Ep. 177-Navigating Business Growth and Work-Life Harmony with Eric Esteves

Now here's your host licensed marriage and family therapist , certified neuro emotional technique practitioner and certified entrepreneur coach , jason Wasser .

point B , maybe point Q at this point or R and people see individuals such as yourself only for where they're at now . They may hear about the story , but they don't get and understand what it took to get there that we can leverage and utilize for ourselves .

So let's start off with that and then we'll take it to all the places that I know we're going to go to . So yeah . So who are you ? What are you ? What's going on ? Let me throw that at you .

Right , I always wanted to work for myself . So , you know , after leveraging , you know RSUs and stock options and whatnot right To really leave that world behind . I started a mortgage business and you know , just like any business , the first few years are just grinding it out and learning as much as you can .

And then you start to scale and build teams and processes and whatnot . And that's where I'm at now , you know . So the mortgage industry is still my bread and butter .

I've since , you know , built some auxiliary businesses just because of the conversations that I've been having in the mortgage world , you know , for example , you know I've used virtual assistants , isas , for quite some time and in the coaching world and I teach classes and whatnot . This comes up a lot , right ? So I made a business out of that , right ?

So you know what , instead of me talking about it and you know , telling people where to go . Why can't I provide that service ? So I partnered with somebody who helped me with the back-end operations , and we do have a virtual assistant company to help leverage , you know , small business owners . But mortgage is my bread and butter .

In addition to that , you know , one of my passion projects is , you know , my daughter is a music recording artist , you know . So we started a small record label and we're just right . Now we're in the rumbles and tumble of things . Right , we're in the weeds , we're learning and you know it takes years , right to make it . So she's just reporting .

And you know , we produced and released our own music video , right , and every other month we're releasing a single . So I'm learning the music business as well . So that's more of a passion project . But it does take money , jason , right , yeah , of course . So it's fun because I'm doing that alongside my daughter and that's her passion . That's amazing .

And I'm hearing and knowing that that's consistently part of this process that we think that if we just do this long enough , we're going to be able to jump ship , start something new , and it's just going to be easy or we have everything we need ready to go .

So I'm curious , just you know , as the first , maybe deep dive of our conversation is what didn't you know in these different developmental stages ? That has been that once you learned it , you realized how foundationally powerful and impactful it was to what you needed to be doing , both personally and professionally .

So I was able to use some of my leadership skills to build teams , which I knew is something that needed to happen quickly to be successful in this world , and I was able to create good cultures and whatnot . But when I left my prior industry as a leader , I had a lot of people that report to me and I was more like the maestro right , like the .

You know , I kind of had great people around me and I was a big , big picture kind of guy . And when I came into the mortgage industry I thought that that was gonna translate .

But I learned real quickly that I had to learn right the weeds of the business so I could be dangerous enough , right , you know , I still surround myself with great people and I know who's gonna surpass my knowledge right , when I hire people , which is , you know , one of the great skill sets of really building a great team is hiring people that are better at

using certain skill sets . But you know , I think I tried to move too fast and not learn right the fundamentals and spent as much time as fundamental . So , for example , I was always focused on connecting with people and sales and people gave me opportunities to help families .

But , you know , I made mistakes because I wasn't in tune right with the details of my business and it took months and months and months to develop relationships and have opportunities to help . You know , families finance their homes but because of my lack of knowledge in some cases , you know , I lost those relationships quickly , right .

So now , how I lead is you have to be good enough to do this on your own .

You have to be dangerous enough to really be able to help a family and answer all questions before you really build a team , because you're gonna be the teacher , right , and you're gonna end up those people are gonna wind up excelling in a specific task along , you know , step along the process .

But you have to be good , right , and I think that in this industry that I'm in , I'm kind of going back to that and saying , okay , what are some of the things that I've lost ? I have to get better at this so I can teach my team and I can lead by example and set that example , and that's what I'm doing right now , jason .

And you know , the whole idea is like you know , we attract what we've done right and what we're aware of and what we're not aware of .

So when I hear people like , ah , this business partner screwed me over , I'm like , yeah , but like you met with them more than once and didn't see these things , so what's going on with you that you're not taking ownership and accountability for ? Versus saying like , how did I know ? How did I not know ?

