might be a little bit more. So
Leo Pareja 05:07
my my child, is very different. I actually grew up in Six South American countries before turning 12 years old. My dad worked for an NGO out of DC, which is very a common DC story. So we moved almost every other year for my whole childhood. So I think that is a unique background, because you learn to adapt and create rapport very quickly. And I always joke that I was bred to sell. My mom has a PhD in psychology. My dad has a PhD in communications, even though they're both non profit bleeding liberal or, you know, want to save the world type folks, which I adore them, I turn out to be a pretty big capitalist, right, and a salesperson, and I think that's because I was able to have such a different vantage point of the world. We moved to the US when I was 12 years old, when my dad got recruited to come run the company from from HQ standpoint. And so I grew up in the DC metropolitan area, which is a hyper competitive part of the country, highest, you know, educational level, income, highly, highly competitive market in real estate, like agents, a lot of them have worked at Deloitte or a government contractor and have MBAs. So it's not a normal market to fiercely competitive, sophisticated buyers and sellers. But I went to school to do tech, which is ironic, because I ended up in tech, but I chose the year 2000 to start my tech journey, which was probably the worst possible year in the history of tech, to go into tech as a college student, my freshman year, the tech bubble blew up, and the job offers I had disappeared overnight, right? And so the thought process was, what could I do? I read a book by Robert Kiyosaki called Rich Dad, Poor Dad, because a friend's parent recommended it, and I got obsessed with leverage. It was the first time I'd read about people time and money, which is different, like, don't come from an entrepreneurial family. I didn't have people to teach me, so it was all different viewpoint. My father was very traditional in the sense that he again, I said he had a PhD, so go to school, get a good job, and my dad worked for one entity for 28 and a half years, which also doesn't exist anymore. So, you know, once I understood that there was another option for trading my time for money, it completely shifted the way my view of the world. So,
Brian Charlesworth 07:16
so why did you choose real estate?
Leo Pareja 07:19
Yeah, probably because I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It was the only thing they talked about, right? It was
Brian Charlesworth 07:24
okay. It was more thinking you're going to buy some real estate. Oh, 100% I
Leo Pareja 07:30
thought I was going to become a real estate investor. Never get my license. That was never in the cards. It was because I found a real estate investment mentor who I paid to teach me investments. And six months into the relationship, which is a crazy story, because I was 19 years old, I met this guy who said he could teach me everything I wanted to know about real estate, and I sold my car and wired a stranger all my money. So that could have gone a very terrible way. Luckily, it did not. He turned out to be the real deal. And halfway through the coaching that year, he said I had to get my license to have access to the MLS and pull comps. In that summer, I ended up buying my first you know, halfway through the semester, I bought my first home when I got in an argument with my landlord, purely because my lease was going to no longer be renewed, and I ended up qualifying for an FHA loan. My father co signed me. I borrowed the 3% down payment from my father. Monday morning, I went to closing, got my commission and paid my father back and rented out three rooms for $500 a piece zero based my entire mortgage, and said, Oh, shit, this works. And then I, with my one transaction under my belt, wrote a little script, and I called every fraternity brother who would listen and said, let me talk to your parents about your housing needs for next year. And I said, How would you like to use the capital you'd spend for one semester room and board and not have to pay for anything for the rest of the time your son's in school? And that was my little script and my hook to get the appointment. Once I got the appointment, I explained an FHA loan. Average price point that I was selling was like, 250 and the math mapped, right? It was like, instead of one semester room and board, you were able to buy a townhouse near the university. And, you know, it was great. Timing was like, what, 2002 and a lot of my friends, you know, made 150 grand by the time we graduate college. But the moral of the story is, in that summer, I made like, $60,000 selling, you know, my fraternity brother some houses and and it was like this light bulb went off, of like, how much leverage existed. Because, I mean for context, before that, I was waiting tables making 80 bucks a night at a back steak house. Wow.
Brian Charlesworth 09:30
So you went from that to running one of the one of the biggest teams you were at KW, running one of the biggest teams in the industry back then, I remember when I was just getting into this industry 10 years ago. I guess it was eight years ago I was getting into the industry, but spring and I were going to a bunch of masterminds, and everyone was talking about doing 100 million, like that was the goal, right? And I heard you mention on a meeting, we were just on or on a webinar, we were just on of teams doing a billion. And you. Exp, have a bunch of teams doing a billion. We have a bunch of teams at Sisu doing over a billion. Some of those are common teams. But how back then, did you go from what you just described to running one of the few teams back then that was doing over 100 million?
