Your Gifts, His Glory: Finding Your Fit in Real Estate

Garrett challenges the myth that success in real estate requires following someone else's formula. Instead, he empowers Christian agents to embrace the unique way God designed them to work, serve, and succeed.

Garrett unpacks the concept of your “opportunity zone”—where your past wins, natural wiring, and God-given gifts align—and encourages agents to focus on purpose over performance. This episode is a reminder that you were never meant to fit the mold—you were made to reflect His design.

Whether you’re new to the industry or feeling burned out by comparison, this message will refocus you on what truly matters: living out your calling with clarity, excellence, and community support.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

• You don’t have to be like everyone else to be successful.
• Mimicking top producers isn’t the path to lasting fulfillment.
• Discover who the Lord created you to be—and work from that place.
• Your natural rhythms, strengths, and gifts are not accidental.
• Your opportunity zone is found where your past wins and unique wiring meet.
• Pursue excellence, not comparison.
• Stay rooted in your core purpose and calling.
• God’s blessings (your “diamonds”) are found on the path He made for you.
• Community support helps you stay aligned and encouraged.
• This is about building His Kingdom, not your personal empire.

📘 Chapters:

00:00 – Embracing Individuality in Success
02:36 – Identifying Your Unique Strengths
07:54 – Creating Your Opportunity Zone
12:42 – Staying Focused on Your Core Purpose
18:30 – The Importance of Community and Support

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://calendly.com/garrettmaroon/210collective

🙌 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:
🔗 7572662876

📲 Follow Garrett on Instagram for more insights and encouragement!

