From Big Four Grind to Real Estate Success: Harrison Sharp on Work Ethic, Resilience, and Growth

Harrison Sharp (00:00)
We’re trying to figure out how to get to that next level. ⁓ We’re really trying to figure out how to scale it and make it, you know, an actual company and not where it’s relying on just two individuals. ⁓ So currently right now, you know, me and my brother and we’re co-owners.

I handle the sales side of it. He’s handling the operations ⁓ and handling the backend.

Quentin Edmonds (01:56)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I’m excited to be here today. I have another sharp guest. Yes, pun intended, but I don’t care. I like playing with him. But no, but no, seriously. I have someone who’s fantastic. He knows exactly what he’s doing. And you know, this is what, this is the part of the show that brings me so much joy. Is when I get to peek through the lens of someone else. I think, you know, we can be doing the same things, but because we are unique.

because we have different perspective mindset strategies. We can be doing the same thing, but still we’re going to learn from each other because there are things that we do slightly different. So I just believe this gentleman is going to bring a ton of knowledge to you. And I’m so excited to introduce you all to Mr. Harrison Sharp. Mr. Harrison, how you doing today,

Harrison Sharp (02:42)
I can’t complain, another day in the real estate world.

Quentin Edmonds (02:45)
My man, I love it, my love it. Listen, man, I even type, I just love to dive in, right? So I would love for you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. ⁓ If you give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got started into this space, we love the hero’s journey is what I call it. Love the hero’s journey. And then man, tell them what part of the world you’re in. Like people love to know where people are geographically because sometimes they’re like.

Hey, this guy’s right next door. Maybe I can partner up with him. So what you’re doing these days, your origin story and where you are. Mr. Harrison, sir, you have the floor,

Harrison Sharp (03:23)
All right, so what are we doing these days? We are currently, so to me and my brother, we basically run a real estate sales team. I’m a broker. That’s how we primarily make our money. We’re one of the top agents in DFW, doing around 30 or so million in sales a year. We’re with a lot of investor clients, and then we also work at a lot of retail as well.

⁓ so, you know, that’s kind of currently what our day to day is in terms of origination story. ⁓ I actually was not involved in real estate at all, ⁓ out of college or didn’t really know a ton about it. ⁓ I guess my going way, way back, ⁓ really the only thing I knew at all about real estate was my grandfather owned some lots and some rental properties and I would go load up my trunk in the, in the hot Texas summer heat and go cut his lawns.

and help make some money to go spend on whatever. So that was way, way back, but again, that was high school timeframe. ⁓ Went to school, went to Texas A ⁓ studied finance and accounting, CPA license, worked in big four accounting, did financial planning, ⁓ and then got to the point where I had discovered kind real estate investing, financial freedom, passive income, things like that.

and ended up buying what’s called a house hack. If you’re not familiar with what a house hack is, that’s just where you’re buying either a duplex, triplex, quad, or a single family, either leasing out one of the units or the bedrooms, and that helps offset your living expense. So I’d say that was my big goal, buy one of those properties. bought my first house at 26 years old, and I was basically covering all of my living expense, and I was just leasing out the extra bedrooms in the house. So that was kind my first exposure to real estate.

Um, you know, my goal then was to, uh, continue to acquire properties. My goal was, know, one property a year and just kind of rinse and repeat, the same thing. And I was like, Oh, I saw how much my real estate agent made off of that transaction. Might as well go get my license and do it myself. My initial goal was to do it just for myself. And I was like, Oh, I can help other people do exactly what I just did and help them eliminate their house and the expense too. And that’s kind of where it all began. Um, and I’m based in, the DFW Metro and

and I’ve been here pretty much all my life except for going off to school at A

Quentin Edmonds (05:46)
Yeah,

yeah. Man, loving man. Harrison, thank you so much, man, for walking us through the journey. And as you was talking, I would just write some things down. You talking about that hot son, man, with your granddad. Like, whoo! Like, I hear you. I was a mailman for 15 years, man. So, I went that hot son. Ain’t nobody joke. But I love it, man, you talking about you went to Texas A ⁓ I believe you studied finance, right? Did I hear that correct? Studied finance. Then you got house hacking.

Harrison Sharp (06:59)
Yep, yep, yep.

Quentin Edmonds (07:03)
And just kind of like figure things out, man. You seeing how much they was making on these transactions. Like, shucks, let me do it myself. And so I love it. And I intentionally kind of regurgitate some of the things that you said. Just the one let you know I’m actively listening. But two, I have a saying where I say every podcast, destiny has no wasted moments. Meaning like as you go through your life, moments kind of build the momentum to where we are now. Right.

