Carla Thompson Shares Her Journey From Teacher To Thriving Entrepreneur

In this inspiring episode of The Quest for Success Podcast, Carla Thompson, a leading real estate expert at Mile High Modern, shares her journey from teaching to building a thriving career in real estate. She reflects on the importance of storytelling in sales, the value of collaborative learning, and how leadership plays a crucial role in creating a strong team culture.

Carla discusses the lessons she learned from her upbringing on a farm, the impact of resilience on entrepreneurship, and why quality should always come before speed in real estate. She also dives into the challenges of industry changes, the role of mastermind groups in personal growth, and how balancing work, family, and joy is key to long-term success.

If you're looking for insights on leadership, business transformation, and the evolving real estate industry, this episode is a must-listen!

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Follow Carla

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-thompson-56861963/
• Milehimodern: https://www.mhmhomes.com/

 #CarlaThompson #RealEstate #QuestForSuccess #Leadership #Storytelling #MileHiModern #Entrepreneurship #SalesLeadership #PersonalGrowth #BusinessSuccess #QualityOverSpeed #MastermindGroups #WorkLifeBalance #SuccessJourney

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Transcript

Dylan Pathirana (00:00.166)
All right. Welcome back to the Quest for Success podcast. And thanks so much for tuning in once again. Today, we're incredibly excited because on the show today, we have Carla Thompson, who is the who founded mile high modern, which is a real estate

Dylan Pathirana (03:02.154)
business out in Colorado. And from what I've seen, it's got a huge emphasis on like artistry and really selling top quality homes with a real story behind them. So I'm really keen to dive a bit more deep into that and understand a bit more about your philosophy. But yeah, really looking forward to having this conversation today. And I had the privilege of meeting Carla at Harvard Business School and she was one of my very first persons like that I met.

in the course and my first living group members and someone I really admire and I learned quite a lot from Carla during that three weeks together in our very first session. So she was in my living group and I always want to have a proper chat with Carla about going a little bit deeper and this is a great opportunity and thank you so much Carla joining us today.

Carla Thompson (03:59.318)
thank you. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Dylan, for having me here today. And Jim, we had a good time that first year. We did. We learned a lot together.

Dylan Pathirana (04:05.918)
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So Carla, to frame this whole conversation, we really need to talk about one key thing and that is success. Right? So I want to understand for you, what does success mean to you?

Carla Thompson (04:20.558)
Well, definitely success changes over the years for sure as you have different experiences of life. think...

When I kind of go back to when I was in my 20s, I do remember thinking a lot about like, you what's a meaningful life? How am going to have a meaningful life? And a lot of it at that time was going into my values and really thinking about, you know, how will I impact people? How will I impact the world? I was a school teacher early on, so I really did think a lot about teaching and education and

I sculpted sort of an approach to life of, know, I think I want to be somehow teaching people all the time. And it was sort of my bedrock for success where I thought, OK, how will I navigate forward and how will I line that up? And.

And then, you know, you have the regular responsibilities of life, things that you want to do. You want to have a family. You want to have an experience. You want to have a career. So those things add up for success as well. But then I think it goes deeper, too, as you start to experience life and take on challenges, take on opportunities, you start to kind of ask yourself every day, am I living a life that I want to live? Am I living my days in the way I want to live my days? And

I remember years ago I read a book called, I think it was called The Path, and it asked in there, it asked different questions about how to really think about what matters to you.

Carla Thompson (06:00.498)
And from that book and that work, I really kind of came to this place of thinking about each day as a successful day and knowing that you're going to have challenges every day, knowing that things aren't going to go the way you want them to go. But what is it about each day that you're going to say, I've lived really well today and I'm living according to what I desire. kind of taking.

a really macro level look at things when I was younger, then bringing it down to more of a micro level and trying to understand how to live the life I want to live has been helpful in defining success.

But one book, there's actually another book that was really helpful in this way. It was called The Big Leap. I don't know if you guys have heard this book, but it's a really interesting book. in there, there's a framework that talks about your zones, your zone of what's called incompetence, where you're operating. This is when you're doing things you're not particularly good at or don't want to do. Your zone of competence, where you're doing things you have to do, but you really, somebody else could probably do these better.

Dylan Pathirana (07:04.586)
Mm-hmm.

Carla Thompson (07:05.324)
your zone of excellence, this is where you're shining every day and you're doing the things you're particularly great at. And then your zone of genius, which is where you're doing things that really you're in a flow state and you know you're really shining and impacting the world. And when I read that book, I started asking myself, how do I live more in my zone of excellence and more in my zone of genius?

What would I do to sculpt a world where that's what my days look like? And now today, that kind of takes shape in a lot of ways in my world, in my business, and also in my internal dialogue of like, is this something I should be doing? Something coming at me? Is this pushing me into my zone of competence? I don't really want to be doing this anymore, but really getting you to focus. so anyway, long story short is as I'm kind of putting together my daily form,

I apply that as I'm taking on bigger challenges or bigger risks or bigger opportunities because I simply don't want to say yes to things that are going to take me outside of living in ways where I really feel like the best of me is coming forward.

Dylan Pathirana (08:20.31)
I think that's that's a really nice definition of success. And I want to probe into that a little bit. What are the things that are in your zone of genius?

Carla Thompson (08:30.542)
I would say that I love teaching. I always have loved teaching. My mom said that my little sister, I forced her when she was three years old to sit and be in class every day and she couldn't read, but I made her sit and learn to read all the time. She can thank me for that.

But I've always, everything I've done, whether it's been sales or actual teaching, I've always approached it from the standpoint of how can I teach, how can I explain.

Dylan Pathirana (09:06.166)
Yeah, Carla, it's knowing you well. Every minute that we spend with you, it's more of learning from you, right? I mean, already you shared some great books because I know you are a great reader. You read a lot and not just read, actually you share that with everyone. So to me, even you're running a real estate business, you're more running a coaching business. Is that?

Carla Thompson (09:16.014)
Good.

Dylan Pathirana (09:34.774)
good way to see it? you know, I mean, I know your focus is more developing people and growing people and help them to achieve success and then you achieve success together, right? Is that a good way to look at it?

Carla Thompson (09:47.746)
That's a wonderful way to describe it. And I would say the way I usually describe it is I say we are secretly a learning organization.

