# Chase Service, Not Checks: Roddy de la Garza on Proving Your Value as a Real Estate Agent

> Published: 2026-10-13 | Category: podcast-episode

**Guest:** Roddy de la Garza

Roddy de la Garza on 30 years, 800+ deals and zero portal leads: how real estate agents can prove their value, build a team and chase service, not checks.

## Content

If you've ever answered your phone thinking "what new hell is this?", Roddy de la Garza has been there. For eight or nine years he was extremely productive by volume and transaction count, and he was miserable doing it. Today he leads a team at Epique Realty in Los Angeles, with more than 30 years in real estate, 800+ transactions and over $400 million in volume since 2014. His team spends nothing on portal leads. On this episode of The REI Agent, he tells host Mattias Clymer how he got there: put service ahead of commission, be able to explain your value in plain terms, and build a business that a portal can't switch off.

## How did Roddy de la Garza get started in real estate?

Roddy didn't so much choose real estate as grow up inside it. His family's brokerage, Bondman Realty, has served the Rio Grande Valley of Texas for 54 years. By the time he was seven or eight he was spending weekends shadowing his dad: showing houses, putting up signs and holding the tape measure while they measured the outside of homes. His college summers were spent back at the office, cutting up long fax-machine rolls of contracts.

Like many children of agents, he swore he'd never do it himself. He went to the University of Texas at Austin to become a film director. By his junior year he was calling his father to say he couldn't stand spending 19 hours on a set for two minutes of usable footage. His dad told him to finish the degree anyway, and that film training later became one of his biggest advantages as a listing agent.

He got his Texas license in 1994, and his first sales were $60,000 houses in rural South Texas. At 23, with no home of his own, he decided to be "the person who solved problems." He followed his father's advice to get out into the community, picking up clients at the gym, at church and at places he volunteered. He also found an early niche: border patrol agents arriving on one- or two-year contracts. He showed them how to use VA or FHA financing to buy a fourplex, live in one unit and let the rent from the other three pay the mortgage. One deal led to the next, and those investment buyers launched his career. Some are still his Facebook friends 30 years later.

His advice to new agents from that period: **don't be a pinball.** Don't let every new shiny thing bounce you somewhere else. Treat each day like a laser and ask what the opportunity is right now, what you can learn from it, and how you can repeat it.

## Is work-life balance a myth for real estate agents?

Roddy says it is. While working as a listing specialist at Redfin, he closed 108 deals in one year and thought he was going to "go crazy." Trying to balance work and life against each other didn't work for him, so he replaced it with what he calls **work-life integration**.

In practice, that means using openings when they show up. If clients cancel, he might go to the movies, take care of himself or finally organize the garage. In exchange, he accepts that some evenings and early mornings will go to work. He has also built a team and broker support that let him truly unplug, and when he does, he's usually out at sea.

Integration also means using judgment. One Christmas Day, while closing a transaction in West Hollywood, his seller kept calling. Roddy had been working on setting boundaries, but he decided taking the call was as much for his own peace as for the client's. He talked the seller down before the closing the following week and felt better for it. His bigger point is about mindset. For years he treated every call and email as "what new hell is this?" Now he asks "what new gift, what new opportunity?" His track record shows that whatever comes up, he or someone he knows will help solve it.

## What does it take to rebuild your business in a new market?

Roddy has started over twice. He moved from South Texas to Dallas-Fort Worth, where his average sale went from $200,000 homes to $500,000 homes. His Zillow reviews came with him, which is why he tells every agent to collect reviews from all their clients. Those reviews brought a call from a Redfin recruiter. He gave himself three months to sell one house. Within three weeks he closed the biggest sale of his career at the time, around $700,000, as tech workers poured into the Metroplex from California.

Then, on a vacation in Los Angeles with his husband, a California recruiter sat down with him and did the math on paper. If his average sale went from $500,000 to $1.2 million, he could do half as many deals and still come out ahead. He couldn't stop thinking about it, but it still took him nine months to say yes. West Los Angeles is one of the most competitive markets in the country, and he worried his Texas approach wouldn't work there. What changed his mind was a conversation at a dog park with his minister, Reverend Dana, who stopped him mid-worry and asked: *What if it all works out?* He moved at the end of 2015.

When someone in leadership later called him "very brave," Roddy didn't see it that way. He simply asked himself what the alternative was. If he was going to try, he had to give it 150%. In a new market that meant staying humble and saying yes to every opportunity others turned down, whatever it paid or wherever it was, so he could learn the school districts, the neighborhoods and the people.

## Why is real estate a service job, not a sales job?

"Those of us who are really good at this business, we know it's not a sales job," Roddy says. "It's a service job." His goal in every conversation is to leave the client feeling a little better about themselves and their project, so they want to talk to him again. He always gives himself homework, such as pulling a title prelim or pointing out that waiting four more months could avoid capital gains tax, so he has a useful reason to follow up.

The idea comes from his father. After Roddy's first big closing, a roughly $400,000 sale, he went abroad for a friend's wedding. When he got back, his dad asked what was in his pipeline and then gave him some advice: *if you chase checks, you're always going to chase checks; if you chase the opportunity to be of service, you'll never worry about checks again.* Roddy stopped celebrating checks and started focusing on the next sale or purchase to get done. He has seen a $300,000 sale lead to referrals on $2 million sales.

This is why Roddy's team doesn't buy portal leads or pay Zillow Flex referral percentages. He is careful to say that's not wrong for everyone, but he describes how it felt from the inside:

> "I did feel at some point that I was indentured to a portal that felt like it owned me more than I helped it."
> — Roddy de la Garza

His question for agents whose pipelines are "spoon fed" by a portal: if that pipeline were turned off, where would you be? The same values led him to leave a brokerage that required him to send clients to a single lender, title company and escrow company. To him, that was too close to steering and took choice away from the consumer.

