Be The Solution: How Maria Quattrone Built a Top Real Estate Listing Business

Maria Quattrone (00:00)
God put you here for reason.

Somebody asked me on a podcast I was on yesterday, I was a guest, and they said, if you could give somebody advice who’s in the slumps right now, business stinks, they’re having problems, said, you know what they can do?

He was shocked at what I said. I said, tell them to go help somebody else.

because helping somebody else.

makes you feel good.

Q Edmonds (01:54)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I am excited today. I have another fantastic guest and this lady just keeps growing from year to year to year. Her performance keeps getting better, processes keep getting refined and I’m so excited for her to tell you about what it is that she does, right? Now listen, this lady ain’t no novice.

Like she’s so proficient that she’s in the top 1.0%. The top 0.1%. Make sure I get that correct. And when you come in, you correct me if I’m wrong, but she knows what she’s doing. She’s proficient. And so I am so happy to introduce you all to Ms. Quattrone. Ms. Maria, how are you today, my dear? Absolutely.

Maria Quattrone (02:44)
fantastic and thank you

sir for having me on your show today I’m super excited to bring you all that I

Q Edmonds (02:53)
I love it. Well, listen, we excited to, I know this is going to be great. And so I am the type, Ms. Maria, I like to dive in. So I would love for you to tell the people what’s your main focus these days. Give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got to the space where you are. We love the hero’s journey, right? And then tell us what part of the world you’re in. People love to know where you are geographically. So what you’re up to, your origin story and where you are. Ms. Maria, you have the floor now.

Maria Quattrone (03:21)
So I’ve been in the real estate industry for 23 years. I’m born and raised Philadelphian and this is where I currently run my business in Philadelphia. I am primarily a listing broker.

Q Edmonds (03:34)
Mmm.

Maria Quattrone (03:34)
I work with sellers, investors, people that weren’t able to sell their property. I’ve repositioned the properties to get them sold. And in today’s environment, we need all guns blazing to make sure that happens. I’m also in the process of, on May 15th, I have a listing accelerator workshop for four weeks for free that agents can join. Only agents have what more listings now though. So, it’s my more listings now.

Q Edmonds (03:57)
Mmm.

Maria Quattrone (04:03)
community. We have a free for our workshop and also sometime in the month of June my first book Be the Solution 192 listings in a year will be launched.

Q Edmonds (05:04)
I love it. So much going on, so many things to be excited about. Thank you for telling us what you do, walking us through the journey. And so as you was talking, I was actively listening. 23 years in the business, born and raised in Philly. You look for and work with sellers and investors.

Got a full week workshop that’s about to come out. That’s for the more listing crowd, for the more listing group community. And you got a book coming out. So all of these fantastic things is going on. Ms. Maria, have a saying where I say, destiny has no wasted moments. Meaning no matter what we go through in life,

We’re building momentum and we’re borrowing from the journey and the journey reinforces the people that we are now. It tells us our passion. tells us our why. Like it tells us who we are, why we do what we do. So I would love to know throughout the journey, the 23 years building a workshop, building a book, building a broker. What have you learned about yourself? What has the moments revealed to you about you?

had it revealed discipline, resilience, innovation, like what has it revealed to you the moments?

Maria Quattrone (06:15)
It’s a great question. think that our journey of life, you know, from being a little girl to now, it’s all of the hardships that you go through, all the struggles. But those struggles, if I didn’t have them early in my early years, I don’t know if I would have the strength, the fortitude, the perseverance that I do today.

Because there was a time when I was young that I said, oh no, this isn’t going to be my life. And I figured out early on that I had to be the solution. I had to find a way. And you know, during that time, my teens and twenties, things could have went a whole nother direction. But I made the choice to not allow that to happen.

Q Edmonds (06:55)
⁓ yeah.

Yeah.

Maria Quattrone (07:07)
You see many people, go to the wrong side of life, Drugs and this and that. It can happen. But you have to make the choice and decision to say like, no, and I am going to be the person that I’m born to be. And here are some things I learned lately. And I really was thinking about this. Everything you want, wants you.

Q Edmonds (07:30)
Whoa. Mm. Mm.

Maria Quattrone (07:32)
It’s

just, so let’s say, let’s just talk about this for a minute. It’s six years ago, COVID, I saw at that time, I wanna have training, coaching, community, business, and teach people in real estate, six years ago. But something was holding me back from doing it, but I wanted it.