Right , and I see this on every level of relationships and every level of even businesses , where there's that blind eye or that's that they don't even realize that the circuit breaker not only does it not exist , or that it exists , but it's also off right and they don't even know to look for that .

So I find that's such a powerful component of personal growth and development , whether it's personal or professionally is how to know what to work on how to know how not to walk in with ego , how to not walk in with arrogance and cockiness , and I think one of the things that scares people from the non-tropinorial journey is seeing people who do carry that brash

ego , grind , rise and grind mentality that doesn't necessarily fit authentically for them , versus seeing this as a path to , like , personal fulfillment and personal growth and , like you said , helping others .

And I think when you open to learning and and you know what you know , it doesn't matter the age is , it's experience , right , if there's a lot of young folk that doing things and that I want to do , right and and I asked questions and I'm inquisitive and I'm open , and that's how you really start to gain relationships and you start to , you know , really build

a circle of influential people in your life . Right when you , when you come to them and say , hey , I want to learn from you in all aspects , whether it's from a business perspective right , if it's a family man , that you know that , just holding it down right .

And you know , and , and especially since I'm branching off into the , you know , virtual assistant , you know world , right , I see I see people that are doing it 10 times better than me and I want to want to learn , and especially now , you know , in the music industry is totally foreign to me .

Not only am I reading books to try to you know , you know , get the theory correct , but it's meeting with as many people as possible right , and and and I've been my , my daughter has been given opportunities because we've come with this hey , I want to learn from a family , mentality right and people . You know what success ?

Successful people want to want to teach right . And guess what , when you teach , you learn and you get better yourself too . So I think I think you talk about , you know you mentioned that that thing that's very important is is not having ego and and and just say , hey , I'm here to learn Right .

Even even myself as the teacher , sometimes in classes and seminars , I can learn from my colleagues that have been doing this for less than me , because you know they might hear something right or know something or got taught something that I say , wow , like that .

And I think that that's how you have to lead your life right and I think that that's how you kind of flatten that learning curve a little bit .

So one of the things I guess I want to ask is is you know you've taken on these new roles , these new responsibilities , these new passion projects , and one of the things I feel that people have a difficult time with is discerning between what they should go down the rabbit hole and take on themselves and what they should leverage out , even if you know it's

that idea of like I can have 100% of something , or I can have , you know , 100% of nothing , or 20% of something , right , and then the other people like , well , if I do it all myself , then I'll have 100% of that .

And I think that you're a good example of you know , especially with this virtual assistant mindset of like everything is about leverage and everything is about bringing people in that right and , like you said , you can only train them to the point of what you know and you can't get them past that .

How have you discerned , or how have you learned to discern , between what you should be absolutely all in on and what you should leverage out ?

You know , sometimes we're not honest with ourselves and if you know , like I know for a fact , that , for example , I hate conflict Right For so many years and I was a leader , right , I led through my personality and I gained , buy and , but you know , sometimes that's just not , you know that's not the way the world is Right , and I hate conflict and I avoid

it right . So I think I have to have people in my team that run right towards that conflict right , because I can get better at it , but , but that's not innate in me . I also don't like details too much , right , I'm not in so , and I have to get better at those things .

But like I know , for example , that I have to refer to somebody on my team is always going to fact check me right , and I'm not going to be able to do that because , because I'm good at building relationships , right , I'm good at big picture thinking , I'm good at rallying people .

So I think you know that accountability knowing what you're good at and what you're not good at is going to allow you now to right , outsource higher people that are going to be doing , that are going to do the things that you're not that great at right .

If , if building a business takes different types of personalities like , let's say , I had a partner at one point and we were opposites , right , you know he was really strong and the things that I was really weak on and it really worked , you know it really worked , you know . So the thing is that sometimes you got to just okay , what am I good at ? Now ?

I know that I'm good at having conversations , talking to people , building relationships , teaching people .

So , when I look at my day and I'm going back to accountability , right , and I'm very structured and that's also , I think , very important for any business , for any business to be able to be organized or is really be organized , and that comes with time but I'm able to look at my day and I'm able to say , ok , well , how do I spend my day today ?