## How do you explain your value under the new buyer broker agreements?

Roddy calls the industry changes of the past two and a half years a bit like looking behind the curtain in *The Wizard of Oz*. These are conversations he thinks agents should have been having all along. Most consumers buy or sell only a few times in their lives. When they answer a portal lead, they have no idea how experienced the person on the other end is. His advice is to **know your value, write it down and be able to say it out loud**. "If you can't sit across from a buyer and explain to them why they should hire you," he says, "you need to really get back to basics."

His team's value is concrete. They spend more on marketing than any team he knows of in the area. Every qualifying listing gets Zillow Showcase, Homes.com Premier, video, Matterport scans and floor plans, so his listings look the same and are recognizably his. He tells sellers they aren't hiring one agent but "an entire flight crew." A team member is at about 85% of showings to guide buyers through the home on a planned route that ends at the view. His film degree shows up here: he creates "a production plan for every single house." For buyers, the team builds a plan to reach their goals, sometimes working with lenders a year or two ahead.

Roddy says it is getting results. In the past two months, his team closed three deals in communities others called slow and set records for both price and time to sell. He's blunt about the alternative: "The idea of the $30,000 lockbox has to go." In other words, an agent who quotes a commission, puts a lockbox on the door and expects to get paid hasn't offered a value proposition. If you can't afford the media it takes to compete, he says, partner with someone who can.

## What should new agents focus on instead of commission splits?

Roddy talks with many newly licensed agents. He sees them come in negotiating their split before they ever ask about education, opportunity or what they bring to the table. Meanwhile, he says, many large brokerages make money from desk fees and from the two or three deals they expect each agent to close before quitting. That leaves new agents starting out with the odds against them. As he puts it about agents who refuse to work below a certain percentage: "You haven't actually sold anything in two years, so you work for zero."

His alternative is to match each person to a role that fits. New agents on his team join transactions as the "cruise director." Their whole job is to make every client interaction enjoyable, share good news and useful information, and provide great service, while being copied on everything so they can learn how Roddy works. A former teacher became the team's California Heroes specialist, bringing listing flyers and gift cards to schools. Agents who dislike negotiating can work only as showing agents and hand off the harder parts. "Not everybody's going to be able to be a star producer in the traditional way," he says. When people work in their strengths, they gain confidence, and some who wanted to do less have become strong producers.

He's skeptical of six-week programs that promise to create top producers with hacks and shortcuts. His question: "Do you want to be a hack or do you want to be an orchestra conductor?" His golden nugget for the episode: **don't wait for the perfect time.** "You are a real estate agent when you start doing the actions of a real estate agent." You don't need the perfect flyer, website or class first. Put down the phone and laptop and go build relationships. When one young agent told him she spent $3,000 on portal leads and closed nothing, he said she should have taken 100 people to a $30 lunch, which probably would have produced about six transactions.

## Can AI replace the relationship side of real estate?

Roddy also owns a home staging company and does publishing and media consulting, and he tried an AI receptionist. He calls it "an utter failure." No one liked it. It was convenient for him, but once he turned it off he started seeing what he'd been missing. Technology can make agents more productive, he says, "but it's not going to take away the work that you have to do because the AI can't make someone feel like you can make them feel."

He also thinks brokerages are at a turning point. For years the industry celebrated the brokerage brand. Now agents are the stars, and many move from brokerage to brokerage chasing a better split or cap deal. Roddy believes the next successful brokerage model will ask what it can take off agents' plates. That's part of what drew him to Epique, where he says everyone starts on the same level and has access to benefits such as health and wellness perks, sign installation, photography and mentorship that doesn't require a split. He's especially excited about the gym memberships planned for next year. The gym is where his dad first sent him to find clients.

His last pieces of advice: take an honest inventory of your skills, spend as little time as possible on work you don't enjoy, and find a mentor who will tell you the truth and hold you accountable. He recommends *Rich Dad Poor Dad* for one idea he applies to time and relationships as well as money: if something doesn't feed you, it eats you. After his father died, Roddy turned their tradition of talking through a nightly devotional into his own book, *Above Asking: Daily Mindwork for Real Estate Professionals*. It's a non-denominational daily guide for agents and teams. In his words, "when your mindset goes to laser from ping pong ball, your productivity changes, your happiness changes, and your self-awareness changes."

## Listen to the full episode

Roddy de la Garza's career shows that service isn't a soft strategy. It shows up in how he markets listings, structures his team and handles the hard calls, and in referrals that can grow from a $300,000 sale to $2 million sales. If you're working on how to explain your value in the buyer-broker era, deciding whether to keep paying for portal leads, or trying to stop feeling dread every time your phone rings, this episode is worth your 45 minutes.

Listen to the full conversation on The REI Agent, and connect with Roddy on Instagram at @roddy4real, on LinkedIn, or at roddy.realtor. If you're ready to put relationship-based business building into practice, **REI Agent Advisor** at [advisor.reiagent.com](https://advisor.reiagent.com) can help you plan your next move, so your business can grow the same way: by being of service.

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<summary>Full Episode Transcript</summary>

[00:00.80] Mattias Clymer:
  Welcome back to the REI Agent Podcast. Today's guest is Roddy de la Garza, Area Leader at Epique Realty in Los Angeles. 30 plus years in real estate, 800 plus transactions and over 400 million in volume since 2014 alone. Before Epique, he was a managing broker in Texas and the regional growth director in California for eXp Realty, where he helped support more than 8,000 agents across both states. He's a licensed broker, a GRI graduate, a senior real estate specialist, and the author of Above Asking Daily Mindwork for Real Estate Professionals, the devotional written for agents producing hard and running low on joy.
  Roddy, welcome to the show.

[00:42.00] Roddy de la Garza:
  Glad to be here, Mattias. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[00:45.22] Mattias Clymer:
  Yeah, so you were giving me a little bit of a rundown of some of the things that you've been involved with through the years, but tell us about how you got started in real estate to begin with.

[00:55.84] Roddy de la Garza:
  Sure. Well, I didn't really have a choice. My parents own a real estate brokerage. My father passed away, but my stepmother still runs it. 54 years in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas called Bondman Realty. So by the time I was seven, eight years old, my weekends were spent shadowing my dad, showing houses, putting up signs. I would hold the tape measure as they measured the exterior of the houses. I just grew up and absorbed all of it since I was a kid, you know, and then my summer jobs were coming back from college to cut up fax machine rollouts that went across the floor of contracts and things like that. So it's just been in my blood. It's in my, it's in my, you know, who I am. I just, it's part of me.