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

Transcript

0:01

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Christian Agent podcast. I'm glad you've joined me today. And if you are watching this on video, which you probably aren't because nobody does, because I'm not that nice to look at. ah That's weird. ah Then you know that I'm outside and I've never recorded an episode outside and I've got my AirPods in and figured it was too nice of a day for me to come inside. So I hope that this works. The audio is good and you all enjoy any ambiance that comes from being out in the Lord's creation. But today we're going to be talking about this reality, something that I care very deeply about. You don't have to be like everyone else to win. The reality in this industry, and we're going to unpack this today, the reality in this industry is they tell us there's one way to win. This is what success looks like. You have to be like this person. You have to... do all of the things that they do, right? You have to code call door knock. You have to buy leads. You have to work by referral. You have to be on social media. You have to be on YouTube. You have to do all the things that success requires. And that's the only way you're going to win when the truth is that's not right at all. Your job, especially as a believer, what we understand is the Lord created each person to have different strengths, right? That's why in the body of Christ, there's arms, there's feet, there's... mouthpieces, there's legs, right? There's all the different pieces of the body. We're not all of those pieces. The reality is your job, at its truest sense, is to figure out who the Lord made you to be and just be excellent at that. That's your job. You don't have to be great at all the things. You don't have to do all the social media. You don't have to do the cold calling, don't have to do the door knock, you don't have to do the open houses. If that's not who you're wired to be, you don't have to do all of those things. What you do need to do is figure out who the Lord made you to be and go be excellent at that. That's who He created you to be. We honor Him by being excellent at exactly that. So we're going to dive into that today. Ultimately, for me, the big idea is that success doesn't come from mimicking the top producers. It comes from owning your wiring, your values, and your calling. and I'm excited to expose maybe some of the lies that the industry has told us as we as believers really try to figure out how do we walk that out in faith? What does that look like? Who the Lord made me to be? But before I do, let me read this joke to you. Now, huge shout out to my friend, Connie Shell. I texted her in a pinch and said, Connie, quick, I need a joke for the podcast. And boom, she hit me right back with multiple podcasts. Little did I know. That she said she was totally available because she was getting a pedicure and then she texted me and said now She's moving to a manicure and so can no longer give me any more jokes, but you did us proud Connie Thank you for that. So no, this is not a Christian joke, but I thought this was funny. Anyways, um, my wife asked me the other day where I got so much candy and I said I Always have a few twicks up my sleeve That's funny actually, I like that. know, Twix are terrible for you, but also delicious and I actually would like one right now. So if someone is listening to this and you want to mail it to me, send me a message. I will give you my address and you can mail a Twix and keep it cold in a cold bag. And so by the time it gets to me, it's not totally ruined. Okay, that has nothing to do with anything. Here's the point. We have to figure out who we are and be excellent at that. Number one, that's the way that we honor the Lord. We're told there's one right way to win in real estate, but that way might not fit how God made you. So that can't be true. Our job is to figure out who the Lord make me to be and go be that. Now I'm not saying there's not an avenue of us growing in areas where we need to grow. We absolutely do. Right? One of the challenges and mistakes that a Christian agent makes is that we end up less than excellent. And that certainly does not honor the Lord. You better believe it does not honor the Lord. However, another more common mistake is we just do what everybody says to do, right? Your gifts, your wiring, your rhythms matter. You need a business that fits you because that's who the Lord made you to be. it is, you know, we can dive into this all day, but here's just what I see so often in uh that happens. I've been a coach for a long time. an agent comes to me, I'll give you an example. I was coaching an agent out in California. And for those of you who've been listening, I'm in Virginia coaching an agent out in California. We get on the phone and she is one of the most uh energetic and outgoing extroverted people I've ever met. And that's saying something for me. You guys know, I like to talk. I'm doing an episode by myself and laughing. So clearly I'm one of those people too, but she surpasses me in every possible category when it comes to that. And so we're getting on the call. We're having this conversation. And she says, she's worked 100 % by referral. She does open houses too. Those were her two forms of lead generation. She gets on the phone. We're having a conversation. Garrett, guess what I just found out? I said, tell me. And she said, I'm the number one agent in whatever her zip code was. I honestly can't remember. I'm the number one agent in the zip code. A mortgage lender just called me and told me. I said, first of that's amazing. Congratulations. What does that mean? for you and she said you know what I think I probably need to start doing mailers to them right should I do geographic farming so if you're not familiar with that agent that just picking a specific area and sending them mailers essentially trying to get business from a certain area which totally can work all these things can work right it's the question of whether she should and she said I think I should start doing mailings and I said well tell me why and she said well I'm the number one agent in that zip code so I don't know shouldn't I do that And I was so glad she asked that question because we started to talk about what is her opportunity zone, right? What does that actually look like? What does that mean inside of her business? And so let me break it down for you. What that means is looking at how she has generated business in the past and how she is specifically wired, right? So she is highly relational. You can take all kinds of personality tests, disc profile. uh Now I can't, Myers-Briggs, right? All of these different personality