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The Real Estate Sales Podcast


Mar 29, 2022

In today’s episode of The Real Estate Sales Podcast, Jimmy’s friend Mario Mitchell shares how he went from homeless to selling over 160 homes each year. This episode is a partial recording of Mario’s speech from the Berkshire Hathaway Florida Realty 2022 Elevate Summit.

Mario was born in 1975 and brought illegally to the United States. 

  • After his mother’s passing when he was four, Mario began to face physical abuse from his father. 
  • His neighbor noticed Mario’s bruises, and she called Child Protective Services. His dad was arrested, and Mario and his brother went to an orphanage.
  • Mario ran away and was homeless from ages 8-10. A homeless man, Stacy, showed Mario how to hustle and survive on the street.
  • However, Stacy was arrested when Mario was 10, and Mario was again left on his own.
  • He broke into schools’ air conditioning ducts at night to play basketball, where an officer eventually identified Mario’s shoe print.

The police took him in, and Mario went to a rehabilitation center.

  • At the center, Mario met a man named Alex, who taught Mario how to be a team player.
  • Mario knew he wanted to join athletics when he entered the school system. However, he was cut from every program he tried. 
  • He didn’t fit in, no one talked to him, he was always behind. So, Mario went back to the facility.
  • His freshman year, Mario tried out for the baseball and basketball team again. He worked harder than anyone else, and he made it.

Mario’s hard work resulted in a full-ride college scholarship for basketball.

  • The day Mario turned 18, his foster family kicked him out. So, Mario took his $1,800 government check, bought an old car, and drove to college.
  • Without parents or any support system, he learned that he could choose to be positive or dwell on his challenges.
  • He built his business based on the compassion and empathy he learned to appreciate.  It’s not about how many contracts you write but the relationships you build.

The positives he has today are because of the negatives he overcame.

  • When you have a dream, you have to protect it. Protecting a dream means focusing on the positives that arise from overcoming the negatives.
  • Find a way to give back to a community because the more you give back, the more you’ll succeed.

Do you have a video or content idea that is perfect for your business? Share it with Jimmy! Connect with Jimmy Burgess on LinkedIn and Facebook and his YouTube channel.  If you like what you heard today, we’d love it if you’d share a rating or review and then subscribe to the podcast and tell others about it as well. You can find The Real Estate Sales Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and our website, The Real Estate Sales Podcast.