[01:40.20] Mattias Clymer:
  You've seen a lot of stuff in the real estate business. That's, that's incredible.
  Um, I mean, I, most people that I talked to, um, that had parents in the business, they almost always are like, I swore I would not become a real estate agent. And then they, uh, end up coming back. So that, that wasn't ever for you. That was, you were always kind of like, you know, this is, this is great. I'm going to keep, keep doing with the family business.

[02:04.88] Roddy de la Garza:
  Well, I definitely align with the, the, the rhythm of your past, uh, clients. I went to college, uh, just fully, uh, committed to becoming a film director. I went to university of Texas at Austin, went through the film track, uh, by the junior year in college, I was calling my dad and I was saying, I don't like this. I don't like spending 19 hours a day on a set for two hours of, uh, two minutes, sorry, of actual footage and all that kind of stuff. And my dad was like, Hey, just finish your degree, just finish your degree. But that, that education and all of that got me to where I am. And I just, uh, I remember saying also, I'm just not going to do this. I don't, every bad experience with me as a kid was us having plans to go to the beach or the zoo or something. And then a client would call, you know, and we had to adjust our expectations. So my dad and my step-mom were, uh, the real estate folks in my life. And then my mom was a preacher. So you can imagine between both of those. I was like, I'm just never going to do what my parents do. But you know, what's funny is where I found my highest and best use my value. And the thing that doesn't feel like work is real estate, because I have answers based upon all the information that was so freely given to me. And all of the mistakes I've made over the years creates a concordance of transactions that just basically, you know, I can really help people. And that feels

[03:27.24] Mattias Clymer:
  really good. Hmm. I love it. I, you know, I, I, I've heard stories about agents going on a vacation and taking a fax machine to plug into their hotel room or whatever. I mean, was that like your reality as a kid growing up?

[03:40.78] Roddy de la Garza:
  Uh, we traveled a lot. My dad would travel a lot at the time. You know, he was an international governor for the Lions Club. So I remember that we got to travel all over and, and see things, but he was always connected via the phone. You know, um, I would say that I had to learn and find, I think that there's this myth of work life balance. You know, there was a time that I worked for red band. I closed 108 deals in one year. I thought I was going to go crazy. You know, it was just so much busyness. And the idea was that there's going to, you know, you've got to adjust your work life balance. And what I really found out is that's just not possible. Instead, I had to create what I call work life integration.
  So, um, you know, I just take advantage of the opportunities as they provide themselves to me. Sometimes I'll have a day where clients cancel or something happens and I say, Hey, let's go to the movies, you know, or I'm going to go take care of myself or finally organize the garage or something like that. But I just kind of go with the flow each day to see what's going to present itself. But I just get out into the world and do things. And what happens is when I allow that to happen, leads come, clients come, time to relax comes. And then I've built a life around me where I trust folks and I have the support of a broker and people on my team that now truly allow me to unplug. And when I unplug, I'm typically out to sea.

[05:01.64] Mattias Clymer:
  Well, that's nice. That's nice to be able to do. And I agree with you completely. I think, uh, you know, you can't really treat this job like a nine to five. I mean, you need to come up consistently. You need to show up consistently. You need to do things consistently. But, um, you also need to take some of those moments. Like I know, uh, there for a while I was really into trail running and, um, I, you know, if I, if I found myself with a morning that didn't have any appointments, I was like, I'm going to go out, I'm going to run it on the trail. And, and now, you know, going to the gym, uh, my lunch hour, essentially. Right. You know, most people are kind of expecting you to, to go out for a networking lunch or whatever. Anyway, I just instead. And it's just, you know, people don't understand how I have time for everything. But, um, you know, I do have to do work in the evening. Sometimes I do have to wake up early, do work sometimes. So I will take time, um, from, you know, your normal nine to five to do things for myself as well. If I need it. I think

[05:52.60] Roddy de la Garza:
  there was one time where I was closing a transaction in West Hollywood and it was Christmas day and the seller was calling me over and over on Christmas day.
  And I was like, well, I got to develop this boundary to not call and all that, but my spirit and my peace didn't feel right. You know what I mean? Here's this person. It's obviously got something to talk about. And so I had in my mind, I just made the decision that I'm doing this for me as much as for him, right. To, to, to call because then I will have peace and he will have peace. So I made that call on Christmas day, just to kind of talk them down a little bit of a ledge for the closing that was coming the next week. And I felt so much better about myself. And I think that, you know, we have to make those decisions in the moment and in the time based upon what surrounds us. And I can tell you that there's a lot of agents that I've met and that I mentor who work in this industry with every phone call, every email, an attitude of, you know, what new hell is this? What new problem? What new person's calling? Why is my broker calling? All this kind of stuff. And I lived in that mindset for about, I'd say eight or nine years when I was extremely productive in terms of volume and transaction count, but not necessarily income. And what I would say to what I would say to them is like, you know, there's another way to look at everything instead. And instead of what new hell am I encountering? Now I go like, what new gift, what new opportunity, you know? And I just look at everything from a new perspective.
  Because the track record shows that no matter what pops up, I or someone I know is going to help me resolve the situation.
  And so it's a big mindset change. Even when someone is, as you learn more in this industry, you learn what you can and can't take on. Right. And, um, it helps streamline that, but I don't ever want to live that way again where I want to answer my phone.

[07:39.10] Mattias Clymer:
  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that can be a really good sign of, uh, like you're burning out for sure, which definitely can help happen. So that's some good mindset shifts. Um, well, we'll tell us, walk us through a little bit, um, you know, after college, how you got back into the business or got into the business, um, and, and kind of where you went from there.

