Flying Supersonic With a Nuclear Payload: How My Unusual Journey Shaped the Way I Sell Real Estate

I grew up an Air Force brat. My dad wasn’t just a pilot, he flew supersonic carrying a nuclear payload in one of the most advanced aircraft ever built in the 1950s era, the B-58 Hustler. He eventually flew the last one to the scrapyard in the 1970s. That was the world I came from: precision, danger, discipline, and no excuses.

Meanwhile, I was a tall kid who grew too fast to be good at team sports. I wasn’t outrunning anyone to the hoop or the goal line. That’s when motorcycles entered my life. Dirt bikes didn’t care. Nobody watched. You could fly and leaving the ground was a real option. My first bike, a Yamaha YZ-80 at age twelve, felt like freedom on two wheels. It wasn’t a Hustler, but to a 12-year-old boy it was close enough.

What I didn’t know was that everything was about to change.

Losing the Net

After college, I came home to a different world. My parents divorced. The family home was sold. My dad, the supersonic nuclear pilot turned developer, told me his company was bankrupt. Then he said, “I love you, but I got no money,” and he left town.

So that was that. I lost my scholarship and my future employer in one day.

Just me, my bills, and whatever grit I could muster.

The HUD Trenches

Out of desperation, I answered a small classified ad to sell HUD homes. Denver was buried in foreclosures. Nobody had ever seen anything like it. I only took the job because it offered a draw against commissions. Basically a paycheck, and I needed rent money.

I paid back a loan to my managing broker, and he looked at me like I was insane.
“No one’s ever paid me back before,” he said.

“Well… that was the agreement,” I told him.

He closed the office but kept me as his only agent. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was a start and I learned the business.

That’s where I learned to sell the homes nobody wanted, in markets that scared everyone else. Today, that’s exactly the skill set you need if your home has failed to sell or is at risk of stalling again.

The Coldwell Breakthrough

Then Coldwell Banker called with something nobody had tried:
salaried agents.

A steady paycheck.
A company car.
Marketing dollars.
And a chance.

I took it.

I started selling about eight homes a month, and by all accounts, I was likely the most productive agent under 30 in the entire metro area. Before that, all I had was one suit and a beat-up Mazda RX-7, which was terrible for selling houses. Now I finally had the tools I needed.

At the annual awards banquet, they called my name. Hundreds of people spontaneously stood up and applauded. I didn’t understand it at first, but then I realized I’d helped every one of them at some point, solve a problem computer, a printer, a contract, whatever. Coldwell Banker noticed, too, and offered me a management role.

It was easy. Too easy.

Enter: Keller Williams

Keller Williams courted me relentlessly. Ownership, leadership, opportunity. I said no for years. When I finally said yes, they handed me the worst office in America, a quarter-million dollars in losses and a graveyard of five failed managers.

The agents were surly, combative, and some days straight-up feral. They vandalized my office just to see how I’d react.

Three years later, we were in a new building with 300 agents, and Real Estate Magazine ranked me among the top 600 brokers in the country. That’s roughly the top .01 percent.

But then came the meltdown.

A War of the Roses erupted between the owners and at the same time, the great recession. My mentor moved out of state a millionaire. I was left behind like the unwanted kid in a bad divorce. Ten years of building, training, selling, and sacrificing were gone. Right into a recession.

So I did the logical thing:
I walked away.

An old agent smirked, one of the agents who’d given me the most grief, and said, “Now you’ll see what it’s like to try and sell real estate again.”

Twelve months later, she watched me accept the award for top agent at the new company we’d both joined.

Turns out, after a decade of training top brokers, I didn’t need a safety net anymore.

The RE/MAX Run

I teamed up with the hardest working guy I knew. He’d gone to RE/MAX. We attacked expired and withdrawn listings the houses other agents couldn’t move.

We sold so many that I eventually stopped counting.

We became the top team in the #1 RE/MAX office in America.
Thirty million a year in volume. More some years.
Not because we were flashy but because we solved problems nobody else could.

We broke record after record. Almost every listing we touched became the highest sale in the neighborhood. Cooperating sellers? We got it done. Exceptional properties? We shattered ceilings.

That brings us to now.

The Return of the Expireds and the Rise of AI

Expired and withdrawn homes are back. The landscape looks familiar. High expectations. Low work ethic. Agents who don’t know how to diagnose a property’s real issues.

If your home has already been on the market once, that’s my favorite kind of problem. I’ve spent decades stepping into “unsellable” situations and turning them into record sales.

Because I learned the hard way, the only way that lasts.

And now, with AI in the mix, I can:

• out-communicate
• out-market
• out-analyze
• and out-strategize

anyone who’s still playing 2015 real estate.

It’s like having an army of admin support, marketers and elite assistants working for me at all times. It’s changing everything for my team, and my clients.

Where is it taking me?
I’ll let you know when I land.

But right now?

Feels like flying supersonic with a nuclear payload.

If your home has failed to sell, or you’re worried about putting it back in the MLS and watching days-on-market pile up again, send me your address. I’ll tell you exactly what I’d do differently this time.