How do I spend my day last , my week , last week ? How do I spend my month ? And if I was , if I wasn't doing the things that I was good at , right , then I would be able to maximize my potential . Right , and I teach that to my team . You know I say OK , well , if you're not doing sales related activities , right . If you're .

If you're fighting fires all the time , right , what caused the fire ? Instead of fighting , you know , I got to fix how that fire came to be in the first place , to eliminate those things in your day so you can focus on the things that you're good at . You can focus on those sales activities .

And I think you know it goes back to accountability , and , and and looking at your , your day and you're weak and analyze in it , right , and , and you know , I think any goal is reachable , right , as long as you're realistic and as long as you reverse , engineer , right , and and say , ok , well , this is what I have to do on a monthly basis , on a weekly

basis , on a daily basis , and and as long as you hold yourself accountable to those daily tasks , you're going to reach those goals , right ? Or if you're not reaching those goals on week two or a month or one month in , ok , well , we have to change our activity and look at ourselves in the future and be honest with ourselves so we can change some of it .

So then we can reach our goal . Many of us . What tends to happen , jason , is is is we wait too long to change ? Yeah , and then we say , I well , the years almost over , right ?

I did really well in graduate school because it was something that I was excited about and motivated about , and I think a lot of people have that , especially academically , where you know they may not even have ever have that opportunity to be turned on to a particular study or subject .

And I think it's also great about the world of , like you know , entrepreneurship and going out there and creating something , because it may have nothing to do with what you learned in school , but for me it was like not realizing that like I love doing this , like strategic mindset , therapeutic work and seeing things and asking questions that Carlos asks .

That wasn't taught to me in school , right , because it's like here's a curriculum , you do the curriculum , you know the curriculum , you pass . If you don't , you fail . And there was no creativity to that .

You know there was no , there was no music in that , there was no right , there was no play in that , and I see a lot of people struggling , including myself , at different developmental stages , where you do hit the wall , where you might be doing everything right , but it also just seems so exhausting to try to do anything more or differently , and how easy it

is to just and it's not because it's not a positive mindset that they're coming , it's not because they're not listening to the right podcast and reading the right books and watching the right YouTube videos and talking to people like you .

It's you know , I think , in 2023 , people are also burnt out in general and we do have this overwhelming even in the social media world and the podcast world . Right , I'm one of them . God knows how many millions of podcasts that exist out there .

At what point do we need to just not get more information and just lead back into the one simple step , and who do we need to talk to to get that one simple step ? That's just a bit different than where we were , so we can move away from that fatigue .

And I'm wondering if you have anything to speak to on that , because I see it . I see it with the people who I'm interviewing , you know , on my show and they may be radically and wildly successful multiple aspects of their life but there's something in their life that's still causing them that fatigue .

light , right . So it's really about finding that balance and we're always , always working towards it .

Right , I have my goals , right when it's my health and my family and my finances and my profession , and I don't think I'm able to say that , you know , I was fully satisfied in every spoke of the wheel at any given point in my life , yet , right , so I think it's about constant work and I think what's made it harder in that fatigue ?

Jason , and you mentioned social media and whatnot . I think you know that same comparison is a thief of all joy , right , yeah , and we see it in front of other people .

We're comparing ourselves whether we might be happy for people , but subconsciously , and I think that that's where some of the fatigue comes in because , right , we're comparing ourselves to highlight reels .

We're comparing ourselves to where we think we should be , where man , like , sometimes , where we're at is exactly where we need to be and if we were just more present , we would just be happier and not as tired . You know , and I struggle with that too , right , I think you know . You know , am I spending enough time with my family ?

Am I doing enough , you know , for work ? Like , I might feel like I haven't figured out one day , but the other day I might feel like what am I doing ? I think that that's a constant struggle , but I think it's surrounding yourself with the right people in your life to remind you , right ? Hey , you know , if you're going too hard , hey , like what is this ?

Why are you going too hard in this ? For , like , you know , like what are you thinking about ? Like we're here today ? Well , let's enjoy the moment .