And everything we do is focused on how are we going to be our absolute best at everything we're doing. No matter what facet of the company it is, we're learning. so coaching, training, teaching, masterminds, anything that equates to how are we progressing and improving and being our absolute best.

Dylan Pathirana (10:18.486)
That's amazing. Amazing because I felt the same way, you know, spending time with you at Harvard, you know, there's so much share, like, you you share your learnings with us and, you know, that's why we always see that you're mentoring us, coaching us and, know, it's a great teacher. So Carla, please take us through a little bit back to your early childhood, right? We want to really understand that Carla.

that little teacher when you're young and your family, like you're growing up as a little young Kala. Just take us through to early childhood, please.

Carla Thompson (10:50.012)
Hahaha!

Carla Thompson (11:00.674)
You bet. Well, I go back and I think, well, I don't know if I was ever like young, little, easygoing Carla. I think I've always been sort of hard charging Carla. So I'm always ready to tell people what they need to learn. But no, I grew up on a farm actually, which I find to be a real privilege back before we had all these screens, right?

Dylan Pathirana (11:10.098)
You

Dylan Pathirana (11:16.15)
All

Carla Thompson (11:23.136)
I think we had maybe one television. It had three channels. I mean, you could barely watch screens when I was growing up. But, you know, lots of acres, lots of animals. And I think...

Dylan Pathirana (11:28.342)
Thank

Carla Thompson (11:35.136)
When I really process my upbringing, it was such a privilege because I grew up with parents who are entrepreneurs. When you're farmers in the Midlands, you just have to be dealing with all kinds of variables all the time. You're always pivoting. You're always trying to figure out what to do next. You've got the elements. You've got the weather. You've got machinery that doesn't work. You've got all kinds of things like that. And my parents were very creative, very adaptable.

I often tell the story about my mom is that she was the kind of person that I heard her say this all the time. And I think it just landed in my head, which was, you know, we try to fix something on the farm and it just wouldn't work. We didn't have the right tools. We didn't have the money to fix it or whatever. And she would always say, well, that didn't work. What else shall we try? And I would say, I just, that's my attitude. So.

Dylan Pathirana (12:28.187)
Ha ha.

Carla Thompson (12:32.59)
I'm the kind of person that just something's not working. I'm like, well, what else should we try? Let's try this. I don't get too fixated on things not working. I don't think much about failure. I don't even really understand the idea of failure, to be honest, because I just go, OK, it's not working. What else should we try? Let's try this instead. So I think I learned that a lot growing up.

Certainly, I come from humble beginnings. Farming is a really tough thing to do. And my parents farmed during the 1970s and 80s here in the US, which was an awfully difficult time. We had massive inflation. And I share that because I had to watch my parents give up the farm. And...

pivot because the economics were so difficult at some point. So that was an interesting experience to go through. watch, you have a complete way of life growing up and then you have to let it completely go. And I watched my mom.

pivot and go ahead and start a whole other business on her own to make sure that she could provide for our family. And then my dad turned around and got retrained in an entirely different industry and also pivoted. And he went back into the military and so that was really

Really telling to grow up in a family where you watched your parents just have to pivot and do hard work and go in different directions. And when things get tough, you don't feel sorry for yourself. You just turn around and go in a different direction and try something else once again.

Carla Thompson (14:14.976)
And I think it's also interesting, I grew up where my mom and all of her sisters were entrepreneurs running businesses or running farms. And growing up with a lot of female role models that were women running their own businesses was kind of unusual. I look back on it now and they're all still working and still running their businesses. So I have a lot of women before me who are just really tough women who also understood

to do what it takes, you know. So hopefully that gives you some insight into why I'm so hard charging.

Dylan Pathirana (14:51.03)
And then where's the link to you getting into teaching? Cause I read you a high school teacher at one point.

Carla Thompson (14:58.606)
I did. I went to college to actually have an English degree and then I went ahead and got a master's degree in education so I could become a teacher and I taught high school English for about seven or eight years. And I think growing up it was a combination of yes, I grew up on a farm. Yes, I worked hard all day long, all the time. When you're on a farm, everybody works.

And also from the really early beginning, I had books in front of me all the time. My parents always put books in front of me. And my dad said to me, you will go to college. And I thought, I don't know, I just knew that growing up. He always said I was going to go to college.

This is again coming from a family where not a lot of people had an opportunity to go to college. And so the expectation was set that school was important, learning was important. I wasn't allowed to miss school ever. Like you just don't miss school. And also looking back, what's interesting is that my community was only 500 people in my whole small community, very small town in Minnesota. And...

What is so cool about that is you also grow up in an environment where everybody is looking out for you. Everybody is watching out for you. Everybody is connected to you. You know what's going on with everybody. And it doesn't even matter.

if people are really different than you are, like differences weren't a big deal growing up, because everybody's part of the community and just that respect you have for the community. And I share that because when I would go to school, all the teachers knew me, they all knew my parents.

Dylan Pathirana (16:38.154)
Mm-hmm.

Carla Thompson (16:47.168)
Everybody knew what was going on all the time. And so you just have this incredible atmosphere of teachers and education and everybody who's just believing in you and saying you can do it and you're going to go to college and learn. And so just a love for learning that was there in my family and then also part of our community.

Dylan Pathirana (17:09.418)
And then so after, you know, seven years of teaching, what was the kind of turning point for you there?

Carla Thompson (17:17.688)
Yeah, I love teaching. know, the problem was I met this guy and I fell in love with him and I got married and...

Dylan Pathirana (17:25.878)
when that happens.

Carla Thompson (17:27.974)
He just disrupted, it's all his fault. He disrupted everything. He had this opportunity to take a position out in Washington state and it was a really cool opportunity for him. So we decided to go for it and move away from Minnesota. And as a result, I had to wait a little while to get into a program to work on my doctorate, because I was going to go ahead and learn to how to teach teachers to teach.

Dylan Pathirana (17:30.624)
You

Carla Thompson (17:57.76)
And I saw this sign that said, get your real estate license. And I was like, what?