Leo Pareja 10:13
Yeah, I think I peaked at like 140 and again, it was super uncommon. And for me, it was unit economics, right? I like scaling stuff, and I figured that out early on in my in my journey. I think there's two ways to do real estate. One is high price point or high volume in units, and the elusive few do it in both, right? And then I think you have to be in one of the coastal markets to do that. But you know, one is understanding the market you're in, the markets cycle you're in and how you want your life to look like. I very early on figured out my brain worked a certain way. And so I'm like, I was really good at institutional business, right? I could talk to whether it was a hedge fund, a bank, a developer, and understand like IRR and carried interest and UPB, Bb, you know, unpaid principal balances and loss severity, and I learned a language that separated me from my peer group, and I was perfectly okay with high degrees of accountability, meaning I was graded on net execution and gross execution and loss severity and all kinds of stuff that I think most agents probably didn't get comfortable with, and I just became an expert. I always figured that if I went into niches, there was a lot less competition. And, you know, whatever market cycle I was in, I'd always managed to find a differentiated way of doing it. I remember going to seminars, whether it was biffini or kW or anything, and I heard people going on 10 appointments a day, or like, just like, and God bless them, right? Like, Chris Heller is one of my best friends in the industry, and I would see him role play on stage, and I was like, I can't do that. I can't call them. I can't talk to that many people, but I'll build complex spreadsheets and tell people what I think something will sell for and be held accountable to a degree of variance on it, and build a system and a process for that. And also, when I say that, and I'm on a stage with agents, I say, Please don't go do what I just said, if that's not how you're built, right? Like, I think that's also one of the biggest fallacies. And when you see people doing certain things at a high level where you're like, Oh, I'm just gonna do that, and they skip a really important step, which is to figure out how you're wired and what your God given talents are, and first deeply understand that and then do what makes sense. All
Brian Charlesworth 12:25
right, I'm gonna back up a little bit. Leo, thanks for sharing that. I know you're a family man. I hear you talk about your kids, your wife all the time, but yet I know your schedule is the CEO of EXP. So how do you juggle that? That's a difficult thing to do. I find that's a difficult thing for me to do. I want to hear more about how you how you do that, because some of the things you've shared with me have really, like, enlightened me on things I should be doing. So I
Leo Pareja 12:50
would, I would say the first, the first part of that kind of self discovery is like just the blessing of the journey I've been on, right? Like complete happenstance. And I can't take credit for it. It was so you know, I made money at a super young age. I made $306,000 my senior year of college as a full time student, right? And I got a x5 and I ended up buying like, 14 rental properties about time I was 23 I just thought I was that good, and I wasn't. I was a creature of a bubble, right? I had no discipline. I was not I was slightly better than the average, and I got my ass handed to me, and I lost it all. And I was like, 90 days for bankruptcy, and I did short sales on myself, so I learned how to do them. I gave stuff back to the bank, and I cried a lot and lots of boogers. And, you know, I've had several really high highs and several low lows. And the one thing it'll teach you is who's there for you in real relationship, right? Like, look when you're up top, everyone's your friend. Everyone wants a selfie. And then it's when you fall off the horse. It's the who doesn't call you back, and the just the really authentic experience. It's like all this is temporary, right? Like you've a 100% chance of not getting out alive. Who's gonna be holding your hand on your deathbed? Like I've read a lot about those last conversations, no one said I wished I worked more bring me my medals and trophies. It's like it's the people who I care about. And being hyper aware that it's all temporary, and who are you really going to be in relationship with, right? Like, just, and again, I'm obsessed with math. Like 90% of the time you'll spend with your kids is before they turn 18, right? So I have a finite amount of nights I can be with them, or mornings I can be with them. The average friendship lasts seven years, right? And I think we can all kind of put that like with with outliers, right, like your best friends, but it's, it's who you like at the end of the day, when you strip it all away, all we have is this relationship experience. And again, the gift I got was getting this shit kicked out of me very young, because I think it's grounded me in a way that I couldn't have. Been and I'm just hyper aware. So, you know, like, I make a very big effort to make sure that I take my kids to school, not because I have to, because I hunt too, right? Like, I have all the leverage in the