[07:58.64] Roddy de la Garza:
  Well, I went, uh, originally I went back down to my hometown in South Texas. I got my Texas real estate license in 1994.
  Um, I think my first
  transactions and sales were like $60,000 houses in rural South Texas. You know, I remember that I quickly had to develop a niche or a brand or something to kind of, you know, have people want to work with me here. I was a 23 year old kid with, you know, I didn't own a home. I just come out of college. I had a good last name in my community and I decided that I was just going to become the person who solved problems. Right. So I remember that I would just meet people. And that was the other thing. My dad was like, get out into the community, get out and do things, go volunteer, go to the gym was a big one. I'd pick up clients at the gym. I'd pick up clients at, uh, at, at church at, at, at things that I volunteered at. And that's what I realized is that it was a really a, a job to get out there. So somehow along the way, I ended up, uh, aligning with the builder and I was working with several border patrol agents down in the nineties who were coming into town on one or two year contracts. And I got this idea of just like, why are they renting? You need to buy a fourplex and you know, you're going to, you've got, most of them had VA loans or they had an FHA loan or something like that. And I was like, Hey, you live in one, the income's going to pay the other three. You're never going to have a chance like this again to buy an investment property with zero down.
  And, um, one turned into another, turned into another, turned into another. And I started realizing that, okay, you got to find a niche and some of those clients and still Facebook friends today, 30 something years later. And those investment properties were the launching pad to a much more successful real estate career, you know? And so what I tell new people is don't be a pinball. Don't go from, you know, don't let things skyrocket you from one thing to the other so that you never accomplish anything. You've got to approach each day like a laser, you know, what's the opportunity right now? What can I learn from this and how can I duplicate it?

[10:02.22] Mattias Clymer:
  Okay. Yeah. I love that. Uh, so, uh, at what, what point did you switch over to the Los Angeles market?

[10:09.90] Roddy de la Garza:
  So I was, uh, I moved up to the doubt to Dallas, Fort Worth. Uh, I was dating someone at the time and I was down in South Texas and I decided to move up to Dallas, Fort Worth. And I started realizing that my clients that I developed over the years were still interested in working with me. I, heck, I had a license to sell real estate in Texas. Right. And I went from selling $200,000 houses to $500,000 houses. And I realized, Hey, I could, I could make this work. You know, I could do this here. And then I got a phone call because my Zillow, uh, my Zillow reviews followed me when I started working in Dallas. Right. So I had all the reviews and I had a big thing that I think is important is review all your clients. All my reviews went with me to Dallas. I got called by a Redfin recruiter.
  They were looking for a listing specialist. Listings have always been 80 to 85% of my business.
  Um, and I remember at that time I was kind of in a crux because I wanted to volunteer for a governor's campaign. I was thinking about law school and then I was thinking about trying to do something more challenging with real estate.
  And my dad was like, son, just pursue all three of them until one becomes a parent.
  And Redfin made me a really nice deal. I was able to join as a listing specialist with them. And I told myself, okay, if I can sell one house in three months, I know this works. Right. So in three weeks, I had the biggest sale of my career at 700,000 at that time. In
  2013 or 14.
  And it started just a plethora of technology folks moving from California to the DFW Metroplex.
  And, um, I was known as the silver bullet just because I would go from place to place listing properties and helping clients. I said yes to every opportunity, regardless of what it paid or where it was, because I wanted to learn the DFW Metroplex. You know, I wanted to get out there and do things. I would even take tours up and things like that for other agents because I wanted the experience of knowing all those different areas.
  So when I had that big successful year, I came out to Los Angeles for vacation with my husband.
  And, um, one of the recruiters for the California market, she said, come out to our office. And I said, okay, I always like to visit my neighboring brokerage offices and stuff. And she was a big influence on my life. She sat down and she said, Hey, you're selling $500,000 houses. You sold this many of them. And I remember she visually as an attractor, she put it on paper. She said, here's two and a half percent of 500 times this many transactions. This is what she made out here. Your average sale is 1.2 million. If you do half as many of those and have, this is what you think. And I couldn't get that picture out of my head. Right. And so they, they offered me the opportunity to come out to, to West Los Angeles, which is one of the most competitive markets in the country that they were trying to get market share there. And, um, it took me nine months to say yes, because, uh, I was just worried with my Texas thing work in West Los Angeles. You know, I, I didn't know the sayings that I have, the little, uh, you know, the things that I know, but I ended up doing it. And, um, and I, I remember sitting with my minister at the dog park with my husband, she and her wife, and we were all sitting there and I was anxious. I was like, I don't know if I can do this. What if I go and I fail? What if I go and it's embarrassing and I don't have the same success?
  And she just stopped me and she looked right at me and, uh, and Reverend Dana said, she was, Roddy, she stopped. She goes, what if it all works out? What if everything works out? What if it's great?
  And that was the moment for me where I said, yeah, what if it does all work out?
  So in December of 2015, uh, we packed up and moved out to West Los Angeles and it's been an adventure. Yeah. And, um, we've been here since then.

[14:16.68] Mattias Clymer:
  I'm sorry. What was the year again? Uh, it was the end

[14:19.31] Roddy de la Garza:
  of 2015. Okay.

[14:21.84] Mattias Clymer:
  Um, the, uh, you have a really interesting perspective. So the, the market you started in Texas, that was, uh, that was, is that more tertiary? Was it more slow? Uh, I forget the, the area you said it was like, it's more closer to the border, right?

