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A
We own the number one single office brokerage in the world.
B
We ran it for 15 years, and we had, at the end, 906 agents.
A
And we took the risk of closing it down, and it was the biggest risk we ever took. But currently, right now, we have almost 9,000 agents.
C
Chuck and Angela Fazio are entrepreneurs, real estate leaders, and business mentors. They help real estate professionals build thriving businesses through visionary leadership, proven systems, and a commitment to faith growth and lasting impact.
B
Our mindset in a lot of different ways is, where is everyone going? Let's go in a different direction. Right. If we want to do something different or bigger or more impactful, why in the heck would you go in the same direction as everyone else?
D
What tips do we have for, I guess the couples out there being Couples Empire?
A
They talk about wives supposed to be submissive to their husbands. And a lot of women don't like to hear that. But they leave out the other part where they say what the husbands are supposed to do. And the husbands are supposed to love their wives like Christ loved the church. And if you understand what Christ did for the church, he died for it. So
B
it spans the globe like a super high Internet Elvis.
E
Ready for free.
D
Today, Apple is going to reinvent the model.
E
It's not over until I win the living your legacy podcast. For those who live to leave a legacy that's extraordinary. The impossible. Oh, that is sensational. Jordan Open Chicago. With the lead, Usain Paul is the fastest man on the planet. You can live your dream.
D
Hi. Welcome back to another episode of living your legacy podcast. I'll be your host today, Jay Slangin. And thanks for joining us. And we're here with two special guests at one of our new shows, Couples Empire, which we really get into the whole dynamics of running a business as a couple. But, yeah. Please introduce yourself and tell me where you're from and what you're all about.
A
Hi, I'm Chuck Fazio. I'm from Chandler, Arizona. And we're entrepreneurs that run businesses. One real estate, one event space.
D
All right.
B
Yep. And my name is Angela Fazio, also from Arizona. That's right.
D
I'm a couple couples empire. You guys are married and everything?
B
Yes.
D
All right. And so, I mean, running a business as a couple. Right. I know that couples just being a couple in general is hard enough. Right. Running a business complicates everything. Right. I know that there's kind of a point where it's a learning curve. Right. And then you get to a point of, hey, you do your thing, and I do my thing. And we kind of have our place within the business. You know, tell me how it is running a business as a couple, and how did you finally get to a good dynamic?
A
Well, I'll tell you, you know, contrary to what you say, I almost think it's harder for people not to run their businesses as couples. Hello.
B
That's true.
A
How good we have it for us. It kind of fell naturally just because she is my best friend and soulmate, and we do everything under the Lord, and we've been blessed to be able to build our businesses together. And because we have such a great relationship and a great dynamic, it actually makes it a little easier to be successful because we don't deal with the other drama most couples deal with.
D
Wow, that's a beautiful thing.
B
It is. I think there's a couple of facts to understand. One, since we've started being serious together back in 2001, we've never spent one day apart.
D
Okay.
B
And we are very similar, personality wise. And yes, it makes. It makes our success easier because we can do it all together. And at the beginning, there was some, you know, we don't have really different lanes because we're so similar. We have a few different lanes, but at first, we did have to, because we're both headstrong people. We did have to figure out how not to kick each other under the table and talk all over each other.
A
And you still haven't figured that out, though?
B
Yes, I. Well, no, I do interrupt a lot. That is one of my best talents. I'm really good at interrupting. But we. We did have that time. We were trying to not, like, intentionally talk over each other in a negative way or dominate the situation because we're both dominant people. But that settled in pretty quickly for us.
D
Okay. I guess one of the main things in business is trust, right?
B
Yes.
D
And you got to trust your business partner, and that's what kind of breaks apart a lot of these businesses. So I guess being a couple, trust is something that you guys definitely have.
A
Well, you know, you spot on. Trust is probably the foundation to any relationship.
D
Yeah.
