Raw Lessons on Thriving in Life and Real Estate with John Marrone

You're listening to Crazy Shit in Real Estate. You'll be amazed at all these wild but true situations that others have found themselves in. Because on this show, you'll hear uncensored, unbelievable stories from the world of real estate. I'm Leigh Brown. Let's dive right in. So if you're in real estate and you're listening to this podcast or watching it and thinking, man, I need some more Leigh Brown answers in my life. Well, guess what, friends? I have a new program that is launching right now called Answers.RealEstate, where I will give you every bit of insight I have to help you grow your real estate business, help you better respond to consumers to provide a more excellent real estate experience, so that the next time you land on crazy shit in real estate, you'll have a better solution to whatever you ran into. Answers.RealEstate, there are monthly plans available. You will love it. Get your coaching, sign up with me today. I'm Leigh Thomas Brown. This is Crazy Shit in Real Estate. Today I've got John Marrone with you. And yes, there is somebody who talks faster than I do, and it's John. So dial in for this conversation of starting from here and going to here and some really great life tips along the way. I think you're going to love this conversation and I'll see you on the other side. All right. So welcome to the show, John.

Excited to be here. Thank you for having me. Beautiful here in Destin, Florida. So excited to jam with you this morning.

Yeah, tell my audience a little bit about what you do and how long in the real estate space. Obviously, you just told us you're in Destin, so you're in the land of freedom with the beautiful white sand beaches. So give us a little background on you.

Yeah, absolutely. So I won't be long-winded with it, but originally from New Jersey, grew up in a household that didn't make the best decisions. Unfortunately, I followed suit, and those bad decisions were addiction, right? So I was addicted to not just drugs, but addicted to bad decisions, addicted to anger, addicted to fighting, partying, you name it. That was a bad addiction. I had it. Then unfortunately, Unfortunately, that addiction led me to do some things that put me behind bars. I was actually in jail for a little bit. When I got out of jail, I had to figure my life out. Nobody was going to figure it out for me. Thankfully enough, I had a beautiful now wife go ahead and actually help me understand really how to live a different life, but I still didn't make the best decisions. I was still inching my way to a better version of John Marrone. What really changed for me was a couple of years later, I was running the sales and marketing firm for a guy named Pat Necorato, great Christian man. And he helped me really understand how to live a better life, right? He gave me the true tools to help run businesses, but really to run my life and not have my life overrun me. But it was October 28th, 2012, where really the big shift started to happen, right? We call this like little quake moments. And as I said, I lived in Jersey at the time and we lived on a barrier island. So we lived between bodies of water and Hurricane Sandy paid a visit to the Jersey Shore and Me, Italian, being from Jersey, I'm stubborn, right? I've been working on it. I've been working on it, right? But unfortunately, that stubbornness put us in a bad situation. And it was about 8 o'clock at night. I had my family there. We just got into this new place, right? We lived in motels. I lived on the streets. I lived in it all. I finally got my own house, rented it at the time. So then I had everybody come over because I took them from their place. They're a little closer to water. At 8 o'clock at night, we go outside. Wind is whipping, but there's no rain. So we go inside and we start playing a board game. My parents are there with me. I hear a trickle of water and that trickle of water, as I look, I see it coming through the living room and we had a one-story little house and I got up and I was like, how could this be? Right? I was just outside. There was no rain. And as I opened up the door, there was 5 feet of water. There's roaring rapids. There was boats flipped over. There was pieces of docks smashing into our house. And then within minutes it cracked through the foundation. Water started filling up into our house. I put everybody up into the attic and the water started climbing rung by rung the tree. 175 mph winds is hitting, it's smacking the roof and the water's coming up. And I remember sitting there, and this is really where it all changed. I'm like, okay, I'm going to make a real impact and a real change when I get out of here. And I believed I was going to get out of there. And fast forward 24 hours, we got rescued. We're sitting in a shelter and I'm sitting there in my wife's fuzzy snowflake pajama pants, a raggity t-shirt and some baseball cleats because that's all we had left. We lost everything. And I remember I said, I was going to make a change, but I didn't know how. And there it was. Saying, "I don't know what I don't know," and dropping my ego was my biggest opportunity to grow. And from there, the rest is kind of history. And I just indulged myself with like, who is doing the things that I want to do at the highest level? And how can I either get in front of them or learn from them in a virtual setting? And because of that, I've been able to create a pretty good speaking career where I'm keynoting conferences and now friends with people like Trent Shelton. Eric Thomas, Hal Elrod, Robert Kiyosaki. And all these things happened because I decided I want to help others, but first I got to help myself in order to help others. Then we lived in Dallas, then we said we got to put some roots down for our family. Let's find another beach. And we landed in Destin, Florida. Been here 7 years running our real estate practice. Been able to help tons of agents through different methods and being able to just really, for me, I tell everybody when I hand the keys over to somebody to open a door, it's corny as it sounds, it's not the door of a home, but it's the door of a new opportunity. And the reason I say that is because I never thought I could have a putting green in my backyard. I never thought I could have a pool in my backyard. That was never in my vision, right? Because I only knew what I knew. And so when I'm able to help somebody through that process, it's really cool to have them open up the door of the opportunities of the new lifestyle for them and their family. And that's where we are today. And the long story short version, that's TL;DR.