[14:34.84] Roddy de la Garza:
  It's, it's exactly where Elon Musk has put SpaceX down there in the Rio Grande Valley. It was pretty much a, it's an amazing area. It's considered one of the best places to live now. Very affordable, great retirement community. I'm blessed because I now also live in, in Palm Springs, which is also a big retirement community. I learned a lot about dealing with that community and what their thoughts are down there in South Texas.
  Um, it has gotten a lot more, uh, uh, appeal and visibility. Harlingen, Brownsville, McAllen. Those are the people who taught me real estate, those agents down there. And, um, I'm glad to see it booming these days. And I mean, they have that, they have big infrastructure projects like the, uh, liquid natural gas project and things going on down there. But when I was there, uh, my hometown was probably around 30,000 people. Yeah. Okay. So, so my,

[15:25.48] Mattias Clymer:
  my thought here is that, you know, you, you, you've seen what it's like. You had the, the, the, the small town, you know, the, you know, that kind of market, uh, that you started off in and then you challenged yourself, you moved into a much bigger market, um, and, and really proved yourself that you could do it a, but it may have not felt like, you know, it was obviously still nerve wracking to jump into a completely different state into another big area.
  Um, but what kind of insights could you give others who are considering, like, I think it's, it's often that you feel stuck in an area when you build a business, uh, like real estate, like you feel like it's going to be very hard to start over somewhere else where you don't know anybody. Um, so

[16:09.35] Roddy de la Garza:
  what kind

[16:09.82] Mattias Clymer:
  of insights could you give to people, especially coming from such a small market, uh, to eventually, you know, LA?

[16:20.72] Roddy de la Garza:
  It's very
  interesting because I had someone tell me when I'd made the transition to Los Angeles, I had someone in leadership at that brokerage tell me, Roddy, you're very brave. You know, cause you've, you've left behind things that are successful multiple times and then build something else. I've never met anyone as brave as you. And what's really funny is I never saw myself as brave. You know, I just kind of saw myself as what's the alternative. If I say no to this, I'm going to regret not trying, you know? And then I said, well, if I'm going to do it, I have to give it 150%. I can't sit lackluster. I can't say no. And I think that's where a lot of newer agents or when you come into a market, you know, it's easy to not be humble in those situations. And I only do this, or I only work this area, or I don't want to take that plan on. I took everything. I wanted to learn. I wanted to know, I wanted to get and understand what school districts were different. So I just said yes to every opportunity that other people were saying no to. And next thing I know, what happens is those of us who are really good at this business, we know it's not a sales job. It's not. We're not making someone buy something they don't want. It's a service job. And what I try to do is every time I encounter someone, I try to make them feel a little better about themselves and the project so that they look forward to talking to me again. So I make sure that I have homework, you know, that I can come back with and say, hey, I did pull your title prelim. This is what I see. Or did you realize if you wait four months that you'll avoid capital gains tax? You know, just things like that to make me useful.
  And it just turns into referral business, you know, I now currently, I moved to LA, I now currently have with Epique Realty where I am, I now currently have the largest team by volume and transaction sides in Southern California.
  And we don't spend any money on portal leads. We don't do any percentages to Zillow Flex.
  We don't do anything like that. You know, there's a lot of transactions. I'm sorry, there's a lot of companies that count transactions that they're basically spoon fed that if Zillow were to turn off that pipeline, where would they be today? You know, I'm not saying that that's wrong or not a great way to build your business. But I did feel at some point that I was indentured to a portal that felt like it owned me more than I helped it. And so I had to come to a crux or a decision, right, to say, hey, I'm going to go all in on myself, you know?

[18:50.66] Mattias Clymer:
  Sure. I think every time you do that as well, you build that confidence. And I think, you know, going from a world of being employed and not being self-employed and moving into the self-employed world is a big jump for a lot of people. That's really intimidating. I think proving to yourself that you can do it is a huge step. And I think that each time you can kind of challenge yourself and push yourself, I mean, make yourself uncomfortable a little bit because I think you're either kind of growing or you're dying, right? So you need to

[19:23.33] Roddy de la Garza:
  kind of keep going.

[19:25.00] Mattias Clymer:
  Yeah. And it just kind of reaffirms that it's within you.
  And, you know, just as, you know, an internet company could change their algorithm or change their policies or just go under, or a corporate job that you have could, you know, lay you off. You don't have control of those kinds of circumstances, but you do have control over what you do. And the more you continue to prove to yourself that you can make a new thing work, I'm sure you have more confidence, not that you wouldn't be worried about it, to go start something completely different. If you wanted to, you probably feel like that it's, you would figure it out because you will know that you will be relentlessly dedicated and focused to achieving that.

[20:11.26] Roddy de la Garza:
  I agree with that. I do think that whatever I went off to do, it would be ancillarily real estate related because that's just where my well of knowledge comes from.
  I think that also it's just the idea that our brokerage industry, the brokerage industry is at a time of reckoning right now. Most real estate brokerages don't know what they offer anymore because middle management, marketing, access to data, all that kind of stuff is being easily solved, you know? And also, like, we as agents need to have a good understanding of who we are in our, not just within our ethics, but in our true values, you know? And so one of the things was, I just like, for me to attract the kind of clients and agents that I want, I have my own level of principles.
  And so, for example, I ended up making different choices with, you know, where I wanted to be as a broker and as an agent based upon things like I didn't feel comfortable being required to refer business to one lender, one title company, one escrow company, you know? Yeah. The idea for me was that it's always consumer choice. And I couldn't get that out of my head that I'm being required to refer someone to a particular mortgage company, even when I knew, based on my experience, that they weren't going to be able to help this person, but someone else could because they're only conforming products and this is not a conforming lender, right? And I just had to make a decision that I wasn't going to turn my back on the people who had, I had worked with in the past who had helped foster and build that success. I also wasn't going to participate in something that I felt fundamentally, you know, felt a lot like steering and, uh, also like the idea that, um, I would work certain areas, but couldn't work other areas or things like that. I just kind of like, you know, I kind of see myself as, as a version of kind of like a real estate Batman that if you shine that light up in the air, I'm going to come help you. Me and my team are going to come help you, but I'm not going to cut myself off based on geography and things

[22:16.38] Mattias Clymer:
  like that.

[22:17.14] Roddy de la Garza:
  So I had to just find that system by which I, I, I found that I would resonate at my highest and best use to help other people. And that's the thing too. If you approach each opportunity with how I can help this person, not how much money can I make, it transforms your world. Cause my dad told me, I remember I got my first big closing check. It was around $400,000. I'm sorry, $400,000 sale. And it was my first big, it was my first big check as a young man. And I ended up going abroad to a friend's wedding. And when I got back, he said, Hey, what's in your pipeline? You know, that kind of thing. And I was like, well, I'll work on it. I'm going to get this done, stuff like that. He goes, I just want to make sure that you remember something. And I was like, what's that? He was like, if you chase checks, you're always going to chase checks. You're always, if you chase the opportunity to be of service, you'll never worry about checks again. And I remember thinking of that and kind of absorbing that. And that's what I decided to do is I'm not going to celebrate the checks. I'm not going to just chase what the next check is. I'm going to pursue the next event of a sale or the next event of a purchase and accomplish that. Cause I can tell you times in my career where a $300,000 sale has turned into referrals of $2 million sales. You just never know, uh, what, what, what providence is going to put before you.