A
And once broken is probably the hardest thing to get back. You know, one of the things, the way we have built trust is by action. You know, I always say talk is cheap. And the way you build trust is not by saying to someone, you're gonna do something or you'll be there or whatever. It's just by constant over the course of time. I am a man of my word, and she's a woman of her word. And when you constantly show that the trust comes naturally because we prove it with actions.
B
Yeah. And the other part of that is really of transparent communication, which is not so easy at first because we live in a world where people aren't transparent with each other and they do keep a lot of secrets from each other. And so we had to. I would say something to him that was really vulnerable and he would be okay with it or he would, you know, process through it. And so over time, that trust built also because we refuse to have any secrets from each other. And we don't have to be afraid of saying what's on our mind, even if it. We don't think it's what the other one wants to hear.
D
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's. Well, first of all, I just thought about what my friend used to say in college and be like, yo, word is bond, yo. So kind of like that, right? So shout out to my friend Mitch. But yes, being transparent backed it up with action, though. All the time. All the time. He's like, my word is my bond and my bond is my word, you know, so. But yes, being transparent, you know, this is, this is also good for couples therapy. Anyone that wants to listen to this and get some tips, Transparency is key. Trust is key. You can't break that. But that also relates in business as well. So, you know, tell us about your business.
A
So we, we run, we run a few businesses right now. One of the main ones is we're big influencers and leaders at EXP Realty.
D
Okay.
A
EXP Realty is a cloud based brokerage, one of the biggest brokerages in the world. We've been with them, gee, since, what is it? 2020. 20, 2020. Before that, we owned our own brokerage. We owned the number one single office brokerage in the world.
D
Hey.
A
Yeah, it was a big brokerage. And we took the risk of closing it down to go build with this new model at the time. And it was the biggest risk we ever took. But we, we saw the vision and we believed in it and we know what we're capable of doing. So currently, right now, we have almost 9,000 agents work in our group all over the world.
D
Wow. And you grew that from how big was your personal brokerage and then you grew that to 9,000. Like, how big was that?
A
Good question.
B
That's a good question. So our brokerage, we ran it for 15 years and we had at the end 906 agents. Wow. Out of one location in Arizona.
D
Massive. Massive.
A
Yeah. We used to do about 2 billion in production a year, which is Equivalent to probably three and a half billion in today's numbers.
D
Wow. And so no regrets on that. Right. From adding a 0, 909,000.
A
Yeah, good point.
D
But the 10x grant card. 10. You got 10x there. Right.
A
And we love Grant. Yes. And, yeah, the biggest risk we ever took in our life, it was. Yeah.
B
And what's interesting is neither of us have business backgrounds. I mean, we didn't start. We didn't start in real estate with this, you know, MBA or any kind of schooling or knowledge or prior experience with business. And I think that over time, God had really allowed us to learn business through a lot of mistakes and a lot of failures. And we've been able to apply that over and over and in bigger ways as we've grown into different businesses as well.
D
All right. Wow. So, yeah, it's kind of like your. Your mistakes, and it's almost like your assets and your. And your equity and your armor, they say. Right. So, yeah. What, what kind of mistakes in growing that fast and that big did you guys learn along the way?
A
Well, I think a lot of the stuff is there's. In the industry, you don't have really people that are going to pour into you that have success at building a brokerage, because technically you're that competition.
D
Yeah, it's a very flooded.
A
Yes. So. So it's a very competitive industry. So we had to learn on our own what worked, what didn't work. You know, there you can't just always follow the grain because that's not always the right thing to do. So a lot of the things I've been blessed, I mean, God gives me visions on what to do, and he's given me that skill set. So we'll try certain things. If it works, we elaborate on it. If it doesn't work, we pivot really quick.
D
One of the things, almost like a blue ocean strategy, where you go in where others aren't.
A
Absolutely.