world, but, like, I make breakfast and I drop them off, and as many times a week as I can, I'm actually, I got a spreadsheet I'm tracking. So at the end of the year, I'm going to actually see how I did, and at 445 Monday through Friday, I hang up my calls because I want to take my son to Jiu Jitsu, my daughter to school of rock, right? And I'm on the mat, on the sideline or at the concert watching, and I know when either one look up and make eye contact with me, I can tell like that's a core memory that I can't replicate any other way than by being present. And so, like, I have cardinal rules, like, I don't have dinner with people ever in Miami, right? You've been to Miami with spring and, like, I've met you both for either breakfast or lunch, but you've never had dinner with me, right? Because that's that's not for you guys, that's for my most important people, and that does is no disrespect when I say that, and you know that I don't mean it that way, but like, I just, I just don't, right? And so, like, when Glenn was recruiting me, I told him I was, like, I do not want to travel of a public or traded company. That's kind of a big ask. And I, like, I was just at the Super Bowl, and I went with my wife, with a bunch of other executives, and they were all saying, like, we're going 200 days a year. That's not me. Like I I'm like, three, four nights a month. And by the way, that's not easy. Like, I do things to myself from a timed perspective, that are tough, where I'll wake up and do the 5am flight out and fly two hours, speak for an hour, and then get back on a plane so I can land by five right, which, again, is brutal, but that's the only version of this role I'm willing to have, because the cool thing is, like, once you've self actualized and kind of, like, really hone in on what your skills and talents are providing for your family. Is not hard, and again, said, with a vantage point of privilege, and have had several exits, and you know, I would say my skill sets are highly marketable, right? Like, I can provide for my family in multiple ways if push comes to shove, so and and just be hyper aware that there's seasons to everything right. Like, I will never regret spending this much time with my kiddos ever. And like, if they weren't little, and I was still in this role, Arianne, and I would probably travel full time, and we go from whatever city we'd want to spend time with, and I get to spend a lot of in person time with agents and but that's not the season I'm in. And I have my parents nearby, like, I see my parents three, four times a week and on the weekends, because that is even more finite. My dad's 83 my mom's 77 like, I have years, like, single years left, right? Yeah. And I guess my, my biggest thing is, I don't take any of it for granted. Yes,
Brian Charlesworth 17:50
that's obvious. Your kids are still young. Mine and springs, youngest is 16. The rest of our kids are out of the house now. So it's interesting, right? When your kids are 16 or when your kids are 12 or four, you get to see them every day, right? But as soon as they move out of the house, now, it's okay. Am I going to get to see them once a week, right? And if they move out of the state now, it's okay, hopefully I get to see them once a month. And so if you think about that and you add up the number of years we have left, especially with your parents, right? It is very finite, and so I love your perspective on that, and I look at life the exact same way, and cherish the time that I have with my kids. For sure, for the sake of time, I'm going to skip down. I wanted to dig into remind with you, but I think I'm gonna skip over that. I'd love to, love to hear a little bit about the real estate industry for a minute here. As the CEO of EXP, you're building something special right now. I've heard it referenced as exp 2.0 let's talk about that. What does that mean?
Leo Pareja 19:05
Marketers ruin everything, and business people ruin everything, meaning they find a outsized rate of return on a behavior to result. So in the 90s we we had email that kind of blew up, right? And it was so powerful, we made a movie about it was called, you got mail with Tom Hanks, and then banner ads and then social, and then, as you can imagine, everything works until it doesn't. And so when Glenn started exp, and I call that one point, it was the model was so novel. It was corporate, owned in a landscape of purely franchises. It was cloud based, which is still novel, believe it or not, from a percentage standpoint, it had revenue share instead of profit share. So like top line revenue distribution, it had liquidity through publicly traded stock options, stock grants. And it took him a decade to convince people that it worked, and that was. Partly because there was this moment in culture where society shifted through COVID, and it was like what I thought would have happened over a 10 to 20 year period, happened in a two month period. And then we proved it worked, and we proved it worked so well that every new company wants to be like us, right? So I've said from stages, every new national brokerage will look more like us than our legacy counterparts. And
Brian Charlesworth 20:22
wait. Wait, when you repeat that you've said, what? Every new brokerage?