Today I heard of I think was it Howie Mandel was in a podcast and I saw maybe a Tik Tok clip or something right , and you know Howie Mandel , you know he's known for being a germaphobe , right , and just have a little bit of anxiety always .

And he talked about how he really in his , in his age , and you know he , with his age , he's really now being present instead of being anxious about tomorrow or depressed about the past . He was doing a podcast and he goes . I'm grateful and you know what , jason , I'm grateful for doing this podcast , and sometimes you don't think about that .

Sometimes you know what ? I'm grateful that you found me , that we're able to have this conversation and saying , wow , you know , you know I'm able to hopefully provide value to at least one person and help somebody out .

And I think that when we , when we try to live in the moment , I think that fatigue is going to wear away a little bit , right , because I feel like we're always chasing something , and I think that is not , is not , you know , is mental fatigue . I think , you know , and I struggle with that . I am very highly motivated .

You know , I woke up today at 430 in the morning , right , and . But then there's sometimes where you can stay to bed to 10 in the morning and play with the dogs and be okay . So I think that's a constant battle .

I think that that's what we always try to seek , is that balance , so that way we feel full and all aspects of our life right , and who knows if we'll ever achieve it right , but as long as we're working towards it , right .

and with right and stay in bed with the family and right and just lounge , and you know , I think that there's not enough about when not to write , these are the things that you should do .

These are the right , these are the 10 steps , these are the five steps and if you follow this method and if you all this book and you know , and God bless , all those people who are putting that out there that are working for them but I know that there's not a one size fits all , but also , no one's talking about when not to do this , which there has to

be , like you just said , right , and I think that's kind of maybe the least known secret is these are all great , right , you want to follow the 10x rule , or you want to follow the Miracle Morning , or you want to follow whatever , any of these wonderful , you know , you know mindset books that are out there , the Wave , the Seal or whatever right , or you know

the David Goggins stuff and all those things . But when do you not do that ?

You know , my family keeps me in check sometimes , right , you know , sometimes , and that's why you want to be surrounded with people , right , and I keep my employees in check , and sometimes , you know , they keep , and I think that you have to , you know , surround yourself with people that are going to keep you in check , because you know , I see myself present ,

you know , with my family around , and it's a beautiful moment . But I'm thinking about something , an idea that I have , right , or business , or whatever .

And you know , my wife would be like hey , hey , like you know , like we're here , right , and I snap out of it because , because it's true , right , like you know , my kids are older , my daughter's 20 , my son is 16 , and down the road , we're going to be empty nesters and we're going to miss those moments .

And I see myself when she tells me that I fast forward 10 years from now , where , where I'm like you know what , like I remember they were here and and , and I was thinking about something else , or work , and I missed that . I missed them , you know , yeah , so so you have to have people in your life that are going to keep you in check , you know .

then asserting that happens because I find that that's very difficult for a lot of people , because that , right , we all want to be liked , we all want to be benevolent , we all want to be like . You know they like me , you know I've done good for them and I don't want people to think bad about me . What , what has that been ?

Because I know that that's one of the key markers of success ? Is that discernment and clarity of those things , what , what has that been like for you on your journey ?

But what I'm most proud of is I I believe you talking about work life balance and I still think I need to Be present right when I need to be present and be appreciative of the now . But I'm most proud of Feel . I feel what I have . I create my own schedule and I create my own time . And have I lost business over that ? Jason , absolutely , you know .

You know , because you know , I remember being on stage a couple years ago and a highly successful broker , you know , was wearing a A shirt and you know , and you know if you listen to those podcast , I'm not saying that is the wrong way to do business , highly successful , but yeah , that's just as pick up your phone , right .

And I remember saying at any time , at any given time , pick up your phone . Nine o'clock , pick up your phone . We just pick up your phone . I don't , I don't work that way ? Right , I don't operate that way . I have a calendar , right , I work through Calendly .

Anybody that I work with knows I'm very responsive , but I'm not gonna just pick up the phone every time you call , because if I'm I'm , if I'm talking in a podcast with Jason , I'm , I'm working , I'm talking to you . If I'm talking to a client , right , I'm talking to that client , you know . So if I'm , if I'm on my son's football game , I'm there .

