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Unfortunately, in real estate right now, there are a ton of agents who are doing not so well. You're struggling. However, there's also a lot of agents that look to be doing very well that are financially crushing it. They're on the real trends list, but they're miserable. They're depressed, they're miserable, they're burned out. They're on their third marriage. And unfortunately, this all comes back to one mistake that agents make early on, and they have no idea that they're making it. They have no idea how to get off the path. I'm going to share with you what this mistake is and how you can turn the page and start getting onto the right path to thrive financially and in your personal life. The Massive Agent podcast with lead generation tips and strategies to get you more leads and sell more homes. I love to buy houses. I like to sell houses. It takes brass balls to sell real estate. Wait a minute. The leads are weak. You're weak. I've had better. Better. Oh, have I got your attention? Now? Here's your host, Dustin Broome. What's up, guys? Welcome to episode 445 of the Massive Agent podcast. I am your host, Dustin Brome in Salt Lake City, Utah. And today is my. This is my first full week back after my family vacation. I took the family to Maui for a week and I completely checked out, which is incredible. That gave me the perspective and the idea for. For today's episode, because I. Look, I've been in real estate for 16 years. I've done so much wrong, especially early on. And in the last few years, I've done a lot right. And I see a lot of agents that unfortunately are. Have. You've been doing everything you were taught to do. You're selling a bunch of houses. You're. You're doing all that, but you're miserable, you're unhappy, you're unhealthy, you're burned out. And it all comes back to a mistake that you made years ago that you have no idea you made. And the people that taught you that actually don't know the mistake that you made either. And that mistake is you are. You're actually doing what the industry has taught you to do, which was to make the number one goal, selling more houses, spin that hamster wheel faster. Just keep selling and selling and selling. What you weren't taught is how to build a great life. And so you. You. If you've been in real estate for any period of time, you completely understand that your calendar will fill up with bullshit if you don't set some structure around your day. And so in the beginning, when I was, I didn't have any, didn't have many homes to sell. I was hardly making any money. I was struggling and I was willing to do whatever. I just let work fill in any part of the day that, that I could because I needed to. Right. And if you're in that phase or that season, I totally get it. I understand there's some seasons where you just have to completely be unbalanced and. But it's a season, okay? It needs to be a season. It needs to be a phase and not the way that you do things. Because I've talked to a lot of agents, unfortunately. I know a lot of agents that their numbers look great. They're these agents that when you drive through neighborhoods, you see their signs everywhere. Their names, their names are in lights. They're on the real trends list. They're selling hundreds of millions of dollars as a team. And they're on their third marriage or their fourth marriage or they barely have been able to spend time with their kids. They haven't taken a vacation in six years. They're barely making any money because their expenses are so damn high. All of these things are avoidable. And unfortunately, it all comes back to that mistake that I mentioned. Where you are, the mistake is putting selling homes as the top goal, as your, as your main priority. Now it needs to be a top priority. But what I've learned to do over the last four or five years, that has really, I'm really at a place of gratitude, especially spending the last week in Maui and be able to check out and to have more money made while I was there than I spent was just incredible. Like, I looked at, I looked at my bank account before and I mean, it's Maui, it's very expensive. We spent a lot on the vacation. We did a lot of things. We did a helicopter tour, zip lining, all this stuff. And you know, their, their food is outrageous. If you've ever been to Hawaii at all, their food is outrageous because they have to import it all from the mainland, right? But there was more money in my account when I got back. And I would, I had this period of reflection where I was like, had I not made certain decisions and made certain moves, that wouldn't have been the case. I'd have to jump back on the hamster wheel. I'd have to play catch up. And luckily, here's what I did, right? We're going to talk about what I did right? And what, what a lot of agents are doing wrong and what I did wrong for most of my career. If you've been taught to just sell more houses and that's all you're taught is just sell more, do more, be more productive, make more out of your time, you know, get more, squeeze more out of your time and all of that, that's all great, you should do that. However, the missing piece is you are not building that around the life that you want. And then the life, your personal life, your family life all fits into whatever time is left in the day. If you're an agent that's burned out and you don't see your family very much, you don't get much free time, you haven't gone to the gym in months, you eat like shit, you just go to drive throughs between showings. It's because you're letting your day control you instead of you controlling your day. So the, the mistake that you're making is you're following someone who's. They didn't know how to have a balanced lifestyle. They didn't know how to define the life you want first, what you want your day to look like, what your non negotiables are, and then build your calendar around that. I've been, look, I've screwed up a lot. I made a lot of mistakes. I'm not a perfect example, but in this case I've done