B
That actually has been our mindset in a lot of different ways, is where is everyone going? Let's go in a different direction. Yeah, right. If we want to do something different or bigger or. Or more impactful, why in the heck would you go in the same direction as everyone else?
D
Absolutely. Yeah. Maybe at first to learn the ropes. But you gotta think, hey, you know, I'm not just a lemming jumping off the entrepreneurial cliff of real estate and brokerages. I'm trying to do my own thing. Right. And that's where you kind of set yourself apart.
B
But you did ask, what kind of failures did we have? There's not a lot of categories where we didn't fail. You know, lots of bad financial decisions. Definitely lots of people. Bad people decisions.
A
Bad hiring.
B
Yes.
A
Bad relationships.
B
Yeah. A lot of things. And it could crush most people. But that's the difference between people who are willing to push through those huge hardships, learn from them. Hopefully learn from them. We've made some mistakes more than once, and then keep pushing.
A
But that's also where the strength comes in of our relationship, because we have each other. We could both vent to each other. There'll be days she's having it worse than I am, or vice versa. We talk ourselves out of, why would you quit? Why would you give up? So that is the beauty of dealing with a strong relationship as opposed to not being in business with a partner.
D
Yeah.
B
We don't go home and someone says, I don't want to hear about business.
D
Yeah. I guess that's the question is always like, how do you separate your business life and then your home life? Right. No, we don't.
B
It's life.
E
Yeah.
A
We always say life is life. This is our life.
D
When you're passionate about something and you love something, why would you kind of separate it? It's like, okay, let's talk about this. Because we love it 100%.
B
We're always brainstorming. Right. We'll take a walk and we're brainstorming where, you know, it doesn't matter what we're doing. We go on dates every single day.
D
Yeah.
B
And we brainstorm and just talk about what can we do.
D
Okay. Okay. Dates every day.
A
Oh, yeah. Well, when you got a hot wife like that, you want to date her every day.
D
All right, this is very interesting for my first couple's empire here. Right. But so you guys have, I mean, 9,000 people, right? From 910X to definitely sounds like an empire.
C
Right.
D
What is that Blue Ocean strategy that sets you apart? And why are all these agents signing up with your brokerage?
A
Well, it's just understand the brokerage of exp is the. The bigger brokerage which has over probably 85,000 agents. So we have one of the bigger organizations within the brokerage. One of the draws to it is the model is different. It's a cloud based. It's one brokerage worldwide. And the collaboration. Because one of the big things I always say is iron sharpens iron. One man sharpens another is when you have big players and big producers pouring into each other, the success is endless.
D
What did you say? Iron sharpens iron.
A
So it's a scripture verse Proverbs 27:17. As iron sharpens iron, one man sharpens another. And it's a great analogy of that's how two pieces of iron get sharp. There is definitely some conflict, which when you got two strong people, you don't just sit and agree with each other. You have debates, you have conversations, you point out each other's flaws, encourage and hold accountable. And a lot of people don't like that. That's why a lot of people fail is they're not willing to grow and learn or take criticism.
B
Yeah. They're people pleasers. And I will tell you, we certainly did not get all 9,000 agents. We have extraordinary partners, and we didn't even bring all the extraordinary partners. Great people bring great people. And people who want to succeed and want to be in bigger rooms and think bigger are attracted to surrounding themselves with those kinds of thinkers. And so we've been so blessed and fortunate that we have an amazing organization full of amazing people.
D
Yeah. Okay. And so what. What have you learned with. With this new organization? Like, how. How is it different from the personal organization that you had? Like what. What's the big difference? And, well, the big. Why'd you say it was the hardest decision of your life?
B
Because it was.
D
Well, I mean, you had such a great organization.
A
So the reason why it was a hard decision is we built this business up to be a multimillion dollar business. I mean, we were financially making good money. In order to do the new venture, we had to close our company down, and they weren't paying us one penny for it. So most people said it was the dumbest thing we ever did. I mean, you got a multimillion dollar business that we could have sold, and we literally closed it for a chance, an opportunity. Yeah.