tests. and you can try to understand that for yourself, but you know, if you're a people person, you know you're a people person. If you're an extreme people person, you know you're an extreme people person. So where has her business come from? Where has she succeeded in the past? Open houses and referrals. Why? Because she is great at connecting with people. Anything in that bubble that is going to be face to face, voice to voice, connecting with people, that's her opportunity zone. Anything outside of that is the distraction zone. Right? So that means, and she has seen that in her, in her career, right? When she's cold called before, when she bought leads before, when she went out and door knocks, she'd done all the things that the industry said, right? Like many of us have done. She did all those things and none of them worked very well. Why? Because that's not her skillset. It's not her personality. So of course it didn't work very well. So we look and we create this opportunity zone, right? Most of us don't know how to make decisions in this industry. We just say, yes, the things that sound good, right? These shiny objects that really end up just being distractions for us because we don't have any way to make a decision. Well, here's what we laid out for her that you can lay out for yourself. Here's your opportunity zone. How have I generated business in the past? Right. So for her, it was referrals and it was open houses. What are the commonalities there? Very, very, very relational activities, right? Being in front of people. She was great at that. So inside this small circle that is her opportunity zone. referrals, open houses, but really it's building relationships face to face. That's the opportunity zone. Outside of that is everything else. If it doesn't fall inside the opportunity zone, it means it's outside, which means it's a distraction. So we just looked at that. We built that out. And I said, okay, now you tell me if you're just mass mailing people, you don't know. You tell me is that inside or outside the opportunity zone? She said, well, it's outside the opportunity zone. Okay, great. So should you do it or not? No, I shouldn't. Right now, we had a way to make a decision. It is a seeking and finding and asking the Lord, who did you make me to be? How do you want me to show up in this business? Right? And a lot of that is, He's already shown us by the personality that you have. Every one of us is different and unique and praise God for that. Right? We don't need more of garrots in the world because we're loud and we talk a lot and no one would get a word in. Right? We need people that are more thoughtful, quicker to listen, people that are slow to speak, people that are more hospitable than I naturally am, people that are more humble than I naturally am. Now we need people like me too. I'm not, you know, totally discounting that as well, but we need all types of people and we need all types of skill sets. And so when we try to be something that we aren't, we are number one, ignoring the reality that the Lord created us uniquely and individually. And number two, we're buying into the lie that there's one way to succeed and it's to look like everybody else. It isn't. Figure out your opportunity zone. What have you done well in the past? What is your personality type? And if something comes to you and it seems like a good opportunity because everything does, then you look and you say, okay, well, is that uniquely in my skill set? Right? If someone came to me and said, we were talking about this, actually, I lead a faith and work call every week for our 210 Collective. And in the book, Traction, it talks about the core focus. Alright, so what is the core focus? What is, if you've the book, Acres of Diamonds by Russell Conwell, which you totally should, essentially the story is about this man who owned a farm. Excuse me, someone came to him one day, a priest came to him one day and said, look, here's gold and one piece of gold will buy this whole county. And so he said, okay, great. I'm going to sell my farm. I'm going to go looking for gold. Well, his name is Ali. Ali ends up uh dying penniless, never finds the gold. Well, that same priest goes back to the man who bought the farm from Ali. And he is telling him the same thing. Look at the gold is so valuable. And he notices up on the hearth that there's a little piece of gold. And he asked the new owner, where did you get that? He said, there's a stream that runs through this farm. And there is so much of this. It's all there. Right. So what happened? Well, there are acres of diamonds. uh Right. Now that I say that, it probably was diamonds, not gold, because that would make sense with the title of the book. But the point is, there's acres of diamonds right under your feet. We just get distracted. We lose focus. We don't stay in one direction long enough, of which I am guilty. And so we say, it didn't work. Well, is that true? Or did we not have a long enough runway? Right? Because most planes will take off if the runway is long enough. But when we give ourselves a short runway and we say, well, I tried for three months, it didn't work. So therefore my natural personality of X, Y, and Z of being in relationships, well, that must not work. So I better go find a way to buy leads. Right. And therefore that's the new normal. That's how I'm going to do this business. Instead of saying, what is my core focus? Meaning, Lord, how did you make me Lord? How do you want me to show up in this business? You all know my story. If you listen to the show in October, twenty, twenty two after my mom passed is when I started asking the Lord, who do you want me to serve? Right. Like, Lord, grant me a core focus. Where am I supposed to stay rooted and focused? And the Lord, in my opinion, made it very clear Christian agents. So now my core focus is how do I serve Christians in real estate? Because of that, I have very clear boundaries, right? And how to make decisions. I have a very clear pathway and how to make decisions. When an opportunity shows up in front of me, of which there are, right? All of us have opportunities. And a lot of them I create myself because I'm an entrepreneur and you guys know what that mind is like. When those opportunities exist, I just run it simply through a filter. Now it's more complex than this a little bit, but simply through the filter. Well, does this serve Christian agents? No, okay, then I'm just not going to do it. As good as it sounds, I'm not going to do it. It's not my core focus. That's not who the Lord called me to be. The acres of diamonds are right under my feet. Now, it doesn't mean that we're all going to go get wealthy, right, from a human perspective. I