And so over those six years, I learned so much more. You know, the last four years in our industry in real estate has sucked. Let’s call it what it is. Most people want to sugarcoat it and say this and that. And this year it’s even more terrible.

I even wrote a post about it last night. I’m like, am I the only one that feels like the whole world is off? And it’s not even just real estate, like even friends, family, like, I don’t, my phone doesn’t even ring. Like, I’m like, where’s everybody at?

I don’t know if you see it by imagining it. Anyway, through all of these things, we could sit here and be like chicken little, houses on fire, running around, right? Or I could come on a podcast or I can continue to keep doing my work and know that this too shall pass. And I had some personal things that happened in my life during the last six years, which

were part of the reason, but I didn’t realize it at the time that the other things weren’t happening. And these are all family members, Not me personally, I wasn’t, it was, but my husband, my sister, my sister, my parents divorced, all this crap. But you still had to keep getting up. And I treat this business like a business. I’m dressed. I get dressed. I go to my office.

Q Edmonds (09:09)
Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Maria Quattrone (09:14)
I’m home right now because I wouldn’t have time with you. But like, what do we do? We have to keep going and keep showing up every day. And what I do is I don’t talk about time management, calendar management. I talk about choice management and how I run my day.

And I have all kinds of sayings, like progress, not perfection. Let’s just make some progress today. Let’s just make some progress. Right. And sometimes when you have to have always, you need to have courage before the confidence is going to come.

Q Edmonds (10:14)
Come on. Yeah. Yes, ma’am. Yeah. Yeah.

Maria Quattrone (10:24)
Right? We gotta have courage. And ⁓ I was on, I had a woman on my podcast, she told me we had a one in 400 trillion chance of being born. Act like it.

God put you here for reason.

Somebody asked me on a podcast I was on yesterday, I was a guest, and they said, if you could give somebody advice who’s in the slumps right now, business stinks, they’re having problems, said, you know what they can do?

He was shocked at what I said. I said, tell them to go help somebody else.

because helping somebody else.

makes you feel good.

And you keep helping somebody else and you feel good, then you’re going to want to do things to move yourself and your life forward. I didn’t tell them to make 20 calls. I didn’t tell them to go jump up and down and do jumping jacks and go run around the block. People give you all this nonsense to do. Go take a cold plunge. The caveman didn’t have cold plunges. You have cold plunges.

Go take a cold plunge. Go bathe yourself in a sauna to your fried, I don’t know, crazy stuff going on. How about help somebody impact? Be an impact for somebody today. Be in contribution.

Q Edmonds (11:33)
You said so many things that align with what we talk about regularly, regularly here on the pod. And I just was writing down just things that you said, one in 400 trillion chances of being born act like it. Everything you want, once you are, mean, you said, you said just how we got so many sayings. And so, and I love how you talked about going out and helping someone. So I quote this proverb.

here quite frequently is actually Proverbs 11, 25, I believe. And it says, when you refresh others, you in return will be refreshed. So it’s just like you were saying, go help somebody. And it’s a universal principle. And if you apply it, will work. If you help somebody else, if you refresh somebody else, you in return will be refreshed. And so my wife and I, have something here called a gratitude jar.

Maria Quattrone (12:09)
Mm-hmm.

Q Edmonds (12:26)
So we write down things that we’re grateful for and we put it in a jar. And then at the beginning of the year, we bring in the year, reading the things that we are grateful for. And so refreshing nervous, gratitude, all these things changes your mindset, rewires the way you think. And it helps you. everything you’re talking about, like I said, just aligns with things that we talk about here on the pod. yeah. Oh, it’s…

Maria Quattrone (12:45)
I love that gratitude jar. That’s so cool.

Q Edmonds (12:49)
It’s brilliant. And then you just, watch the jar fill up with gratitude. And then at the end of the year, you dump all that gratitude out and you just read about it you bring in the year. Sometimes forgetting some of the things that you said, like, I’m grateful for this. And you’re like, wow. And there’s just so much remembrance that goes on and just bringing the year grateful and just continue to do it over and over. What my mentors say, it’s hard to be anxious and angry and be grateful at the same time.