But I don't think you can compress that any more than you did. And it's not really a little quake as you reference your little quake moments. That seems to me like a really big quake when you think about what Hurricane Sandy did to turn everything around for you. But I do have to ask a question that might be a little off-kilter, but addictions obviously never go away. You just have to learn how to manage them and take control of them. So this is 2024 that we're recording this, and I feel like everybody in our society right now is living on a tinderbox of anger which can get set off at any moment because we are just So convinced that we're 100% right and everybody else must be burned to the ground. How do you control that addiction to anger and probably to the adrenaline and the endorphins from it in a world that is just on fire all the time? Do you turn off social media? Do you stay away from the political environment? How do you keep yourself focused in that space?

Wow, this is actually a phenomenal question, and there's so much depth to this, to be honest. And I think that you're absolutely correct, and it's a world of I'm offended, it's a world of I should this and that, but yet you're not doing the work to have this or that. And it's the world of division. And unfortunately, we don't need to get into it, but there are leaders in our country that are unfortunately creating a divide when united we stand should be the platform, right? And so because of that, there's been battles. And so how do I deal with it? The first thing is I was one of the highest levels of addiction to many things, and anger was one of them. Nothing to brag, but if it wasn't a weekend that I didn't go fighting somebody, it was a very rare weekend. And this went on for years. And so I had to learn, right? And to be honest, my wife kind of shined a light on me because I was the guy that if you cut me off, I'm white-knuckling trying to find you to do what, who knows, right? But I was that guy. And I remember my wife sitting there and we were in Dallas and she looked at me and she was like, "Realize that these emotions affect other people. I don't think you realize that." Wow. And I was like, "What do you mean? How does it affect anybody? It affects me." Then I started to think about it as I'm speaking out loud and I'm like, "Well, okay, you're absolutely correct." So I had to come up with a method and that method was the 3-2-1 rule. And basically anytime I got angry, I allowed myself 3 minutes to feel that anger. I had to learn how to, which I'm still working on as we all are, not to do it in front of kids, right? Because we now have a beautiful soon-to-be 7-year-old and it's an amazing little 2-year-old boy. And so I had 3 minutes of like, feel the pain, feel the anger because it's an emotion, right? And that's actually a beautiful thing that we could feel it, but sometimes we don't understand how to express it correctly. But then you go 2 minutes into gratitude. What am I grateful for right now? Got a car that I could drive, right? Got a car to drive. I got gas in the tank, got money in the bank. Okay, now one minute of ownership. What could I have done differently not to be in this position to create anger? Well, if I left 10 minutes early like I was supposed to, that guy would've never cut me off. And so going through that process took many years. It was actually a story of a crazy day that I realized I mastered it that day. But then the world tests you and your mastery all of a sudden starts to, to waver a little bit, right? So that helped me, the 3, 2, 1 rule. But I think the big thing is you said turn off social media, political things. It's very important for us to set these emotional guardrails, to set these boundaries, to set these new expectations in our life, to set these new rules of how people treat you. Because that's all we're doing, right? We're training people how to treat us. If you're offended by somebody and every time that person comes into your awareness, social media, family, whatever it is, that is your choice to be in that person's awareness. And that's also your choice to allow that into your life. So what we do is we do an EAC, expectation, agreement, consequence. And this is with your clients, everybody listening. This is with your clients, this is with family members, this is with yourself, right? So expectation would be, look, just to let you know, when you're calling me with this drama and this negativity, I'm trying to step away from that because it's affecting my peace and affecting my life. I just let you know that unfortunately, if you step into my world with that, I'm going to have to hang up the phone. I'm going to have to separate myself. Is that fair? Yeah, that's fair. Okay, awesome. I don't want you to think I don't like you, I don't love you, but the situation is I am trying to grow away from drama, and every time you talk about it, it brings me back in and sucks me back in. Thank you for respecting that. EAC, expectation, get the agreement, and then consequence. I'm going to walk away. I'm going to hang up the phone. Now, with clients, just kind of give everybody a little tip here. What I would do is, hey, John, just super excited to be working with you. Just a heads up, starting here about 8:00 at night till 9:00 in the morning. So I take my kids to school. That's family time. I don't want you to think that I'm ignoring your phone calls at 9:30 at night. I just want to make you aware of it. Is that fair? That's fair. Okay, awesome. I promise you, call you first thing, 9:00 in the morning when the kids are dropped off at school. We're working a deal and there's a fire. I get it. But 99% of the time that's not going to be the case. I just wanted to make sure we had that open communication prior. Okay, awesome. So it's all about setting these boundaries, setting these emotional guardrails with our family, with our clients, with ourselves, to be able to really not allow the infiltration of the negativity or the anger to really take over. Will it be completely eliminated? As you know, absolutely not. And it's reevaluating every week how we can get better at adjusting our character to react differently to the things that come into our awareness.