Leo Pareja 20:26
Yeah, every new brokerage, going forward, will look more like us than our legacy counterparts. Yep,
Brian Charlesworth 20:33
and I've, I've been saying from stage for the last five years that there will be no new real estate brands formed that have the franchise model. So I think we're saying the same thing there well,
Leo Pareja 20:47
and it's also evolution, right? The reason franchises existed is because we didn't have this like you are on the West Coast, I am on the East Coast, and we're recording in 10 ADP, in real time, right? With, with real time audio, with this existed in the 80s, we would have never done franchises, because what you were investing in with the franchisee was this relationship capital of the local expert. Because I can't get to that local consumer. And so what modern technology, from a pure speed of communications, has happened is you can actually evangelize from anywhere, right? Like, you know, as exp, right, I can reach agents in not only the United States, it's all over the world, right? Like, I think our agents in the 25 countries were actively and soon to be 27 countries. They can be in a one to one digital relationship with us, not just me, the other members of the leadership team, and so 2.0 has to be so much more than that, right? It's it's the fully scaled and time tested, operationally excellent machine we pay you faster than anyone else. We educate you at a much deeper level with no additional costs. We do things that only fully scaled robust enterprises that are now obsessed with SLAs and user experience, right? It's no longer just purely entrepreneur passion versus like we are a well oiled machine where my goal is to now pay people in minutes and seconds versus days and hours. It's can I give the highest level of support from a help desk with first level non ping pong, transferring people back and forth, right? What is the best in class vendor, tech stack I can develop and not trying to build it myself, because I don't have delusions that I'm a tech company. You know? That's why I partner with Sisu. That's why we partner with Slack. That's why you partner with Canva. That's why we partner with Sky slope and sky slope forms and digital signature. It is really important that we deliver more value than we charge, right? Like my thesis is, I want to deliver so much value for what I charge that it is silly not to be with us.
Brian Charlesworth 22:58
So everything you just said is focused around providing a better experience for the agent. It seems to me like that is what you have core at your heart. Is that, because that is your background,
Leo Pareja 23:09
this is interesting, because this is the first time I'm not the founder and CEO, right? And so I have this deep, deep, deep appreciation for the entrepreneurial journey. And I'm also very clear, like I'm not replacing Glenn like in any way, shape or form. Glenn is still very attached to this company, and he will always be. And so for me, it was understanding what his vision was, and how do I execute on that? And again, I have a ton of latitude, because he only gave me one rule, which was pretty interesting. He says, there, I will only give you one question to ask, and then it's your decision making process, which is, are we the most agent centric company on the planet? Like, that's the entire lens. He looks at everything and, okay, what I take away from that is like, hey, we need to have a margin, right? But above that, I'm probably going to reinvest everything I can back into the agent experience, because that's the flywheel. It's organic growth. I don't have to do M A like other businesses, do we distributed two, $20 million of cash inequity to agents in 2024 and that's a whole nother public traded company, right? And so he built a model that works, and it's super sticky. And I just know that if, if I must sleep at the wheel in 12 months, someone will figure out a better mousetrap. And so I actually have to disrupt myself faster than anyone can disrupt me. And that's that's a forever process and journey that doesn't end
Brian Charlesworth 24:33
well. My observation of you has been that you are fulfilling extremely well on Glenn's desire to be the most agent centric. So congratulations on that. It's been fun to watch, and I know people are paying attention to that in the industry, because I hear people talk about it all the time. Few more questions for you, and we'll wrap up. I was at a realtor.com event back in New York about a month ago. It was right around the same time as your New York. York City event on NASDAQ, and they passed around a note of paper, and this is a contest they're having, and their question was, how many homes will we sell in the US this year? I'd like to hear what, how you would have answered that. Well,
Leo Pareja 25:16
I know how many we sell, right? So, so in the US, we sell roughly 35,000 homes a month. In Canada, we roughly sell 5000 homes a month, and the balance is about 5000 homes in the rest of the countries. And that that's actually why I get really excited about our growth prospects. I mean, we're north of total transaction, so this includes leases and other transactions. So, but we're in the 400,000 in the US in aggregate, you know, we're north of 500,000 transactions. And in the US alone, I think we can three to 4x based on REMAX and Keller Williams in their heydays in Canada, I think we can 7x and then the rest of the world is a pretty blue ocean strategy, as far as I as I see it,
Brian Charlesworth 26:00
yeah, let me ask you, maybe. Let me rephrase the question, total homes sold in the US, among all brokerages this year. You know, we went from 6.8 million to 3.8 million. 5 million being average, right. Where are we going to be this year?
Leo Pareja 26:15
Yeah. So I've gone on the record to Sisu. We closed 2024 with roughly 4 million resales and 700,000 new construction. And I'm, like, very scientific with the breakdown. I think this year we can end up between 4.2 and 4.3 resales with 750,000 so I think we'll be up. And when people quote the four, they normally just do resales. New Construction has been a bright spot in the economy, just because they can be a lot more creative and aggressive, like three to one down buy route rates. And, you know, they have different levers as owners, but historically, it's still going to be, you know, like the 30 worst year in real estate ever since, like 1995
Brian Charlesworth 26:53
okay, so I'll take that as you don't see interest rates changing really much this year.