And so sometimes just reflecting back, sometimes you could just see you borrowed from different mindsets to kind of form the mindset that you are now. And so, man, I would love to know throughout your journey to get into the place where you are now, what are some of the things that you learned about yourself? Did you learn discipline? Did you learn like resilience? Did you learn like, hey, this is the space that I love being in? Like, what are some of the things that you learned about yourself?

Harrison Sharp (07:56)
Yeah. Big one is work ethic, work ethic, learning how to work hard, resilience. I mean, that’s a big one too. So I’ll kind of give a story to go into a little more detail on that. You know, my first job out of college, I worked at Ernst & Young, massive accounting firm. Everyone’s super smart. So in terms of like the work aspect, you know, we were working, some weeks we were working 90, 100 hours a week. So that obviously taught me the value of

of how to really, really, really work. cause again, like not a lot of jobs, you know, most jobs are nine to five, you know, there’s a stretch and I tell the story a lot actually to, to, you know, anytime reminiscing about, you know, what I used to do. And there was a stretch on one of our clients. We, we worked from for three weeks straight from nine a.m. in the morning until one or two a.m. at night, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So like that’s, that was kind of the bar that I had like on, you know,

And again, that wasn’t every week. That was just one of the busier times, filing deadlines and things like that, like that is just crunch time. So that was terrible. But again, looking back on it, it taught you how to work and really put your head down and figure stuff out. In terms of like resiliency, and actually similar story back at that company, you’re working that much. So most people get promoted. There was something that kind of happened with one of the teams I was on. was just, not going to go into the details there, but.

actually didn’t get promoted with the rest of my class. So was like, okay, well I had a setback there. I’ve never really experienced anything like that before. I’d always done pretty well in school, passed all the CPA exams on the first try and never really had any issues like that. that was kind of a shock to my system, a little bit of, wow, I was expecting to get promoted, didn’t. So just kind of dealing with that, figuring out how to overcome that, because you deal with a lot of adversity on the real estate side. Like every single day something negative is happening.

with how many deals we have going on now. And you just kind of get used to it. that’s, that was kind of the first, I guess, instance of that ⁓ happening.

Quentin Edmonds (10:34)
No, man, thank you so much for saying that story. And I can definitely see where putting that much time in on an account for another business, guess that putting the grind in for yourself, it’s like, doesn’t even like, I can do this. Like if I’m gonna put that type of grind in for somebody else’s business for another account, I bet you it makes it so much easier to put the grind in for a business that you’re erecting in a business that you’ve grown to doing.

Harrison Sharp (10:52)
Yes.

Quentin Edmonds (11:03)
30 million in sales, I’m sure that again, that makes it a lot more easy and more rewarding. Is that correct? Yeah. Yep.

Harrison Sharp (11:11)
100%. It’s way easier to work that much when you’re making

all the money and not making it for someone else. So. ⁓

Quentin Edmonds (11:16)
Yeah. I love

it. And bro, thank you for just taking us, that quick reflection. Because I love asking people like yourself that question. And I love for our audience to hear that kind of moment because sometimes we just got to take a quick look back and reflect on how we got to where we are now and really appreciate the moments that we’re in. And then really pull on like, tag, if I did that back then.

Like, cause when you’re in it, you’re just putting one foot in front of the other. It’s one coffee drink in front of the other one, you know, energy drink. But when you look back like, dang, I actually went through that. And so it makes you appreciate where you are and like, you know what? I can do this because you’re pulling from something that you already know is inside of you because you did it before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate you. So where you are now, how does it adversely look where you are now? Like,

Harrison Sharp (11:49)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Quentin Edmonds (12:16)
Is it, know, somebody may be not giving you ⁓ information when you’re trying to do a deal. Like, how does adversity creep ahead up now doing what you do within the space that you’re in now?

Harrison Sharp (12:27)
Um, yeah, probably two big forms. Um, maybe three, actually. First one is just the day to day, you know, real estate agents get a lot of just flack everywhere and it’s very well deserved in my opinion. Um, there are so many just lazy and competent, like, what are you thinking? Like you have no idea what’s going on. So I get, I’m, I’m very, let’s get, let’s get shit done. Like, let’s get it done. Let’s get it done fast. Like if it, if it doesn’t make logical sense.

Quentin Edmonds (12:42)
Mmm.