We had just bought a house and I didn't understand the process very well. So I came home that day and I told my husband, guess what? I signed up to go ahead and get a real estate license today. And my husband said, why would you do that? And I said, well, I don't know. I don't have anything to do for six months. So why don't I just take these classes? And I purely went because I wanted to understand real estate. As I was taking the classes, and by the way, this is when you had to go into a location

and I had to put on my headset and I had to put in the little cassette tape and listen to the cassette tape in order to learn. That's a long time ago. And anyway, as I was taking the classes, I really started to get interested in real estate and found it very fascinating. And by the end of the coursework, I told my husband, I think I'm gonna go sell real estate. And he thought I was absolutely insane. I was like, no, I think I will.

And a week later, I had my license, I joined a real estate company, I met the real estate agents in the office, and I said, these people are absolutely amazing. I mean, when you are an entrepreneur in sales and you are a real estate agent, you have to go find your own business, you have to know everything about how to do the business. They were the most entrepreneurial people. I just said, I found my people and I loved it. And the rest is history. I've been in real estate forever.

Dylan Pathirana (19:29.758)
Yeah, so that's amazing. This is something that we have in common, Carla. I started the business, but then I couldn't live on whatever I'm getting on the business. So I decided, well, side hustle, you know, go and get my real estate license. I'm also, yeah. So, I mean, this is while back. This is about over 20 years ago, right? Or maybe just after 20 years ago. And then I was selling houses. I loved it.

Carla Thompson (19:47.213)
You did!

Carla Thompson (19:54.316)
You didn't hear that?

Dylan Pathirana (19:59.102)
I mean, real estate is amazing because it's more than you're selling houses, right? You're selling, it's more emotional things, right? Like you're connecting with people. But tell me, it's interesting, right? So you go into an industry that you didn't have any idea and then you start loving it. And then, you know, I mean, you work for someone before you started your own business, right?

Carla Thompson (19:59.372)
You? Yeah.

Yes.

Carla Thompson (20:27.008)
In real estate? Actually, no. Right out of the gate, I didn't know a soul in the community and I just decided to start selling real estate myself. Yeah.

Dylan Pathirana (20:33.736)
Wow! Wow! Why you decided to start your own thing?

Carla Thompson (20:38.732)
Well, nobody told me it was gonna be hard.

Dylan Pathirana (20:41.28)
I mean it's a very competitive business as well, right?

Carla Thompson (20:45.198)
I didn't know it was going to be hard. just guess what I did. I read a book on how to do it.

Dylan Pathirana (20:52.918)
That's the only way, right? For color.

Carla Thompson (20:56.374)
the only way for Carla. And so I said, Wow, it sounds like you're supposed to find somebody who needs help.

And by that point, I had been trained in contracts and representation. So I had done quite a bit of training, right? But they said, go find somebody who needs help. So I went and hosted my first open house. I met a bunch of people at the open house. And within about a week and a half, I had found two homes, one for each of the two people I could help. So I had two houses under contract within about a week and a half. Nobody told me that it was supposed to be hard. And I just approached it from like, I need to educate these people, go find what they're looking for and help them buy a home.

I really kind of tackled the career that way, which is what do need to educate people on? How do I have to help my buyers and sellers understand what's going on?

Yeah, and really I loved it. I loved the career. So I sold real estate in the field for about 10 years and grew what's called a mega team. So you kind of grow a large number of salespeople working for you and loved it. Loved the whole experience, loved leadership, loved scaling, loved serving the buyers and sellers, loved everything about it.

Dylan Pathirana (22:06.922)
Okay, that's amazing. So initially you started yourself and then you, how did you manage to get other people involved into your business?

Carla Thompson (22:16.074)
Well, think so the part about growing a real estate business is that

you have to simply reach a point where you have more clients to serve than you can possibly serve. And when your business reputation gets that strong, that the level of service and quality you provide, then you have more clients, then suddenly you need another sales associate to work for you. And so I always say, you know what, there's not a shortcut. You have to do quality work. You have to work very hard. And then you have to grow it to a point where you just simply have a lot of clients.

hands.

Dylan Pathirana (22:53.142)
Absolutely. And what do you what do you think is your differentiating factor compared to other real estates out there?

Carla Thompson (22:54.221)
Yeah.

Carla Thompson (23:00.962)
Well, now are we talking about Mile High Modern? Are you fast forwarding?

Dylan Pathirana (23:03.039)
Yes. Yeah.

Carla Thompson (23:04.82)
So in the process of career, just a quick synopsis, I stopped selling real estate. I went and ran a large brokerage. So I ran a company that had about 500 real estate agents in it when I was done. And then I went ahead and started my own consulting company to teach or coach and guide real estate brokerage owners on how to grow their brokerages as well as top teams. And that's how I ended up meeting my partner,

Carmelo that I work with. So that fast forwards to starting Mile High Modern. When we started that company, it was 2019, six, little over six years ago. And to answer your question, I'm going to say there's, this is how this unfolded is.

My partner Carmelo and his business partner Peter were selling real estate under the name Mile High Modern that Peter had originated. And when I met them, I started consulting them on how to keep scaling that. And they turned to me and asked if I wanted to open up a brokerage with them since I had brokerage background and I knew how to run a big brokerage. What I said to them was, you know what? I might be interested in doing this if...

we can really bring the value to the marketplace that I know is missing. And Peter and Carmelo already had part of the formula that I saw missing. They had a beautiful focus on artistic representation of properties. They cared so much about really making sure each property was presented in its most beautiful light, whether it was in the preparation of the property, the understanding of the architecture.

Dylan Pathirana (24:29.782)
Mm-hmm.

Carla Thompson (24:49.984)
the design that they would bring to a home, of course, staging, of course, the careful photography and how we would shoot the properties, the narrative, the story that we could tell about how to live in a home. All of these elements were lined up. And because that was so beautiful, I said, if we can scale this, I would like to do this. So really articulating how the formula was different. And by the way, at least in our industry and real estate, the rest of the industry is going

in the other direction. The rest of the industry is trying to automate everything, trying to make things fast, automated. And so the rest of the industry is going that way. We often say when everybody else is going right, we're going left. And so we focus on the quality. And I said, if we can scale that, I would really love to do that. However, here's what's also missing in the industry. There is not a learning.

Dylan Pathirana (25:21.27)
Mm.

Carla Thompson (25:46.688)
opportunity for top brokers to really understand how to bring best performance to the marketplace. There's bits and pieces of new agent training that goes on at brokerages. There's coaching companies out there, but there's not an actual brokerage where we can focus on training, constant training on how to be the absolute best in all aspects of representation, whether it's compliance, contract representation, marketing, or leadership, negotiations, all the things

that agents have to do. So that's how we built the formula to differentiate and it's been definitely working. I mean we're growing so it's working and we like what we're doing so yeah.