It's such great advice, especially in real estate where we have a tendency to work 24/7 simply because we never told the consumer that they should not call us at midnight. And it's so true that most of our situations, they're not earth-shattering. We are very important, but we are not on a 911 call for a reason. First responders are the ones you should call if you've got the water pouring into your house. You don't call your realtor and say, it's on the market, what What should I do? You call 911. But to get to that point, you set the expectations and that allows you to say no later. It's the same thing we do with our kids. If you never tell your kids, our family doesn't behave that way, then whatever they see is what they will emulate. And in real estate, all you guys have been emulating is what you've seen from other people that said, I'm available 24/7, 365. I'm always on for your real estate needs. And that means you're unable to draw boundaries and your clients should actually want you drawing boundaries. That's great advice. Now I want to know from your perspective. So you mentioned having the putting green and the pool and the things that you never expected to come into your life. And then about 2 breaths later, you mentioned that we are currently in a world where our younger generation seems to think that those things come without the years of hard work and the saving and the sweat and the screw-ups and all of the things that it goes through to get there. So what is your best advice to the person getting started who's in a rough spot and they want it? How do you train your brain to learn how to delay gratification? Because good gravy, if we could all learn that, we could get a lot further in life. And I just don't think we're teaching our young people that right now, especially when these things act as candy and poison at the same time.

Man, this could be a whole podcast we could do together. I'm telling you, because—

well, let's see, you only have about 6 minutes left. Here we go.

Right. So you're Here's what I tell you guys. It's called the microwave mindset, right? Let's play a scenario. I want everybody listening to this or watching this, raise your hand if you ever did this. You put your little Hot Pockets, you know, whatever it is, into the microwave, put it for 2 minutes, and you never seen 2 minutes take so damn long in your entire life. And you stop it before it even gets to all the zeros, right?

Why? Oh yeah, stop the microwave, girl. Like, it's close enough, right? Why do we do that?

Because we are now trained by everything that it can happen faster. Uber Eats, Favor, Netflix, right? Versus going, I have to go to Blockbuster, right? All these things are training us that it should happen faster, right? And then social media. Unfortunately, there are some things out there that people are saying, I'm a top producer and all these things, and reality is like, maybe they are, but they are celebrating an accolade and not the story behind the glory. So what I always tell everybody is, who do you idolize, right? Sports, academically, music— who do you idolize? So let's use sports, right? I'm a big sports guy. Tom Brady. Dude's got 7 Super Bowl rings. We are celebrating him for 7 Super Bowl rings and we look up to him for that. But in reality, we should be looking up at the absolute relentlessness to practice, practice, practice, right? To master his craft so that when he gets on the field, it's all subconsciously happening and there's not even a lot of energy being exuded because he's been there before a million times on the practice field. So how do we delay gratification? We always talk about Instant gratification creates long-term regret. And so what I tell anybody listening, a newer agent, young, whatever it might be, first off, understand everybody that you look up to, they are where they're at because they did the work in the dark so they could shine the brightest in the light, right? Their character is being tested when nobody's watching. When it's an audience of one, who are you? Because I promise you, once that audience of one turns audience of 2, 5, 6, 20, you're gonna look a lot better because you're doing the work prior. Right? So anybody in real estate that wants to make more money, write this quote down. If you want to increase your pay, increase your role play, right? Get so damn good the world can't ignore you. Get so damn good the world can't ignore you. And that happens through repetition, repetition, repetition before stepping on the field, before picking up the call, before stepping into a listing appointment. So how do we delay gratification? The first thing is realize that the mindset of instant gratification creates long-term regret. Number 2 is Master your craft and realize that the people we idolize today, the accolades are great, but the accolades are a byproduct to who they are as a character and what they have done behind closed doors to become this version of themselves. So it's very hard in today's world, but you also need to be around people that challenge you and also let you know that this is a process, right? We are looking for progression, not perfection. So how can we progress a little bit today? And then give yourself a little grace when it doesn't happen because sometimes the world kicks you in the face and the days just don't go exactly playing like they thought they were going to, you know.