Harrison Sharp (12:57)
I don’t understand that. And there are a lot of people out there that just don’t think the same way. So, know, way number one is just me trying to like rein in my emotions and just not get super frustrated with these other people that are just like not on the same, the same, working at the same speed as me. You know, that’s one big thing. Another big thing is the inconsistency in the income. Although this has gotten a lot better since I’ve been in it now, but you know, some months you’ll be like, I don’t have two deals closing this month. I’m used to doing 10 or 15.

what’s going on. And then you start like, get those thoughts creeping in your head about, know, maybe, you know, well, what if I never get another deal? Like you just kind of, you know, that’s how the sale, you know, that’s how sales is again, that that’s not as big now. And then the third big one is like, you know, kind of shifting from that, you know, scarcity mindset and more towards, ⁓ I guess, one of the big thoughts that we have now, why aren’t we growing, you know, we’re putting in all these hours, why are we stagnating, you know, how do we get to that next level? So that’s kind of a thought that started to enter too. So

Quentin Edmonds (13:55)
I mean, I’m thank you so much for the gift of your transparency because business owners that’s listening, they can identify with what you’re saying. And I’m glad you’re saying it out loud because I don’t want people to have to suffer in silence. It’s like, no, these are some of the things that’s going through your head. These are some of the things that’s going through other business owners’ So you’re not crazy. You’re not by yourself. Like you said, this is part of the grind. And I’m so glad we’re shining light on it in a safe space where people can talk about it and hear it from somebody.

Harrison Sharp (14:14)
Yep.

Quentin Edmonds (14:25)
who has done it, gonna continue to do it and like, hey, we’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna get through this for sure. So with that being said, man, I would love to know what’s your next real goal? What are you looking to solve a scale next?

Harrison Sharp (15:18)
Yeah. So right now we’re at business wise. Like I said, doing around 30 million a year. That’s pretty much straight referrals, you know, from people that know, like, and trust us and have worked with us before, you know, investment, retail.

We’re trying to figure out how to get to that next level. ⁓ We’re really trying to figure out how to scale it and make it, you know, an actual company and not where it’s relying on just two individuals. ⁓ So currently right now, you know, me and my brother and we’re co-owners.

I handle the sales side of it. He’s handling the operations ⁓ and handling the backend.

Right now, over last six months or so, he’s been working on figuring out how to actually get into a more predictable way or method of generating leads and getting people in the door. And how do you do that? You have to spend money to do it. ⁓ So specifically, we’ve been focusing on Facebook advertising. We created an inbound sales funnel that

goes directly to our website and then we’ll end up going click through where you book a call with me to basically set a consultation. What do you need in the real estate realm? Whatever that looks like for the individual who has clicked on that ad. So right now we’re kind in the testing phase, figuring out what ad gets the most attention, gets the highest click through rates, very data driven approach there. And once we start figuring that out, okay, well we’re spending $1,000, $2,000 a month, well why can’t we spend $10,000 a month?

⁓ And basically we’re going to do that until it breaks, until I get so overwhelmed that I have too much going on that I cannot provide that level of service that our clients are used to. At that point, you know, when that breaks, well, now we’ve got to go hire someone to help take, you know, this task off of me, this task off of him. And that’s kind of where we’re headed right now. So ⁓ that’s immediate, you know, immediate top of mind of where we’re looking to go in the next few years.

Quentin Edmonds (16:51)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Gotcha, I love it, man. I love how you talk about your brother. And I’m going to say this word, and I want to just hear it from your perspective. The word relationship. When you hear the word relationship, what comes into mind? Of course, I’m talking about from a business aspect, but also, I just want to hear from you too. Just when you hear that word relationship, what comes to mind for you,

Harrison Sharp (17:19)
Mm-hmm.

⁓ Immediately off the cuff, would say just someone you can go to and someone that you can chat with about whatever is going on, whether it’s business, personal, ⁓ things like that. Somebody that you can rely on like fully because, know, I’ve been in my fair share of poor relationships, poor business relationships, and, you know, some of that you can just be fully transparent with and not feel judged or…

you know, something that you can get your problems out to and just, and deal with them too and feel like, okay, well, here’s the issue, let’s find a solution for it. Just something that you can rely on. That’s immediate, like something that comes to mind. Something that’s gonna be there for you no matter what. So.

Quentin Edmonds (18:12)
but sir, I think you the nail on the head. often talk about, when I talk about the word relationship, the word community, and I say healing happens in community. And it sounds good, but I double down on it because as you said, when you have people around you who you can talk to, who you can sound off to, what it does, it creates a space for one, for you to get it out, you know, because, you know, not to be all super therapeutic, but one of my mentors says,

what doesn’t come out of your mouth and words will come out of your body in action. And so we’ll find ourselves trying to cope, doing these bad things. When I say bad things, things are just not healthy for us. My thing, eating, sugar. Right? And so being in a place where you can talk about it get it out of your mouth, you’ll start to realize, like we said earlier, oh, wow, I’m not the only one going through this. Oh, wow.