Dylan Pathirana (26:32.95)
And you, you mentioned something there, which kind of connected a few dots for me. You, it almost sounds like what you're trying to do is paint a very like a clear story about each of the properties that you're trying to sell. And like, you know, as, as humans stories, like is the way that we communicate. Right. And do you think that goes back to your background in like literature?

Carla Thompson (26:58.606)
Yes, it does. Yes, I'm all about stories. I'm all about words. I'm all about writing. I'm also very keen on how to pull out the elements that make something a beautiful story. And you're right, because it's a lot of the magic of what I think our brand stands for. being able to walk into a home.

Dylan Pathirana (27:00.134)
Hahaha

Carla Thompson (27:25.046)
and feel the feeling of living in a home and then be able to explain that in words and imagery so that the buyer can feel that before they ever walk into a home. That's the magic of storytelling. And we do that. We concentrate on it. Our brokers are amazing. They concentrate on it. Our marketing division is incredible at being able to do that. So when everybody in the organization is focused on capturing that magic and being able to tell this

the the buyers can respond to that. And our sellers know we do that. They can see it, they can feel it. And the buyers experience that because the buyers will say things like, you know, I'll run into a buyer and they'll say, you own Mile High Modern? I said, yeah. And they'll say, I just bought a Mile High Modern home.

And what that means, I mean, it's very emotional for me, but you what it means for me is they feel the beauty of the story that they bought, right?

Dylan Pathirana (28:19.776)
Bye.

Carla Thompson (28:26.766)
And that always excites me. As a matter of fact, I was flying back on a plane from the Harvard program, and it was about 930 at night, damn. I'm exhausted from three weeks of learning. My head's exploding. And this woman leans over. I was wearing my Mile High Modern jacket. And she said, are you from Mile High Modern?

Dylan Pathirana (28:26.912)
Yeah.

Carla Thompson (28:47.19)
And I said, And she goes, I love your company. And I was like, OK, that's the response I get, which I love. Yeah.

Dylan Pathirana (28:47.462)
Wow! Great feeling,

Dylan Pathirana (28:56.854)
So, Eskala, it's amazing, right? Like, story connects people, right? That's exactly what you're doing. As a real estate agent, we call agents here. I don't know what you call brokers here. So we connect buyers and sellers, but then connect that emotionally as well, because that's the part of the storytelling. And talking about storytelling, I'm also following you on Instagram and all other social media things. And I can see...

Carla Thompson (29:06.916)
Yeah, brokers. Yeah.

Dylan Pathirana (29:26.33)
vibrant, very happy team culture in your organization, right? Everyone seems so happy, like, you know, living the life, like living the best life. You know, how do you, how do you as a leader of the organization create that amazing positive culture?

Carla Thompson (29:43.774)
that's a great question. You know, I think that goes back to the joy of growing up in a community that was so tight knit because...

I just knew everybody cared about me and I cared about everybody, right? Like it doesn't even matter if you don't like the person down the street, you still care about them. And so you learn growing up in that atmosphere. Plus I think growing up in a military family, know, my dad was military, my sister military, my brother military, my sister-in-law military, like you learn the importance of having each other's back and really looking out for each other and the importance of working together, right?

my life experience has been about a tight community. And so one of our key value systems at the brokerage is the concept of we.

We try to start our words that way, our sentences that way, we think about collaboration, our business model is set up to collaborate. So to directly answer your question, for example, in one broker, sorry, in all other brokerages out there, one agent will list a property and promote a property. So you'll hire one person to do that for you. In our brokerage, if an agent lists a property, the entire brokerage, all 225 of my brokerages

workers work to promote a property. We all work together to sell a property. So the power of that is intense.

Carla Thompson (31:17.996)
What's different in other brokerages is that single agent may have to figure out how to market a property. In our company, our entire marketing department works in collaboration with the brokers to market those properties, bring press to them, present them in the most beautiful light. So the entire business model is set up where everybody is forced to collaborate in order to get the result we want. And I say forced because real estate brokers are independent contractors. They could go work for

any company they want to. But if they're going to work with us, they must follow our processes in order to collaborate and get the best result possible. So that was a very intentional decision from the beginning to say, how will I construct this business model in order to make sure that we have a we culture, not an I culture.

Dylan Pathirana (31:49.814)
All right.

Dylan Pathirana (32:07.87)
Mm-hmm.

Carla Thompson (32:10.048)
And that's, you know, kind of deep in my heart with the learning part. For example, we run masterminds weekly and a mastermind. Yeah, weekly. And that's in itself, a very collaborative event where you're learning from each other. We present content, things that everybody needs to know. We talk about implementation. People share best practices. the agents or agents or brokers within our company are used to the idea that we help each other. just.

Dylan Pathirana (32:17.14)
Alright, weekly!

Carla Thompson (32:40.042)
help each other constantly. And that started with a lot of business decisions from the beginning. A lot of, you know, how we constructed the model.

Dylan Pathirana (32:50.71)
That's amazing. So Carla, I know you're as a leader, you're continuously investing your time to teach people and get their best selves, right? And when you're doing that, I mean, you've done that from your days to even now, And are you learning anything when you're doing that?

Carla Thompson (33:12.998)
yes, I learn all the time. that's such a good question. Jam, I have so many smart people at my company. I have 225 brokers and 30 team members that if I can't figure out how to get ahead of this group, they'll be just saying, Karla, teach me, teach me, teach me.

I am always learning and I love it. I just absolutely love it. I love that my brokers will say they want to learn about something and I'll say, great, let me shortcut that for you. I'll go read about it and I'll bring the information back to you or let's facilitate learning around that, right? So I just feel like I'm constantly learning and moving very quickly all the time.

Dylan Pathirana (33:54.282)
Yeah, so you're a teacher and same time you can be a student as well.

Carla Thompson (33:58.51)
yeah, I'm always a student. And I learned so much from the brokers and from my team members too. Like they're always learning. So they're sharing ideas and challenging things. And I mean, as an example, we did a mastermind not too long ago where I said, hey everybody, tell me how you're using chat GPT right now.

Dylan Pathirana (34:04.756)
Yeah.

