Todays guest is Terrence Murphy, a former Texas A&M football player and a second round draft pick for the Green Bay Packers who started his own realty firm to pursue his passion in real estate.
His company, TM5 Properties, has seen over 500% growth and he is a contributor to the XM Radio Football Channel.
1:32 - Terrence grew up in east Texas in a humble and challenging background. At an early age he started his entrepreneur ventures by trading Gameboy games in school. By the time he got to high school he was working 2 jobs, so he knew the hard work that went into making it in an environment where it was easy to make it through illegal means. After retiring from football, Terrence read Rich Dad's Who Took My Money by Robert Kiyosaki, and started the process of how to change his mindset on starting a business.
3:20 - When he was in the NFL, Terrence would sign for up to 6 hours a day singing trading cards. That showed him that really the number on thing you have is your time. When the stock market started crashing in 2008 he went to his financial advisor and told him to take all his money out of stocks. His financial advisor told him only if Terrence could tell him what he was going to do with the money and this challenged him. At this time he developed his attitude that if you become passionate about something, and then become good at it only then will the money follow. He fell in love with real estate, and started investing in property. He learned with his own money, made mistakes and made some good money too.
6:03 - One of the things that Terrence highlights is that he has no background in Entrepreneurship, but he believes that its all about who wants to work the hardest and who wants to put in the time to succeed. He tells how when he went from part of a realtor firm to owning his own firm he saw his sales jump from 1 million to 20 million. He estimates this year his firm will do in excess of 100 million dollars with just 8 agents, and he has turned down a buy out offer from Warren Buffet’s company to stay local.
8:40 - Sport brought a good work ethic out of him and gave him the confidence to go after what he wanted, to be aggressive and fearless.
10:14 - The one thing that Terrence falls back on is that his background was so tough growing up. All he has to do is look in the mirror and say, "I’m gonna figure this out." When tough things happen he looks back on past experiences to propel himself forward.
12:05 - Terrence gives little time to thinking about whether or not he was one of the greatest football players, but believes firmly that he was one of the hardest working players.
13:41 - He believes his drive comes from the way that God wired him. He feels that through his life and his career people are always and have always counted him out, and he rises to this.
15:43 - He feels he has always been misunderstood. He remembers working his butt off in college and believing he was going to be successful despite what other people believed. He has a mantra at his company is "nobody is allowed to be unsuccessful."
17:05 - When Terrence got into business he had a hard time making the transition from college athlete to entrepreneur. He’s focused on transition. No matter where you come from, you inevitably will start somewhere else and jump into entrepreneurship. Two quotes he loves are, "If it’s not on your schedule, it’s not important," and "if it’s not on your schedule, it won’t get done."
18:35 - One thing he realized early on was that people are buying into you when they work with your company. They want the real you. He gives the example of a retail store he tried and closed down because he wasn’t really passionate about it.
19:40 - Unless you’re willing to sacrifice for something, unless you’re willing to die for something you will not succeed.
20:50 - He studied the stats for the real estate business and he found headline stats that jumped off the page. An example was that 87% of estate agents didn’t contact clients again after they closed a deal, so by implementing this he automatically went into the top 10%.
23:45 - Terrence not only played for the Green Bay Packers, but he spent his time watching how the organization was ran, and he was able to bring this learning to his own business ventures. He learned consistency, loyalty and commitment and uses these principles daily.
25:07 - When success comes you’ve got to be really careful because somebody else will take your journey and try to make it theirs. This is why he resists mergers and buy outs and works on his basic aim of becoming the number one brokerage in town.
26:25 - His vision for the next few years is to completely dominate the market, and once that’s achieved he will consider escrow, insurance and new construction to expand the brands services.
27:49 - He follows his gut. In football he went from a nobody to a somebody overnight, and always remembers how he stayed grounded and humble and still practices it. When the time is right to move into these areas he will know. He feels that when you attach new services to the brand, any new services are expected to have the same standards as the current services and he’s very conscious of maintaining that level.
30:37 - Terrence relates a great analogy based on the Super Bowl on teams and specialists.