Why You're Still Hustling Like It's 2016

Garrett Maroon shares a raw and honest reflection on the toxic hustle culture that dominates the real estate industry. He opens up about his own experience with the pressure to perform, the addiction to sales, and the emptiness that comes from tying identity to production numbers.

Garrett challenges Christian real estate agents to redefine success through a biblical lens, root their confidence in Christ, and step off the hamster wheel of constant hustle. If you've ever felt burned out, inadequate, or stuck in the comparison trap, this episode offers hope, truth, and practical encouragement to find lasting peace and purpose in your business journey.

Key Takeaways:

✅ Hustle culture promotes an unhealthy obsession with performance.
✅ Your identity is in Christ, not your closings or commissions.
✅ The industry often celebrates success at the expense of relationships and health.
✅ Redefining success through faith leads to true fulfillment.
✅ Comparison fuels burnout and steals your joy.
✅ Confidence and rest should come from your relationship with God, not sales stats.
✅ The cycle of hustle is celebrated but often leads to emptiness.
✅ Work-life balance is not a luxury—it’s a necessity for long-term health and impact.
✅ Garrett offers a free guide to help you reclaim your identity in Christ as a real estate agent.
✅ Your calling is greater than your closings.

Episode Chapters:

⏳ 00:00 – Welcome & Introduction to Hustle Culture in Real Estate
🔥 02:51 – The Addiction to Sales and Performance-Based Identity
✝️ 06:12 – Replacing Hustle with Christ-Centered Identity
🎯 08:51 – Redefining What Success Means in Your Career
📘 12:03 – Final Encouragement & Free Resources for Agents

Resources & Opportunities:

📩 Are you tired of the hustle? Download my free guide: 3 Lies Christian Agents Believe—and the Truth That Will Set You Free
🔗 https://www.210collective.com/podcast

📞 Want to be in Business with Garrett and Christian agents around the globe? Schedule a call with Garrett to learn about the 2:10 Collective on the eXp Realty platform
🔗 https://calendar.app.google/YmCPQRhWJaV7owmw6

