Meet Justin Miller of Monarchs Real Estate in Plano

Today we’d like to introduce you to Justin Miller.

Justin, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I initially began my career in real estate as an act of desperation. I was 27 years old and was laid off from my previous job as a high school science teacher in 2011 after the state of Texas cut the education budget by $12 Billion. Ironically, I was pulled into the principal’s office and informed of my fate as I was just about to walk out of the front door of the school to get in my car and drive to the title company where I was to close on the purchase of my very first home. Luckily, I had befriended the Realtor that helped me purchase said home, and after several months of working odd jobs to make ends meet and battling depression from having no idea what I was going to do with my life, I called him and asked him to help me get started in the business. Honestly, I was just reaching for SOMETHING. I had no previous knowledge of the real estate industry or any idea of what it entailed. All I knew was that it was a career I could start relatively quickly and cheaply and potentially make some decent money here and there. At the time, I never thought that years later I would end up making a real career out of it by becoming the Owner & Broker of my very own real estate company.

My company is deeply personal to me. Monarchs Real Estate is named in honor of my grandmother, Marion (Mim) Landino, whose life was tragically cut short by a botched surgery in 2006. After her passing, my mother (her daughter) noticed that whenever she thought of Mim or began to miss her, butterflies would appear; more specifically Monarch butterflies. Since then, my family has interpreted the presence of Monarch butterflies as an angelic visit from Mim. Even the brand colors are the colors of my son Owen’s nursery. So, in many ways, this company is a part of me and I am a part of it.

Has it been a smooth road?
I’ve been on the verge of losing everything on more than one occasion. Early in my career, and before I was a broker or really established in the business, I had to sell my first home because I got down to just a few thousand dollars total to my name with no sign of income coming soon enough to save me from losing it to foreclosure. Then, a few years later, as a married man with a child and being the sole income provider on a 100% commission basis, I had this crazy one-off year where business was extremely slow and was put back in that same situation, having to seriously contemplate selling another home for the equity to once again avoid losing it all. There were a couple months there where I had to do some serious soul-searching and figure out if I was going to keep going or give up and go back to a steady diet of equal paychecks every 2 weeks working for “the man”. I ultimately decided to man up, push forward and double down by getting my Broker’s license and starting my own company. That year, I had my best year ever and after more than a year, the Company and myself personally are both doing better than ever!

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Monarchs Real Estate story. Tell us more about the business.
Monarchs Real Estate is a marriage of the traditional customer service values you would find in a local mom-and-pop and the company-wide standard incentives available to all customers to increase loyalty while saving them money that you may find in a large corporation.

We have a standard policy that requires all Realtors to be full-time and background-checked. We want our customers to know that when they call Monarchs, they are going to have the opportunity to take advantage of our client incentives and that they aren’t going to get an agent who’s a part-time, ex-con who couldn’t hack it in used car sales and doesn’t really take it seriously.

Our offices (and future offices) are not individually owned and operated like you would find in a franchise business structure, but rather owned by the Company. This allows us to have total control in ensuring that our customers receive the same access to the same benefits and incentives regardless of which Monarchs Realtor or office location they choose to contact as opposed to leaving it up to each individual office or agent as to the type and quality of services that they may or may not choose to provide their clients with.

We do not consider ourselves to be in an industry of “sales”, but rather one of customer service. “Sales” implies an element of convincing someone to do something that they otherwise would not do or to pay more for something that they otherwise would spend less on. It is our duty to put our client’s interests before our own even if doing so is at our expense. We are more concerned with earning our customer’s trust which leads to referrals and greater business in the long run versus screwing them over for an extra few dollars now and create a bad reputation. You would think that this mode of thinking would be common sense, but unfortunately, it’s not.

I’m most proud of the fact that there are people who believe in me enough to be a part of my company and to benefit from it. I spent the better part of 3 years creating and modifying and modifying our business model to maximize efficiency and cut costs without sacrificing the quality of the end-product because I want to give my Realtors the best I possibly while keeping their fees as low as is economically feasible. I want my team members to feel like they are a part of an extended family, to feel like they aren’t alone and have a shot to make a real career out of this instead of throwing them to the wolves, telling them good luck and then taking a bunch of their money when they finally make some.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I can really see us growing, but doing so responsibly and in such a way that is conducive to economic health of the company. The business model is built to scale and can handle as much or as little business as you can throw at it, but with safe-guards in place for the unforeseen like another recession. However, instead of just trying to get as big as possible as quickly as possible, I’m more concerned with gaining majority market share in my immediate geographic area as opposed to a tiny fragment of market share in a very large geographical area. I really want to see us dominate our immediate surrounding area, become good stewards of our community and a brand that is as ubiquitous to the local residents as some of the giant nation-wide brokerages you can think of off the top of your head. Then, after we have successfully completed that mission, repeat that same process with the next area and the next area and so on. I really don’t have a limit on how far I want this to go and how big I want us to get. The sky is the limit.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.monarchsre.com
• Phone: 972-665-6141
• Email: info@monarchsre.com

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