Lyric Joseph Armstrong

I would attribute my success first to my relationship with the Lord. I'm a believer, and I believe that he's blessing me extremely abundantly, beyond all I can ask or think. As far as my personal characteristics and work ethic, I would say it's about staying the course, being tenacious, being diligent, and being fully committed to the process. Having that as a core value with my walk with Christ has allowed me to use that in my profession to stay the course and show up to my clients with integrity and get things done. A lot of people run off with the answer no, and I'm just like, look, that's just one opportunity to get closer to yes. You know, it's no today, yes tomorrow. You just keep asking.

The best advice I've ever received is to stay the course and to not give up on the market, because it is ever-changing with ups and downs, peaks and valleys. If you can determine how to operate in any given marketplace, you can be successful. This may change your strategy, but just never give up on real estate. Even when it was the worst of the worst, people were still buying houses, it's just what you buy and how you buy it.

I would definitely say don't go at it alone. Find the people that you best connect with, join a group, door knock together, cold call together, try to get on a team if you can. That type of investment, though you are splitting some of your commission, it's invaluable because you're learning from those who came before you and you're trying to avoid certain mistakes. We want to be independent and we try to come into real estate thinking, okay, I'm gonna be my own boss, I'm gonna do it my way, but a lot of these things don't need you to reinvent the wheel. It takes you to connect with others who are successful so you can get up and door knock, you can cold call together, you can hold yourself accountable to the tasks that you put forth within your business. When you have your own business, you work longer and harder than when you go to a 9 to 5. People don't realize that.

The biggest challenges are things that are uncontrollable, such as what's going to happen with the marketplace and different legal and political things that make a huge impact, even if it's just to the psyche. A couple years ago, we had a lawsuit going on against the Realtor organization that changed the industry standard of how you do commissions and if you can put it on the MLS. I'm strongly against it and I've even done an op-ed against it because what it did was put the community in fear that they don't need to use real estate agents, but at the same time, you're expecting them to know all the legalese and information relative to real estate that they don't already know. The problem for buyers is that typically the seller is paying the buyer's agent out of the commission as part of the marketing packet. Now that it's not on the MLS, some brokers are not handling themselves appropriately because they're turning around and saying if you're outside of my office, it's a lesser price, but if you're within my office, they're gonna give more commission to the agent inside their office, and that's a problem. But you can't let the outside world stop you from real estate because real estate is the best investment there is to have, and it's one of the American dreams that many people come to this country to experience, ownership of their own business and their own home.

For me, work and personal values kind of bleed together. It's just having good character and high morals, which are prevalent in both areas. One of the things that drives me is I want my children to be able to see me and their father as the role models of their lives, versus having to look outward into a world of uncertainty and pick maybe some unwilling and undeserving person as a role model. I'm trying to show my children service to the community, having high morals, good character, always working with integrity, and being available to the community for those who are in need. Those are some of the characteristics that I would like my children to witness, so that's what I hold in high regard, and it carries over to business as well.