🙌 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

What's up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Christian Agent Podcast. I'm your host Garrett Maroon and I am so excited to be with you today. It's just me running solo and I'm excited to share a topic with you that is near and dear to my heart. The topic of the day is why you're still hustling like it's 2016 and we're going to expose the lie that you're only as good as your next sale. And I hope that we can dive into that topic. It's going to be a shorter episode, but I hope we can dive into that topic. and that it may be a blessing and benefit to you and your soul and your business. So I'm excited to dive into that today. But before I do, as always, let me share a good Christian dad joke. Let's see. What did the classmates say when asked why they keep walking next to the same person at school? He responded, I was told I'm supposed to walk by faith. That's pretty funny Okay, well It's a little awkward to laugh when you're the only one here but hopefully you're laughing with me too so Have you ever felt like you are one bad month away from feeling like a failure? Even if you crushed it last year, it just resets. Well, you know what me too. I started in real estate in 2014 I was a brand new agent had never done any kind of sales and never been in any kind of commission job. fact, you my parents were concerned that a commission job was not going to fit me well, but I came into the business because my wife thought that I'd be good at it and I trusted her and I took the leap and I just went for it. And many of you have heard my story, but I had made a commitment to my wife that if I hadn't sold a home in the first three months that I would quit. Well, it got to three months. I hadn't sold a house. And so I remember coming home that night and telling my wife, Hey, I think I can figure this out. But can I get another three months and we agreed but at the end of that three months it was you know game over at that point well in the Lord's mercy and kindness at five and a half months I finally got a deal under contract and as they say I guess the rest is history But here's what happened to me and probably maybe what happened to you I remember the feeling the addiction if you will of getting that sale and getting that home under contract and then getting that commission check and wanting that to happen more and more and more and more. And that's good, right? It's good that we desire to sell more homes. That's ultimately why we're here and excellence in business, which honors the Lord, ultimately looks like selling more homes. But I had gotten addicted to this hustle culture. I became obsessed with this idea that if I could just keep learning and growing in this self-development culture, that I could outpace everyone else. I could sell a ton of homes, I could make a ton of money. And so I got into this cycle where I was just reading and learning and podcasting and listening to shows all the time. I mean, I was obsessed with growth and it was working. I'm not gonna lie, it was working. I was probably reading six books a month, listening to multiple podcast episodes a day. And I was just this self-development junkie, if you will. And there was an aspect of that, again, where that was really working, but I realized I had become, it took me a while, right? But I look back and say, man, I was addicted to the result. I was addicted to growing. was addicted to being able to excel and sell more houses and have more leverage and more freedom and make more money. I'd become addicted to this hustle cycle, right? I had gotten these early wins. And so I just kept doing it and I kept doing it. I kept pushing. kept pushing. I kept learning, I kept growing, I kept trying, I kept doing all of these things. Again, in and of themselves, good things, but I had become addicted to this culture, just like the industry tries to teach us. And I realized one day, I'm on the hamster wheel that the industry wants me to be on. I'm just on this same hamster wheel because I work my butt off and I sell a bunch of homes. I was selling 50 homes a year by referral. I work my butt off, I sell 50 homes. But guess what happens January 1st it resets as if none of that ever mattered in the first place It totally resets and I have to start over from the beginning. So what do I need to do? I need to get out there. I need to grind I need to talk to people I need to learn I need to grow all of those things again in and of themselves not bad But I realized here I was on the same hamster wheel that most of us get stuck on and here's the problem When the wheel starts turning fast enough It becomes impossible for the hamster to get off. And guess what? We're the hamsters. The wheel is the industry saying, keep selling, keep selling, keep selling, keep selling. Well, I ran into this reality. I ran into the understanding of this lie that you're only as good as your next sale. Have you ever felt like that before? That you're only as good as your next sale? Right. We are so often quick to not only judge, but be judged. on how many deals did we do? What was our transaction number? Right? We often look in the mirror and we judge ourselves only on when was the last time you did a deal, Garrett? We've become addicted to this sales cycle running in this hamster wheel. But here's the truth. The next sale that you have, the number of sales that you have does not define you. Your identity is in Christ, not in production. Your identity is in Christ, not in production. And that's the truth. What does Scripture have to say about this? Well, in 2 Corinthians 5.17 it says, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. Romans 8.1 said, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Colossians 3.3 says, For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. You are no longer who you used to be. You are a new creation and so am I. Your identity becomes easily wrapped up in this vicious cycle of sales, this vicious cycle of a hustle culture. And quickly we start to believe that I'm only as good as my next sale, that I look at my life and I compare it to the people around me and I have to ask the question, why am I not selling like they are? What's wrong with me? Now, it doesn't mean that there's not an issue in your business. It doesn't mean that you need to be working harder or smarter or become more excellent in whatever it is that's going on in your life. That is absolutely true sometimes. But it does mean when we start to believe this lie, that we're only as good as our next sale, the devil starts to get a foothold and shift what our identity is supposed to be found in Christ. It sounds like this. If I don't perform, I'm falling behind. It sounds like I can't rest. I've got to get, I've got to keep producing. It sounds like I don't feel like I've earned a break, but you're not your production. You're not your performance, you are a child of God. Your identity and your worth are already secure in Him. And He reminds us of this rest. In Matthew 11, 28, come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Many of you know if you've been listening to this show that I'm working on a book right now and I hope that it's published later this fall and it's going to be called the balanced breakthrough winning at work without losing at life. And here's the big idea. The big idea is we're in this real estate industry which is a phenomenal industry. The best single best opportunity in this industry and in this entire world if you ask me in our country is being in real estate. We have unlimited potential. We have unlimited options. There is a low barrier to entry. It is easy to get in and start growing and succeeding and working and finding leverage and all the pieces that come along. We are in an amazing industry. But this idea of this balanced breakthrough is I've seen, I've been in the industry now for 11 years and it is far too often that I see the person on stage winning that award for being a platinum winner and selling a ton of homes, I know they just lost their marriage. It is astounding how many times I've seen the people posting the photos of all the homes they've sold and all the money they've made when I know they haven't seen their kids and they don't even talk to them anymore. It is absurd what gets celebrated in this industry because the industry wants us to stay in that hustle culture because if we don't, Guess what? They no longer make money and so they want your identity to be tied up in you looking on Instagram to see what every other agent is doing and deciding whether you're winning the game. But what happens is too often we start to chase the way of the world and we leave behind what the Lord says matters, which is our walk with him, our spouse, our friends, our kids, our relationships. showing up for people well. We start to compare ourselves. We start to chase what the world tells us to chase. When all along the Lord is right there whispering, here's the way I want you to go. Your identity is not found in your success in this world. Your identity is found in me. I died, Jesus says, to give you and grant you a new identity. I want you, brother and sister, and any agent in this industry to have that breakthrough, to recognize that we are more than just our next sale, to recognize that we get to define success in our own way. And that should look like. Yes, I want to succeed in this industry because the Lord has placed me here and I want to take advantage of the opportunity He's given me. But I know that my identity ultimately rests in Christ and I will rest in that. That maybe, just maybe, the Lord's going to judge my work by how faithful I am, not how many homes I sell. And brothers and sisters, that is So my question for you is this, because I want to make this episode short and I will probably do a few more like this. The question for you is this, where in your business are you hustling for identity instead of working from it? Where in your business are you hustling for identity instead of working from it? That hit home with me. I hope that hits home with you and that we pause and we just wonder, what am I really chasing after? Am I seeking to find and define an identity or do I know what my identity is? And I'm going to build a business based off the identity that the Lord in His kindness has given me. I created just a few days ago, this new guide that I want to give to you totally for free. If that hit home with you what I talked about, download my free guide. It's in the show notes, three lies Christian agents believe and the truth that will set you free. And I dive into some of this a little bit more. And I hope as I talk about often that you'll join the school group where we're building this out in real time. We're working through this together, totally free. Also in the show notes, helping Christian agents sell three to four homes a month. But actually on our call today, what did we talk about? We talked about lead generation and a lack of confidence. And my encouragement to them and to myself was if we lack confidence in our lead generation plan, maybe we don't have the right plan, but we've always got to remember that we stay anchored in the Lord. That's our confidence. It cannot be shaken. It doesn't matter what the industry does. It doesn't matter what the market does. It doesn't matter what settlements are going on or the buyer brokerage form that's being changed. None of that matters. Our confidence should not be shaken because our confidence is founded in the Lord and He has promised to provide. Brothers and sisters, you are more than just your next sale. That does not define you. Christ defines you. I love you, brother and sister in Christ. Thank you for listening. Take the time, I would love it if you would take the time to leave a five-star review wherever you listen to the show. It helps other agents find the show and send it to a friend. Send it to a friend that might just need this encouragement. I hope you send it to them. I do this because I love this community and I want to serve the Christian agent community. Thank you for tuning in this week. I love you and I'll see you next time.