What motivates you when things get tough? Please be detailed and explain why.
Growth up 260% in 7 years didn’t happen without rough stretches. What keeps me going is breaking the problem down small enough to fix one piece at a time. Learned that as a leasing agent, when a deal fell through, I’d just find the next lever to pull instead of sitting with it.
Tell us 3 surprisingly easy and 3 surprisingly difficult things about your business.
Easy: reading a lease fast, pricing a listing right the first time, and knowing which clients are ready to move versus just browsing. Hard: predicting rate shifts before they hit our pipeline, telling a good agent their numbers are off, and staying patient through a slow closing when everyone wants an answer today.
What are the 3 things you like best about your work and why?
I like closing a deal that looked impossible two weeks earlier, there’s nothing like watching a stuck negotiation finally move. I like the strategy side, deciding where Nomadic grows next instead of just reacting to the market. And I like when a client comes back years later for a second property, that means we did right by them the first time. All three come back to the same thing, building something that lasts past one transaction.
What are your greatest 3 skills and how have they helped you succeed?
My philosophy background trained me to spot weak deal logic fast, that alone saved us from two acquisitions that looked good on paper. I’m also stubborn about automation, cut hours of manual work across the team. And I remember client details, that keeps people coming back for years.
Tell us about a time you were dead wrong about something.
I once told a client to hold off on a property because the numbers looked thin to me. He bought it anyway, against my advice. That property ended up outperforming everything else in our portfolio that year. I don’t lead with gut instinct over data as hard as I used to before that one.
What is the biggest challenge you face each day and how do you handle it?
Every day it’s the same thing, something breaks that nobody flagged in time. A lease detail missed, a maintenance call ignored for too long. I built a shared tracker so nothing sits unseen for more than 24 hours across the team. It cut our missed-issue rate down more than I expected.
What do you value most and why?
I had a client walk away once because I went quiet for two weeks during a tough negotiation. Never again. Now I send updates even when there’s nothing new to report. Clear communication matters more to me than almost anything else in this business.
What are you doing that is difficult? Please explain.
Right now I’m rebuilding how leads get tracked across teams, moving everyone off spreadsheets they built themselves years ago. People don’t love changing habits that worked fine for them. We’re about 60% through it and already seeing fewer leads slip through the cracks.
Who is your favorite motivational speaker and why?
I learn more from older agents at Nomadic who’ve closed hundreds of deals over the years and never made a big deal out of any of it. Watching how they handle a bad week teaches me more than a stage talk ever could. But for a motivational speaker in my field, im still figuring it out and taking good advice from the people who had more experience than I do.
If you could go back 2 years and give yourself advice, what would it be?
I’d tell myself to stop doing everything by hand two years earlier than I did. I was scared automation would feel impersonal to clients. Turns out it freed up time to actually talk to them more, not less. Wish I’d trusted that sooner.
Are you willing to be a mentor? If yes, what is the best way to reach you?
Yes, happy to mentor. Best way to reach me is through Nomadic’s website contact form. I’m especially interested in people early in leasing or ops roles. My email is devin@nomadicrealestate.com
Just for fun, what is your favorite food?
Tacos, no contest. Simple, fast, and I can eat them standing up between meetings.