Leo Pareja 26:59
No, no. And I speak to the media of weekly now, and I said, you know, we could see a 25 to 50 point base fluctuation based on macro, right? I think too many people like even pay attention to the Treasury or the Fed rate. The only thing that matters is the 10 year treasury bill, right? And that one normally has about 150 basis points to 200 business points spread, and we've been floating at higher than that, like 250 basis points. So I don't see us getting a huge reprieve. I think that we will be in this, this interest rate environment, because even calling it high interest rate environments, it's only accurate in like a five year, 10 year period versus a 50 year period. And I don't see we get much reprieve. Yeah. Okay. Last
Brian Charlesworth 27:42
question I have for you, Leo. I'm just wondering, what do you think the agents and team leaders should be focused on? Now, here we are, March of 2025 what should they be focused on? Now it's what
Leo Pareja 27:53
I thought in, you know, October of 2002 when I got my license, and in 2010 when I was in heavy, my peak of production and size and scale as an agent, it's focus on the basics, right? It's, it is a contact sport, right? And the beauty of this industry, I think there's, you know, 510, 2050, different ways to create a lead, is figuring out how you're wired, figuring out a funnel that works for your personality and skill level and passions and how it resonates in your world, and just be, you know, obsessed with prioritization, right? So what is the highest and best return on your time, not only for your enterprise, but the life you want to live like? If we go back to what you know, we're talking about, quite personal, like opinions of life. It's about making sure that you are in rapport and relationship with the people that matter, and that's, you know, your family, the people you surround yourself with, and call team members or employees or or mentors or partners, and making sure you're having fun. I think that's under thought of, right? Like, if it's not fun and it sucks, like your cortisol levels are going to get messed up and you're going to die of a heart attack, like it's like you got to enjoy the ride as much as possible. Yeah,
Brian Charlesworth 29:13
so well said. I mean, so many people think, Oh, this industry is changing so much, you know, you have to do all these things so different. But it's not rocket science. The same thing has worked over and over and over again for years and years. There are new marketing opportunities today,
Leo Pareja 29:29
but I haven't taken a step further, because I remember, you know, you, you mentioned how I handled the transition with NAR, and it was a loud couple of months and and what I said on the record, and I'll say it again, is life isn't 10% what happens in 90% how you react to it, right? Like, I was quite opinionated what it should have happened, and it didn't happen the way I thought it should have happened. But then it's like, okay, we now have a new rule set in society, and that's, by the way, that's what happens when your candidate doesn't win in an election. Or some traumatic event happens, the loss of a loved one or a child, or, like, the worst possible things I can think of, it's like, this is what's available to you now. You can now choose how you react to it. And I've studied a lot about psychology and how the brain works and how people react to certain things. And like, there was a fascinating stat I double check because I heard it at a keynote once. It was something like 70% of all world leaders across time, history, forms of government going back 1000 years, have lost one or more of their parents before turning 15 years old. When you think about that's that makes a lot of sense, right? That's actually the most traumatic thing that can happen to a small human being like I am absolutely me and Ariana are everything to our little humans, food, shelter, love, protection, nurture, all that stuff. If you can overcome that at that age, I mean, you are basically able to take over the world. And that's what happened to these people, right? Like, I survived that, which is arguably the worst thing that can happen to a child. So I'm going to take over the world. And then there's this fascinating flip side of it, because, you know, it was a speech and a good hook. There is another portion of society that has the same statistics, and it's people in prison with life sentences, right, where equally horrible event happened at a similar time and age, and they decided that they were a victim and life was after them, and went in like the most polar opposite reaction to a similar event in time, in history. And again, that's like, if you are in a business and the rules change on you and you hate it great, choose not to be a market participant. And that's the beauty of this journey, where at any point you can say, I don't want to do this anymore, right? And thankfully, you know, if you're in this country and you speak English, and you have the the ability to start another career path, or even if you don't speak the language, and you move to a new country, as you know, I'm the child of immigrants, and so is my wife, and you know, we've seen our families pick up and leave like we left Columbia in the in the early 90s, because it wasn't safe, right? Like I say Narcos was a documentary, right? History In the early 90s, and so you can choose to change your circumstance. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying it's it's without hardship, but I feel like that's the most amazing part of the human experience. At any point you at any point, you're in control of what you choose to experience.
Brian Charlesworth 32:25
So someone in real estate really just needs to focus on what they can control and stop focusing on everything else. Well,
Leo Pareja 32:33
more specifically, it's like realize what produces dollar productive activity and obsess with that. And by the way, at that point, if for any reason, it's still not your jam, then do something else.
Brian Charlesworth 32:44
Yeah, then get out. Okay. Well, Said, Leo, hey, I really appreciate your time today. For all you listeners, thanks for listening week after week, this is what brings people like Leo on the show with me. So go in like this episode and we will see you again next week on another episode of the grit podcast. Thanks for joining us today.