Harrison Sharp (18:52)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah, I get it.

Quentin Edmonds (19:10)
What we made, what we made extremely big, oh, we can condense it. It’s not that big. You’ve been here before. And so I just think that when you have community, we have good people around you. You start to get more healthy with your mindset. And if your mindset is healthy, you’re healthy or physically. If you’re healthier physically, you start being healthier financially. You start getting healthier socially. And this is why I say like healing happens in community, because when you’re able to think clearly,

and not think in an anxious state of mind or a distressed state of mind, everything else functions in a better environment. And so I’m glad that you brought up about talking to people, people that you can relate to that can support you. And so I appreciate that, man. think that’s so good for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, listen, man, is there any topic that I have not brought up that you would like to talk about?

Harrison Sharp (19:53)
Absolutely. Yeah, I agree with everything you just said. That’s good stuff.

Quentin Edmonds (20:04)
Or is there any other words of inspiration, education, motivation? Like if you came in here with something on your mind, I kind of just want to open up this space for you to be able to talk about it and land it if you think our viewers need to hear it.

Harrison Sharp (20:17)
Oh yeah, I’ll kind of go in a little bit more on like some ancillary stuff that we’re working on. Like again, we’re really big on the power of real estate and there’s so many avenues in real estate that can change your life in terms of just financially, obviously, I’m just talking more financially here. So many different avenues. Like one thing that I’ve been kind of big on, not even real estate, but just different avenues in investment. That’s something I’ve always been interested in, having a background in finance and

I’ve been interested in the stock market for a while. you know, one thing that we’ve actually helped a few of our clients do this video. Okay, let’s say you got a big stock portfolio. There are ways that you can borrow against that and borrow against that in a safe way that you’re getting way better terms than you otherwise would. And we have a lot of our higher network clients that do stuff like this. You know, but one thing that I do specifically is like, okay, well, you know, if I’ve got stocks.

And, you know, there’s a safety margin there on the levers that you can borrow against it. And then we’ve got another real estate client that may have found this home run deal and they don’t have the liquidity for it. Cause you know, a of real estate investors typically don’t have a lot of liquidity. All their equity is tied up in their real estate. So, you know, they got to, they got to jump on a deal and they don’t have the cash for it. Well, okay, I’m going to go help. I’m going to go lend. It’s short-term lending. You know, they’re going to give me a high, a high rate.

they secure the deal and then they’ll pay me back once they refinance one of their properties. So that’s kind of something that we really use in tandem with our real estate sales business. And we don’t do this for a lot of people and we underwrite the asset and the deal and all that. And it’s people we’ve worked with for a while and we trust and know that they’re going to be a good operator. But that’s something that we’ve used to help kind of leverage, you know, the aspect. And again, I love the personal finance space and it’s something that I’ve studied since I’ve been in college and there’s so many different layers to it.

That’s another thing that we try to add, add value to our clients as well as just kind of imparting some of the knowledge that we’ve learned along the way. Because I know not everyone has that background and is not really taught in schools. So ⁓ yeah, just we love that stuff.

Quentin Edmonds (22:20)
Yeah,

no, I’m glad you went there. think that’s great bulletin board material for you and what you do best. And I think that’s great advertisement. I mean, I’m using these words, but you know, what you just said is what people need. And so I think you are a very good draw for people to come to you and be able to get that mindset, get that actually value for their company. so with that being said, man, someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you.

Learn more about what you’re doing, Mr. How can I get in contact with you,

Harrison Sharp (22:52)
Yeah, our website is probably gonna be the best place if you just wanna see what we got going on or book a consultation call, it’s sbre.group. And then if, I’m pretty active on Instagram and Facebook, just type my name in Facebook, send me a firm request, DM me, I’m pretty responsive to everyone. And then same thing on Instagram, it’s Harrison.sharp, or you can search Harrison.sharp real estate, you’ll find my page.

⁓ But yeah, always looking to give back, help people. If anyone’s got any questions, that’s where you can find me and I’ll give you as best information as I know or pointing to someone that does.

Quentin (23:30)
I believe it’s planting seeds and people that really is going to make incredible change. So thank you for your story. Lastly, man, thank you for your perspective, for your mindset, the way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you being here today, man.

Harrison Sharp (23:45)
Absolutely happy to be here. Thanks for having me on, Quentin.

Quentin (23:48)
Absolutely, But listen, y’all heard Harrison Check him out. Check him out in his show notes. I appreciate you coming through. Y’all get in contact with him and definitely make sure you subscribe here. That way you can be here when we continue to bring up incredible people, just like Mr. Harrison. So sir, I appreciate you. Everyone else, y’all have a fantastic day.