D
And why didn't you sell it first?
A
Why didn't we?
D
Yeah. Could you have?
A
Yeah, you know what? That's a great question.
B
That is a good question. Well, we did get offers.
A
Yeah, we did have some offers. The way the other brokerage works is because you build agents underneath you. So we were hoping to start a foundational get our agents because we did want to help our agents. So. So it was like we were running our business under the new umbrella.
D
Okay.
A
When you say why it afforded us to work now not just in a local Arizona area, but now it enabled us not only to build all over the country, but all over the world.
D
Yeah.
A
So the platform would have. Would afford us to do it to build even bigger. So that's the chance that the.
D
There I'm Sure. They were happy to have you guys come over.
B
They sure were. You know, you asked a great question on what. What have we learned? And I've got to tell you, far more than I anticipated.
A
Yeah.
B
And one of the things, why. Why is it so different our experience now and what we're building now than what we were doing before? And the truth is, is real estate is a very antiquated. It's. The whole environment is antiquated. And it's really. Everyone's out for themselves. You know, you're working even within the same brokerage. Agents are working against each other. They. They look at each other as competitions. They don't share and collaborate because they're afraid somebody's going to steal their stuff. Now, that's not always true, but by and large it is.
D
That's. That's iron fighting iron. Yes.
E
That's.
B
Yeah.
A
Tin foil.
B
No, that's like the two opposing ends of magnets pushing each other away. And what's interesting is because of the way Expensive he is built, the business model, it encourages people like us who want to share to share more intentionally and people who maybe wouldn't been as inclined to share to collaborate deeply. And that has been a whole new. Far exceeded my expectations.
D
All right, well, what tips do we have for, I guess, the couples out there being couples Empire? What do you guys have to say?
B
I got the first one. Seek other couples who are not tearing each other down, who are. Who are not opposing each other, who don't complain about each other. There are couples out there that have abiding relationships. Seek them out and learn all you can from what they're doing and teach them all you can about what you're doing. Because if you surround yourself with garbage, wives complaining about their husbands, husbands complaining about their wives, that will wear on your mindset.
A
Yeah, yeah. The other thing, I mean, which is big to me is our walk with Christ. And we take the Bible literally from a standpoint that it helps in every aspect of your life, especially marriage. And I tell people, look, even if you're not a spiritual person or you don't believe in Jesus, I will tell you, just reading the Bible and the elements it has on how to live life and have a relationship really do work. I mean, it really is powerful stuff. And the one thing is that the Bible says that a lot of people like to point out. They talk about wives supposed to be submissive to their husbands, and a lot of women don't like to hear that. But they leave out the other part where they say, what the husbands are supposed to do. And the husbands are supposed to love their wives like Christ loved the church. And if you understand what Christ did for the church, he died for it. So to make a great relationship is I cherish this woman and I protect and love her at all costs. And in return, she loves and respects me. Because when you create that, what we call the love respect cycle, it does create a perfect marriage. Now, it does take a lot of work, and it takes communication and intention. But I will tell you, you gotta get rid of your pride and ego if you want a great marriage. It's between just the two of you. And like Angela said, look, if you're a husband out there, don't go hang out with a bunch of dudes and bitch about your wives or go look to try to pick up girls. I go, because you're just setting yourself up for failure in your relationship.
D
Yeah, I guess it's also a constant work because you have to always have the respect of your partner as well. That's a huge thing.
A
Yeah.
D
So we got. We got trust, we got transparency, we got respect. Right.
B
I have a really huge one. You have to date. You have to spend quality time with each other.
D
Listen, fellas, listen.
B
We have six children, and believe me, we always made it a priority that we are each other's first. Because I can't tell you how many countless couples, they get married and the life takes over. And even if you don't work with each other, that's okay. But you have to date because you'll wake up 20 years later when the kids are out of the house and you're like, who am I living with?