don't mean that. Now, maybe we could. Maybe that's the Lord's purpose. What I mean is the diamonds are the blessings that the Lord has for us right under our feet. Will we believe? Will we believe that the Lord has already put our feet on the field that he wants us to plow? Or will we always believe? that the Lord wants our feet to be somewhere else and so we should never be satisfied with where we are. We've got to ask those questions. Lord, what is my core focus? Who did you put me here to serve? How do you want me to show up? Right. And a lot of that again is already innately wired in you. Who are you? Anyways, you've heard me talk about my business partner and lead agent, Jesse loves to fish, right? Loves to fish just at all the time. In fact, as I record this, he told me today, texted me this morning, said, Hey, I'm taking the day off. uh and I'm gonna go fishing. I great, have a good time. I would never do that. Now, part of it sounds fun, right? Sitting there and trying to catch something that you can't do anything with anyways. I don't know if he eats it or not. I have no idea. But the reality is this, I don't like fishing. I'd rather go play pickleball, right? I'd rather read a book. I'd rather hang out with my kids. I'd rather sit in the sun and, you know, whatever, just enjoy that. I didn't choose that. He didn't choose it. That's just how we were wired, right? Why do you like certain foods and your spouse doesn't? I don't know. That's just how you were wired. You were made uniquely and we understand that but for some reason we come back to our business and we say no, no, no, no, no, no, We are all meant to be the same How was that true? It isn't it is not true Who are you meant to be in this industry show up and be that with excellence? That's how you honor the lord, but one of one of the um Last pieces to this conversation for me because you know I I just want you to understand that figure out who the lord made you to be and go be excellent at that, right? One of the reasons I think we often move our feet from the field we're on to the field next to us, or we go searching for another field, which I am totally guilty of, is because we look at the field that we're on. We look at the diamonds that our field is creating, or we never find the diamonds because we just don't stay focused long enough. But we find the diamonds on our field and we look and we say, well, Lord, I really appreciate that. But, his diamonds over there are much bigger and more valuable than mine. So clearly you must have wanted for me. bigger diamonds, right? So I'm going to try to get myself over there. I'm going to pursue what this person has pursued. I'm going to compare myself to them and say, you must have meant for me XYZ fill in the blank. And so because of that, I quickly let go of the field that I'm called and placed on specifically to harvest and reap and do the work. No matter where you are, it's hard. Running a business is just hard. There's no other way to do this. Will we honor the Lord by saying, Lord, this is the field you have me, I'll keep my feet right here and I'll keep doing the work. Will we honor him by saying, this is who you made me to be. And if I'm highly relational, which I am, and I'm wired to work by relationship, which I am, if that's going to take me to 50 deals a year and no further, praise God for that. If that takes me to 10 deals a year and no further by being excellent at it, right? I'm not saying being lazy at it, but if I'm excellent at it and it only produces 10 deals a year and that's enough? ah Praise God for that. That's okay. I don't have to be like everybody else. Right? Now, maybe that produces a lot more. Maybe that produces less, whatever it is. But just because I'm not getting what everybody else is getting, just because my field in acres of diamonds is not the same acre as my neighbor, doesn't mean I need to operate outside of the way the Lord wired me to be. Because he made me this way for a specific purpose. You know, in the book of Esther, Mordecai, who's Esther's uncle raises her, she ends up the new queen and go read it if you haven't, but she ends up the new queen. And come to find out Haman, who's this wicked counselor to the king says, we're gonna kill all the Jews and Mordecai is distraught. So Esther tries to send him clothes because he tore all his clothes and Esther tries to send him clothes, he says no. And then basically he says to her, I'm paraphrasing, go read it. Basically he says to her, hey, you need to go tell the king not to kill all these Jews, right? Because you're a Jew too, you need to save us. And she's like, well, if he doesn't pass out, the scepter to me, then I'm going to be killed. You know that. And he essentially says, you're going to be killed anyways, right? If he disorts the Jews, you're not going to escape that. But he says, what if you were put in this kingdom for such a time as this? Right? This honest question. What if you're here for this specific reason, Esther? If everything leading up to this was for this moment, what if, what if, he doesn't know. I love, I love the honesty. What if he doesn't know? What if this is why you're here? What if agent you were given that skill set for a specific reason for such a time as this? What if those clients that you're working with, you're working with them for such a time as this? What if those relationships that you're building, you are in those relationships for such a time as this? What does that look like? What could that mean? And I guarantee you what it doesn't mean is what the industry often says. You need to be counter to who you were created to be. The Lord gave you this. awesome. I don't want you to be that. want you to be something completely different. Right, Garrett? You're five, six and three quarters. That three quarters is highly important when you're as small as me. And so, Garrett, you weren't created to be a professional basketball player as hard as I might try. It ain't going to happen, right? It's just not going to happen. And so here's the reality. I could always look and say, well, I need to be something else or I could listen to everyone else and say, you need to be something else. Or I could look and say, no, no, no, no. Lord, who did you make me work from my identity, not for my identity? Who did you make me to be? And I'm going to try to be as excellent as possible. That's your job. The freedom in that, right, to not please man, but to please the Lord, the freedom in saying, what does it look like if I just go pursue excellence? That's the question. My encouragement to me, to you, to all of us is most of our day, The devil's job is to distract us, to pull you away from your own acres and make you look at the acres next