It’s hard to be sad and grateful at the same time. So everything you’re saying, just, makes total sense. Total, total sense. ⁓ yeah. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. That would be, I’m telling you, it’s going to be a game changer. It’s going to be a game changer. I’m telling you. so what’s, what’s next for you in the business? Like what’s next for the business? What’s your next goals? Were you looking to solve a scale next, Ms. Maria?

Maria Quattrone (13:22)
⁓ I’m going to start this gratitude drive maybe at the office too.

Well, I have the book coming out and the book is written in my voice. So if you know me and you read the book, you’ll be like, my God, so hard. But it’s all about building your real estate business listings. Everything’s about listings. And so excited to have that launch, more so for the fact of actually doing it.

getting it done, because it’s been a while since this has been happening. But it’s very close. It has to be edited by an editor. And then they’re working on the book cover. ⁓ So that’s one thing. The other thing I’m super excited about is my More Listings Now community. And we have our first thing that’s happening starting on May 15th.

anybody who’s in the real estate business who wants to join the workshop. It is for people focusing on listings and the workshop is going to be on Fridays at 1 o’clock for four weeks straight. And I’m going to give everybody homework at the end of it each week. And I’m excited to launch this four week listing accelerator.

So I’ll give you the link and you can drop it in and people can just register for the workshop, but it’s exciting I’ve been working on it for some time and Then we have lots of other things after that coming. So that’s my number one thing actually is the workshop right now

Q Edmonds (15:53)
Yeah.

Love it. Excited for you. Excited for the workshop. I got to ask, are you going to do an audio version of the book so people can literally hear your voice? Is that something that’s in my? ⁓ yes. Awesome. Awesome. I love listening to the author in their voice. Exactly. And so it’s getting to know you, hearing your voice. It would be beautiful to be able to read, listen to the book, and hear your voice. So that’s awesome. Listen, you talk about community. You are saying a lot of words, again, that we say here frequently.

Maria Quattrone (16:02)
I am.

Q Edmonds (16:24)
Community is one of those. I always say community is common unity. It’s people doing things with the mission in mind and they’re doing it together. And unity is different than uniformity because uniformity means everybody’s doing the same thing all at the same time. But unity is when people do different things but with one common goal. So I love how you have the more listening community. So I want to hear your perspective on the word relationship. When you hear the word relationship,

What comes to mind to you, Ms. Maria?

Maria Quattrone (16:54)
Hmm. Relationship. Well, they’re super important. They’re super important and I think about relationships. You have different relationships with different people. And you know, I was just thinking about somebody I haven’t talked to in a while. And that doesn’t mean that we don’t have a relationship. It means that they’re doing their thing. We, I’m doing my thing.

Q Edmonds (16:59)
Yeah. Yeah.

Maria Quattrone (17:19)
And when we do talk, we are just like back to regular. But relationship can be with a client that you just met, you have a relationship, can be, you know, I think it’s all about doing the right thing.

Q Edmonds (17:37)
I it. love it. Doing the right thing, integrity. I think of when you say doing the right thing, authenticity. I think of when you say doing the right thing. And all these things are just good groundworks for good relationship. ⁓ Good communication, good relating. Yes, ma’am.

Maria Quattrone (17:50)
Yeah.

Being authentic is critical. You know, I always say the person that you are talking to right now is the person that would be talking to you at dinner, at breakfast, at home, at the gym. I don’t have different Maria’s. That’s only this one. And which gets me into trouble sometimes, but only good trouble.

Q Edmonds (18:08)
Yes.

Yeah. that’s, mean, that’s the thing. When you are who you are, you accept all consequences and consequences are just results. And so there are great consequences for us being who we are. And there are some things that, hey, it may, it may cause tension. Not that it’s bad. It may just cause tension. In tension, there’s no growth without tension. So like when you show up as your authentic self, you are going to experience

Maria Quattrone (18:33)
Right.

Q Edmonds (18:41)
smoothness, but also you’re going to experience tension and attention is designed to make you grow. And the smoothness is designed for you to just enjoy, but both of them are working for your good. And so I love showing up as my authentic self.

Maria Quattrone (18:52)
Yeah.

So what do you think when people say to you, you know how you are?