[23:37.58] Mattias Clymer:
  Yeah, that's, that's really good advice and really good perspective to have, especially lucky for you to, you know, have that kind of advice early on and kind of get that ingrained, uh, because commission breath it's, it's, it's stinky. People are away from that.

[23:52.56] Roddy de la Garza:
  Well, you know, what's funny is like, I, I, I do talk to a lot of new agents and new agents get licensed and they're getting all this mail because they've been registered with the DRE about all the different brokerages and all that kind of stuff. And people will want to come in negotiating their split without ever talking about education, opportunity, what they bring to the table. I, um, I know that a lot of these large brokerages, they make their money off of desk fees and the idea that they're going to get at least two or three transactions out of each person before they give up. Right. So they'll charge a heavy mentorship fees or bigger, you know, uh, lead provision fees on the first three till they prove themselves. And the person is entering into it with the odds stacked against them, you know? And, um, I think that that has to change and transfer over so that in order to be able to pursue real estate, the way you want, folks need to come in and, um, understand who they are, what their immediate goals are, what they want to do in this industry, where their personality shines. Cause like on my team, I have new agents. I bring them into the transactions to mentor me at a nice percentage. And I tell them your job on this transaction is you're the cruise director. Every time you encounter this client, you show their home, you do anything, you have a good time, you have good news, you provide them great information. You knock the service out of the park. That's your whole job. And then to watch me and learn on everything. I'm going to copy you on everything. I want you to learn how I present stuff, how I do stuff. And the thing is, is that I'm not asking them to go out and be me with no training or mentorship. I'm taking them the same way my dad did through transactions and learning with experience.

[25:38.68] Mattias Clymer:
  I love that. I think you're absolutely correct. I think that people will get very hung up on the splits and that kind of stuff. And then really, you need to really focus on your education. What, how, where are you going to be successful? How are you going to actually become successful in this business? Because it doesn't matter if you get a hundred percent of the commission, if, if you don't sell anything.

[25:59.38] Roddy de la Garza:
  You'll have people that say, I just don't sell for that commission percentage, or I don't do that. And you're like, well, you haven't actually sold anything in two years, so you work for zero.

[26:09.20] Mattias Clymer:
  Yeah. So it's, it's such a, yeah, it's such a, a, a change. Yeah. I think you're right. I think, I think it needs to be a shift in the industry for sure. Um, you, you kind of touched on, uh, the importance of, uh, being able to explain your worth. Um, and I feel like you probably have a pretty good, uh, explanation of that, uh, that you could give to people, uh, and to, to set that up a little bit more, you know, I think when, uh, when people weren't used to, uh, the doing buyer brokerage agreements and that kind of stuff. And that became something that everybody had to do. Um, I think it became a little bit like, you know, everybody, people might've been marketing themselves as, Hey, I'm free to you. I'm free. You know, like I'm, uh, you don't have to pay me. I'm free. I don't worry about it. Um, and then now it's, well, we're going to have to, you know, agree to a commission amount and, uh, let's, uh, this is why I'm worth this money. So like, can you, can you help, uh, give us a little bit about how you would approach a conversation with somebody who, who may be asking you kind of, yeah, what are you going to do for me?

[27:10.62] Roddy de la Garza:
  Yeah, absolutely. I think that the key thing is, is this, the new buyer broker agreement, the changes that have come into the industry in regards to the past two and a half years or so. I think all of that, um, is a little bit of like discovering, you know, the wizard of Oz, what's behind the curtain of how some of these things work. And quite frankly, they are discussions that I think should have been had anyway. You know, someone should really understand, uh, what they're getting into. The average consumer has no idea when they respond to a portal lead that the person they're talking to, what's their true level of experience. You know, is this person just, is this their first contact call is, have they done a transaction before? Do you really have to pay a $400 transaction fee? Am I really going to have to pay all this kind of, you know, the average consumer does this, what, maybe two to four times a year. I mean, in their lifetime. And so it's just kind of like, it's, it's just kind of tough like that. So I think the, the important thing is to know your value. You have to sit down and write it down and you have to align yourself with a team, you know, and you have to set those goals. So sometimes I'll work with someone that says, Hey, I'm, I used to be a school teacher. I'm really passionate about this. I go, great. Why don't you become our California heroes person? I want you to really learn this program, the listings that we have in the area. We're going to get flyers. We're going to take those. I want you to deliver them to the schools and ask them to put them on the inbox, see if they'll allow you to come in and bring some gift cards or something to the teacher's lounge and things like that. And we give them a specific direction or a goal. Who's the community you can resonate with? And some people say, you know, Roddy, I don't really want to do any negotiating. I don't like when things get tough. I don't like this kind of stuff. I said, great. You can be a showing agent with our team and this is how we compensate you. And at the end of the day, you get to just say you're done and then someone else will take over the chunky parts. So you have to understand what that proposition is. Not everybody's going to be able to be a star producer in the traditional way that star producers are. That's why we have such a huge failure rate. But what's funny is when you get folks producing or working in their highest, I would say their highest rhythm, when they're doing that and they're happy, they start getting more confidence to do more. So I've seen agents who thought they just wanted to do a smaller amount or turn into really incredible producers.
  You know, and I think it's because we have to work with each person individually. There's a lot of systems out there where they say, hey, this brokerage offers a class and in six weeks, we're going to turn you into a top producer. We're going to learn the rhythms, the hacks, the systems, the this and that to get this in. I'm sorry.
  This industry is, do you want to be a hack or do you want to be an orchestra conductor?
  They're very different technicality skills. And I think that the idea that there's a quick way to master this industry is disinformation to the agent base. You have to get out there. You have to work. You have to be in front of folks. You have to know your value proposition. And if you can't sit across from a buyer and explain to them why they should hire you, you need to really get back to basics and understand with your broker and your team, what is their leverage? So I can tell you that with our team, we invest the highest amount in marketing of any team that I know of in the area. That includes every listing getting Zillow Showcase, everything getting homes.com premiere, video, Matterport scans, floor plan scans. We do everything because I want every listing of mine that is residential and looks nice to look the same way. I want us to have a brand and an idea and that you don't just get me, you get an entire team. I say, you're going to get an entire flight crew of people to make sure that we arrive to your destination without any hiccups. And that's the kind of thing you need to do. There's other agents who are like, I'll do everything. And people like that. I'm going to be the one person for everything. And that's definitely a choice for folks. But know what it is and be able to know how to explain it to someone.