Carla Thompson (34:17.938)
And you know, quick fire rounds. Everybody shares their ideas. What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? I mean, I walked out of there in 20 minutes and I was like, all right, I have some new, you know, new things I'm going to go do, you know, so I love it.

Dylan Pathirana (34:30.997)
And I suppose real estate is a lot about selling as well. Do you have any key tips for like improving sales?

Carla Thompson (34:41.15)
gosh. Well, okay, so my number one thing I'll say about sales is this, which is selling is a process of guiding people to make decisions that are in their best interest. Okay? So we think of sales sometimes as the old fashioned way of like shmarmie sales when people are trying to get you to do something you don't want to do. That's terrible. Great sales is actually about leadership.

Dylan Pathirana (34:54.678)
Mm-hmm.

Carla Thompson (35:10.41)
So if you want to be a really great salesperson, work on being a really great leader. Because when you learn how to lead well, you are really helping people make decisions that are in their best interest. OK? That's my number one tip. Number two is practice.

the different ways that you would lead people. Not everybody can be lead in the same ways, you know? So we know this, you ever have, if you have children, you know, you don't lead your children in the same ways, you know? You, every relationship, actually, here's the truth. Every relationship you have, you're selling. You're trying to sell your spouse on going on a vacation where you want to go.

That was my 11 o'clock conversation today. I think I won. I think I got him to believe it's in his best interest that he should go to Belize with me. All right. So, but we're always selling. And if you have children, you become a very good salesperson because you're like, listen, this broccoli, it's really better than the cookie. Okay. So you really have to practice that. And a lot of people don't realize they're always selling. You're always selling. Everybody's always selling.

Dylan Pathirana (36:17.11)
Mm.

very true. Yeah. I like that one. Yeah. I also, you know, selling, right. I mean, again, when you're selling, it's a transaction as well, right. But we got to look at more than a transaction, right? How can that become a more like, you know, the, the buyer, because you have to sell to buyer. They've got to feel like you're, you're working for their best interest, right. And then, yeah. So you're.

Carla Thompson (36:45.358)
have.

Dylan Pathirana (36:47.742)
working together to achieve something, know, like you're solving a problem together, not like you're in one side and then they are in the other side. So as long as you are understanding, know, understanding their problem, understanding where they, how they want to live their life. And you can, if you can fit in, it's like we are in the same team, right? So it's like, yeah, it's pretty much what you shared, but I just want to highlight as well, you know, I mean,

As you know, we love doing sales, both you and I and many other people, but it's not about just win one way. It's a win-win, right? It has to be a win-win.

Carla Thompson (37:30.52)
Yeah, I mean, that's exactly it, Jam. And selling, you know, when I really think about selling in the brokerage world, there is no such thing as I'm going to pull one over on somebody. Sales doesn't work like that. Real estate sales is very, it's very complicated and it's about guiding people, helping them figure out things, being educated, helping them make the best decisions for themselves. It's truly a leadership process. And so yes, we kind of wrap it up into real

real estate agents are sa really have to redefine means because it's so much as you said jam, it's car important to them, you kn in the U. S. We're guid called fiduciary responsib we must as an oath put the our own needs. And I lo exactly how we operate. An

right for this person and helping them figure out what's right for them, right? And so it's hard to whittle that kind of complexity down to the word sales, you know? Yeah.

Dylan Pathirana (38:40.564)
Yeah. And you mentioned something a little while ago, which I've been mulling on for a little while. As we've been talking, you mentioned that, you know, a lot of your competitors are going down the route of automation and trying to streamline processes and things like that. Whereas you're going the other way and really taking the time to, you know, tell that story. How do you, how do you compete with them? Because for me, it's like automation is highly scalable.

and there's so much more effort and work that goes into, I totally agree with you. I think more effort should be put into, you know, really making something beautiful and enhancing that story. But how do you compete with that quick to market and your kind of deeper approach?

Carla Thompson (39:27.384)
Jay, that is just a profound question. You guys are good. Man, that is so good. Well, it's interesting, right? Because what is the problem you're trying to solve in real estate? For us, the challenge we want to solve is we want to make sure we can ascertain the most money possible for a seller's property.

Dylan Pathirana (39:31.624)
You

Carla Thompson (39:53.622)
And if that's the case, right, we want to make sure we're maximizing value for their beautiful home that they have put so much time and effort into. And if that is the case, then you have to understand quality takes a minute. You can't speed that up. And it's not that we're slow. We're certainly not slow. We can bring a house to market pretty darn quickly. But the challenge of it is, you know,

If it takes us 24 hours more to bring a house to market, but we can bring it to market and make sure it shines and make sure that we have the right story and we can maximize another 5 % or another 10 % for that seller, that's our priority. And most sellers, I mean, the sellers who list with us love that, right? And also it's...

pride of ownership. know, as a buyer, you want to buy a property you can feel safe about. And oftentimes buyers are fine paying a fair price for a home or even above asking if they know they're going to get a really high quality home.

Right? Who wants to buy a home and have tons of problems with it? Nobody. Nobody ever said that. also it depends on where the priority is. And, you know, in every market you have industry at the top, industry that cares about quality and focuses on that highest quality. And if you're going to be there, you have to be very clear. That's what you represent in the marketplace. And everybody else is going to represent something else. Sometimes the business

another business may represent speed and a consumer may want speed. Another, and again, I don't mean to imply that we're slow, we can bring a house to market very quickly. We do not sacrifice quality though. That is the difference.

Dylan Pathirana (41:38.259)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dylan Pathirana (41:45.878)
Yeah. And do think this applies only for real estate where it's like, someone's not just buying a house, right? They're buying the home. And they're buying that emotional connection of, you know, yeah, it's their home. Do think it applies to other industries as well? Where, you know, it's not always about speed. It's also about quality.

Carla Thompson (42:02.626)
Yeah.

Carla Thompson (42:09.206)
Definitely, like there are plenty of industries where you have to wait a long time to get a product because it takes a long time to create such a beautiful product, right? So.