So what happens is I block out time , and that has helped me a lot , right , by using a calendar has helped me a lot . And by setting those expectations Around my team and around the people that work with me has helped me a lot . I've lost business because of it . Right , because it's a 930 and I get a call , I'm not gonna pick up .

Even if I could , I'm not because I don't want to set that expectation . Yeah , right . So that's that has helped me being organized and being time blocking and and and being able to . So , jesse Eichler , right , I have . He has something called the big ass .

I gotta take a vacation in balance right . Right . So I think it's great because being organized allows you to be more balanced , right .

Even though I'm seeking to continue to be more present and do more things , I feel like I've developed that reputation in my field , right , where you know , even some people say , well , you know you call , everybody's not gonna pick up the phone .

I even say , I even tell , I even tell my realtor partners , right , you know , there's probably a chance , there's 90% chance , that I won't pick up the phone when you call , right , but that's because but this is why , right , I'm very organized , I'm following up , I'm gonna follow up on your people , right , but I will respond to you right away .

And then I have a team also . That helps a lot of times . People know who to call in my team instead of calling me . So what I do is I try to deflect Calls right , when they don't have to be directed towards me , right .

You know , I'm finding that a lot of struggles that people are having , root cause stuff is just boundaries , or nonbound , or having a lack of boundaries , and how many things can we have right , whether it's work , life balance and and professionalism , and you know how many one too many drinks or One too many , you know spending one too many dollars or whatever it

is . That's all going back to boundaries and I maybe will Put it out there for those that are listening to see if , like they can look at this our conversation through that lens of , is everything we're talking about really just a boundary ?

Is the key to success really just Identifying , having clean and holding accountable to those and having other people hold you to those , because , right , work , life balance is boundaries .

I , I , you know , I think that that's a great way to look at things you know we talk about , you know , looking at root causes and and I have every I recruited a large team To my office and some of them , you know , they have different levels of experience but I said you know , I said , hey , you know what , one of the one of the best ways that we learn

is from pain . Right , it's , it's , it's pain hopefully Right . Yeah , so , so I have a call every Friday , right , 30 minutes , and I call it pain point Fridays .

Hey , I want everybody to discuss their pain this week because If you might experience a pain that we can all learn from so we can avoid that pain in the future , right , if , if there's a specific you know Family that you're helping , that we miss deadlines and is causing extra stress , let's , let's dig into that . What was the root cause of why ?

What , what could we do better ? So I try to really instill accountability and everybody that works with me , because , first of all , I want people that are accountable , I want people to look in the mirror and say , hey , what could I have done better , instead of pointing fingers , because we never grow , we point fingers , right .

So , so we have that that's on our calendar every Friday at 12 o'clock 30 minutes , pain point Fridays . Let's , let's learn from each other's pain . And the whole point is I said , hey , guys , if in 30 , if in 30 days , even 90 days , we still have to have 30 minute calls , guess what we're not learning from the pain .

Right , we're doing this so we can eliminate these calls . Right , that's the kind of team that I want

.

It's not even the right , it's not even that linear , like that person person cut me off and therefore they're not a good person . It's what is my belief about the type of person that would cut somebody else off , right ? Oh well , they're self-centered and they only care about themselves and they put themselves on pedestals , and okay .

So then , how do I make that universal ? What is my belief about anybody who is self-centered and anybody who puts themself first ?

Right now , you're getting to the nitty-gritty of where this might be showing up in multiple scenarios that you don't even realize , and I think that that beautiful , that Paint White Friday , is such a cool thing where you can unpackage beliefs , assumptions and expectations , going even deeper to that , and okay . Well , where else is this showing up ?

Even outside of our calls and outside of our , you know , outside of this business for everybody , because wherever we go , there we are , we show up with that . We just don't realize we're oblivious to it in some arenas of our life and it's completely blatant in some arenas of our life .

What are some of the resources and tools in which you know I mean , I know you're up in Jersey , but you know where people can obviously , said , you do speaking engagements and there's other stuff going on in the world what are the different ways that people can benefit from your experience , from your wisdom , from your , from your teams and everything that you're

putting out into the world , and and then how we can leverage that .