[31:16.36] Mattias Clymer:
  Yeah, I love that. But I think the illustration of what you do with listings is like, you know, you could spend a lot of money chasing leads, chasing, you know, you could put out, you know, what I pay, pay for leads everywhere.
  You can spend a lot of money in this industry.
  But what you just described is spending a lot of money marketing the house itself, the product. And that kind of is an indirect way of really spending money on marketing yourself because you're doing a really good job for your clients. And that would, you know, showcase anytime somebody's looking online, oh, yeah, he did that again. That's definitely his listing because, you know, it's got XYZ done to it. And I love when he has a listing because I can do the Matterport 3D walkthrough. It's really cool.

[32:00.54] Roddy de la Garza:
  And then also, obviously,

[32:01.19] Mattias Clymer:
  there would be the word of mouth from there, like if your clients feel like you did a really good job. So I love that. We have a track

[32:08.32] Roddy de la Garza:
  record that at least in the past two months, we've closed three transactions in stagnant communities where people thought that things were just slow, right? Oh, it's just slow. It's just slow. We've closed them and we've set record sales timing and record sales prices. And it's because we go all in in what the client offered us to do. If you're in this business and you can't afford to pay for the media that's required to compete in this industry, you need to align yourself with someone who can. The idea of the $30,000 lockbox has to go, you know, where someone says, hey, what's your commission? I'm going to put a lockbox on here and you owe me $30,000 when it

[32:48.87] Mattias Clymer:
  sells, you know, what

[32:50.52] Roddy de la Garza:
  kind of value proposition is that? You know, we try to be present for every showing. I tell my clients, 85% of showings, we're going to be there to guide the buyer through the house. We're going to start here and end here because I want them to end looking at your view. You know, we kind of create the whole little pathway of that. That's how much attention we put into it. I think that's where my film degree comes in because I literally create a production plan for every single house. You know, how we're going to do it. And then for the buyers too, we create a, I call it a case care package. How are we going to get them to what they want? And it involves, you know, these are all the things we need to do. And sometimes we start working with lenders a year, two years in advance to get the person to be able to achieve their goals.

[33:33.94] Mattias Clymer:
  Yeah, I love that. That's really awesome.
  I mean, there's already been a million golden nuggets in this episode, but Roddy, what golden nuggets do you have for our listeners?

[33:44.76] Roddy de la Garza:
  The biggest thing that I would say is don't wait for the perfect time. Just start, right? Just get out there and do it.
  You are a real estate agent when you start doing the actions of a real estate agent. A lot of people want to get the right class, the right tools. Oh, I need this kind of flyer. I need this kind of marketing material. I need a website. There's so many places that you can spend money, right? And do that. Instead, just get out there. That's the other thing. Get away from your cell phone, get away from your laptop, get out into the community with people, make relationships.
  That's the best thing that I would tell people. This is not an industry to sit back anymore and wait for online leads to come in. They're not the same quality. It's not the same exposure.
  And those companies know it. That's why they're definitely trying to get them into the hands of the people that perform best in that particular market. I had a young lady come to me and she said, Roddy, I spent $3,000 on portal leads from this particular portal and everything I got, nothing came over. And I said, do you know what you should have done? You should have taken 100 people out to a $30 lunch or whatever it is and spent that $3,000 differently. You probably would have walked away with six transactions.
  Just reach out to your sphere. Go do things.
  That's just the way that I see it is just you have to be out there and involved in this new level of real estate.

[35:11.98] Mattias Clymer:
  Yeah, that's totally true.
  And I think there's a lot of flashy tech and things that trying to make it easy, automate things, take yourself out of the process, which is the opposite of what we want.
  Shameless plug here to the CRM real quick. We have created a system where we can actually like, you know, you input data, you put in data about your clients and stuff as you get to know them, you put it in and then it gives you intelligent reminders to communicate with them. But you have to do it yourself because I think that's the most important thing. So just like, you know, the like Facebook or the internet allows us to, you know, connect and do things more efficiently.
  But we don't want to actually like replace ourselves completely. So I think that, you know, that, you know, going out to making sure that you have a system to track who your A clients are and making sure that you are systematically, you know, going out to lunch with them or that you are taking them out for coffee or you're at least, you know, having a phone conversation with them regularly to stay in touch is crucial. And so, you know, systems to help you do that better, more effectively is great, but not to, you know, replace you. I think that whenever we smell that it's not real, that's unauthentic, it's worse than ever. Like, I think we have so much out there that as soon as you sniff, it's not real.
  It's just like, I'm out, I'm out, I'm out.

[36:40.40] Roddy de la Garza:
  I tried one of those because I own a home staging company. I own, I do a publishing stuff. I do some media consultation and I have the real estate company.
  The thing that's interesting is I tried one of those AI receptionists, you know, and it was an utter failure. My, nobody liked it. You know what I mean? And it was
  convenient to me, but when I turned it off, I saw, I started to see what I was missing. Right. And like the people that were trying to reach me, there's a good use of technology and there's not a good use of technology. And we're trying to figure it all out, but there are so many cool tools now and things that will make you more productive, but it's not going to take away the work that you have to do because the AI can't make someone feel like you can make them feel, you know, one of the things I just, I want to say a little plug too, is I think that this industry is inverted for years. We celebrated the brokerage, right? The brand, that idea right now, every brokerage is chasing the high producers, the moderate producers, the people who are actually doing transactions. And we went from the brokerage and the CEO and all those people being the stars to the agents are the stars, you know? And what's happened is you'll get agents that just chase the best split, the next cap deferment, all this kind of stuff, and they just go from place to place negotiating the next best deal.