You know, we're in an industry where time is a pressure for sure. Time is of the essence in real estate. So we know there are many times when a real estate, you know, a home needs to come to market immediately. And we have lots of ways to adapt if it's an immediate need. And at the same time, there are many, many times where a brokerage will say, let's just get that, you know, property to market in 24 hours. If you just take another day or two and really stage correct,

Make sure that property is ready to go and in reality I will say a lot of our brokers work with properties for a long time before they ever go to market because sellers will call them ahead of time a long time ahead of time and Say I really want to maximize the value of this home can you help me make sure that we're gonna bring it to market when with its best story and A lot of our agents. I mean it could be months It could be sometimes up to a year where they're working with a seller to make sure that that property is going to come to market and shine

So it's a different, you know, kind of a different space. But to answer your question, yes, in other industries, there are definitely the same type of models. You just have to be really clear on what your model is and stick to it.

Dylan Pathirana (43:36.214)
So, Carla, apart from competition and technology, is there any other challenges in your industry you're facing today? Or opportunities, maybe?

Carla Thompson (43:49.046)
I mean, yeah, I mean, for certain, like, and, you know, technology is always there. It's a huge part of what we do. I mean, we use more than 40 technology systems to create the quality we create. So it's not that technology doesn't matter. We just don't use it as a substitute for quality.

So just to be clear on that one too, know, industries, our industry is for sure in the middle of a lot of changes, just like a lot of industries probably are, but in the United States, for example, in the last year we had...

legal pressures in terms that there was an antitrust lawsuit. That particular lawsuit has caused representation to change when it comes to how we work with buyers, for example.

I think it's been a wonderful change. I don't think it's harmed our industry at all. I think it's just made our industry stronger. So even though we had that type of a pressure in the last year, we looked at it from an absolute opportunity standpoint, which is, okay, great. If this is the way things are changing, it only allows us to shine more closely on the front end, right? So for us, that was good.

Definite changes have been just economic, but that's affected every industry. Inflation has been tough. We had one of the fastest interest rate hikes about a year ago. I think that was the fastest hike in 40 years. So in an industry that could have put complete breaks on the industry, but fortunately the industry adjusted quickly. Our brokers adjusted quickly. We figured out how to guide our clients. So we adapted very quickly to that change. But you know, your economic environment is changing constantly.

Carla Thompson (45:36.292)
So that's been interesting. Yeah.

Dylan Pathirana (45:42.613)
I guess, you know, all the challenges also bring opportunities as you as you're an entrepreneur, you know that quite well, you know. Yeah, that will affect the industry, but, you know, the businesses are stronger, have a great leadership, great mindset. They always always thrive. Right. So I'm sure I mean, that's I want to go back to a little bit more on to leadership.

because I know that's something really interesting. You have interest and you're very good at it. so how do you define or maybe how do you kind of find a good leader and a great leader? What's the kind of a difference between good leader and a great leader?

Carla Thompson (46:30.38)
Ooh, that's good. Well, think, you know, I think some of us, some of the times we might even say like, listen, I'm a good leader in this way. I'm a great leader in this way. And so maybe I'll define it like that because I do think here's the journey that I've observed about a lot of our leaders and about myself, for example, is I often say that the growth of your business is the growth of you.

So for each one of us in our performance, what we want to think about is how well do we understand who we are, both in terms of how you have impact, how you may be struggling to have impact in other ways, or here's where it gets super complex, is understanding that

How you operate might work for three of your five people that you lead, but the other two people are struggling with how you operate as a leader. So the journey of going from good to great leadership is this really strong understanding of how you're impacting everybody else based on even who they are. Let me give you a concrete example. So

I am definitely a leader that is a visionary leader and a strategic leader. And I'm always living in the future. I'm always able to articulate the future. And I think the team appreciates that about me. I'm not the detailed organizational leader.

If I don't have people around me that can operate in a detailed and organizational fashion.

Carla Thompson (48:21.526)
If you're asking me to do that, I think we might have a problem. So it's really trying to understand, for example, who shines in what way and how am I not shining? And I think great leadership is really understanding how you best lead, but then also understanding the bridge. Here's the bridge. So if I've got three or four organizational leaders working for me,

Dylan Pathirana (48:23.786)
Yeah.

Dylan Pathirana (48:41.974)
Mm-hmm.

Carla Thompson (48:47.49)
but I'm constantly speaking vision and strategy, I'm actually not leading them very well.

Dylan Pathirana (48:53.674)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Carla Thompson (48:54.688)
So I don't get to default to them figuring out what I'm trying to say. I have to figure out how to bridge the gap between being a visionary leader and the organizational leaders. I have to learn how to do the translation to make sure they can carry out vision. They're part of the vision. They have a voice. All those things you want to have done. So to really understand your style of leadership that has allowed you to lead at the highest level,

but then understand that not everybody's having the same experience of you and being reflective about how to adjust enough to bridge the gap between their style and your style.

Dylan Pathirana (49:29.878)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Pathirana (49:38.038)
And how do you how do you learn that translation? Is it do you have to is it like a almost empathy you have to put yourself in their shoes and try and figure out like connect the dots? How do you how do you do that? Because I think that is a key, a key takeaway is lots of people are like have their own leadership style. But then when they try and communicate it, it gets lost in that that boundary layer. So how do you bridge the gap?

Carla Thompson (50:01.624)
Yeah.

I love.

different types of personality assessments, not because any one of them is completely accurate or perfect or any of that. But what I love is that it gives you a language to understand each other. So for example, I'm a certified practitioner of the Myers-Briggs assessment. And what that means is I can take a Myers-Briggs assessment and know my type. I'm an ENTJ for anybody listening who understands this world and loves it as much as I do.

And I can know, for example, that if I'm leading an ESTJ,

The ESTJ profile is going to be incredibly detailed across every T dot, every I. So if I'm working with somebody who's that style and I say something like, let's go ahead and put on an event coming up in April, I'll speak to the nature of the event. This is the kind of event we're going to put on. It's going to be a tour of our luxury homes to make sure that the public understands the beauty of all of these homes, right? I can speak to a result. can then speak to

Carla Thompson (51:11.248)
to an end product I want done, and then I'm ready to move on. However...

My ESTJ or my ISTJ profile will need to know all the details of expectations. What is the budget you would like for that? What is the exact date that will work? What time of the day should we host it, right? Who should be invited? All these detailed questions that if I don't slow down a moment and try to listen to their questions and answer their questions, they can't go do their role very well. So it's a bit of learning from the assessment.

for example, that wow, this person's brain is going to immediately go to all the detail and I need to be patient and answer those questions so they can go do their job. Okay.