this right and I'm really fricking proud about it and grateful because it let me go to go to Maui and spend way too much money and have more in my account. When I, when I got back, it was just, it's just mind boggling because. And above all that it's not just about the finances like that that's great, but it's also that I'm happy and it's because I defined certain things that are important to me in my life. Certain things that I want to do each day and then I just block those off on the calendar first. So then everything work related comes after. For example, this is, now this is me personally. I'm not saying that you must do these things or you should, but for me personally, during the school year, I take my kids to school every morning. If you want to meet with me during that time, if there's an appointment, if there's something I, I'm sorry, you're gonna have, I'm gonna have to do it later. The only time I will ever miss dropping them off is if I'm out of town. And I try to minimize that as much as I can. I'VE taken later flights in the morning so that I can take my kids to school and then go to the airport. For me, that's one of my non negotiables. And then I go straight to the gym. I get a workout in, I come back maybe 10 o', clock, 9:30, 10 o', clock, I eat. I, I'm not really starting work until 10:30 or 11 each day. Sometimes, sometimes I will, I'll take a, like, you know, cut my workout short or go take a zoom call in the car or something and then go back to it. It depends. But for the most part, my calendar is not even open until 10:30 or 11 every morning. So if you're on the east coast, that means like, sorry, I can't meet with you till afternoon. I'm actually not sorry because that is what I need. I need the time with my kids, I need the time with my family, I need the time with my wife at the gym. I need that for my health and my nutrition and all this stuff. And so I just then build my work calendar around that. Now there's other things like if my wife needs to, if she has an appointment or something or she was doing something with her friends, then I'll just time block that in and build my work schedule around it. Sometimes that means that I have to, that I have to do stuff a few days earlier than I would have normally in anticipation of what's coming up. So I have to be very intelligent and, you know, thoughtful of my calendar and of my schedule and what's coming up later. Big hack. Don't like tonight. Okay, let me zoom all the way out here. You need to look at what's coming up tomorrow, tonight, the night before is when you should start planning the next day, not when you wake up in the morning. And pro, pro tip here. Don't just look at tomorrow, look at it like the next week. See what's coming up. Because sometimes there's something where you're going to be out of the office, you're not able to work or not willing to work for a certain period of time, which means you've got to do X, Y or Z three days earlier. And if you're just looking at the next morning each time, you're going to miss some of that stuff till it's too late. And then you have one hell of a day and you don't have enough time to get stuff in and then you're working till 4am and that's, that's not cool. Unfortunately, agents are following the playbook of someone who's following the playbook of someone who's following the playbook of someone who had just a horrible work life balance. I do believe there is some version of a work life balance. I know it's popular in entrepreneur circles to say that there's no such thing. I understand the spirit of that. I don't think it's necessarily possible at any given time to have a perfect 50, 50 split. Sometimes it's going to be way more work, way more family. Things become balanced. Balanced. But you do your best and it is possible to absolutely. To fit in your health, your fitness, your family in addition to work. If you're at the place where you're like, I just have so many tasks to do. I'm just so busy. Okay. That means you either need to do fewer things or outsource the things to. To somebody. Transaction coordinator, virtual assistant, executive assistant. List. What are they called? Not buyer's agents, but showing agents. You need to have showing agents showing the houses on your behalf. I would bet you if you serve buyers, the majority of your time is spent on the road showing fricking houses. Is that the best you should for time? Spoiler alert. It's not. Someone else can do that. You can hire somebody else to be your, to be your showing agent. And in fact, one of my good friends in Florida, she, she was living in another state. She was living in. She was, I don't want to divulge too much. She was living in another state and she was still closing deals in Florida. Sometimes her clients didn't even know that she wasn't in the state. It's because she had a great team of showing agents showing the houses. And then she handled the rest. She handled offer writing, negotiations, everything else that didn't require her to physically be there. That's incredible. So anything is possible if you set the intention of having a business a certain way. Here's what I want you to do. Here's what I want you to walk away with today. The main purpose of this is for you to rethink which way things are going. Are you letting your day control you or are you controlling your day? So write down, not just think about, write down what is important to you every single day. What are your non negotiables? I just told you a few of mine. What are those non negotiables for you? And then fake them into your calendar. I talked to an agent earlier that's like, oh, I really want to be on that, that mastermind call that you talked about. But I Have this other thing. Like, well, okay, well, just reschedule the thing and in the future stop doing that thing at that time. And the light bulb went off, they were like, oh my gosh, you're right. Like, I don't have to schedule that at that time. So they're going to reschedule the thing in the future so that now they're open to attend this, this