[37:59.72] Mattias Clymer:
  I noticed also that the folks

[38:00.86] Roddy de la Garza:
  who got the best treatment would come into these brokerages and negotiate things or packages that other folks couldn't. So when I started thinking about how I wanted to run my team on the next level, what I was really attracted to about Epique is that everybody starts on the same level. It's not hierarchical, like a pyramid. I didn't like having to be forced to attract, I'm sorry, to recruit rather than attract, things like that. But every agent comes in with a myriad of benefits and solutions that they can pull from to help their life. For example, free urgent care, prescription medications, access to dental insurance, a 401k plan, sign installation, free photography, mentorship for life that doesn't require a split, free leads, agent billboards. There's just all these things that agents can go, okay, if I take care of this, if they're taking care of that, all inclusive in my monthly fee to the transaction, I can spend more time doing things. And then my favorite one is that next year we're going to roll out gym membership benefits. So no extra costs, no anything, you're going to be able to have lifestyle and wellness benefits and that was full circle to me because where I got my first clients was when my dad was telling me, get out to the gym. So if I don't have to worry about prospecting stuff or doing things, but I can go out and do something because my brokerage enabled me from day one to have these things, that really resonated with me. I think the next level of brokerage model is going to have to acknowledge that agents already do a lot. So what can we take off of their plate for them to make their lives better?

[39:36.28] Mattias Clymer:
  Yeah. You know, you become an agent thinking it's one thing and then you realize you have to try to wear all these different hats and it can be really, really challenging. I just am not going

[39:46.13] Roddy de la Garza:
  to do a TikTok dance to get business.

[39:49.88] Mattias Clymer:
  That's just not me.
  I don't know. You never, you could try. Any other nuggets here before we go to the book?

[40:03.80] Roddy de la Garza:
  I would just say find, get to the place where you have to spend as little time as possible doing things you don't enjoy.
  And that is going to require a really good self-inventory of yourself, your skills and your talents and where you contribute and get a good mentor that's going to tell you like it is. You know what I mean? And I think with that would be what I would first say is, is know yourself, know, know what you provide to any particular client transaction. And then know also that you have someone to hold you accountable.

[40:38.96] Mattias Clymer:
  Okay.
  I love it.
  Now, what about a favorite book, one that you think that is fundamental that everybody should read or just one that you're currently enjoying?

[40:47.18] Roddy de la Garza:
  Sure. Well, I'll tell you that the first book that comes to mind is the one that just left me with the most basic idea that I share with folks. And then also it's a pretty much a standard within our industry. And although sometimes it's become controversial is Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Kazaki's book, the idea that if it doesn't feed you, it eats you. And that's with everything, not just investments, but time, relationships, everything like that is this eating me or feeding me. So I always give that book to new agents. That's one that resonates with me.
  When my dad passed away, we used to read Dr. Joyce Meyer's Ending Your Day Right. I would talk to him about two or three days a week and we'd talk about the devotional from the night before.
  And then when he passed away, I got this idea that I was going to create a real estate devotional for agents. And it's not aligned to any particular set, denomination, religion, anything like that. It's basically quotes from real estate leaders, things like that. And each month takes us through a production of a theme of just knowing yourself, knowing your team. It's a great thing for teams to use together. So everyone's on a common thematic idea for the day. Some of it is admitting to yourself where your business is lacking, confiding in someone else and asking for help where you've been not doing that, reaching out to someone in the industry that you haven't talked to in a long time who made a difference in your life. There's just different things like that throughout the day. So that's my other favorite book right now. I do like to see it being used by individual agents, partners, teams, things like that. It's called Above Asking, Daily Mindwork for Real Estate Agents. And it's available on Amazon.

[42:28.32] Mattias Clymer:
  I love that. I think that anytime you can prime your brain in a direction that's going to align with where you're
  wanting to go, your goals, your vision, that's a great practice. And I think that if you don't live with intentionality, you're going to have life happen to you. I mean, it's easy in this business to get kind of swept up in everything and kind of lose sight of what's most important. It's also easy to get swept up in other things and the business goes away because if you're not kind of in the mindset, if you're not aligned with the industry, then it will, yeah, you're either growing or you're dying. And if you've got a

[43:06.99] Roddy de la Garza:
  common theme with your team members, with the people that go for that day and you have some idea, it drives everybody into that same direction. A lot of agents wake up not knowing what to do first, right? It's just this relentless bombardment of different things. But when you actually start knowing what you're going for, when your mindset goes to laser from ping pong ball, your productivity changes, your happiness changes, and your self-awareness changes, and that attracts people.
  I love it.

[43:35.66] Mattias Clymer:
  Roddy, where can people find you if they want to follow you on social media or websites, etc.? I'm on

[43:42.28] Roddy de la Garza:
  Instagram. It's Roddy4Real with the number four on Instagram. LinkedIn is also a place where I do a lot of promotion. You can just search me under Roddy de la Garza. On my website, I have information on the book, opportunities to speak, media engagements, as well as just general information on myself and my brokerage and contact information. But those are the primary places where I market myself.

[44:09.32] Mattias Clymer:
  Well, Roddy, thank you so much for being on the show. It's been a lot of fun talking with you.

[44:13.18] Roddy de la Garza:
  Thank you. It's been a pleasure, Mattias. Really enjoyed it.

[44:20.86] Mattias Clymer:
  All right. All right.
  All
  right.

</details>

## Related Episode

This post is based on Episode 227 of The REI Agent podcast.
- [Listen to Episode 227](https://reiagent.com/episodes/)

## Links

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