I mean, it goes back to Tom Brady. What was he, 116 in the draft? I mean, he was pretty low in the draft and kept working at it. And then you could also be Michael Jordan, who did all that work, but he was top in the draft. And Wayne Gretzky— I mean, any of your greats from the past did all the work. But I don't know if you saw the tweet that was posted this week about MJ, because, you know, Michael's from North Carolina, so obviously I'm totally biased towards him. And this is my favorite sports conversation that I have seen in a long time. A news reporter asked Michael Jordan if he thought the '90s Bulls could beat LeBron's Lakers. MJ: Yes. Reporter: By how much? MJ: 2 or 3 points. Reporter: Why so close? Michael: Most of us are almost 60 now. But you know, the difference between his era and today's era is work. It is the I don't need the likes and the reposts and the shares. I'm doing the work, like you said, in the dark. And maybe, just maybe, you don't have to post everything that you do. If you talk about something of substance, you have permission not to be like the people that you see because they may not be reflecting actually what the true outcome is or what your outcome should look like. And I always love sports analogies, especially after watching the draft last week and seeing all the wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth over Caitlin Clark's contract and the utter lack of reality when it comes to the WNBA, which brings in no revenue. So of course her numbers look different than the men's sport, not because of the gender, but because of the underlying revenues. And so you have to ask yourself if your results have something to do with you or something to do with the game you're playing or the people with whom you're playing. And so I think she could have done better in Ice Cube's league. And I really had hoped she'd go that way because that would have been cool to see. And who knows, maybe it'll still happen and just turn this into a sports podcast for for all the people who don't pay attention to anything. Next week we're talking baseball. Well, actually, that's my sport, but I'm a Cardinals fan, so we're off right now. So, oh well, then you already suck because nobody likes the Yankees.

Of course, I'm already walking into a situation here.

You guys will say you're a Cowboys fan too, and just—

yes, I am, but I'm also a New York Ranger, diehard New York Ranger, and New York Knicks fan. So we got our playoffs happening right now, so it's been a lot of ups and downs in the Morone household, that's for sure.

That is, that's a lot of extremes there. But that's also the real estate life. It's also the entrepreneur life and the sales life is the extremes. And maybe that's why we do like sports, because underdogs can do great things, which is the story of real estate. And people that are expected to be great can do great things. They don't always. And it all depends on what you put into it. So, John, if somebody wants to talk to you more about what you're doing, your story, Destin, Florida real estate, what's the best way for them to find can you— what's your best website or social handle?

Yeah, so you just go right to— if you're an Instagram person, @realjohnmarone, and it's M-A-R-R-O-N-E. So @realjohnmarone. If you're not really an Instagram person, but maybe YouTube, just look up my name, John Marrone. We also have a podcast called The Real and Raw Show. So The Real and Raw Show with John Marrone. But definitely reach out, would love to hear your story, love to hear kind of maybe a takeaway that you guys had on this podcast, and love to connect.

All right, people, say something below, say something nice, ask a question, whatever, in the comments. Hit the bell to subscribe, and we'll see you next time. By the way, friends, Don't miss my brand new coaching program at answers.realestate where you can have access to Leigh Thomas Brown, submit your questions, have them answered, meet like-minded professionals, have an entire library to help you build your business no matter what happens in the market. Get signed up today. I promise you'll be glad you did. As always, I am so super thrilled that you joined in for more crazy shit. And if you're a realtor, investor, inspector, lender, or just a regular human being who happens to have an unbelievable story that you you need to tell the world about, or frankly, you just need to one-up the story you just heard, then make sure to DM me on Instagram @leithomasbrown or tweet me @leighbrown, or frankly, any social network where you hang out, I'm there. And if you had some fun, then you totally want to subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episodes.