Dylan Pathirana (51:54.902)
Yeah, I quite like what you share earlier, Carla. You mentioned, you know, when you're working in a team, you need to start with you, right? I. So, I mean, we are going through, I mean, something that you confirmed as well, because that's something that we are trying to work in our business planning session, actually change the name of business planning into business transformation. Because, you know, so I told my team,

Carla Thompson (52:20.308)
Ooh, that's cool.

Dylan Pathirana (52:24.872)
If you want to transform our business, we need to start with you first. If you don't transform ourselves, you know, you can't transform the business, right? It's all about, yes, we are talking about the team, but team is all about so many of us together, right? So we need to get our mindset change. And so something you confirm, which is really good. I think I'm in the right direction. Yeah.

Carla Thompson (52:48.974)
I love it. That's so good. And by the way, I'll say, you know, there's lots of assessments. It doesn't have to be the Myers-Briggs. There's all there's, I think in the course of my leadership history, I've probably taken 20 different assessments and each one gives you a little different information about yourself and how others see you and how they interact with you. So just a lot of trying to understand that having my team members take assessments, right? And

I do want to say one moment about adaptability is that most of us, you know, we're either right-handed or left-handed, very few people are both. So let's say I'm right-handed. Most of the time I'm going to be successful if I'm operating in my natural zone of what, you know, how I behave, which is using my right hand. There are times though where I can start to develop some ability to write with my left hand, but it's awkward.

It hurts my head. It's frustrating, right? So most of the time, you want everybody in your organization really riding with their dominant hand.

And you need everybody to understand they need a little bit of flexibility with the other hand to be able to bridge between the worlds. And when you start thinking about that in terms of leadership, you start building a team where team members start to appreciate each other's differences, work with each other's differences, and the efficacy of the whole team goes up dramatically. Okay.

Dylan Pathirana (54:20.576)
Yeah, think that's a great point. You mentioned there that you are the, you know, visionary, the future thinker. What what's next for for my high modern? What's next for you?

Carla Thompson (54:32.49)
love it. Well, Mile High Modern, we're just busy expanding. I mean, we're getting ready to launch two more offices this year. So we're in the process of doing that. And I think of expansion also as how are we innovating?

Right? So we're in the process of doing some pretty cool innovation. Video is, as we all know, very important in this day and age in marketing. So we have a really a lot of cool things we're doing there. I like to think that part of vision work is infusing energy into all aspects of the organization and allowing people space to be creative and innovate and think about what to do and then decide on a course of action and bring things to fruition. I feel like we're always

in that process.

Dylan Pathirana (55:20.726)
What about you personally? What's the plan for Kala?

Carla Thompson (55:26.592)
Well, that's great. This last week, I asked everybody in my organization to think about their 80-20. What's the 20 % of what you do that will keep you more in your zone of excellence or zone of genius? And what's 80 % of the things you need to get off your plate? I really like to tackle that question quarterly.

because things creep up and end up on your plate that suddenly you're doing and you're like, I'm not sure I'm the person who should be doing this anymore, right? So part of the 20 % is just visioning, like where would I like to spend a whole lot more time? you know, there's lots of things I would like to do. Maybe start a podcast. Woo hoo! I do!

Dylan Pathirana (56:05.706)
Why not? You got two sons? You got two sons? Like bring them out? Or maybe with your husband?

Carla Thompson (56:15.658)
of it. Maybe, we'll see. I really love to write. So I've been working on some outlines for some books. So I'd like to put some literature together for our company, push that forward. So there's projects I'd like to work on.

Dylan Pathirana (56:16.726)
you

Dylan Pathirana (56:32.595)
Love to read your books, Karo. That's a great idea. Once you go into that level, I'm one of the first ones to buy your books.

Carla Thompson (56:41.09)
All right, I will let you know. All right.

Dylan Pathirana (56:43.048)
Yeah. And Carla, looking back on, your journey, all this incredible journey that we've spoken about, do you feel successful?

Carla Thompson (56:51.436)
yeah, I do. I feel like I've had plenty of challenges over the years, but I feel happy that I continue to persevere even when things get difficult. And I feel like I've done very interesting things in my life. I've challenged myself. it's a good question is, know, once I had my first child, I really thought about, you know, how do I want to live my life?

And what resonated with me was I want to live my life in a way where I'm having much joy. I'm challenging myself. I'm doing things that I perceive to be difficult. want my child to witness that and be able to also lead a life of not being afraid. Go ahead and do things that are hard and it's okay if you fail. Do it again. Try again. Right. And just live, have the full life experience. Good or bad, the full life experience. And so

those ways I do feel successful. Yeah.

Dylan Pathirana (57:50.458)
living your best life yeah so Carla I mean you're a leader at your work and I'm sure you are the leader at home how do you manage the balance?

Carla Thompson (58:01.774)
You better ask my husband that.

Dylan Pathirana (58:04.086)
I mean, you are the leader in our living group. So I know you are a born leader. I mean, a way, right? know, is always someone, I mean, all your children look up to. of course, father is an important figure. But, know, it's a core role.

Carla Thompson (58:11.176)
us but any pretty strong willed. I love it. I love it.

Carla Thompson (58:17.528)
Yeah.

Carla Thompson (58:23.662)
Yeah. I mean, it's really, think your question was how do you manage it all or balance it all? Is that right? That's a very good question. And I have, I have people ask all the time, right? Cause everybody's in different stages of parenting, different stages of work and you know, and I think the real answer is putting it.

Dylan Pathirana (58:28.384)
Yeah.

Carla Thompson (58:44.494)
in terms of, for me anyway, I'm very goal oriented. What was my goal as a parent? My goal was to model for my kids to really love work, like do things you enjoy doing and be passionate about the things you want to do. that entails, you know, it doesn't mean that there aren't times I had to do things I didn't want to do even to this day, right? But there's, there's this sense of like, do work that's meaningful.

to you, it's a choice you have in life. I mean, yes, sometimes you have to go make money and you have to provide at the moment, but then how do you get to a space where you really do get to do the things you wanna do? That takes courage, because you've really gotta put yourself out there, you've gotta be willing to handle rejection, you've gotta be willing to not win all the time. If you're trying hard things, you're not gonna win all the time. And a lot of people want to be comfortable.

Dylan Pathirana (59:40.692)
Yep. Yep.