A
Well, no, no, no. Here's what. Here's what year a lot. And it's mostly the women. This is not a bash on the women. It's just women are way more loving on their children. Maybe that's true. Nurturing. That's the word I'm looking for. And when you talk to someone and they'll say, my kids are the most important thing in my life, well, that's you. You already started off in the wrong order. Your husband and the wife are the number one most important things in your life. Not the kids.
B
Harass. It goes, God first, us second, and then everything else goes below it. And sometimes kids are third, sometimes they're fifth. You know, sometimes business is third. And so if you don't spend, you change. I was 30 when I met him. You know, he was a lot older than that. And so we. These 25 years, everyone changes in 25 years. And if you're not, if you're not aware of what's going on in each other's lives and the things that are shap you as a person, it. You, it. You will naturally grow apart. You have to intentionally stay focused on each other and engaged with each other. We dream together.
A
All we dream, we talk, we plan. It's.
D
That is also so important. Dreaming, dreaming together, having those goals together. Right. Because it's also like, you know, you can't just go through life right. Without the dream, you know, and when you both have that same dream that
A
is like very powerful, you know, it's probably sad. I would go on the limb and say most couples don't ask their spouse, what do you dream about? And do we dream together? You know, or is that your dream? And here's my dream. Yeah, that's. It's sad.
B
Yeah. You know, in Isaiah, which is a book in the Bible, it says where there is no vision, the people will perish. If you don't have anything that you're developing and it doesn't have to be business all the time, it can be interests or aspirations or, you know, it can be anything. If you aren't developing those thoughts together and if you're not open to that and you want to separate those things, you're separating yourself from your spouse. And that will inevitably cause it to tear apart. Yes, it will.
D
Well, I will tell you, I read through your guys kind of story, story points, and for anyone listening, you definitely going to want to tune into their episode because, you know, their, their history together and what they kind of grew out of and the issues that they both grew out of to kind of overcome to get to where they are is just so, so interesting. And I'm going to leave it at that. Right. But what you heard here is just the tip of the iceberg. And yeah. Wow. It's incredible that you're sitting here. It's incredible what you've built. And thank you for joining us.
B
Thank you for having us.
A
Appreciate it.
D
Yeah, yeah. It's a beautiful thing that you guys have. You're my first couple's empire. Right. And thanks for being. That's like a beautiful thing to hear what you guys have.
A
We give God all the glory.
B
Absolutely.
A
All the glory. Yes.
D
All right, well, thanks for tuning in and I hope you guys join us again. And that's it from. Oh, wait, wait, where can people find you?
A
Oh, well, One Stop Collaboration is our group that we're building in the real estate industry.
B
So the website is the one stop. Collaboration.com.
A
you can find us, the iconic power couple and Chuck and Angela Fazio on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.
B
Yes, Chuck and Angela Fazio.
D
All right, well, that's it from our studios in sunny Miami Beach. Thanks for joining us and see you next time.
A
Thank you.
Living Your Legacy Podcast Episode: How They Walked Away From a Billion Dollar Brokerage Host: Jay Slangin (substituting for Rudy Mawer) Guests: Chuck & Angela Fazio Date: August 2, 2026
This special "Couple’s Empire" episode features Chuck and Angela Fazio, acclaimed entrepreneurs, real estate industry leaders, and business mentors. Known for building the world’s #1 single-office real estate brokerage and later making the bold decision to shut it down, Chuck and Angela open up about the risks, rewards, and dynamics of working and building legacies together as a married couple. The conversation dives deep into navigating business as life partners, the role of faith, strategies for growth, and practical advice for other entrepreneurial couples.
This episode is a treasure trove of hard-earned wisdom, candid advice, and motivating storytelling for ambitious couples and entrepreneurs alike. Chuck and Angela's journey stands as a testament to intentional partnership, faith-driven risk taking, and the idea that true legacy is built side-by-side.