But I think , I think , you know , I've always had a coach , so it's not like , you know , you're listening to just Eric SFS speak .

You're listening to a coach that has had a lot more years of experience and success that I have had , right , and anything that I get taught , at least to my team , and then even things like this , jason , these podcasts , and you know , I listen to a lot of great people and a lot of great ideas and I use that in my conversations with people .

Right , I tried to talk to top performers in the industry so I can know what their mindset is and what they're doing . You know , and I use my platform to do that .

You know , I'm the incoming president of NAREP North Jersey , which is the National Association of Hispanic Willis-A-Professionals , and we're the largest Latino organization in the country and , yeah , you know what I use that to now talk to highly successful you know these realtors and lenders and make millions of dollars on a yearly basis and I invite them to speak ,

right , so we do have . So what you can find me , for example , is we have four events a year , right , educational events to really educate our real estate professionals , and a lot of times , not even me speaking is these highly successful individuals that are speaking . We have one on October 12th , right in New Jersey , you know . So we try to do it .

Tonight I have a , so I talk about , so I bring forth people that are already excelling in this tight inventory market to teach others , but then I'm also going tonight , you know , to a local church , right at eight o'clock in Newark , new Jersey , to teach first time home buying seminars , right , so , right .

So I go from hundreds of people to a room maybe with 15 people , because this is what I really enjoy is , you know , is helping people through education , and that's how I've built my business , and I know that that's how I'm going to continue to build my business is right , not only this business , but others as well , because , you know , I love to teach and

by teaching I feel like I get better . Right , I learn when I teach , yeah , so , but yeah , you know , I do these events through NARAP , I do masterminds , right , I do webinars and seminars , you know so .

So , yeah , you know , I always just try to see what's out there and see what people are feeling , and my job is to have conversations with people every day , so I think I'm in tune with what people are feeling out there and what they need Absolutely .

But yeah , we just had a speaking of that , we just had a nation's lending , we had our first comedy night ever , so we had four New York City comedians come in last week . I have a friend of mine who's a comedian , professional comedian and what we did is we said , hey , you know what ? Let's recognize the people that we're doing business with .

So we call it , we call the closings in comedy , and then it was a wild success and now we want to do this every month right , that's awesome . Where the people that are helping families with us , we can go ahead and we can laugh together , because I think that's one of the best things that we can do to connect .

playful , and bringing people together to do that . And what a great opportunity for people to connect , for people who are like-minded , to be amongst and around each other .

Right , whether again , like , whether you're speaking on a stage in front of a thousand people or whether you're going to a church and speaking to 15 people , right , everybody , I'm assuming , showing up it's a safe assumption is that they're like-minded people that want to learn something new , that want to be around other people that are also putting themselves in this

place to do something that's uncomfortable and new for them and sometimes , like you said in this comedy evening , also could be fun . So , you know , I challenge people out there to think about that .

Like , what could you do in your own specific world , whether it's personally or professionally , where you can add and invite more people to join you , whether it's a hobby and you're somewhere and you're like I really want to do this , but I don't have anybody . Are you inviting them to do it ?

Are you getting two or three people together and saying , well , what can we do and who can we invite amongst the two or three of us , instead of trying to do it all alone ?

And if it's professionally , where can you overlap with another industry or just something that you wouldn't think would be connected but it's still in alignment with that , and invite people to join you on that journey ? And I think that's such a cool wrapping up point for our conversation . And , eric , I really do want to thank you .

I know we had a few a month ago . We tried to connect and it didn't work out and thankfully it was able to happen today and I'm really , really appreciative for the deep dive that we went into .

And if you want to reach out to him that way , that's awesome and , like you said , he's more than happy to hear from you . But also just go on any of the review sites iTunes or Apple or any of those things and just let us know that you're listening .

And if this episode or any other episode was beneficial to you or to someone you know would benefit from it , just share it out . We don't have crazy sponsors or anything like that .

This is just something that I'm a passionate about , is a project and outpouring of my private practice as a therapist and entrepreneur coach , but just let us know that you're listening , tell us where you are , you know , get in touch with me as well , and I always appreciate that . And again , eric will , will , will be in touch and we'll talk soon .