I had the opportunity recently to speak at an event alongside John Maxwell, Giselle Ugarte, Dana Gentry, Linda McKissack and several other incredible leaders.
What an honor to be part of a stellar lineup. I love getting the opportunity to speak, but one of my favorite parts of events like this is what happens when I get OFF the stage.
I get to become a student again.
So I pulled out my journal and started writing.
And writing.
There were a bunch of things that made me think differently about my business, my family, my time, my failures, and ultimately the life I’m trying to create.
A number of people asked me afterward if I would share my notes.
So here they are.
Not a transcript. Not necessarily everything each speaker taught.
Just the ideas that hit me.
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DANA GENTRY: Are You Choosing Your Life… or Defaulting Into It?
Dana’s entire presentation was built around intentionality.
And one line summed it up beautifully:
“No one drifts into intentionality.”
That one stuck.
Because I can be really freaking busy.
But busy and intentional aren’t the same thing.
Dana talked about three areas where we need to become more intentional:
Our Time. Our Talents. Our Treasures.
When it comes to time, she shared a simple four-quadrant decision-making framework:
Urgent + Important: Do it now.
Not Urgent + Important: Schedule it.
Urgent + Not Important: Delegate it.
Not Urgent + Not Important: Eliminate it.
Nothing revolutionary about the matrix itself.
But here’s what got me:
Some of the most important things in our lives almost always live in that second box.
Health.
Marriage.
Family.
Faith.
Planning.
Developing people.
Building systems.
Thinking.
None of them are usually screaming at us.
Which makes them incredibly easy to sacrifice for the things that are.
Dana said something else that hit home:
“God will never call you to build something that requires you to abandon your family or health.”
Our business should help create the life we want—not consume the life we’re supposedly building it for.
Another thing I’m taking from Dana is her Intentional Mentor Lunch.
Instead of simply asking someone you admire if you can “pick their brain,” she goes in with seven questions, including:
What is the greatest lesson you’ve ever learned?
What are you learning right now?
How has failure shaped your life?
Who do you know that I should know?
What have you read that I should read?
What have you done that I should do?
How can I add value to you?
I love that.
I’m putting some of those lunches on my calendar.
Because intentionality doesn’t happen someday.
You have to schedule it.
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GISELLE UGARTE: The Hardest Brands to Humanize Are Humans
Giselle opened with a line I loved:
“The hardest brands to humanize are humans.”
Think about how true that is.
We spend all this time trying to create a “personal brand” and sometimes accidentally remove the person from it.
One of her concepts was the difference between being personal and being private.
You don’t have to share every detail of your life with the internet to allow people to know you.
But people do want to know there’s a human on the other side.
She also made me think about how we communicate as experts.
In real estate, we throw around words like:
Equity.
Escrow.
Contingency.
Due diligence.
Pre-qualified.
Under contract.
Appraisal.
We know what those words mean.
But does our customer?
Instead of simply explaining the definition, Giselle encouraged us to go one step further:
What does that mean?
And then:
What does that mean FOR YOU?
That’s an important distinction.
Expertise isn’t proving how much you know.
It’s making what you know useful to someone else.
That immediately gave me an idea for creating simple content around terminology and questions we hear all the time.
But her biggest punch for me may have been around energy.
What energy do you need to bring?
Who do you need to be?
That applies to business.
And it definitely applies at home.
Sometimes we give our clients, businesses and teams the absolute best version of ourselves…and the people we love get whatever is left.
That’s something I’m thinking a lot about.
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JOHN MAXWELL: Get a Return on Failure
John Maxwell dropped a ton of wisdom, but one idea jumped off the page for me:
ROF — Return on Failure.
We’re obsessed with ROI.
What’s the return on my money?
My time?
My investment?
But what about our failures?
If we’re going to screw something up—and we’re all going to—why wouldn’t we demand a return from that too?
John said:
“It is not the failure itself but your response to failure that matters.”