door, to show you the diamonds that you might get and to convince you they're not enough, as if the Lord didn't provide what you needed and you deserve more. All day, the devil's job is to distract us. We need to be in community with one another. Why? Because we need to make sure that those around us are saying, hold on, hold on, hold on, on. You don't need to be somebody you're not because that's not who the Lord made you to be. You need to pursue who he has called you to be and do that well. Each one of us plays a role. Each one of us is part of a bigger, broader, grander story than we can possibly fathom. We want to show up and honor him by just staying focused in the direction that he has. I'm going to end with this. The War of the Worlds was a uh radio show that was played out and should have looked that up in advance. uh I don't remember when it was read on the radio, but it was before TV. So they read out this story about, you know, these weird alien robots coming in, totally destroying the planet basically. And then they did uh a remake movie of it with Tom Cruise and like the mid-2000s, I don't remember. But go check it out. Anyways, aliens, alien robots thingies coming and harvesting people and destroying everything. That's basically what happened. Well, there's this part in the movie where Tom Cruise is on the run with his son, who's I think maybe 17, and his daughter who's maybe 10. They uh are trying to escape these alien things and they run into this house and they dock into this house and they're trying to hide. Well, outside of the house is just chaos, right? uh plane literally crashes outside, there's destruction everywhere, all kinds of crazy stuff. Well, they survived the night and in the morning, Tom Cruise goes outside and he's looking around and he sees the complete destruction of everything and how terrifying it is. Well, they also have this van that somehow is untouched because, know, whatever, Hollywood, and they need to get to the van so they can leave. Well, Tom Cruise, now I'm not advocating at all that you look at Tom Cruise as any kind of spiritual example. However, in this uh scenario, Tom Cruise picks up his daughter. He goes to his 10 year old daughter and he says, whatever her name is, he says, look only at my eyes. Don't look anywhere else. He picks her up. He holds her and they walk out, right? And she is looking right in his eyes and looking nowhere else. All around them is chaos. This plane is burning. People have died, like just chaos. She just keeps her eyes fixed on him. He walks her to the van. They get in the van, buckles her up, they drive away and she's totally calm. in such a real way. That's what the Lord is asking of us. Just look right here. Let me hold you. Let me take you where I want us to go. And it's not into chaos. It's into peace. If your world is chaos, that's not the Lord. That's not what he desires for you. And the Lord says, come with me. I will take you where I want you to go, which is in peace. Doesn't mean life's going to be easy. Don't hear me say that. but it means that we're not gonna be operating outside of what the Lord desires for us. When we look around, which I do all the time, when we look around, we start to freak out because the world around us is crazy. And we think, man, look at all this stuff. I need to run, right? I need to run away because I'm scared. Or we look and we say, uh look how terrible that is. I need to go do this because I don't know everybody around me is doing it. I need to go be part of that. Instead of just saying, okay, Lord, please, this is what I love about the Lord's Prayer. Give me this day, my daily bread, right? Every single day. Come back to the Lord. carry me, keep my eyes fixed on you. Grant me this day my daily bread. Be who you were created to be, brother and sister. That's the only thing we can do. That's how we honor the Lord. Be who you were created to be. Figure out who the Lord wired you to be and go be excellent at that. That's your lead generation strategy. That's your strategy in business. That's what it should be in this industry. We're thinking in my world, right, the 210 Collective might have heard me talk about that. And I'm just going to share this briefly. what is it that our main focus is? Well, it's to pursue excellence, serve others, and to glorify God. What does it mean for us to pursue excellence? Well, it's to pursue who the Lord made us to be and go be excellent at it. What does it mean for us to serve others? How do we do that? Well, we do that well by showing up as who we're called to be and doing that selflessly, putting others above ourselves. using the skills the Lord has given us. am not a hospitable person by nature. I don't love people coming over to my house. Now I can grow in that. Don't hear me say I should just ignore it as if it's okay. But if I was going to do that all the time and try to be that person because I thought that's who I was supposed to be instead of letting my wife do it who is so gracious and hospitable, well that doesn't even make sense. If my wife instead thought she should be on this podcast because that's what she was supposed to do and not me. That wouldn't make sense either. We play a role. We play the role with the cards the Lord has specifically given us. We best serve each other by doing that. And that's how we glorify God. That's my hope. the end of all of this, every conversation we have, every time we talk about something different, every time we talk about business or thought process or have a guest on or whatever, the end goal is how do we pursue excellence to the glory of the Father? That's what matters. We're not building our own kingdoms. We're building His. A hundred years from now, no one will even know I existed. And they won't know you existed either, not in a morbid way, but they will know that the word of the Lord remains. So who are we trying to build? Who are we trying to please? That's my challenge for all of us. I hope that you will go out in pursuit to glorify the Father. And if you need help figuring that out and pursuing that, I genuinely hope you'll reach out to me, whether it's Set up a call to learn about 210 Collective, whether it's join my free school community where we go live every single Wednesday, we teach, we train, and we encourage one another. I hope that you will become part of the family in a deeper way because I genuinely have a heart to help you do this and I need your help to help me do this and stay on that track too. I love you Christianations, genuinely. That's why I show up every single week. I love you. I desire good for you, that you would go and glorify and honor the Lord. by being exactly who he made you to be and doing that with excellence.