Q Edmonds (18:58)
You know what I said? I said, yeah, I fully embrace who I am. And I do that from a self-aware standpoint, not a self-confident standpoint. Because self-confident people, they are self-confident at the detriment of everybody around them. Meaning they know their superpower and they use their superpower to just one-range shot. Like, yes, I’m egotistical. This is who I am. I know who I am. You don’t know who I am. But also they have weaknesses and

They know they have weaknesses, but they don’t embrace or try to comp. I want to say compensate, but do things to compliment their weaknesses. So self-confident people, they are self-confident at the detriment of everybody. Self-aware people, they are self-aware at the compliment of everybody. Meaning they want to make sure that their strength superpower complements everybody else’s superpower.

They want to make sure that their weakness is that they have somebody that can compliment them in their weakness. So when somebody say, you know, you know who you are, you’re right. But from a self-aware point of view, I know who I am. I know my superpower. I know my weakness and I am willing to collaborate with people to make sure that my weaknesses are become superpowers in the areas that we are. So yeah, so that’s, that’s how I approach it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Listen.

Maria Quattrone (20:13)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I usually get

that from like, you know, my mother.

Q Edmonds (20:20)
Yeah. It’s a whole different relationship. Whole different relationship. Yeah, yeah. Whole different relationship. Yeah. Look, we’re late, we’re late, and then right. If my wife were here, so my wife’s a counselor, if my wife was here, she would probably reverse that in some type of way. It’s like, yeah, I know who I am.

Maria Quattrone (20:20)
That’s different relationship.

Nobody else really says that.

We’ll just laugh at that.

Q Edmonds (20:41)
Do know who you are? She probably would twist it. Tell me about who you are. You know, so, so yeah.

Maria Quattrone (20:47)
I’m going to use that the next time.

Q Edmonds (20:48)
There you go. There you go. Listen, I know who I am more you. Are you satisfied with who you are? Tell me more about that. yeah. ⁓ Mr. Reed, I have really thoroughly enjoyed talking to you. If someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they connect with you, my dear?

Maria Quattrone (21:11)
They can email me at maria@callmq. They can call me 215-607-3535. I’m on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. If you DM me, I will answer you. I personally answer all my messages. And if people call, and usually I’m in a meeting, but the office will schedule, I will call you back. I call everybody back.

Q Edmonds (21:37)
Yeah. Well, listen, y’all heard Ms. Maria. I want to say three things to you, ma’am. One, thank you for your time because your time is super valuable. So thank you for giving us the gift of your time. Secondly, thank you for your story, for your narrative and giving us your authenticity, giving us your,

your honesty and integrity. Also, I like to say like the gift of your vulnerability, like you shared things with us. You did not have to share, but you did. And so thank you for your story. Stories have a way of planting seeds in people. We may never see the growth, but the seed is there and that seed can sprout up at any given time. And so thank you for your story. Lastly, thank you for your mindset, the way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you.

Maria Quattrone (22:20)
⁓ Thank you. You know, one thing before we wrap up, I just thought about the seed. So when you plant a tree, you can plant a tree, a cherry tree, a lemon tree, and they’ll grow pretty quickly. But if you plant the olive tree,

Q Edmonds (22:21)
Absolutely.

Maria Quattrone (22:41)
Do know how long olive trees live for?

Q Edmonds (22:44)
every very long time.

Maria Quattrone (22:46)
Yeah, they’re old.

There’s olive trees older than a thousand years old. But in order for the olive tree to grow, it needs time.

Q Edmonds (22:54)
Mm.

Maria Quattrone (22:54)
It needs lots of, I don’t want to say fertilizer, but you know, stuff, stuff. And, once that olive tree grows, becomes, it’s a very, very strong, strong tree. And it takes some years to produce fruit. But once it does, you have something forever.

Q Edmonds (23:00)
That’s my word.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mmm.

So listen, we trying to get out of here, but you keep dropping these gems. I often say on this podcast, failure is fertilizer. Like if we learn from our hardships, because I I wrote down, you said without the struggles, there wouldn’t be strength. That’s one thing you said this podcast. And so sometimes the failure is just fertilizer. And like you just said, the olive tree, if you let that thing get planted in the nutrients of the failure of fertilizer,

it will grow up and give you an everlasting strength that you never thought you would have. so Ms. Maria is so well said. Listen, y’all heard Ms. Maria. Her information is in the show notes. Get in contact with her. Listen, the people out there, the listening, listen, get into, or what is it, the more listening group, get in there, get this course, get in contact with her, but definitely make sure you are subscribed here.

because we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people, just like Ms. Maria. So ma’am, I say thank you again. And everyone else, y’all have a fantastic day.