Carla Thompson (59:44.096)
rather than have to deal with the fact that, listen, if you're really putting yourself out there, you're gonna have to be uncomfortable. I mean, going to the Harvard program, right, Jam? That was a definite uncomfortable experience. By the end, it was a lot more fun, but in the beginning, that was terrifying for a whole lot of reasons. And...

Dylan Pathirana (59:54.74)
Yep.

Dylan Pathirana (01:00:06.632)
Outside your comfort zone, yeah.

Carla Thompson (01:00:08.298)
Yeah, totally outside of the comfort zone, right? And so balancing it all is sometimes just like, what is your goal? How are you trying to live your life? And then how do you make decisions in accordance? Now, also having said that, know, some things are sequential. Some things are priority. There are...

are times where you can lean harder into that. And then there are times where you can't. When my kids were little, when they were under five years old, it was really important for me to both keep the business growing and be as present as possible for my children. So in order to do that, I had to get a lot of leverage hired. had to have a lot of people helping me. I hired a lot of help. I had a lot of strict boundaries in place. And I try to explain that to parents. Like sometimes you have to leverage something

might not want to leverage. I leveraged people cooking for me when my kids were little. I had people cooking meals for me. I didn't have the time to cook meals because I was also running a business. there's times and kind of sequencing to things. Starting a business when my kids were still in middle school is when we started the business. I still needed to be very present for my kids. So one of the rules I had was we're going to start this business, but I'm not

I'm not outside of the home after five o'clock every day. I need to be home and present for my family and I'm not going to work weekends. So if we can't get this done in a 40 hour week, then we're gonna have to live with the consequences because parenting also requires my time. What didn't get my time was friends. For quite a few years I had to table the fact that I didn't have a lot of time for friends. Starting a company takes a lot out of you.

Dylan Pathirana (01:01:55.478)
Absolutely.

Carla Thompson (01:01:58.37)
So sometimes there's like periods of life where you're heavily focused in one way and other ways have to maybe get shortchanged a bit. But now I have lots of time for friends. So there you go.

Dylan Pathirana (01:02:11.062)
Awesome. Yeah. And one of the secrets of Carla's success, she go to bed so early.

Do you think that's a secret?

Carla Thompson (01:02:24.398)
It's not a secret to the people of my organization. Everybody knows I go to bed early. I like to be asleep by eight o'clock. I really do. And I do get up at like four o'clock every day and I do a lot of preparatory work in the mornings and I get a lot done by eight o'clock in the morning. So there you go.

Dylan Pathirana (01:02:41.11)
Good sleep is important, that's for sure. And call it a night.

Carla Thompson (01:02:43.874)
But not every night. I do go out for dinners with people. I go have fun, know, come on, like I'm not that rigid.

Dylan Pathirana (01:02:51.19)
No, you're fine. Yeah. And Carla, like we could talk all day. I know there's so much, there's so much to dig into your story. And it's been very, very informative, but we'll wrap up there. And throughout our conversation, I've been jotting down a few things, which I think are core traits, which have led to your successful life. And I'd like to share them with you. The first one. I mean, they kind of link together, but you're.

incredibly avid learner. Like you go out, you read a lot of books, you're learning from the people that you work with. You're always trying to stay ahead of the ball and learning and consuming information. I think that's really important. But to link in with that, you also you don't just, you know, keep that knowledge to yourself. You share it and you teach it with other people. And I think that's super important because it not only helps the people around you, but it also makes sure that

you understand it like deeply. You can only teach something if you truly, truly understand it. And so I think it kind of has that mutual benefit for the people around you and yourself. The next one is the ability to say no. And I think you kind of just touched on it there is, you only focus your effort into what's important to you. And like, you laugh, but I think it's a really it's a % dying skill.

I know for myself, it's just, I find it so hard to say no to people and opportunities and things like that. But it really ensures that you're, you're putting your focus and effort into the things that are important to you and moving you to that next level. And then the next one I've got is you're incredibly open minded. And you know, if you were, if you had have seen that real estate license sign, and just been any other person, it probably would have just

Carla Thompson (01:04:18.296)
haha

Dylan Pathirana (01:04:45.514)
gone to the back of your mind and you would have gone on teaching. And I think just having that open mindedness, seeing opportunities, taking opportunities, and really going all in as well. And it's obviously gotten you to where you are today. Otherwise you wouldn't be sitting here. And then the last one I've got is communication and connection. It's clear that, you know, leadership doesn't come without, you know, being able to communicate to other people. But

I think your philosophy is a lot more like connection based as well. You truly put in the effort to understand the people that you're working with so that you can, you almost see leadership as you you're a servant to them. It's you have to understand them first so that you can portray and deliver the information in the way that's right to connect with them. So I think that's a really nice trait to have. Yeah. So Carla, just to add to what Dylan shared, you know,

One other thing that I want to share, you're such a beautiful person. know, so easy to connect and it's so easy to have a conversation and you give, you know, everything that you have, like, you know, not keeping any secrets, even sleeping early and not attending parties, right? Like, it's okay. And, you know, like, so that's all about, about you're talking about the culture, like building like that team.

and then the win-win, you know, so it doesn't matter whether it's your work, I'm sure it's in your family and you're working with friends as well. So you're giving the knowledge that you learn from books or your experience, you share that with everyone. So that's again, an amazing thing and such a someone that I always look up to, you know, I can always reach out and learn things from you.

that I'm sure your team members feel the same way talking about you. So thank you, Carla. because I wanted to, had some lots of questions about the leadership and all that, but I think we have to wait till your book come out to read about all that stuff. But this is a wonderful conversation and I loved every minute. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Carla Thompson (01:07:01.966)
Thank you to you both. This was so fun and it's so wonderful the way you have taken this to such a high level, this podcast, and Dylan, your summation at the end is just so lovely. I mean, really, that was very nice. So thank you both. You guys are awesome. You're doing so great. Thank you.

Dylan Pathirana (01:07:20.458)
Thanks, Carl. It was a real pleasure. And if you're listening and you've gotten something out of today's conversation, it would be excellent if you could subscribe or follow us on whichever platform you're listening to this on right now. And you can see all of our inspiring episodes over on our website, the quest for success podcast.com. And with that, we'll see you guys in the next episode. Thanks for listening. Thank you. Hey, thanks Carl. Thanks. Carl. Thank you for giving us.