one mastermind. You're in control. You are in control of your day, of your calendar, of your schedule, of the tasks you do or don't do. And if you feel like you're just spinning this hamster wheel, it's because you, you've lost control. You've let everyone else and everything else take over. And it doesn't have to be that way. I have the life that I have now, which is not perfect, and I'm trying to improve and I'm trying to scale and, and grow and all of that stuff, of course. But I'm super grateful for what I have. Like me five years ago would have killed for this. Me 10 years ago would not have believed my current life is possible. Me 15, 20 years ago would have even thought that anyone in the world could have a life like what I have. Not, not, not that I'm some billionaire or anything like that. Not even close, but. And you're in control. So define what you want your life to look like and then schedule your work around that. Something magical happens. When you do it this way, you're going to realize, okay, there's less time in the day to just do a bunch of stuff. So I got to cut the stuff or outsource the stuff that must get done to somebody else when you start to leverage other people to get the job done. Now you have yourself a team. And I'm not, I'm not talking about that like a real estate team. I mean, you have a team of people who are shouldering the workload, which helps you be much more productive and focus on the money making activities, which means you make more money and you start to like, if you do more money making activities, you make more money, which lets you afford more staff and you can hire even more and outsource more and it, and it steamrolls. But you got to take the first step, define what you want. Build your life, build your schedule around that. I encourage you to do this exercise. It's not rocket science, it's not hard. And stop telling yourself you can't do it because you absolutely can. It might require a couple sacrifices here and there along the way, there might be a. You might feel a little step back here or there. But I'm telling you, if you are not in a place where you're loving your life, if you feel like you're a slave to work, slave to your clients, it is because you made it so. And unfortunately, it's because you were taught to do that by someone else who didn't know better. But now's the time to change the tune, to turn the page, to knock that shit off and take fricking control. Define what you want your life to look like. Schedule, work around that, your business structure and everything. Maybe you just need a bunch more income to make other things possible. Have you thought about attaching revenue share onto what you're doing or, you know, creating a referral business? There's so many things that you can do as an agent to make money. Maybe you have a certain skill set that you should package up and monetize and sell to other agents or other entrepreneurs. There's something that you're good at that someone else is trying to get good at, that you could package up and sell and teach them. But it takes thinking outside the box out of a place of necessity. When you're like, oh, my gosh, I now only have this amount of time I have to cut something, or, oh, my gosh, I want to do all this and I don't have enough income for it, how do I get that? It makes you think in a productive way, where you start thinking about new ways of doing things. That's what I want you to do. Define your life. Reverse engineer how to make it happen. Build your work schedule around that. You can do it. You absolutely can do it, and I'd encourage you to do it. I appreciate you guys. Thanks for listening. See you next week. Sam.
Host: Dustin Brohm
Date: July 2, 2026
In this episode, Dustin Brohm digs deep into the root causes of unhappiness among top-producing real estate agents. Despite the external markers of success—big sales numbers, industry accolades, and market dominance—many agents are miserable, unhealthy, and burned out. Dustin reveals the hidden mistake many agents make early in their careers: letting work dictate their life, instead of designing their business around the lifestyle they want. He shares personal anecdotes, hard-won lessons, and actionable strategies to reclaim control, achieve genuine freedom, and build a business that enriches—not consumes—your life.
[01:15 – 03:00]
[03:00 – 07:30]
[08:00 – 15:00]
[15:00 – 20:00]
[20:00 – 25:00]
[25:00 – 30:00]
[30:00 – 34:00]
[34:00 – 37:00]
Dustin Brohm [02:02]:
“What you weren’t taught is how to build a great life… If you’ve been in real estate for any period of time, you completely understand that your calendar will fill up with bullshit if you don’t set some structure around your day.”
[09:20]:
“I’m not really starting work until 10:30 or 11 each day… Sorry, I can’t meet with you till afternoon. I’m actually not sorry because that is what I need.”
[13:45]:
“You need to look at what’s coming up tomorrow, tonight. The night before is when you should start planning the next day, not when you wake up in the morning.”
[21:10]:
“I would bet you, if you serve buyers, the majority of your time is spent on the road showing fricking houses. Is that the best use of your time? Spoiler alert: it's not.”
[26:00]:
“You are in control of your day, of your calendar, of your schedule, of the tasks you do or don’t do.”
[31:30]:
“When you start to leverage other people to get the job done… you become much more productive and focus on the money-making activities, which lets you afford more staff and… it steamrolls.”
[37:05]:
“Define your life. Reverse engineer how to make it happen. Build your work schedule around that. You can do it. You absolutely can do it, and I’d encourage you to do it.”
Dustin’s message is clear: True success in real estate isn’t about the number of homes sold or volume metrics—it’s about building a business that gives you time, happiness, and freedom to live the life you want. The first—and most crucial—step is realizing that you get to define what that looks like and taking action to make it reality.