Darryl Davis interviews Harcourt’s Mike Green on his podcast “Real Estate Unscripted” and reveals why real estate success rarely happens by chance.
One thing the real estate industry is good at is chasing the shiny things.
Who is growing the fastest? Who is opening the most offices? Who now appears to have cracked the code?
But if you’ve been in this business long enough, you know that’s not the only thing that actually keeps people in the game.
That’s why my conversation with Mike Green, CEO of Harcourts, stuck with me. I recorded it for the Real Estate Unscripted podcast, and it didn’t feel like a podcast conversation. It felt like two people who had been through many cycles having an honest conversation about what lasted and what didn’t.
How Mike Green ‘stumbled’ into real estate
Mr. Green didn’t enter the real estate industry with grand plans. He was 19 years old. He wandered into it. The market was good, the trades were going well, and like many people who start with a head start, things worked out for him before he really understood why they worked out.
Then the market changed and suddenly effort no longer automatically translated into results.
Open house activity has slowed down. The momentum was gone. And that’s when cracks appear, not only in the market but also in customs. Green was very open about what he couldn’t build early on: consistency. daily discipline. Boring basics that don’t feel urgent until they’re missing.
I see that part of the conversation all the time, so it really stuck with me. When things are going well, fundamentals fade into the background. When things get tense, you move front and center.
What Mr. Green said stuck with me. “Markets don’t create skills; they reveal skills.” That’s exactly right.
One reason most people fail in real estate
Another thing he made clear is that the reason most people fail in real estate is not because they are incompetent. They fail because they stop working long enough for the business to quietly collapse. They try something. They become contradictory. They give it up too soon. Then they look for the next one. It happens to almost everyone at least once, right?
Green said in his decades in the business, he has never seen someone who consistently did a good job and lost money over the long term. It may not happen right away. It may not look pretty. But it works.
The conversation got particularly interesting when we talked about leadership.
Being a great agent doesn’t automatically make you a great leader. In fact, it can work against you. Leadership forces you to stop measuring your success by your own accomplishments and start measuring it by how well those around you are doing.
Green talked about how his leadership changed when he stopped focusing on himself and focused on building others. If you help enough people succeed, your business will automatically take care of itself.
That belief was severely tested when Harcourt expanded to Australia. For more than two years, they lost money. There was no end to the rejection. Progress was slow. He didn’t dress it up – it was worn out. There was a point when it made sense to walk away.
It wasn’t motivation that stopped him. It was an honest question from someone he trusted. “When did you decide to be a loser?”
The question forced a decision. he remained. he continued. And looking back now, that moment changed everything.
It’s a reminder that success in the real estate industry doesn’t always look like confidence and clarity in the moment. In some cases, it may seem like you stay even when it would be easier to quit.
Find (or re-find) your purpose
Green also spoke candidly about purpose and what happens when it disappears. Later in his career, when he stepped away from day-to-day leadership, he was surprised by the rapid decline in his energy. Titles and income were not enough. Without a reason to be involved, motivation disappeared.
Burnout, he said, isn’t necessarily the result of trying too hard. Often it’s caused by feeling disconnected from why you’re doing it.
And what he said at the end feels especially relevant right now. That said, markets are important, but they don’t determine who wins. There are some people who are really doing their best even in difficult situations. Others don’t. The difference usually comes down to habit, consistency, and personal ownership, not luck.
Where you will be a year from now will not be determined by your expected market. It is shaped by the work you are willing to continue doing when things feel uncertain.
Mike Green’s career proves that success in the real estate industry rarely happens by chance. It is built slowly, strengthened day by day, and held together by fundamentals that never become obsolete.
If you’d like to hear the entire conversation (the parts that weren’t included in this article), you can listen to Mike’s episode of Real Estate Unscripted here.