His framework was simple:
What did I expect to happen?
What actually happened?
Where was the gap?
What did I learn?
What will I change?
How will I apply it next time?
That’s powerful.
Failure without reflection is just failure.
Failure with reflection becomes tuition.
Another John Maxwell line I circled:
“Your best excuse is your worst excuse because you actually believe it.”
Ouch.
The excuses that sound ridiculous are easy to discard.
The dangerous ones are the ones we’ve convinced ourselves are true.
He also talked about the difference between enduring hard and embracing hard.
We all have uphill hopes.
But too often we have downhill habits.
The work we’re willing to do today gets stored up before the results ever show up.
That’s a reminder I needed.
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LINDA MCKISSACK: Choose Before Life Chooses for You
Linda asked a question I’ve been sitting with:
What am I continuing to do simply because I’m good at it?
That’s a dangerous trap for successful people.
You get good at something.
People depend on you for it.
You get rewarded for it.
So you keep doing it.
Long after it stopped being the highest and best use of you.
Linda’s challenge was:
Choose before life chooses for you.
Our future should influence what we’re saying yes to today.
And when you identify where yo’re supposed to go, don’t wait until you know exactly how to do it.
Find somebody who already does.
Learn.
Ask.
Get help.
One of my favorite lines from Linda was:
“It wasn’t an assignment of being ready. It was an assignment of being willing.”
How often do we wait to feel ready?
Maybe readiness isn’t the requirement.
Maybe willingness is.
And another one worth writing down:
“Clarity is much cheaper than another year of drifting.”
Amen.
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JOSH ANDERSON: What Does Your Name Mean?
Josh said something that made me think differently about branding:
More important than people knowing my name, they need to know what my name means.
That’s good.
Because your brand isn’t your logo.
It isn’t your colors.
It isn’t your Instagram profile.
And it definitely isn’t what you say about yourself.
Your brand is the evidence.
What happens when someone actually works with you?
Does the experience match the promise?
Do people trust you more after doing business with you than before?
And here's the harder question for leaders:
Does that same experience happen when you’re not there?
Because if the promise only gets delivered when the founder is in the room, we haven’t really built a brand.
We’ve built a personality-dependent business.
That one gave me some homework.
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SARAH: Stop Trying to Go Viral
One of my favorite practical ideas came from Sarah:
“You don’t need your videos to go viral, but you do need a library of useful videos.”
YES.
This is where I think a lot of people get content wrong.
We chase views.
Likes.
Followers.
Virality.
But what if instead we simply answered the questions people are already asking us?
I get questions from agents and brokerage leaders constantly.
Instead of answering the same question for the 47th time, why not create the best answer I can
once and put it somewhere people can find it?
Sarah put it another way:
“These YouTube videos are not paying my bills. The clients that reach out from them are paying my bills.”
That’s a huge distinction.
Content isn’t necessarily the product.
Content builds trust.
Trust creates conversations.
Conversations create opportunities.
And when you’re starting, remember:
Don’t compare your beginning to somebody else’s middle or end.
Just start building the library.
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MY BIGGEST AHA
Looking back through all my notes, there was one theme running through almost everything:
Intentionality.
Intentional with our time.
Intentional with our talents.
Intentional about failure.
Intentional with our communication.
Intentional about the promises we make.
Intentional with our families.
Intentional about the life we’re building.
Because the scary thing about drifting is that you usually don’t realize you’re doing it.
You’re still moving.
You’re still busy.
You’re still accomplishing things.
You just may not be moving toward the life you actually want.
So here are a few questions I’m asking myself:
Am I choosing—or defaulting?
Do my habits actually support my hopes?
What am I doing simply because I’m good at it?
What did my last failure teach me?
Does the experience I’m delivering match the promise I’m making?
And maybe most importantly…
Are the people I’m supposedly building this life for experiencing the best of what it creates?
Those are questions worth sitting with.
I know I’m going to.
Go live life on your terms,
Marcus